ah, who dares thinks we dare to ask and the stories that shaped this week, we march 20 years since the us and its allies invaded afghanistan, toppling the taliban regime. and now in the wake of the pentagon, pull out many questions are still being asked with violence. they're continuing to raise lights out for facebook. what's happened instagram after the company experienced massive outages twice during the week, leaving the firm, nursing a $60000000.00 loss, and rampant gas prices drop in europe after russia pledges to boost supplies. but

the move has not stopped us politicians from blaming moscow for the christ broadcasting live direct from our studios in moscow, recapping week's top stories with our weekly program. this is our t international right now, this week we marked 20 years since the us led invasion of afghanistan, which over through the taliban. and now in the wake of western pull out many issues remain unresolved. not least while the taliban is offered to hand over osama. bin laden was rejected by the bush administration. 2 decades of war followed with countless lives at loss. and at the end of it all the militants back in charge. our correspondent is in cobbled and asked what's really been achieved the afghan war and it's just shy of it's it's 20th anniversary, the the war of vengeance that was launched by the united states as revenge for 911

and quickly morphed into something else. one of the most protracted conflicts in modern history, an exercise in and nation building before losing all lame and tylenol towards the end. neither the united states nor any of its allies still knew what it is that they hoped to achieve. here. the end result is that it was unanimously considered an abject failure. metallic banners is back in control. and more absolutely than it was before the united states invaded afghanistan. and the question that we're hearing now in the halls of congress, in parliament, in europe, and in the press and either on television internationally is, is who the we lame. we need to consider some uncomfortable truth that we did not fully comprehend the depth of corruption and poor leadership in her senior ranks.

that we did not grass a damaging effect of frequent and unexplained rotations by president ghani of his commanders. and that we fail to fully grasp there was only so much for which and for home, many of the afghan forces would fight. this has been a 10 year while ty, administration, drawdown, not a 19 month or 19 day neo. these scandal is no n yet over the americans calling it been ghazi on steroids. the republicans, as well as ordinary americans that see the end of the war as humiliating for america. they want some one held responsible, the biden, the miss administration, as was the pentagon, so far they have done their best to absolve themselves of all accountability for what many americans again see as a catastrophe. they argue that the fault is with many american administrations that that preceded good. and that is ignoring the tremendous financial cost of the war.

7 some that could have made the lives of americans and many of their allies at the taxpayers so much better and so much easier. ah ah ah ah ah ah, we are the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet we have the highest child hobb, right,

almost any country on earth from the perspective of the civilian there is scott evidence here on the ground in afghanistan of any of that money other making its way here aside from half finished kleenexes and broken roots, testament to record breaking levels of corruption that, that so brilliant siphoned off into the bank accounts of corrupt officials into the pockets of private contractors. though the evidence of these billions being here is in the hands of the taliban, the guns that they wield, stamped with made in america, the vehicles military vehicles left behind it, industrial quantities. the taliban are of course jubilant. they have dismantled everything that the united states built in the human rights, the tolerance, the democratic institutions,

and the matter of weeks. and they are jubilant. they have after 20 years of, and so wretched and rebellion, believe they won. mm . ah. by virtually any measure, this war was a failure. in some respects, it even made things worse. from a humanitarian perspective or a 3rd of afghans near enough are on the verge of starvation, with no hope inside the drugs manufactured and export to that of of got to start kill countless youth worldwide. from a geopolitical perspective, the taliban considered an international pariah since its inception is now having to be negotiated with it. i counted with even at the un love from

a security perspective. yes, i called the ease of canister, may have been degraded but, but something worse has taken its place in that is isis which has bound to the challenge to afghanistan, dominance by the taliban. or, and also this week and afghanistan, scores of people were killed in an explosion in a she, a mosque in the northern city of coon dues. the blast happened during friday prayers, and more than 100 people are reported to have been injured. and isis k suicide bomber was behind the attack. it was the sunni terrorist groups, 2nd assault on a mosque in a matter of days. and they have a long history of targeting shia muslims. in afghanistan, a local journalist visited the site of the incident and sent us this report. childhood. the explosion was so powerful, according to some officials, the new taliban government had warned a tax like this one were possible. earlier taliban security personnel visited this

place and they gave the opinion that it might be a suicide blast. after examining some evidence, we've seen such a blast in the past hitting mosques and killing worshippers with faith. we're targeting here and there are, there were targeting chia in syria. they were targeting here everywhere in the middle east. so i wouldn't be surprised that this, this is, as i said, you know, this is actually the work of them expired because they consider shia. there it is there. another good believe are over there. so this is, this is the execute. but i mean, the major aim is who these that belies up, get them to actually be stabilized that taliban rule. and that is that, so this has been the beginning and i wouldn't be surprised actually more of the big lea at that slide miss will take place. and a few weeks among sir ahead. meanwhile, the u. s. delegation met with senior taliban representatives over the weekend in

the could tarry capital. the 1st such talks since the american pullout officials from both sides said ongoing negotiations center on the evacuation of foreign citizens and afghans in countering extremism. but the telephones rejected. joint operations with washington to suppress the extremist group, isis keg. and while the white house hasn't made it clear that the talks don't signal the recognition of the taliban, anti war activists, brian becker thinks they clearly do. the afghanistan government is insisting is that the united states not have the right or not to believe that it has the right to continually intervene into the air space. or territory of afghanistan talks between the taliban lead government in afghanistan and the united states. and other talks with the e, u. r, constitutes a kind of defacto recognition that the taliban, in fact are the government,

the both the european countries and the united states have to make a choice. if they refuse to recognize the taliban government officially, if they continue to hold the seized assets of the afghan government, making it impossible for that government to meet basic needs of the people in afghanistan. i think it's very likely that the african government will seek to find new partners the united states does not legally have the right to take control of or sees the assets of afghanistan simply because the u. s. occupied the country for 20 years. they spoke to has been in the headlines this week with a v tech giant experiencing serious outages. not once but twice. the 1st black out happened on monday when users of the platform along with what's happened, instagram, we're unable to get access to their accounts for 7 hours straight. the 2nd disruption which happened on friday, continued for

a couple of hours. both are said to have been caused by technical errors. now facebook to engineers blamed the problem on a connection failure between the tech companies, data centers and the outage, had a knock on effect for users and businesses all over the world. the platform itself took a financial hit. losing up to $60000000.00, journalist and commentator chadwick more questioned how such a vast company could have been so vulnerable to a technical failure. facebook oh is a one trillion dollar company and i like these outages happen a lot. it happened in april in june of just this year. you don't see google outages or any other big tech companies. apple. busy happening quite so frequently. ready so it's a bit bizarre that facebook has a problem with this. it seems to be that all of their, these properties oculus, instagram, whatsapp, and facebook all run through some sort of similar server. facebook is now sort of saying they were making upgrades and, and,

and program has gotten locked out or something. sounds fishy sound really strange. the fact that this and facebook always the privacy problems and they always have problems there and they always go offline. they've got one, so it's, it's very suspicious and it's also suspicious that facebook seems to have bigger problems than most tech companies with these issues. and i would whistleblowers as well. i cannot get back. this has a look at the dangers of these monopolies if they can blink out of existence so quickly. hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue was lost in 6 hours today till these companies have it so much control, so much power. they are monopolies and look at how they can just wipe out revenue, whether the shut that was intentional or it was just the mistake. so for a brief period, we all had time to take a breath. were the outages of pleasure or pain for you or to the garage done off, took us through a world without facebook and what's up was quite an experience. and in fact, it was one of the longest outages that facebook has experienced in its history. so

yet it was long and there were long, tense hours because nobody seemed to know what caused the outage, how long it will last and well, we'll, what we should all do with it. when facebook service went down, they took along with themselves the so the infrastructure inside the, the, the facebook headquarters or wherever their services are located. so engineers, when they tried to get in, they found out that they have electronic cards, their passes simply did not work. so they had to literally forced their way into the server room to manually reboot them. so and it took mark zuckerberg also hours to come forward and explain what was going on. facebook, instagram, whatsapp, a messenger coming back online now. sorry for the disruption today. i know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about. you might think that it was just facebook, instagram and you know, facebook sista companies essentially, but no, a lot of other companies,

a lot of other businesses that do not necessarily rely on facebook as a social platform, but rely rather on their technical physical infrastructure like service they all went down to, from well tendered to netflix, to zoom, to literally websites of airline companies and world bank apps as well. so a lot of a lot of sites, a lot of services that were used to using they, well they went offline. but one app seem to take advantage of it and mainly to take advantage of what's that not work. and that's the telegram messenger. they estimate their social media team even had their fun on twitter before twitter went down as well. and well, they try to attract new users. and well, they successfully did so because it is estimated some 50000000 new users join telegram and it almost went down as well, but not because of the facebook thing, but because it had pro says so many new accounts being registered. so yeah,

and there were a few funny reactions on line to this whole mayhem unfolding. have a look. we're working to get things back to normal. telegram you single, come over, the servers are up and my parents aren't home. so yeah, being a little tongue in cheek, the s m. m team there by probably, well, capitalizing on the whole situation. but in general, this whole thing and underlying, especially the fact that other businesses not, not well, accounting linked, which didn't appear to billing to facebook. that they experienced troubles, it really points out how much people and in general, massive massive companies rely on things for structure of one particular tech giant . millions of businesses rely on facebook now and many other, many others use, say, spoke in order to, to connect to other apps. it sends a huge warning across the bile because here we have a major social network site. but you know, this shows us the extent to which we rely on digital technology across the board.

and cyber attacks of sorts can bring down whole systems. and facebook is just one. it's a social networking platform, but a lot of businesses as we've said, relying on it. but imagine a much more intrinsic infrastructural saw attack. i'm not saying this was a, a cyber attack. in fact, i have a theory about what happened. but ah, this shows you the fragility of the entire digital infrastructure that were relying on facebook insisted the service outage didn't lead to any user data being compromised, but it is still another set back weeks after former product manager claimed that the social network knowingly allows users to spread hate and misinformation in the week our guests gave us their views on where facebook the brand currently stands after these recent events. but what's interesting about the leak documents of the wall street journal published is that they show quite clearly that facebook is in

decline and knows it's in decline. and so you see all these desperate measures of attempting to attract pre teens and children. i mean, even children, so there is a kind of convergence of several bad instances. i mean, not just to shut down, but to any trust effort to break it up, coupled with now what these lead documents show is and understanding by facebook officials, that crest of the wave is now headed downwards. that facebook is not infallible. and what's up is definitely not infallible. what's that also came under scrutiny because there were reports that even though they claim that the user messages were encrypted, that they were actually sending some user data to authorities in order to help with different types of prosecution. so if there's a message to take away from this, i think it is absolutely that we should be very skeptical. the claims that facebook whatsapp, if you all the subsidiaries are making about their ability to keep your, your data private. because clearly, it seems like they can't,

at least for the moment, i keep their sites, even online. boiling gas prices in europe have been reduced to a simmer after vladimir putin said russia is ready to stabilize the market. the president addressed the countenance energy crisis on wednesday, adding that moscow would continue its gas transit commitment to ukraine. a strong shortage to yes, prom believes that it would be more profitable for it to pay a fine to ukraine and increase the gas volume pumping through the new systems. but there's no need for that. or is it as more pressure in the pipe? less c o 2 emissions into the atmosphere. everything turns out cheaper and at $3000000000.00 a year, it is necessary to 40 comply with the contractual obligations for the transitive gas through ukraine. although it is more profitable to sell it on the exchange. but there is no need to, but any one in a difficult position, including ukraine, despite the difficulties in relation sorta, 2nd, as no need to undermine gas prompts confidence is an absolute reliable pond that in

all respects some state of new president, putin earlier blamed europe's gas crisis on an overly hasty transition to green energy coupled with brussels decision to switch from long term gas contracts to volatile spot trading. the gas price had been steadily increasing since the spring, but shot up in the past couple of weeks putting a huge financial strain on many european households ah, in with

a, despite the pledge to help reduce prices in europe, moscow is still being accused of manipulating the market, meanwhile, u. s. a congressman michael mccaul called for sanctions against the north stream to gas pipeline. we discuss how politics and energy security clash with a german european parliament and p, and a former austrian foreign minister. about 7 years ago. that could be more supply to do your mom. that's why i planned that was never billed them. he's house 3000 stream free. went it from being constructed in the summer 2014. and so now it seems as if all the i, all the criticism available is simply directed against the most stream. and it simply doesn't make sense of a real mistake in terms of making a guess as much as well as the contracts allow, when we speak of anna to weapon,

a lot of people, even those who have been more than 73, will always think of all what, for instance, opechi arab countries used in the 1970s. we had to separate instances non supply and non export of all this. what we can call it in like an an, a 2 weapon. if you want to use that natasha. but in the current context of the many context, long term delivery castillo complex that exist between the russian federation and various you countries. and beyond that, it simply doesn't make sense to use it. if the western europe and russia become into a partnership over economic change over energy supply than europe gets new, opportunity is ended, you world or europe is not any longer, completely dependent to the united states. so d, america, europe, america,

playing dia, politics, to preserve their global leadership rule as the only superpower and they don't care about consumer prices and energy security in europe, they care on their arm. and since the whole others, pro american politicians fear of a whole industry of turns, this is very powerful. so what we have there is no rational reason there is no, there is no rational reason because of rational behavior. because on ecology, inches. but the reason behind is angie rushing. rave is g in politics made a deep statement. washington the austrian chancellor has resigned as a result of mounting fall out over corruption allegations made against both sebastian curts and his inner circle. the claims against him include a breach of trust, bribery, and making false statements to a parliamentary committee. foreign minister, alexander schellenberg will be sworn in as the new leader on monday. chris denies

any wrong doing, saying that the accusations are solely based on old text messages recently published in austria media. his decision to resign comes after raids on his parties, office the chancellor re and also the finance ministry. as part of the probe into the case out as head of the conservative block in parliament, he still has immunity from prosecution. he insists his decision to step down is to restore political stability. my land, this movie sticker. my country is more important to me than myself. what is needed now? a stable conditions. i would therefore like to make room in order to resolve the stalemate. 56 people have died and a massive explosion in yemen, sports, city of aiden 7, others have been injured as well. now this video shows the immediate aftermath of the blast. as thick black smoke rose from the ensuing blaze. yelman's information

ministry says that the attack targeted the local governors convoy and another senior official, both of whom survived the explosion, damage the surrounding area, billings, and vehicles as well as the power grid. no one has yet claimed responsibility. however, suspicion has fallen on islamist militants who have carried out similar attacks in the past. yemen has been at war for 7 years with islamist rebels fighting for control of the middle eastern countries. witnesses described assault as nottingham in london, when we left school traffic was flown in the street and then we heard a sudden and powerful loud explosion. it shook houses and buildings. farrah. it was a boom stripped co, the targeted aiden's government, which led to casualties among his team and some civilians. it'll solitude damaged houses and civilian cars. electricity was also hit affecting all the way to the city sense of in albany. elsewhere powerful storms and mud slides have flooded the air via island north of the greek capital. some $200.00 properties were severely

damaged in an area still reeling from the summers. devastating wildfires meteorologist say that more rain is expected in the area route monday. check out this dramatic and video of another natural disaster this time though a volcanic eruption in the canary islands off north west africa lava. as high as 3 stories slid down the mountain side on la palmer, reeking more havoc in the area in the past 3 weeks more than a 1000 billings have been badly damaged, destroyed as the molten rock forced its way through villages. there were 21 seismic movements on sunday alone. andy rockies have been casting their balance in nationwide elections. it is the 1st such vote since major protests broke out in 2019, which toppled government facing accusations of corruption. thousands of candidates are competing for more than $300.00 seats in parliament. that's a look at your weekly. i'll be back with one more looking at,

let's say 34 minutes. you are watching arch international by that with us. mm hm. mm. or. so ah.

join me every thursday on the alex simon, sure. i'll be speaking to guess when the world politics sport business. i'm show business. i'll see you then. ah, i ah, i'm african retents here we're going underground coming up in the show a 100 years after albert einstein won the nobel prize for physics. we speak to this,

he has joined physics laureate. he tells us why we can't predict the weather, but can predict armageddon and why he was interested in the impact of a nature war in iraq on climate change. and his dirty money infiltrates, parliament, 76 years up to the chinese civil war began. we ask if extreme inequality and preventable mass covey deaths and major nations show a rising threat once again against capitalism told us more coming up in today's going underground. but 1st, it's a century since albert einstein was awarded the nobel prize for physics for work on the photo electric effect. this year, it has been awarded to want to discoveries that may help save the human species from climate change. joining me now from hamburg in germany is one of the 2021. no well prize win is professor class household, and i thank you so much for coming on. congratulations. i'm going to ask, i'm not gonna have how you heard about it. i know everyone always asked that question, although people probably want to know. but why is it as it is so often asked of you, we can't predict whether it will rain in 10 days time. but we can predict that

climate change may annihilate the human species. well, the problem is that it's not just natural religion, which is difficult, but it also lives impact on time to distinguish between mazda impact and national are the result of very difficult. i'm a strange ever go to get across a new britain or the my problem is that i would try 5102030 years. we used to responding to them or no one or 2 years. so there's no response to climate change or something which you're pretty sure you're not, you're still in my in true treat, operate, you know, boys and girls today they graduate. they used to cast tick modeling to model gambling in the city of london. your most famous papers, some of them because there's so many involve using stochastic modeling. what about

how we have such little data on climate temperature? at least when you were writing your very famous papers, we didn't have, i score data. how are you able to model data, which was just a tiny fraction of the age when i think we have some idea of the past, we had to pass data from the printer or data so, so we knew what national come everybody was. and the question knew whether can you separate the national trauma variables here that we knew about from the man's impact, which is on a short time change or time scale and to separate these 2 long time changes. and the short time changes to my impact was these are challenges we out of that time as well. so we had to so somebody uses them. so i 0 now demonstrated quite clearly that mine is changing time.