and the headlines today british drug giant asteroid zeneca agrees to cooperate with the makers of russia sputnik to study the effectiveness of combining their respective brought a virus vaccine. also this hour the international criminal court drops a probe into alleged war crimes by u.k. forces in iraq despite having quote a reasonable basis to believe that the atrocities actually took place. plus goodbye russia gays hello china gate with us intel choose printing beijing the greatest threat to washington today and sign a spying scandal unfolds. and as the u.s.

struggles with the pandemic and its economic consequences the nation billionaires have increased their wealth by more than a trillion dollars. to cover a major relief well i guess to get their teeth into the issue. it's up but i think she is glory of the system being out of control children it's just in the quality keeps getting worse at large corporation drop. people are rescued from these heavy handed government policies which never have to be sure here. this is our 2 international coming to you straight from the russian capital with your live news update welcome to the program russian and british scientists are ready to put their heads together and their vaccines to tackle the coronavirus pandemic britain's astra zeneca said in a statement that it's ready to work with the developers of russia sputnik feet.

today we announce a clinical trial program to assess safety and immunogenicity of combination of a's a d $1222.00 developed by astra zeneca and oxford university and sputnik v. developed by russian research institute. various international joins us in the studio for more on that so give us more details on this how important is this development i think it is quite important that this is over here from both sides and we hear about this huge corporation between the developer is of the bridge swedish and the russian drug at the time you have to understand a global covered $1000.00 vaccine raise and both sides believe everybody will only benefit from that they have a problem very vaccines efficacy isn't high enough this should be improved we have 2 different added over says they will take one of them and use it as a booster collaboration with the gamma layer research institute is important to

explore the potential of vaccine combinations unlocking synergies in protection and accessibility through a portfolio approach the head of russia's investment fund the company responsible for foreign distribution of rushes of vaccine qualified we also believes this is a breakthrough collaboration this unique example of cooperation between scientists from different countries will play a crucial role in achieving the final victory over the pandemic astra zeneca its decision to conduct clinical trials using one of the 2 sputnik viveca says to improve the effectiveness of its own vaccine is an important step towards joining forces in the fight against the virus. and astra zeneca says that they go in to start enroll in a doll's aged 18 years and older very very soon and early on friday we heard what mr putin's spokesperson the middle school saying that competition is a very good thing of course but not when it comes to vaccine aimed at protecting

the world these pro says he believes should not be politicized and i think this is a very good example of what he meant these collaborations between us and it can be so we have this unique cooperation in how to developers come to the agreement actually it was the russian initiative and they made this offer after interim earlier results of astra zeneca as clinical trials were announced showing that the drug is safe and has an overall efficacy of 70 percent in protecting against covered 19 as you remember. vaccine is over 95 percent efficient and 42 days after the 1st shot that is a 2 shot vaccine i think this is where the idea of combining these 2 vaccines came from and meanwhile mass vaccination here in russia is in full swing and is about to launch a huge factory able to produce $10000000.00 doses of sputnik the month. from

national breaking down that story for us thank you. earlier i spoke with simon karkare microbiologist at the u.k. is reading university who says global cooperation is vital during the pandemic. i wish that you could know what they're doing and wouldn't accept it unless they thought it was a real deal something that they should do the more data that is produced on any vaccine does about so where it's produced or by whom it's a good thing and it provided of course that data there is positive then it could only. quell any public fears that people might have about actually people need to come together and find a way of getting those things that work maybe to work better or to be able to produce more quickly or in greater amounts that's what's important now meanwhile the president of argentina has given a thumbs up to russia's corona virus vaccine alberto fernandez said that once the

drug is approved by the country's medical regulator he would be the 1st person in the country to receive the sputnik me jab adding that he had no doubts about its quality and. in argentina some raise doubts about the quality of russian science the russian gamelan institute has several nobel prizes among its staff of scientists to everyone's downswings sputnik vs here in argentina i will be the 1st one to take that vaccine because i have no doubt about the quality of the vaccine argentina has been badly hit by the pandemic with nearly 1500000 cases and a total of more than 40000 deaths remains the 2nd worst hit country in latin america after brazil the argentine president has confirmed the country has signed a deal with sputnik with russia on sputnik the supplies high risk groups in the country will be 1st in line for the job the country's president says they are buying enough doses to vaccinate 10000000 people you know most of our political.

we will be able to counter the nuff theresa's defection 18000000 argentinians between january and february 1st a batch of 600000 doses to vaccinate 300000 people before the end of the year by january will have enough vaccines for 5000000 people and by february we'll have enough vaccines to reach the 10000000 people with the see. the international criminal court has dropped a probe into alleged war crimes by u.k. armed forces in iraq that's despite the prosecutor having quote a reasonable basis to believe that offensive took place the court explained its decision by pointing to the fact that the u.k. had investigated the matter itself although investigations into more than $3000.00 cases resulted in no prosecutions takes a closer look and of story after 6 years of what was called a preliminary examination of allegations of war crimes by the u.k. moultrie in iraq the international criminal court says it's not going to proceed

and so just before calling the british justice system one of the best in the world this is the way you case proud defense secretary reacts their statement today indicates our efforts to pursue justice were allegations have been found that i'm pleased that work we have done and continues to do in improving the quality and assurances around investigations has been recognized by the international criminal court what i suggest though is reading beyond the 1st 2 lines of what the i.c.c. prosecutor ruled it will only take a few seconds to get to the part that says the office has previously filed and today confirmed that there is a reasonable basis to believe members of the british armed forces are responsible for the following.

i'll continue reading out bits from pretty much every paragraph one after another civilian supervisory and military command famous contributed to the commission of crimes against detainees the initial response of the british army and theater at the time of the alleged offenses was an adequate not a single case being submitted for prosecution to date a result that has deprived the victims of justice i could keep going but it's already clear that these conclusions sound like they're from a different report not from one that leads to a major case being dropped or a senior cabinet member bragging about an amazing justice system the judgment is it

is a travesty given the actual content of the report which not only says. reasonable evidence of all sorts of systematic violence against people in the british. during the iraq war but it also makes clear that sounds about negotiations and that not one of those cases has been prosecuted how they can say at the same time on the record can say the same time that it has been no shield to be no cover up what i recommend is that people read the report itself it's an indictment of the british army its enjoyment of the british justice system and it's also in a strange way an indictment of the international criminal court it sounds however if that's the way things are in the world of international criminal law london tick the boxes by launching domestic probes and the i.c.c.

couldn't prove any seal doing. or deliberate covering up so the rest is out of the tribunals jurisdiction which only makes you wonder following up on the i.c.c. zone statement does it all mean the iraqi victims will never get justice the u.k. government has repeatedly shown precious little interest in investigating and prosecuting atrocities committed abroad by british troops the prosecutor's decision to close a u.k. inquiry will doubtless fuel perceptions and an ugly double standard in justice one approach to powerful states and quite another for those with less clout the news from the i.c.c. comes as london pushes for a controversial overseas operations bill it's supposed to quote unquote protect british troops in overseas call flights from big say says litigation and repeat investigations critics though say it would allow more offenders to escape the law. the overseas operations bill will do nothing to address the issue of repeat investigations of u.k.

armed forces personnel list will do is make arifin cases like the death of iraqi national even more difficult to prosecute. the u.k. would also be violating numerous human rights treaties by not ensuring abuses are properly dealt with but even without the bill as we now know the international criminal court has pulled the brakes on probing the british military earlier when the court was going to look into potential abuses by the us troops in war zones washington simply paid back by sanctioning senior staff members at the i.c.c. what if after that the tribunal just didn't want to go too far with investigating uncle sam's number one in iraq well there's no way of knowing. top u.s. politicians are calling for heads to roll after a member of the u.s. intelligence committee was targeted by a suspected chinese spy it comes as u.s.

intel chiefs identified beijing as washington's number one adversary my god i have ticks deeper. so trumps out and the russia gate thing is slamming shut behind him because there's a new scare story in town china you know it doesn't take long to dig up dirt in a town like washington q us democrat representative eric swalwell until now move well this crist so far the evidence is one contradicted that the president used taxpayer dollars to ask the ukrainians to help them choose an election this time around it's his links to a suspected chinese spy who is in the stink not least because and this is awkward he sits on the house intelligence committee not the only shall be removed from the intel he should be removed from congress as well yes house minority leader kevin mccarthy there spotted an opportunity to claim his 1st victim so the background in a nutshell swalwell hod

a chinese national called fang fagged in his early political career and this person quickly started raising suspicions within the intel community he got rid of her but has recently refused to answer whether he slept with her which probably means yes but before we burn mr swalwell at the stake at sea we're out might have to join him once this chinese witch hunt really gains momentum you've got a feel for mitch mcconnell he survived the title most good image but can he now survive the fact that is wife secretary of transportation elaine chao is from one of china's most prominent political families that would be one hell of a honey trap and you and jean shall have served on the board of the holding company for china's teach to build in a state owned enterprise that makes chips for the chinese military. is also on the board at the bank of china and top lender to the ship builder remember also the former speaker of the house john boehner aka the original orange man is there is

the high. republicans actually give john boehner a harder time than they give me. which means orange really is the new black. these days the former speaker of the house just happens to be a lot b.s. for a certain people's republic of china is this guy purdy chief security officer who are way the u.s. is ready china on a number of issues and they want to while away to hurt china the very afraid of the competition between china and the u.s. so they're focusing on hurting while way before getting professionally agri for you our way for a living and you purdy was a member of the white house staff team that helped draft the u.s. national strategy to secure cyberspace this is just the tip of the iceberg therefore the head of u.s. intelligence is declared open season on beijing calling it threat number one if i

could communicate one thing to the american people it is that the people's republic of china poses the greatest threats to america today and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since world war 2 what they might find is that there aren't many politicians left who don't have links to this new enemy because they used to be friends weenies getting hard to keep up. still have while thousands of americans have been struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic hundreds of the countries and billionaires have been making huge sums of money to tell them that story and more after the break. anyone else chose seemed wrong. but i will say just don't call. me.

yet to see how it just didn't come out to. and in detroit equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. join me every thursday on the all excitement show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

welcome back we turn to russia where a suicide bomber has blown himself up and they small village in the caucuses region reportedly injuring 6 federal security service officers attack happened near a local f.s.b. building and this image reportedly shows what remains of the improvised bomb the suicide bomber was allegedly a radical islamist russia's anti-terrorist committee said that the man detonated the bomb as he was being detained. more americans have now died of coded than were lost fighting and world war 2 the death toll is now close to 300000 while the total number of cases over $15000000.00 the pandemic may be the country's worst crisis in decades but that hasn't stopped the rich from getting

richer and that work worth of american billionaires has soared by one trillion dollars cents march according to a new report as tens of millions of americans suffer from the health and economic river just over these pandemic a few 100 billionaires to their massive fortunes their pandemic profits are so immense that america's billionaires could pay for a major corporate relieve bill and still not lose a dime of their provider it's reaches. the updraft of wealth to the billionaire class is disturbing at a time when millions face eviction to situation and loss billionaires are extracting wealth at a time when essential work is pushed into the vajra line 5 the campaign group americans for tax fairness found that the extra wealth accumulated by billionaires during the pandemic would be enough to dish out $3000.00 to every single american as roughly equal to the entire amount spent by the federal government on health care and $21000.00 i merely 4 times more than the stimulus payments made earlier

this year to $159000000.00 americans now the report included $651.00 billionaires and we can take a look at just a few of them at the wealthiest of course is jeff bezos who is now worth over $180000000000.00 which is more than the g.d.p. of iraq elon musk's wealth grew almost 6 fold during the pandemic qual mark zuckerberg almost doubled his both musk and zuckerberg are worth more than $100000000000.00 now are guesstimated profiting from a pandemic. this is capitalism on government life support and the side effect of that is to make those who own shares the overwhelming bulk being owned by the richest people even richer and while everybody else is in trouble in the way that they blame capitalism for destroying the poor and and creating great inequality these government policies do exactly not have lockdowns crushing small

medium businesses we have stayed home orders which drove people into an unemployment largely virtual existence we don't wait a month for policy which drove a crisis in financial markets i always love these kinds of analyses is it the government has a day or 6 not going to get drugs from the government there's nothing naive here the government isn't doing something then as a result the government is itself the result of the way this society works which puts enormous wealth and therefore political power in the hands of a very small number of people who turn out to have a government policy that makes them richer this burst of new wealth is just as purely a product of government policy and was unnecessary you know the unintended consequences of lock downs and such and in this case that they call them non-pharmaceutical interventions but there's also capacity limits on businesses are going to be almost the opposite of what we hope for the draconian policies they've increased the gap. between the rich and poor that created new controversies of wealth this tremendous

consolidation going on right now let me be clear here we could have been prepared for this virus the way other countries where we could have handled it better the way other countries hand it's a pathetic sad story of a system spinning out of control so that it's unjust inequality keeps getting worse we have a monopoly in this country have had it for a century we have 2 parties we don't allow 2 businesses that dominate most of our industries but we allow these 2 parties to dominate our politics that's very convenient for the computer they. the class of corporate directors who donate the bulk of the money to both of them who pull the strings from both of the bodies and you can't really have a monopoly without government help because innovation never stops you have you would you need to have a monopoly as richard said is you need government controls you need artificial controls like patents and i copyright all that sort of thing health care is a perfect example of that as a business and it's a sector which is super regulated. and it therefore you have entrenched interests

there and for that reason we shouldn't be surprised that those costs are rising rising rising and you know juju with no end in sight i mean i think that is. what one of the one of those maybe maybe the picture perfect examples of what happens when government gets up to its neck in an industry to think of this is a government policy is strange the beneficiary ear our corporations they are aberrate with 4 industries doctors hospitals device and drug makers and the insurers they've got us by the throat we have to pay those prices that they control yes peter is right they use the government to cement their monopoly as monopolists always had but the impetus the desire that need to control the market to squeeze more profits that's what drives the government to do what they do in support of these interests trying to maximize the money they can squeeze out of our health

care if you look at these lockdowns how many people i mean if you think of people locked in home people with nothing to do stores being closed what was keeping people alive what was keeping people fed what was keeping people's minds same right facebook google amazon netflix things like that there was no service providers and as many of the businesses to me is but large corporations are offering people some some sort of refuge from these heavy handed government policies which never had to be so heavy hand. in members have stressed the need to develop a coordinated approach to vaccines certificates a common new approach to vaccination certificates is likely to reinforce the public health response in member states and the trust of citizens in the vaccination effort electronic vaccination certificates would show whether a trauma had been immunized against corona virus before crossing borders a system was a key part of discussions on how the block is going to lift pandemic restrictions

over the coming year earlier the world health organization advised against any such system we heard from its representative. thank. we generally have price not to make it mandate tree it's much better people want to be vaccinated if you have a mandate or a system it's much difficult to much more difficult at you to ensure that everybody gets the exit interview because people are then become frightened that there's no reason to be fight no something like this which is a little. we're scientific a neutral cause or when i say shit. like you know when i say should we do get criticized but we also have knows if they have been some politicize ation of the response and we do i ask the quality but certainly we have been concerned and have been warning against taxing nationalism for a long time and again that's why in part a little while ago scientists were working on developing the vaccines or they were working on sitting up on the facility the kovacs facility and talking with all the

different countries to join that. we will see the changes we will see big improvements in 2021 if we will keep doing what we must do if we don't play out but continue with the garbage health measures continue with the tracking and tracing finding in every case bringing in the numbers down as we bring the numbers of infections down and as we increase the vaccination the virus will have no way to go and we will we. that's been our breakdown of the day's top news for this hour but don't forget you can always had to our website are 2 dot com for the details on all of those stories and many more.

people in the local. just look. at those connections among those around him and ask for the last 70 and seeing him down the day for that. commission so you know we're going to shift. gears in the. least you. know new car so said i'm not going to much to me mama it's just

that yeah. greetings and sal you taste right the u.s. justice system is a humming this week as 2 major court cases are captivating the headlines for all the rightfully wrong and wrongfully right reasons the 1st comes down. from all the way down to mettled lone star state where texas attorney general ken paxton poked the proverbial hornet's nest this week when he decided to call november's presidential election results and die

a bad 1st into trump giuliani's spoiled sore loser crybaby act that's been masquerading as a legitimate. here's the theory for about a month now yes the texas attorney general filed a lawsuit with the u.s. supreme court on tuesday alleging that under the cover of code would leaders in the state of pennsylvania georgia michigan and wisconsin usurp their legislatures authority and unconstitutionally revised their state's election statutes all in enough hurts to steal the election for one joe biden it goes on to declare that without dependent states combined $72.00 electoral votes president trump presumably has 232 electoral votes and for a vice president biden presumably has 234 thus these defendants states electors will determine the outcome of the election. when the minute you known some something seems off of. this the attorney general put in

there some of the feel right you know you know what you know what. oh it would appear the texas attorney general paxton forgot to double check his electoral math as supreme court legal reporter lyle denniston points out on key point it says it is challenging for states combined $72.00 electoral votes but those 4 only have 62 electoral votes pennsylvania 20 georgia and michigan 62 in wisconsin 10. but you know really a bit of point are we are we really all that surprised what with the you know all the 4 seasons landscaping porno shop press conferences and drunken karen witness testimonies. but sadly that hasn't stopped 17 other trump supporting state attorney generals from joining this ludicrous rule being brought before the supreme court but thankfully it wasn't just trump's legal dancing that made headlines this week

as federal regulators and a coalition of nearly 40 five's.