i'm sure. i'll see of. this hour's headlines stories russian british create a deal. together in the hope of boosting their effect that this. new highly contagious strain discovered in the u.k. international public but the head of the russian fund. seeks to dispel figures. the 00. 0 s. . he didn't. get many way.

the latest mutation growing list of countries to flights from the u.k. from. leaving goods people stranded over christmas. they sent me a text saying of trains been cancelled you have to get out of the country now face the case yeah just to do that my family received. the u.s. attorney general ses russian hiker is quote certainly appears to have targeted us institutions we look at the latest claims on the familiar concept of highlight. your training in from across the globe this hour welcome to moscow international my names you know neal good to of your company. britain's.

center have signed an agreement to cooperate in the fight against corona virus joint clinical trials are set to start just days from r t z was in the studio earlier explaining to the significance of the time. 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 these see astra zeneca put what was achieved today we have 2 main goals the 1st one is to allow. our professional loads to use 11 vaccine all the

other for the for the 1st injection and the 2nd goal is to hopefully get better when you combine 2 different recs 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. cent of action for the 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 you on this significant event 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 can think can we be that the vaccines that we have well work against it the thing to understand about this. particular corona virus the type of this infection it's a so-called r.n.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 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

something would keep in mind this mutation. in the other produces what you call it or don't because we just need a war to gather and it's our national operation. against the strain just as was the. other day show that you or your despised was america we believe that it will lead to advocacy. if the u.s. . approach but again it still need to be tested and we will do so i mean 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 well absolutely astra zeneca is vaccine it has faced its own share of criticism it has been centered around its average efficacy 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. elderly people and that was something emitted in the initial press report by astra zeneca when it comes to sputnik 3 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 have been critical. as a just critical because you don't know all of the facts and all the information sometimes a critical purpose for competitive reasons for geopolitical reasons what you've seen as it's ever bice is there is just less also goal arguments have by the critics so 1st of all this or we're seeing or maybe install it well it's clear that

small because it's very different from others that we believe it's better in many ways than others so there was criticism what about phase 3 and we've seen there are a few manufacturers also registered as it were seen on emergency use basis just as russia did before all of these 3 are completed so and so were questions about this well we demonstrated advocacy more than 90 percent 122700 or 26 all of who participated in clinical trials and the intimacy. of. both astra zeneca and the russians they have put their cards on the table and now basically independent people you know object to can objectively look and study both back scenes and put all the marketing all the politics aside and just genuinely make the job better lawrence young professor of molecular oncology at warrick medical school told us existing code vaccines are likely to be effective against

the industry. we know from recent data that this new variant that's arisen in probably in the u.k. has some changes in that white protein that the vaccines that have been developed around the world are all based on but those changes will not affect the vaccine because when you vaccinate you get loads of different antibody responses and many of these will be the parts of least 5 protein that aren't affected by this variation so even though we know that variants are arising all the time in this virus the various vaccines that of been developed around the world should be very effective irrespective of these changes. or russia has joined a growing list of countries bombing flights from the u.k. after the discovery of a new coronavirus strain as we were just going through it's believed to be 70

percent more transmissible than earlier variants artie's shadi at 1st dusty brings us more live 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's freezed transport links with the united kingdom for at least a 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 saudi arabia 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 and 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 be with my family and for. everybody to view my. name. but they sent me a text like 2 o'clock this afternoon saying the trains 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 festive joy was absolutely wrenched from many people within the united kingdom with boris johnson announcing that christmas ascension it was canceled at least for those in the southeast of the country by saying their slogan returns to stay at home and no indoor household mixing simply saying christmas is counsel for many

people now this is all because of this new strain this new super strand of 19 which the health secretary. has said it's completely out of control you said recently that the virus was under control is it 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 to have fled from the capital incredibly selfish and totally irresponsible but for those stuck in the capital they would argue that the government's handling of this pandemic has long been something that needs to be called out on and criticised for mixed messages and indeed broken

promises. we've got i think you would be like you probably you know maybe 3 you might be like remember this the prime minister gets worse but you go with the basic you know you probably are just playing this with bookies well despite this is verity of these measures some people online on twitter especially have managed to see the funny side. while boris johnson may be seen as the grinch that stole christmas at least christmas this year effectively being cancelled there is a glimmer of hope and 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. well journalist and broadcaster neil clark believes the british government has mismanaged the latest crisis and cause on necessary chaos the fact of the matter is that this so-called news straight was known about in september we had scientists writing about it discussing it in september. and yet the health secretary only in this is this just a few days before christmas why didn't he make an announcement about this in september why didn't they get up in september now so the predictable what was going to happen is also to link up with government still will get to where the british government is trying to terrify is the iraqi government the star about this terrible threat but of course our closest trading partners are going to say wow you're sorry we're going to block flights going to stop people coming in from 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 the disaster is the responsibility of the british government. ok another story we're closely following today u.s. lawmakers have struck a long awaited deal on a $900000000000.00 coronavirus stimulus it is the 2nd relief package since the start of the pandemic with congress expected to formally approved in the coming hours artie's came up and has been taking a look at the finer details and the reaction from both major parties. well the united states at this point has the distinction of being the country with the most coded cases of any country in the world and furthermore a we've got a situation where not only are people dying on a daily basis but people's jobs are in jeopardy unemployment numbers are rising however members of the u.s. congress are reassuring us that they have put together

a relief package help is on the way this is what we're hearing moments ago in consultation with our committees the 4 leaders of the senate and. found was an agreement it will be another major rescue package for the american people our purpose has always been to crush the virus put money in the package to the american people which we do in this legislation to the millions of small business owners who are worried their businesses would go on their help is on the way to families struggling with less money. direct payments mean help is on the way the stimulus package will inject $900000000000.00 into the u.s. economy and for average americans that translates to a check of $600.00 now keep in mind that 6 $100.00 will be lessened for people who make more than $75000.00 per year now there will also be

a $300.00 boost to federal unemployment benefits now this might sound like a lot for some but many americans look at this and say this is completely underwhelming and are quite disappointed this is some of the reaction to this deal $600.00 is a slap in the face you know you should be proud of making people so desperate that they were used to saying thank you for a crumb 600 dollars 11000000000 dollars for border wall 15000000000 dollars for a space force we need a radical revolution of values for many americans it's going to be a quite gloomy holiday season jobless claims have shot up to roughly $23000.00 per week close to $8000000.00 americans have been driven into poverty and that's according to u.s. government statistics and it's also important to note that 27000000 adults in the united states in december were living in a household in which there was food insecurity and not enough food on the table we

have one of the stories of this is one story of a family that has suffered during the pandemic from the economic fallout i actually was getting unemployment when the endemic hit so that the endemic can't and i have not been able to get any late unemployment benefits am i going to get an extension so that helps but then i wasn't able to get anything else i still haven't since july i've lost my car i'm about to lose my apartment's if there are no christmas for my kids i've been taking part time jobs i've had 3 jobs since everything happens that i keep losing because of cove it and to do. to the families that are suffering and the workers who have become unemployed there is also been a devastation of small businesses across the united states a number of small businesses have shut their doors. and small businesses owned by ethnic minorities in the united states have been particularly badly hit with a number of bankruptcies at this point we've got quite a bit of frustration from democrats and republicans about all the amount of time

that it took to reach a stimulus agreement negotiations dragged on for months now some reports show that donald trump a wanted to intervene in the discussions and demand that every american get $2000.00 rather than 6 $100.00 however he was advised against taking this move and pushing for this policy and republicans wanted the ultimate stimulus to be less than a trillion dollars now there does not appear at this moment to be a clear and to the pandemic in sight there are optimistic hopes about the vaccine and at this moment many are questioning how things might change in january when joe biden comes into office biden is promising that he will turn things around regarding the pandemic in his 1st 100 days many people are looking at joe biden's words and saying let's wait and see a lot of frustration in the united states right now a lot of economic suffering and a lot of a lot of people that are very unsatisfied with this stimulus agreement it just

points we spoke to economist edward hall he's the co-founder of the occupy wall street movement he sees the pandemic has left businesses across america. there is such a huge real way many of the economy it's not just because of the aid package expiring and. the need for the economy to adaptive is becoming more visible in this present cycle for most businesses there is a heavy duty struggle just to make ends meet in different sectors more so than others with 35 percent of businesses unable to pay rent and a similar. ally in a boy i think it was researched us. the 2nd or even the most important challenge for a small business was paying or employees the need or there to be safety net for these kinds of small businesses. and for.

others absolutely absolutely clear. now a lot of interest about this next story british spies may be given a real life license to kill under u.k. law controversial legislation being considered in the heart of lords would protect agents from prosecution for serious crimes committed abroad it comes as a new report reveals the extent to which they have been acting with impunity saskia taylor has been taking appeals from. 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 a red line said most likely been breached every year the i p c o 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 that my 6 continues to rely on section 7 of the 9904 intelligence services act now i might be nicknamed the james bond clause but it's far less shaken not stirred and much more a 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 license to rape torture and kill a license. is 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 world 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 i did

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 they like against ordinary people seems its overreach in democratic states is 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 can mcdonald q.c. observed it will be easier for police to commit a serious crime than to search a shed redlines transparency or annoyed that 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 it spooks to become both 2 months until what could possibly go overall 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 you're serving 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. the u.s. attorney general pointed the finger at russia over

a major hook of government departments america's own intelligence agencies have so far stopped short of assigning blame but that didn't stop william barr from drawing conclusions. from the information i have i agree with secretary powell's assessment it certainly appears to be the russians but i'm not going to discuss it beyond that . let's talk more on this with ortiz double quarter the claim from the attorney general echoed what the secretary of state earlier said and yet neither of them seemed entirely sure did they judging by their language and their union well absolutely there's not a shred of evidence and we're already seeing the attorney general of the united states assigning blame on russia while refusing to say anything more about it now in the court of law this wouldn't really work but we've seen over the past several years about how when it comes to russia all you really need is a person of importance saying that things are pretty clear and this is no exception

but we can say pretty clearly that it was a rush of putting to use the most activity now that is a bit surprising coming from pompei although since throughout trump's administration we've seen mostly democrats jumping on the anti russia bandwagon but this time we've seen bipartisan finger pointing and admissions that nobody really knows what's going on here we don't know fully what happened the extent of it and frankly we don't know fully for sure who did it and we also heard from donald trump who caught a lot of flack from the mainstream media and politicians from both parties for daring to suggest that this could all 'd be a bunch of baloney. the cyber hack is far greater in the fake news media than in actuality i have been fully briefed and everything is well under control russia russia russia is the priority chance when anything happens because lean she media is for mostly financial reasons petrified of discussing the possibility that it may

be shina it may and of course with trump we have another baseless accusation which the chinese foreign ministry has even criticized as spreading false information so we've got a lot of accusations against russia and a lot of big lack of evidence made public to prove anything so really this whole situation seems like a big deja vu if anything our teams don't all quarter taking us through. what was good to hear what you're thinking out there and you can do so by dropping a comment on the story of your choice son or to dot com or all our facebook page too i'm back here in just over 30 with all the latest global news headlines hope to catch it. because there's a survival guide book stacie just the start. of it all these are. good

this is a repatriation scheme look at the rest in 7 years. philip a separate kaiser report. mary was over in bed barely got another researcher to. where american pressure is weapon of mass communication is spreading below blair found that way to marry the day good friend of m.t.v. news if it was an image well devices more than 12000000000 contaminated conjured fuel we don't need to worry about taking your mother mary against alternative vision exhaust you'll start to question

a regulator excel data. that can tell me to marry up to create an appropriate or media narrative a undercover i'm going to disable the site. if you will get exposed or i'll take your complaint decontaminate my low self reliance and break everything to. track down where mary. you can defend yourself enjoyed reforms from the weapons of mass communications. thanks for the r.t. to. give the enemy our singular view. we're.

in if not in the harness with a backup of the sun and a political b.s. obama has a pass on that's just lost and so if you come up with a family that's that she should move in and kill those that injustice in just a minute on a. you don't mind just. pulled the shining most gold jewelry wouldn't you because you've. become what we're going to choose to be such so dated back to this 3. i mean look them up you know. to be not a new established. and yet one of. the. best self is that. we're no no. no no.