the party we choose to look for common ground. the developers of russia sputnik recoated vaccine sign and official memorandum of cooperation with astra zeneca and the hope that combining their 2 vaccines will boost their africa see. also a new coronavirus variants that emerged in the u.k. is believed to be around 70 percent more can be just than the current strains at the head of the russian fund behind sputnik p 6 to dispel fears over that. deal was used to being sure we actually got the. best buy or if.

you mean the way. that new coded mutation prompts a growing list of countries to ban flights from the u.k. all around all across channel traffic leaving goods and people stranded over christmas and they sent me a text saying your trains been cancelled you have to get out of the country now face again if interested in my family and not be alone for christmas. you're watching our to international bring you your live news update from our studio here in moscow welcome to the program. britain's astra zeneca and russia's camelias center have signed an agreement to cooperate in the fight against the coronavirus with joint clinical trials being gaining just days from now i was trying to earlier by our to love who explained the significance of the new partnership. a russian research institute and

a british pharmaceutical giant astra zeneca they have decided to join their forces in making this new vaccine against the corona virus more effective they have signed an agreement a so-called a memorandum and they are said to begin joint clinical trials a very very shortly basically they will be trying to marry the 2 different formulas and to make the job as efficient as possible have a listen to how the sea of astra zeneca put what was achieved today we have 2 main goals the 1st one is to allow. your professional notice to use 11 vaccine or the other for the for the 1st injection and the 2nd goal is to hopefully get better when you combine to the affront i don't think companies are competing against each other everybody is racing against the virus we will need many many vaccines because there is no one single. quote unquote new set of works and for the employer world

it's about making the vaccine as reliable as possible because right now astra zeneca efficacies stands at around 70 percent it's a good number but again it could be much much better the producers of the russian vaccine sputnik we are placing its efficacy at around 90 to 95 percent and such international corporation has been promoted and pushed for by the russian president vladimir putin himself i am glad to congratulate of the significance of vent signing the memorandum of cooperation i'm convinced that this commitment to partnership can serve as a compelling example of how science and technology combine to protect the lives and safety of millions of people what about when it comes that this new highly infectious corona virus strain that we're hearing about how conflict can we be that the vaccines that we have will work against it the thing to understand about. this particular corona virus the type of this infection it's a so-called are in

a infection r.n.a. virus and of these viruses they mutate very rapidly so essentially there could be dozens of different variations of this covert 1000 virus but i should say this is something that any vaccine producer any scientist will keep in the equation because it doesn't make any sense to make a vaccine against only one particular strain of the virus because which is one strain of the virus now say 6 months from now on it could mutate and develop some different traits so this is something that the producers of the vaccine again that they would something would they keep in mind this mutation or asian. in the other producing what you call you or because we just need a war to gather and it's our national operation. do you believe. these. are against the strain just as was the. other additional that you or your

dispatchers america believes are good will lead to advocacy. of the u.s. . approach but again it still need to be tested and we will lose us in the upcoming several months now when it comes to these 2 vaccines that we have at this point it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for them has it or well absolutely astra zeneca is vaccine it has faced its own share of criticism it has been centered around its average advocacy of 70 percent essentially the company behind the vaccine astra zeneca has been criticized for not being transparent when releasing information about how they tested this vaccine because essentially they said that well a full dose was less efficient than a half dose and it didn't make any sense because it has to be more effective than half the dose and then it turned out it proved to be less efficient among the 0. the only people and that was something amid the initial press report by astra

zeneca when it comes to sputnik really it has also been criticized people have been pointing out and claiming that it didn't go through all the necessary phases of testing before going to the market but the scientists behind sputnik the they have addressed this criticism both for being critical. as a just critical because you don't know all of the facts and all information sometimes a critical and purposeful competitive reasons for geopolitical reasons what you've seen as it's ever by staff there is just less also of all arguments by the critics so 1st of all this or we're seeing or may be install it well it's clear that small because it's very different from others frankly we believe it's better in many ways than others so it's always great this is what about phase 3 and do scenes of there are but few manufacturers also registered as it were seen on the emergency use basis justice russia did you for all of these 3 had completed and some were

questions about this well we demonstrated advocacy more than 90 percent on point it was cells and 746 people who participated in clinical trials and it was saved. because both astra zeneca and the russians they have put their cards on the table and now basically independent people you know object who can objectively look and study both back scenes and put all the marketing all the politics aside and just genuinely make the job better. we can now bring in line dr peter smith a professor of epidemiology and former adviser to the w.h.o. on vaccine safety you're very welcome to the program now how optimistic are you about this tie up between astra zeneca and russia. you know i think it's a very interesting development they are both vaccines they are both got vaccines that have shown efficacy the the. vaccine appears happy higher because the of the

order of 90 percent using 2 different human at no viruses as the vector for delivering the vaccine the opposite vaccine as your commentator said earlier has been shown to be less efficacious tends to lead because years between about 70 percent effective clearly one would like a vaccine which is more than 90 all other than than 70 and certainly the 2 vaccines that have been approved for emergency use in the united states are pfizer and that recently there were to no vaccine both have it because it's over 90 percent so that it would be good if we had another vaccine that could be produced on a lot scale which had high at that to see now the problem with both him and biotech vaccines is that they are caught of 8 street culture which is going to

make it very difficult to deliver in many parts of the world where it is both the oxford and the the russian vaccine have a much more except of all cold chain in terms of being delivered in being able to very many parts of the world both of those companies have said that they can but use large companies about seemed i don't know exactly how much camel air could produce but i've seen figures of about a 1000000000 doses next year and astra zeneca said they can produce 3000000000 doses next year so if by combining one of the russian at nobody's vaccines with the astra zeneca vaccine which is based upon a chimpanzee had no violence then this mixing of add no biases which seems to have been very successful with the. our air vaccine or though very different has been published formally on that scene yet but if that combination is more effective than

just using a single ad no virus as is used in the opposite vaccine then this could be very exciting in d. i think the problem is going to be that in this new approach we will have to do a clinical trial with this combination and that will take time so it may be not until the middle of next year when there are really good evidence of the efficacy of that combination i don't think that one could necessarily assume that combining these 2 vaccines is going to produce a vaccine which is efficacious 90 percent or pass so actually doing that to nickel trial would take quite a long time to to set up an incomplete. we also seem to understand at this point that the astra zeneca vaccine it was having lower africa see when it was being tested among people in an older age group is that a large problem. well i think they haven't got enough data on them or the older population to really assess what the ethic disease in their population and most of

the published. a younger population and it particular this group that they said had potentially 90 percent if it does see who only got by accident half a dose of the 1st dose of the vaccine they were a young group i personally think that result is still sort of to be evaluated i think that was not the intention in the trial it was a sort of accidental finding and i think the figure of something like 70 percent effort to see is probably the best estimate for that vaccine at the moment but we'll see what the the regulators say when they come to consider the full data but it certainly as a whole does not seem as if acacias as the data that have been released on the bechstein and what about this new strain of cohered that we're hearing about that could be more infectious do you think it's right when people say that vaccine

developers seem confident that their jobs will work against it as well. yeah i think the. i think there's no reason to suppose at the moment it will be they won't work but i don't think we could be competent that they would necessarily be as a precocious as they've been shown to be in the trials so i think i keep an open mind on this at the moment i think there's a reasonable chance that they will be as effective but it's something so needs to be evaluated. as more and more people are exposed to this new apparently more infectious strain dr peter smith a professor and former adviser to the w.h.o. on vaccine safety thank you for joining us on the program today thank you russia has joined a growing list of countries banning flights from the u.k.

after the discovery of that new corona virus strain it's believed to be 70 percent more transmissible than earlier variants and prime minister boris johnson will chair an emergency response meeting on the crisis today are to shoddy edward starsky reports from london. well 2 days after boris johnson the prime minister announced his latest set of restrictions it's almost as though the united kingdom is plummeting into chaos countries that neighbor united kingdom have not quite gone to the extent of shutting the borders down entirely they're doing all they can very extreme measures to try and contain this new strand of covert 900 in the united kingdom and not to bring it to their shores now france has freezed transport links with the united kingdom for at least 48 hours germany is not quite following suit but all travel is being banned and suspended until december 31st that's followed by many countries both within europe and outside europe including the netherlands belgium and italy and further afield canada colombia and rabiah with that list of

countries growing by the minute for thousands of people both sides of the english channel are struggling to get back home in time for christmas i live in paris i go with. my family i'm heading back to france to see my family couldn't see for more than 4 months just to visit my family and. my. evening. but they sent me a text like 2 o'clock this afternoon saying a train's been cancelled you have to get out of the country now basically if you want to go but there was a glimmer of hope there from the prime minister a few weeks ago when he promised brits that they could celebrate christmas with their loved ones at least for around 4 or 5 days around christmas however that 1st of joy was absolutely wrenched from many people within the united kingdom with boris johnson announcing that christmas ascension it was cancelled at least for those in the southeast of the country by saying their slogan returns to stay at

home and no indoor household make the virus was under control. no it's not the new variant is out of control and we need to bring it under control. following boris johnson's announcement on saturday thousands of londoners were scrambling to get out of the capital to avoid having a lonely christmas this year because many parts of the country remain in loose a set of are strict in the south but of course the whole idea of clamping down in the south was to try and restrain this latest strand of the coronavirus so many people in the north are calling londoners the have fled from the capital incredibly selfish and totally irresponsible but for those stuck in the capital they were darkie that the government's handling of this pandemic has long been something that needs to be called out on and criticized for mixed messages and indeed broken promises so it's. we've got thank you would be like you

probably you know maybe 3 you might be like remember this the prime minister gets worse but you know with richard you know you probably are just playing this week. well despite this is verity of these measures some people online on twitter especially have managed to see the funny side. well it seems this mutated version of the corona virus is spreading rapidly across the united kingdom and even we've seen the 1st case come out of the united kingdom and has been detected in italy as well so while boris johnson may be seen as the grinch that stole christmas at least christmas this year effectively being canceled

there is a glimmer of hope in that comes in the form of that vaccination hopefully a gift from santa will be that christmas is back on track at least next year. journalist and broadcaster neil clark has told us he's not surprised by the international or domestic reaction to the british covert response the fact of the matter is that this so-called use throat was known about in september we had scientists writing about it discussing it in september. and yet the health secretary only says this just a few days before christmas why didn't he make announcement about this in september why did need to get up in september those big get up now so those are the good example is going to happen and it's also to link up with the other main story will ever get to where the british government is trying to terrify is in iraqi w m d star about this terrible strain but of course our closest trading partners are going to say wow you're sorry we're going to block flights we're going to stop people coming in from britain if what you say true british government said it why

should we have british people coming over to our countries and of course we got the chaos of the whole issue about the about the french blockade etcetera coming in so it really is a total disaster really and disaster is the responsibility of the british government. and extend them only as claiming to have spoken to the man who tried to kill him the russian opposition figure head who was allegedly poisoned over the summer says he tricked his assassin into revealing the details of the operation which he blames on the kremlin i can cross live to our corner who's going to give us more on the story donald tell us about this phone call. while jackie was on monday that alex alex a nepali published this conversation in which he claims to have duped in at leats russian spy from a top secret comical subunits a chemical weapon subunit into admitting that he had poisoned the opposition activists underpants now this conversation went on for apparently over 45 minutes

and the elite spy did not realize that he was actually speaking with someone posing as an official from the russian national and russian national security official now according to the vali the man was none other than constantine who dropped the ark opposition activist says was part of an f.s.b. team that allegedly poisoned him earlier this year and now the published transcript claims that the alleged f.s.b. officer said that the only reason of only is alive was because of the emergency landing made by the pilot as well as the medical treatment given by the 1st responders but the authenticity of this conversation hasn't been verified and it also doesn't seem like it can be verified at all skin centering the fact that this story the narrative does seem a bit suspect and other so-called investigations into the alleged poisoning about like saying the ball may have been pointing to have been trying to lay the blame at basically a water bottle and the hotel room that he was staying in on that day but nevertheless

the mainstream media have jumped on this story they've been publishing it everywhere has unquestionably factual and this really seems to have been the editorial line since the activist was poisoned earlier this year. are allegedly telling corridor and thank you for bringing us that report. british spies may really be given a license to kill under u.k. law on personal legislation being considered in the house of lords would protect agents from prosecution for serious crimes committed abroad it comes as a new report reveals the extent to which they've been acting with impunity already foskett taylor takes a closer look. do you dream of a life of crime are you just not fussed about human rights does the idea of going rogue excites you yes well then i've got great news and my 6 is hiring oh and don't worry if one syrian you commit a few deeds they don't mind in fact even renew your contract secret

intelligence services identify the risk that agents may be involved in serious criminality overseas or renewal 6 months up to the original submission. to number of indicators that the agent may have been involved in or have contemplated the serious criminality referenced above we concluded that on the basis of this new information as our red line said most likely been breached every year the i.p.c.c. releases a report on how well behaved the u.k. intelligence agencies and police forces have been in this area turns out not very not only does the report tell that story of a rogue agent apparently probably pretty likely breaking the law without punishment it turns out it wasn't a one off in fact it seems m i 6 continues to rely on section 7 of the 1904 intelligence services act now i might be nicknamed the james bond clause but it's far less shaken not stirred and much more i get out of jail free card if apart

from this section a person would be liable in the united kingdom for any act done outside the british islands he shall not be so liable if the act is one which is authorized to be done by virtue of an authorization given by the secretary of state under this section so a license to rape torture and kill a license. signed off by someone at the top most people would find this fairly worrying but apparently boris johnson's no one of them this report demonstrates the high quality of the oversight of our security and intelligence agencies use of the most intrusive. powers i'm satisfied there are arrangements are amongst the strongest and most effective in the world but then again birger how certainly he's not just ok with this shady wild of undercover crime is he actually wants it to become legal and for perpetrators to be immune from prosecution the pm is carney pushing the cause that human intelligence sources bill through parliament at

a dizzying pace a bill that would literally make being above the law the law for a select few of course now london says that agents have to have this freedom to convince the people best spying on that they aren't goody 2 shoes informants but not everyone's convinced we have us in the c.h.l. is bill in the u.k. that legalizes government to commit any crimes against ordinary people seems it's overreach in democratic states these days what could possibly go wrong with giving more leeway to secretary of state institutions who consider themselves accountable to nobody. the c.h.i.'s bill places no limits on the crimes that can be authorized as former director of public prosecutions ken macdonald q.c. observed it will be easier for police to commit a serious crime than to search a shed redlines transparency or know what's said to be replaced by copy all

snow accountability and by any means necessary wild of secrecy to become even more secret and the state on its spooks to become both judge and jury what could possibly go over all i would hope that this bill would fail. for the for the for the main reason that. you know we when you serve you know in whether it's in the military whether it's in diplomacy or in the intelligence services you'd like to believe that your server in a good cause a just cause and like i said sometimes you have to do things that are difficult to accomplish a difficult task. to solve a difficult problem. but you you know you're serving the greater good and the greater good is a standard a moral standard that says we don't tolerate murder we don't tolerate robbery we don't tolerate these these high crimes. you pay home office has admitted its

lost track of 37000 migrants over the last 30 years think that asylum seekers people overstaying their visas and those who cross the border illegally as chairman of migration watch u.k. has called the situation a failure of the system this is a shocking failure it is ridiculous to intercept those crossing the channel illegally or after they emerge from the back of lorries only to turn them loose to disappear into the undergrowth of the shadow economy. a home office spokesperson has said it's likely that many of the people have left the country for those still in the u.k. there is a national tracing team dedicated to finding migrants that have dropped off the radar for a buck that party and ukip member for scotland david coburn believes the u.k. should take a firmer approach to migration normal individuals are stopped to customs or stopped immigration and their checks for. there were little terrorists or whatever but

these people are right they're not checked and no one seems to want to chase them up but this is going on for years there's no desire in the part of the government to stop my creation and this is the reason one of the major reasons that people voted to leave the european union too many people are just allowed to stay and the government she said no it's just too much trouble it gives them bad publicity and they want to get the reelected so therefore they're not chasing you know it's expensive you know there's a lot of police man are you must control migration for the sake of the health service and so the siegel national security system the whole thing will collapse if we don't control migration they have to be from what i do see you will not be allowed to stay in the country you will not be allowed to work and you should not people should not be employing people who do not have the right to stay in the united kingdom. 9 people have been killed in a car bombing in the afghan capital 20 others were injured during the blast on

sunday among them a member of parliament now groups have so far claimed responsibility but the attack comes after a new report by a us watchdog revealing that military equipment handed over to the afghan government has gone missing r.t.s. demeter park looks at the possible implications. the pentagon has yet again lost track of its toys according to a new report by the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction the department of defense lost track of 60 percent of quote some of the most sensitive articles provided to the afghan military the last gear includes night vision devices surveillance systems and even controls for laser guided explosives the sensitive equipment was supposed to be inventoried by the us every year to ensure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands but apparently that's exactly what happened after the pentagon failed to keep count of this precious gear the command has never met its 100 percent inventory requirement and is unlikely to ever do so because the

security situation in afghanistan prevents some inventories from taking place the report found that in 2019 and afghan forces filed over 3000 change of use requests for the transferred articles almost half a which were captured by enemy forces and the others destroyed damaged or simply lost however the pentagon doesn't seem to be too broken up about the whole ordeal nothing has actually changed in the way the u.s. keeps track of its foreign military aid despite constant promises to do better over the years the pentagon has lost track of thousands of weapons and billions of dollars of foreign military aid and once in awhile the lethal cargo ends up in the hands of the terrorists further.

the pentagon even gets coronavirus relief funds and even those get misplaced one would think the scale of carelessness would inquire some serious reform but so far every. seems to stay the same and the pentagon maintains its several 100000000000 dollar annual budget to the frustration of many with little to no accountability it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the u.s. doesn't really care where its weapons and funds end up just as long as there's constant demand for them i think the problem has historically been that once you get into. the far reaches of the country a lot a lot of the inventory just goes missing it's that it's not properly inventoried it passes from and and and eventually u.s. forces journal you lose track of what you mean sensitive equipment such as your

night vision. at all for this hour news wise thanks for tuning in. we need to put about kind of what i think is more because of the act so i think that so we can at least for me and she. didn't just this in japanese and i. don't mean to just pick. the channels.