in the day's headlines a world health organization scientists investigating the origins of covert 19 question the reliability of u.s. intelligence after washington says it wants to conduct its own probe in china. also this hour donald trump's defense team accuses democrats of tearing the country and house as the former president's impeachment trial gets underway in the senate. they tell us that we have to have this impeachment trial such as it is to bring about unity but they don't want unity and they know this so-called trial will tear the country in half. twitter bans another raft of conservative voices breaking its rules not to mention fraud in november's u.s. election. and protests break out across france calling for

tougher laws protecting children as the country's top court hears the case of a 13 year old girl who was allegedly raped by 20 firefighters. watching are to international bring your live news update from our studio here in moscow welcome to the program. w.h.o. scientists has questioned the reliability of u.s. intelligence on the origins of code 19 after taking part in a source tracing mission in china now we're joined live in the studio again by artist constantine for more on this so tell us about this. so the figure that is front and center to this story peter does show he is a british american just and he was assisting the w.h.o. mission to go on to find out the origins of the current dummy so the scientists

really didn't mince his words when he took to twitter to lash out at u.s. intelligence for back in fear is that the virus could have been men made and. came from a chinese lab let's have a listen. well now this joe biden has to look tough on china please don't rely too much on u.s. intelligence increasingly disengaged under trump and frankly wrong on many aspects now why has it made such a fuss well for one its strong language from a u w h o representative who has taken on the u.s. intelligence community questioning their credibility and the thing is that u.s. intelligence has a different version of why and how this pandemic came about and u.s. officials already claim that they're not going to accept the findings of these one mission because of what their own intelligence intelligence tells them. broadly speaking we have expressed our concerns regarding the need for full

transparency and access from china. and the w.h.o. access from china and the w.h.o. to all information regarding the earliest days of the pen demick and that speaks volumes about the level of trust that the new u.s. administration has towards the w.h.o. and that is itself an interesting turn of events because as you remember when joe biden came to power he explicitly claim that he's going to reverse most a peace process or its policies especially the one on pulling out of international organizations like w. h. o. but the americas overall stance in that issue doesn't seem like you know changed a lot from what it was during the trump stay near. the united states pays them $450000000.00 a year china pays them $38000000000.00 a year and they're

a puppet of china. china centric to put it nicer but they're a puppet of china. well the w.h.o. finally has a team sent there they're doing this investigation how we got any closer to figuring out the origins of covert 1000 then really you know if we talk about bigger picture right the scientific community is trying to find out the origins of this virus the source of this corona virus and that's why they sent this mission to to the chinese who a province where the virus was 1st detected in 2019 but the probe didn't give us a lot right away i mean the experts came only to one conclusion conclusion which is really important in the light of this ongoing spat between the u.s. and china and that is that the virus did not originate in the chinese lab and that it probably transmitted from animals presumably bats. to humans so again this is not exactly of revelation and we're still far from understanding the roots of the

pandemic i guess what this story has shown to us is that the issue itself is highly politicized and clearly scientists are going to feel under immense pressure from both american and chinese scientists and will that you know make things difficult to get to the bottom of that almost certainly unfortunately nothing is safe from politics constantine thank you for joining us and giving us all those details. meanwhile europe continues to struggle with its coded $1000.00 vaccine rollout and the european commission president underlined has for the 1st time admitted that the bloc was too slow in its response addressing the european parliament she highlighted that the bloc was too late and approving vaccines and overestimated its medical production capacity however found a lie and defended the joint a response as the right way of dealing with a pandemic next. we're now joined live by doctors at heart

a regional advisor for the w.h.o. vaccine preventable diseases and immunization program how would you characterize the overall situation with code 19 at the moment. so in a way to thank you so much for having me on your program you know globally as we as we know 106000000 cases and you know. at around 2300000 deaths we are all concerned obviously with this situation happening globally and also in the. european region the number of cases that we have seen 35000000 cases so overall. in this is no no not a single same situation across every part of the globe or countries there are cases where in some of the cases some of the countries we see cases going up while in some of the cases are stabilizing but it's too early to to be due to the

drug drop the guard and i think it's time to better enhance their testing. tracing koren gene then there are other measures that are in place in the different parts of the ward you say that it's too early to drop our guard down does that mean that we're not actually very close to overcoming the pandemic is there no light at the end of the tunnel. you know i think we would say that we should be cautiously optimist despond time given that we do have a new toolkit on our hands a vaccine the covert 1000 vaccine on our hand but i think. we do we need to keep a very very close. vigil on how the virus is behaving how the virus is our people our people are adjusting to these known non-pharmaceutical public health measures of hand washing using the mask and i think this is not the

time to drop the guard i think this is the time to be more vigilant and do more in terms of the disease surveillance and the restaurants measures britain has accused the e.u. of vaccine nationalism after a few of the suppliers and the tightening of supplies how much of that supposedly nationalism is at play do you think. so you know do the global do covered $9000.00 pandemic is is a global event and need. pons we do understand and acknowledge the effort made by the countries to protect its own population but i think it's because of this global nature of 19 pandemic it did to the restaurants cannot be within the international boundaries we all need to understand that everybody need to be safe if we want our cell to be safe and within this principle of global solidarity we called upon all countries to

ensure that this global public good covert 19 vaccine should be acceptable and accessible to everybody irrespective of the income status or income level this vaccine nationalism will will hurt the country themselves and i think it's important that everybody should get access to that vaccine and at least at the start as we say health care workers who are at both higher risk of acquiring or transmitting the disease plus the people who are more than 65 years of age and we call mortgages in every country need to be protected and given access to this vaccine as soon as possible at the same time as we just mentioned before we started talking to you the european commission president has said that the block was too slow in its response when it came to vaccines how likely is the aid to meet its target of an ocular 70 percent of adults by the end of august. so you know i would

. respond to your question in 2 different hops the 1st i think is we have to acknowledge that this k.d. just sheer scale of 19 vaccine is enormous so the demand for the vaccine is not common to the volume of vaccine that we have so there will have to be some privatization done in the countries which i have mentioned in terms of getting access to the vaccine we have seen early tea thing you shoes that are on production of the vaccine with pfizer and with astra zeneca in the european union member states so i think it's not a matter of race between countries who should get 1st and which block should get earlier i think we are all fighting this race against the virus so i think we will have to be. realistic in all these vaccines available to t. plus vaccine to a lot in the countries but i think these are the countries and the european union

in general need to plan for 4 years population to be covered by a certain period of time and we appreciate this efforts made by the countries bill gates has said that the world is not ready for another pandemic like the one we're experiencing right now do you agree with that and what can be done for us to become ready the next time something like this should come around. thank you i think you know this 1000 pandemic has taught us something that preparedness ease key and i think that this preparedness relates to health system preparedness should a new pandemic. and i think this will the world will not counter the last pandemic there could be another round around the corner so we should be prepared more invest in the health system invest in our health workforce. to make sure that the system is resilient to such type of pandemic happening and i think

the lessons that we are learning during this 90 not after need to be incorporated into the policy strategies of our national health government and i think it's extremely important and paramount that these lessons that we're learning now are translated into very concrete policies and and programs at the national level this goes not only at the national level supranational a lot of this also calls upon the lessons that we learned from the research and development of the 19 vaccines in $1000.00 diagnostics that the research community the global community need to come around to to ensure that we are prepared for any such pandemic coming forward so concrete programs at the national level we do have some countries right now trying to embrace things like vaccine passports do you believe that those will help in fighting carbonite. so you know we

understand that anybody who is receiving the vaccine need to be provided with a. sort of a such a ticket or it could be a paper based or a digital or abt based whatever the countries have got their own immunization systems or health systems in place and the technology that they have so that is a proof of receipt of a vaccine by an individual however as we as we can see the passport that is being viewed by the by different people as an element of international travel related restrictions to the international health regulations and has come out very clearly that introducing any such travel link to the vaccination is not fair and it should not be done because there are issues out on equity issues around very different vaccination strategies in different countries so they should not be part of travel

restrictions around vaccination however if somebody else are part of the hightest population groups in a country they should be getting vaccinated and obviously whether this will lead to travel or not. anyways so they should get vaccinated but we don't recommend using vaccination as one of the principal element of travel or travel restrictions so that's not fair. yes thankfully it's slowly but surely in vaccines are becoming more prevalent and the w.h.o. plans to discuss russia sputnik the vaccine do you think it can be is all around the world like pfizer or us are concerned because. so 1st of all i think we do acknowledge the the research and development by all manufacturers irrespective of the country of origin of a vaccine this is an unprecedented effort being made by everybody we had been just one year since the detection of the virus and we see so many of the vaccines which

are on the horizon. you know looking at the long tradition of russian federation in development of vaccines we are extremely ecstatic to see the development of vaccine happening in russian federation and also now about the prospect of the we are in very close touch with with our russian federation ministry of health and other colleagues of the millions to do it which i developed in this book maybe vaccine and we are understanding better that clinical trial results that are coming up we look forward to to listen to more and learn about more about the trial results france foot and we will be very glad to see that we. received the it required emergency listing from douglas but we are as i have mentioned we are looking forward to the clinical trial results reading more and learning more about those results phones got my leah institute on the spot. we've

been speaking with dr said how to data a regional adviser for the vaccine preventable diseases and immunization program it was a pleasure talking with you thank you very time and comments thank you so much. donald trump's legal team has warned that the democrats push to convict him in the u.s. senate could push the country towards a civil war here's how day one of terms trial unfolded. they tell us that we have to have this impeachment trial such as it is to bring about unity but they don't want unity and they know this so-called trial will tear the country in half leaving tens of millions of americans feeling left out of the nation's agenda. as dictated by one political party that now holds the power in the white house and in our national legislature well it's a very serious situation on capitol hill where we've got an impeachment trial

underway donald trump's lawyers they call it absurd and unconstitutional meanwhile we've got the prosecution saying this is the comeuppance for treacherous donald trump and the backdrop for all of this is a country that is deeply deeply divided this trial will tear this country apart perhaps like we've only seen once before in our history we are really here because the majority in the house of representatives does not want to face donald trump as a political rival in the future with this trial you a little bit of new and bigger wounds across the nation the constitution is a document designed to protect the rights of the minority not the rights of the majority now the charge against donald trump in the impeachment proceedings is inciting in surat action and they are arguing that under the 14th amendment of the u.s. constitution trump is ineligible for office because you know gauged in inciting insurrection and this flows from the events of january 6th we've heard testimony from what

happened at this point people are recapping of the situation where there were 5 deaths there were many injuries on capitol hill as trump supporters stormed in and penetrated the u.s. capitol congressional staffers were very afraid for their lives there was violence that unfolded and all of this has got the prosecution at the impeachment trial appealing to people's emotions and saying there must be harsh consequences for trump if that's not an impeachable offense then there is no such thing what our country experienced that day. is the framers worst nightmare come to life this one senator said they could have killed. all of us this cannot be the future of america. we cannot have presidents inciting and mobilizing mob violence against our government and our institutions now these are very serious proceedings with

a very big implications for the country however if you're looking on it seems like a rather theatrical and strange performance you've got the recitation of poetry and you've got witnesses crying and breaking down into tears and i told my daughter tabitha. or told her how sorry i was and i promised her that it would not be like this again the next time she came back to the capital with me. and you know what she said. she said dad i don't want to come back to camp. you've got the waving around of mao tse tung's little red book in order to make political points it's all very theatrical very explosive meanwhile all across the country millions of americans remain quite divided in the aftermath of an election they seem to be watching with lots of anger gun sales are up throughout the united states here's some of what we've heard from americans if

you keep heading down the same way. they're going to push people into another civil war i'm very worried about this country where it's going. it's a bad thing he's out of office we'll be sure pieces for to remove him from office he's already been removed they could get worse and it seems like every day you do good work that's not good for this conflict country decides the start going on and democrats. you know. i don't want to be the victim you know and like honestly i never thought about that have mean to a lot of those stories some point there will be a final vote on whether or not donald trump is indeed convicted regardless of the outcome donald trump has certainly made history he's the only president in u.s. history to have been impeached on 2 different occasions so quite dramatic goings on we've got the military all over washington d.c. we've got the country watching on television we've got

a lot of division 74000000 americans voted for trump despite a pretty solid number boating against him impeachment proceedings continue even though donald trump has left office already and it is not the president the impeachment vote marches on words. twitter is continuing to scrap down on conservative commentators accused of spreading false information about the us electoral process to the latest examples are jim hoffa founder of the website the gateway pundit and radio host wayne allen root they have both been bought by twitter for what it called repeated violations of civic integrity policy they fell foul of the pot farms rules by promoting dollar terms claimed that the november election was marred by fraud since the storming of the u.s. capitol last month twitter has banned more than $70000.00 accounts for similar reasons including that of the former president himself we spoke with wayne allen root about his ban he says alternative voices are being silenced this is

a joe mccarthy which prides against conservative voices their tried to eliminate dissent they're trying to eliminate diversity while they talk all day about diversity if you're black it's great if you're let's you know it's great if you're gay it's great if you're a woman it's great if you're transsexual it's great god forbid in the united states of america you'd be a chap listed service if they want to destroy your life and silence you censure you ban you burn your books this is the irony you know the big hero of liberals all the liberal activists is sol inskeep you wrote a book called rules for radicals and he always said look at that mera whatever you see blame the other guy democrats have spent 50 years attacking joba court the for which he wants now they're very good ads i don't even know why i was suspended to be showed me the tweet i do will of bet you that 74000000 americans that voted for trump agree with every word of light sweet how do you ban someone's opinions when 74000000 people who have the waters agree with them. as i mentioned are already the

founder of the gateway pundit was also banned by the social media giant after a site posted a video and these are screen shots from that clip claims that shows the delivery of absentee ballots to a polling station in detroit hours after the deadline for deliveries have passed a site has pledged to release more of such videos in the coming days. but it's important to remember that u.s. election officials have said there is no evidence of significant fraud in the 2020 presidential vote which they called the most secure in the country's history jim hoft of the gateway pundit things there's no justification for shutting out those who disagree twitter does not want to just release any more of this information they're citing as spreading in violating their there are laws they just put in where you cannot challenge anything about the 20 twentieth's action and yet there are still individuals who are challenging the 2016 election that's still

allowed on twitter there are so secure with their position why are they cracking down in a limited eliminating. sites like myself from the social media platforms it doesn't make sense and this is what we've fought against for several months now . a paris court is set to rule later on wednesday on the case of a french girl allegedly raped by 20 firefighters the case has sparked protests across the country but demonstrators demanding legal changes to introduce a minimum age of consent which currently does not exist child timothy has the details. on wednesday this court is going to be center stage for a case that's provoked outrage here in france it involves a woman known as julie who says she was raped by 20 firefighters between the ages of 13 and 15. it all began when julie not real name had been assisted by a firefighter following

a severe anxiety seizure at 13 in 2008 now it's claimed he obtained her number for medical records and then grew before asking her to undress via webcam it's then claimed he passed it details on to other firefighters who did the same now in 2009 it's alleged a firefighter then raped julie says she was later taken to an apartment where she was gang raped in 2010 julie disclosed what it happened to her mother and a complaint was filed 3 firefighters were placed under investigation but no action was taken against another 17 men also accused 2 of the men have admitted that they had sex with julie whilst on duty and whilst wearing their uniforms a 3rd admitted a sexual act in a toilet cubicle in a prison hospital where julie had been admitted in march 20th definite judge was

appointed to investigate but after 8 years the rape charges were dropped instead rape was replaced by consensual penetrative sex with a minor under 15 this means the maximum sentence that they could receive is 7 years compared with 20 for rape so it's not she's a child who was facing 20 firefighters zob this one we're talking voluntary 13 year old child on able to realize that we are not in a fair balance of power and that's when julie was raped by 20 firefighters she was raped on a dress and she could not consent she could not accept the rape since she was a child. that outcome is said to have hit julie hard and she attempted to take her own life her family though is determined to keep fighting julie's mother is still gulps marked by that decision. the facts are simple julie was 1314 and 15 at the time she was in a very vulnerable state taking medication and trying to kill herself and 20

firefighters came to her all of them admit that they performed a sexual act on her with penetration and yet in france in the 21st century the court decides that the innocent julie's case has caused consternation in france. for almost a decade we have trusted the justice system to make its ruling the court of appeals ruled that the fire rapists were justified given the success they enjoy with women moreover they stated to verbal and in writing that the firefighters should be exonerated quote given the rampant sexual interest shown and by women campaigners hope that the decision reached this court will lead to an age of sexual consent being in troy and in french law calls for a minimum age of consent have been cruising in recent years and in january the senate but a bill to make the age of consent 13 but child protection associations say that

that is insufficient charlotte r.t. paris. that's a breakdown of the day's top headlines for now thanks for tuning in wherever you may be. i'm action right hansie and you're watching another lockdown edition of going underground a 155 years to the day the british labor party was named today the party's new leader secure starmer is said to be deploying national identity politics flags and

patriotism to help is failing poll numbers involved you will be talking to dr james trafford about how britain's brutal imperial empire lives on through british culture values and sense of self but 1st the biggest vaccination program in world history is being rolled out around the world and boris johnson says britain is world leading or we had a britain much harder hit by coronavirus than all g 7 countries joining me now from oxford in england is senior research fellow at oxford university collective responsibility for infectious disease program dr alberto giuliani thanks so much alberto for coming on and i should ask 1st of all given that your an expert you've written about this before the pandemic how do you see the moral dimension to the current vaccine rollout here in britain. i think that this government is doing in these are specific is that it's mission a good job and i think the public the general public is responding well to that has been for the hypoxia shouldn't take i think it is

a moral imperative to get these about seen when he's off air i think refusing his vaccine now is it morally irresponsible. as is just possible to delay the execution approve of like europe for example because every every day we wait before approving or read out of that scene it means that more nice will be lost so i think that it is a moral responsibility of owning to do us good about seem on the collective to create a system whereby as many vaccine as possible are distributed and on governments to approve and a lot of extension program ask week in effect was only a moral question do you think elites fully understand why the dispossessed as it were do not trust elites when they tell them to take vaccines after you know arguably being repeated and they lied to over so many things whether it be the colony whether it be you had one of the iraq war.