where's it going is it moving more towards corporate interests or is it more in the idea of a traditional participatory democracy is or how are the people this case demonstrates that struggle in the very real ways. the struggle. the headlines this grim footage from the german crematorium highlights the extent of a resurgent and then we can in europe is accused of stockpiling vaccines at the expense of other e.u. member states also to come you know when you sit down in the ritual trade for a service for only i'm sure. for what you. think a police crackdown on walks and violates his but are caught on camera apparently breaking the very rules they are supposed to be enforcing. joins the list of tech giants purging donald trump and his supporters from their platforms but it is sparking complaints that the big online companies have become too powerful.

and are going to go as far as they can because the trouble with power like in gorged they are now controlling pretty much the entire communications system available to wall. welcome you're watching r t international this wednesday evening just gone 5 o'clock in moscow now europe is suffering and use cases with france germany and spain registering some of the highest rates emerging evidence from one of germany's worst affected regions highlights just how bad the situation has become. miles. usually we gets about $700.00 deceased per month now we have $1500.00 so roughly

double that figure and this really is the impact of the corona crisis. if you are not allowed to visit covert patients in hospital you cannot hold their hands while they are dying you only receive a call saying he or she is dead you cannot say your last goodbye before their cremated you only receive that this is a big problem for relatives they have no way of saying go but. if you. if you. we have more than a 1000 deaths a day off today and that all shows that we will still need restrictions and what's go but long that will have to look into with the regions but one thing is in my opinion that it won't be possible to relax all the restrictions on february the 1st

well this comes as the european union struggles to maintain unity faxing purchases brussels is urging member states to cater to the bloc centralised distribution scheme but not all saying to be catering to the agreement paid to all of the explains. the european union's one for all and all for one vaccine plan is co-op against the problem of members self interest when it comes to obtaining the jobs germany has snapped up an extra $13000000.00 doses of the pfizer vaccines being criticized by its partners for doing so it is selfish behavior to buy medicine by yourself disrespecting common decisions is another example of the german policy of respecting their own interests above the interests of other e.u. countries berlin insists it is playing by the rules and that those extra doses won't be sent out until the vaccine is being dispatched across the rest of the

european union germany says the real problem lies with problems when it comes to production it's not correct to see the germany secure vaccines at the expense of other countries. that would see it we have ordered enough vaccines and the question is how can they be produced how fast they can be produced and if we would have ordered more it would not have been possible to produce it quicker the shortage is due to the lack of production capacity it isn't just germany that's being accused of looking out for itself cyprus is courting israel for vaccine delivery saying that the european union isn't forthcoming with the new doses to provide a mass switch to rollout the initial indications were very encouraging but at some point there was a setback in its effectiveness 2 companies came up with the vaccine 1st phase of buying to commit done but the number of vaccines is not enough for rapid mass vaccination e.u.

commission president has live on the line is telling member states to cut it out into it to the plan that they all agreed on we have all agreed legally binding that there will be no parallel negotiations no parallel contracts so the framework we are all working. in is a framework of 27 together and we are negotiating together we are procuring and together we are bringing forward this vaccination process brussels is calling on member states to come clean about any side deals they may have going on the president has asked commissioner this to send a letter to all health ministers asking them to provide us with all the necessary transparency on the way in which they are complying with the provisions of our vaccine strategy in terms of contacts or lack of contacts rather with. those pharmaceutical companies that we have been or are

negotiating with the commission on doing themselves any favors demanding transparency from member states when it comes to vaccine procurement when they are being all that clear on who will get what when the 27 agree that brussels would negotiate on their behalf the accusation is that that is being undermined by member states looking out for number one as we see the e.u. were very slow compared to other countries both in their regulation approvals both in there are a vaccination campaigns and. again no surprise that there is unsaid disaffection we indeed have of across the across the whole front we have a very poor performance by the european union here but the central administration of the european union and all they managed was to secure so the $100000000.00 doses

for a population of $450.00 so taking into account that you need 2 doses per person this was one 3rd of the population for which the vaccine was secured because of some budget constraints it is officially said so no wonder that the e.u. population is not very happy with that performance 'd in brussels while the red cross has warned the development of the vaccines does not mean that the public should ease up on basic preventative measures we spoke to the head of the humanitarian groups health and care department. it's something that we need to be prepared and we need to do is physically distancing is moscow is avoiding being in crowded places is making sure that one gets it's isolated and people are in contact with somebody sick we are in thailand up for some provide the support that is needed and to the person can go out again these are critical measures that can save

thousands of lives until vaccines will be widely available in all countries we can not lower the guard right now because the. researchers are worried about what we have been seeing. the u.k. and in south africa where. developed the further mutations occur we may see potentially also reduction of the effectiveness of some of the vaccine the majority of the world unfortunately i was not started vaccination programs yet and we know that we need to vaccinate people all over the world to assure safety for everybody around the world so we'll we'll have to accelerate the pace at which vaccines will be distributed around the world ensuring a mechanism to do so. in that very safe safe way and until that moment the best line of defense will be individual behavior or just as the red cross then warns the public must play its part to fight the pandemic police in the

u.k. are increasingly finding people who break the lock down restrictions they think home without a reasonable excuse could mean a 200 pounds fine rising to 6400 pounds for the plaintiff and as for the shot he asked at which stash he's been finding out in force mint is quietly consistent offices are sometimes forced to back down and have even a patron broken the rules themselves. despite the u.k. being in a full scale national lockdown codeine 1000 cases a soaring and death rates are constantly hitting recollects the. public has been ordered to stay at home once again but it seems not everyone is sticking to the rules and with rule breakers rule makers have given the place more power to clamp down on the law if you do not play your part our selfless police officers who are out there risking their own lives every day to keep us safe they will enforce the regulations and i will back them to do so to protect our n.h.s.

and to save lives and england and wales piece of issued $8000.00 penalties since november but leading by example isn't exactly the strong point you know for if you sit down in a restaurant takeaway service only on through the floor they said. so what are you doing right now. some offices and those eager to abide by the rules as they owe it to enforce them to women who drive 8 kilometers to meet up for a walk and found themselves surrounded by police their offense carrying coffee that made to the picnic so they were fined $200.00 pounds each in fact they were strictly following the rules as police later admitted worsening the fines and giving a half hearted apology look and we martin being our to. work is an operational marker and if it's not take out confiscating private it snowballs trip shipley's of starch and throws with $200.00 pounds fines there have been 2 reports

of snow balls being thrown last night between 11 and 11 30 pm this is obviously not a justifiable reason to be out of your house this behavior is likely to result in a 200 pounds fixed penalty notice for breaking the lockdown rule the tweet has since been deleted after dozens of angry complaints but still the message is stay at home we're going to keep the rules on the course review we have to tighten them we will but we have in place now used the money for single digits. observation observance of the group although the prime minister himself a spot it's like linger 11 kilometers away from downing street so is it a case of one rule for me and another for you. r.t. london. russia's covidien or collation program is about to be significantly ramped

up president putin has announced that mass vaccinations should start next week. so much that we have to switch from launch kind of vaccination to a massive program and i'm asking you to keep this in mind to get the relevant infrastructure ready i'm asking you to start the mass vaccination of all people as soon as next week and to build a schedule like we do for other infections such as influenza. ok let's get more details now with he joins us this evening evening at a big step forward then today with this announcement what further details do we know then about what happens next well andrew definitely this is a milestone because it's not law only it's not long any longer only about the jobs like doctors or teachers it's the kind of professions where the staff is forced to me loads of people clearly these were the people that got the job 1st in russia and

already as we know more than a 1000000 people have been vaccinated in this country and now after this announcement by the russian president the goal is we understand to make sure that the sputnik the vaccine is available to every russian and it's looking promising because as a result of the 3rd stage of the trials in december we know that the data from that research pointed to 96 percent efficacy the question though is whether the infrastructure is ready and whether there are enough doses well we heard from a senior russian government minister that production is on the rise and the plan is to rapid the crew increase the number of vaccination centers so yes it's all kicking off next week and like i said so far already a 1000000 russians have been vaccinated but everyone still needs to be cautious

with their optimism because while. all the numbers and this country are looking very good when it comes to the numbers of new cases daily we understand that things aren't that great in quite a few countries plus there's the issue of new strains and we know that last weekend a person with the new strain of patient has been hospitalized and that only happened like i said last week and so this explains the cautious and the warnings that came from the russian president while he was speaking at the government meeting. i know that we have the new corona virus strains and scientists are working on them its use in practice shows that the russian vaccine is the best in the world because we should understand its effectiveness against the new strains for that we need full scale research and i

urge you to monitor that to make sure everything is fine. this by the things that told you about earlier before the 3rd stage trials of the russian sputnik the vaccine we remember that it drew significant criticism from the west there were different reasons for it some said the approval came to early others accused russia of using the vaccine as a political or p.r. tool but now these kind of things this kind of rhetoric is beginning to vanish with the the apparent success of the russians putting vivax and in fact the new york times correspondent here in moscow got the job only a few days ago and bloomberg we saw a piece basically the conclusion of which was that the russian vaccine is clearly good to go and there are no reasons to be dubious about it and perhaps another

reason which explains and which points to the success of the putting the vaccine is the fact that more and more countries are beginning to register that jab and also signed some kind of contracts to cooperate with russia on it lattimer putin said that soon perhaps the production will kick off in turkey and then the turkish citizens could also use the russian vaccine we know that it's already been delivered to countries like argentina which we know is very far from russia but. is there already too and more and more countries are joining in which is clearly a good sign but again like i said it's very important for the russians for the citizens of this country that soon which is next week the vaccine will be available for all of them here to. ok thanks thanks for the update i was artie's or any pre-trained a reporter. so there is only a week of the trump presidency to go but the u.s.

house of representatives is still pushing for the vice president to invoke the 25th amendment and remove trump from office the democrats have also fired an impeachment resolution to which they'll put the vote later on wednesday pence though has already indicated that he would not exercise the amendment adding that attempts to impinge the president of damaging the country i do not believe that such a course of action isn't the best interest of our nation are consistent with our constitution i urge the congress to avoid actions that would further divide and inflame the passions of the moment or their retreat is really a get to new way of the greatest which shines through politics it's ridiculous i think it's causing tremendous danger to our country and it causing tremendous anger . as lawmakers attempt to remove from from the white house the tech giants have already all but to raise the president's online presence you tube has now joined

the likes of amazon and facebook and twitter in suspending donald trump social media pages as well as purging thousands of his followers claiming that they could incite violence it does follow last week storming of the capitol building in washington d.c. which some leading politicians the mainstream media have branded as domestic terrorism but there is pushback against the growing role and power of big online companies r.t. america's john hardy reports. the twitter hit list continues the social media site has permanently suspended more than $70000.00 accounts accused of promoting conspiracy theories or violent rhetoric including most prominently banning donald trump from the platform friday concluding his tweets constituted a risk to public safety and could potentially lead to more violence in the wake of these efforts twitter stocks tumbled as much as 12 percent monday and continued to fall today the crackdown has drawn iron criticism from some republican lawmakers

who say twitter is attacking the president's right to free speech and u.s. lawmakers aren't alone a spokesman for german chancellor angela merkel said chancellor merkel criticized twitter is trying to ban arguing legislators not private companies should decide on free speech and expression regulations european union commissioner terry britton called the chaos on capitol hill the quote $911.00 moment of social media writing in an op ed for politico that by banning donald trump social media companies have quote recognized their responsibility duty and means to prevent the spread of illegal viral content they can no longer hide their responsibility toward society by arguing that they merely provide hosting services yet he goes on to write that the fact a c.e.o. can pull the plug on posts is loudspeaker without any checks and balances is perplexing adding it is not only confirmation of the power of these platforms but it also displays deep weaknesses in the way our society is organized in the digital

space for those who either loved or love the dons daily rants and raves well it certainly is a perplexing time though maybe not exactly surprising twitter and facebook were already flagging trumps posts and seemingly moving in the direction of suspending and or banning him altogether but another question critics of the social media slaughter are raising is why so late in the game with less than 2 weeks in his presidency many contend the social media crackdown should have been. and sooner or not at all others contend it's a dangerous power play by big tech flexing its digital muscles knowing full well that president trumps powers on the eve of his departure from office are more limited in that he doesn't have the time or ability at this point to attack the social media platforms that have launched full scale war on him and the hits keep on coming for trump deutsche bank now reportedly cutting ties with the dawn a move that would be a major cut in funding for his hotels and golf courses and speaking of which the

p.g.a. announced it would strip trump's new jersey golf club from a major championship tournament next year a move that reportedly gutted the president for our t.v. john hardy well as the social media giants then continue to crackdown on the president he spoke to legal internet and politics experts about whether the platforms are indeed powerful they just won an election they're going to see how far they can push this this is a stress test to see how far the law will go how long how much people will tolerate and even to go as far as they can because drunk with power that they know which way the wind is blowing donald trump is no longer going to be in the white house almost all of these companies face antitrust suits that are going to be decided by the biden department of justice and so now there is going to be less of a priority to maybe make these arguments internally that donald trump and his account should be protected but these are self interested actors eighty's over the years that they have now controlling pretty much the entire communications system

all over the wall but it will be a mater of telling the full census she pulled the move on to other parts of the will credit party companies like twitter facebook anonymous and can do this to their own president and they do it anywhere in the well to any government they don't like. oh certainly so. they that the largest problems within these companies is that there really is no actual basis for which they are operating there is no bible there is no constitution there is no their terms of service are often edited and malleable and even then subject to vague enough to be subject to the whims of internal discussions within the company this it means that we have to rewrite the 1st amendment in this country because this is a quote private company that 99 percent of all the people on the planet use our

laws are outdated and unless that is changed nothing will change at least in this country now the question who should be more the rating perhaps the thirty's this should be a form of duration but it needs to be transparent so the state of affairs at the moment they don't know who makes those were the rationed do you think of a creative intended to end like this with a massive bans and censorship. of course absolutely look there was so much involvement in not only private equity but in government sponsored this was never intended to be good those dean going to giants and being exposed to all they actually are this is a mission statement to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and the information age the glee without barriers now people used to believe this does anyone believe that anymore i don't think so the question that i have is are we now bifurcating the internet are we going to totally solve select from the point of

adolescence or before or to be handed down by our parents to our children that we now only go on social networks and only interact with people and they're only hosted on servers that either are liberal or conservative or possibly even more extreme versions of that that to me is a dystopian vision that i think is something that is closer today than i've ever known it my laptop now the u.s. actually states last big foreign diplomatic trip as for them flat the plug is being pulled on my visit to europe apparently because officials there are refusing to meet with him as our friends correspondent sean of the bit scary. well the trump era is coming to a close not only with the social media blackout for. things such as you tube and twitter but also it seems the cold shoulder for many of the cabinet take mike is

the u.s. secretary of state who is due to be in europe on wednesday for some high level meetings including with the general secretary of nato he said in a tweet just a few hours ago that he was really looking forward to those meetings essentially his sworn song for his counterparts in europe but at the very last minute the plug was pulled on the trip more you will the u.s. state department says the player who was a man who didn't recognize the victory over by the u.s. election last year is now the man who wants to make sure that there is a smooth transition we are fully committed to the completion of a smooth and orderly transition process to be finalized over the next 8 days as a result we counseling all planned travel this week including the sixty's trip to europe it's a very different take. in the e.u. with apparently pompei you being pursued. and the european commission saying that officials didn't want to meet him they didn't elaborate on not but we've also heard

from diplomatic sources there was a sense of embarrassment around the idea of being in europe given that although he had condemned the violence of those crowds who stormed the capitol building in washington last week he hasn't said whether president from being a cause a factor in that however the luxemburg foreign minister he said the trumpet egg them on the trumpets a criminal a political pyromaniac who should be sent to the criminal court he's a person who was elected democratically but who isn't interested in democracy in the slightest and it also seems that there were other reasons to save face and to cancel those meetings because had meetings gone ahead with officials in that there was a problem that would have. to be addressed and this is the compensation for the jewish families was also fact was stolen during the holocaust in the 2nd rule a dispute between washington and luxembourg now for a very long time and he approved that some of suggested that those who stormed the

capitol building in washington last week would need to nazi sympathizers this could have put public pay you know in a bit old a pickle it seems to trumpet ministration will come to an end in a blaze of glory but in a proof of some very lax way. i wish i would have been ski reporting that i'm up bring you up to date with for this hour we're back again with more stories in about 30.

damn action returns here welcome to a lockdown season premiere of going underground while we've been away coronavirus levels here in britain have reached the highest per capita rates in the world we've seen an attempted insurrection in washington d.c. and of course the world's most famous journalist and publisher julian assange has north being extradited to have a ginia court to thanks to judge for that separates that was nevertheless kept him in a maximum security prison here in london where according to the un special rapporteur he has been tortured by u.k. authorities who are joining me now is one of joining us on just media partners the former editor of the guardian newspaper alan rusbridger his new book is called news and how to use it what to believe in a fake news world alan welcome to the show what's sad about the new book arguably

is the fact you begin by saying you're writing it at the peak of the pandemic we now know that isn't the case what's it like writing a book on journalism during log well i wish i'd had foresight that was written in the spring and i think we all saw that was the worst but of course we're now in a much graver situation. but i still think the themes of. journalism. people believe in how people know what to believe still is relevant as they were when i wrote the. i mean i'm right in the title of the book is the issue of fake news especially especially important right now obviously with the i don't know how you would measure the level of. scientific dissonance going on here in britain and around the world against big pharma vaccines and so on. well i think journalists are very conscious that maybe for the 1st time in their lives what they

write could be the difference between life and death so i think there's a.