self, ah ah, facebook admits it in court that its 3rd party fact checks are nothing more than opinions fueling further allegations of bias and censorship on social media. also ahead o anger mounts in the u. k. over new restrictions being brought into combat. the fast spreading, alma kron coven variant one m p. even compared the proposals to nazi germany. and the pentagon says it won't hold anyone liable for a botched drone strike in afghanistan that killed 10 civilians, including 7 children. ah,

oh rod casting live from moscow, russia, this is our t international. my name's donald quarter. welcome to the program. now we start this news hour with a quick update on our story from washington were a suspicious package was found in the compound of the russian embassy. it appears to have been thrown over the fence there. police had initially closed off the street near the building, but now that cordon has been removed and what it and it is what it appears to have been a false alarm. and a landmark case. facebook has admitted that its 3rd party fact checks are just opinions. the revelations came during a legal battle that journalists are bringing against the social media giant. they are accusing it of defamation, after posts related to their work were flagged as false or t. saskia taylor takes up the story. well, facebook might have put itself a new name matter, but it seems that it's up to its old trick. the age old question of whether it's a free, an open platform or in fact, a giant tech company that is just censoring anyone. it does like, has yet to again,

re and merge. now the latest revelations transpired from a neural suit filed against facebook by john list, and that's because one of his posts from about last year's california wildfires was fact checked and labeled pot you false. so he said for defamation, as you said, but the social media platforms response has been to lift up the towns and say when it can't be defamation. because these flak jackets were pounding out to rid the world of nasty misinformation are actually surprise 3rd party people who decide what is full, so not based, not on facts, but on opinion. and because this is america opinion is sacred. stills, stills claims focus on the fact check articles written by climate feedback. not the labels have fixed through the facebook, but for the labels themselves are neither fools nor defamatory to the contrary. they constitute protect that opinion. so facebook has essentially admitted that for the fact check as facts, opp, optional, and of course, it does have

a right to do this facebook as a private company. so it's policy is an internal matter. but the point is, is that it does have responsibility on accountability before it's roughly 3000000000 users wild wide. and actually speaking of that and undoubtedly who feel misled at best and maybe downright night to it was, they've been sharing that take on these latest developments. court filing, facebook admits it's fact checkers. don't check facts. is facebook admitted here that it's fact checks are not really facts at all, but merely opinion assertions also by facebook claim in its labels constitute opinions than doesn't that make it a publisher. facebook, your opinion piece is not exempt from being fact checked, even when they are clearly labeled as o peds or editorials. also, facebook or fax labels can not be false or to pharma tree because they constitute, protects that opinion, even though we present them, as fact. we don't facebook's got a whole section on its website dedicated to fact check, isn't it ready, does salad. while you know, a 2 organizations watching and 60 languages fighting lies together. it's

a rigorous process and that process involves identifying the problematic post and then reviewing it. and apparently, and want to decide whether this post is actually or not, it goes straight to the source it interviews, people at consults, data and then on the basis of these findings that determines whether that content needs to be filtered or allowed to circulate. so it really does sound like a thorough a scientific process, no way in all of that. and bleeping actual lives of tool through that was a lot of it is absolutely no use of was like opinion, subjective, you know, personal perception, judgment is nothing like that. speaks more widely, you know, if you do listen to some of the top bras at facebook, you believe that they never really filter any content because that's such great champions of free speech. if your democracy can't tolerate the speech of people, i'm not sure what kind of democracy it is. i do believe in giving people more access to information and more anxious to connect with one another and not reserving those as tools for some small number of a lead people. i don't feel comfortable at all saying they don't get to have

a voice because i don't agree with what they said. our ability to know what is misinformation is itself in question and i think reasonably. so i think many people would agree without a party sentiment from him, but the question here is, is facebook trying to get us out out of a tight spot with this rule suit by suddenly amending the job description of fact sheka in order to escape any liability or has it actually just been lying on its website for this time? by the way, it's not good enough for the company. and it's acting does absolutely nothing to count all those accusations with all these years that they have been silencing voice says arbitrary blocking conton quite frankly, straying into the dangerous territory of censorship. we spoke with social affairs broadcaster dave perkins. he thinks that facebook is desperately trying to avoid a barrage of further lawsuits. facebook has found themselves back against the wall and if they try to cling to the idea that they are fact checking in court, they're going to lose. and not only is it going to cost them big dime,

but it's an open the door to a flood of similar lawsuit in the near future, and it could be more than they can handle. i think they're hoping that by admitting that fact, jack just means opinion jack, when facebook puts a label on there, hoping to get out of this lawsuit without harm. and then just sink the story into the daily fountain of news events and hope people forget about it. in due time and in the, in the future, you'll see changes in their labels. they'll stop using the word fact and they'll come up with some other way to express it where they still exercise their dictatorship right to control speech on their platform. but it won't be a false presentation like the word fact jack is o. s u k has begun to record alma chron, cases in the thousands. the variance now accounts for 20 percent of infections in the country, and nearly half in all of london. one death linked to the so called mutant strain has been confirmed. and boris johnson has now brought in his plan b new restrictions and an accelerated roll out of booster shots. and he,

many members of his own party are not convinced it's the way forward. we are not to papers please society, this is not nazi germany. well, the prime minister's lakers instruction to the nation is get a boosted and now the aim really is to get every single adult in the country vaccinate with that booster job. by the end of this month, the is quite ambitious then really because that would mean i'm 1000000000 people need to be jobs every single day, and i'm outside saint thomas hospital here in central london. and as you can see, the queue is really piling up. now this morning, in fact the, in a chest is out telling people to stop trying to book their booster online. the system has totally crash say why. 7 may you ask about the acceleration of this booth to program now? well, according to the how secretary the on the chrome variant is now the dominant one. no, very old code 19 has spread this fast. oh me con. expected to become the dominant

code 19 parent in the capital in the next 48 hours. so the 2nd of this week is to get a boosted now, and it's all part of a drive of the plan. be covert restrictions that include face mouse being made. mandatory again cove. it possible it's coded ice elation rules, but also the most controversial one is trying to get the n 8 just to get vaccinated, making that compulsory now many people in the public se that's an attack on civil liberties. that's something that some m p 's agree with. and so we're expecting a huge tory rebellion. many people saying compelling the public to get immunize as simply a step too far. not to mention the temporary emergency measures that don't seem to be so temporary anymore. we were told these measures might be left before santa took to his sleigh, and suddenly, before half the country was pinged into the gulag, there seems no lead up to this kind of self defeating dystopian logic. well, just yesterday, then the government put the owners back on the public saying we must all be playing our part. but that's quite a difficult message for the public to take,

especially after the last few weeks of revelations that some quality don't seem to be playing their part in trying to get on the other side of this pandemic. and yes, i'm told me about those downing street christmas parties as being the headline news here in the united kingdom. but many people, as you can see, the key directly behind me, they all following the rules. they want to get that these to now perhaps it allows ditch effort to save their christmas is while there was a brief moment of panic on tuesday morning after in person pc, our tests were temporarily unavailable across england. the government's website has now been updated, showing new time slots, and despite u. k efforts to ramp up testing to counter the new omicron berry. and there are still plenty of questions over how potent or otherwise it actually is on that subject. we spoke with simon clark, who is a microbiologist at reading university in the u. k. who is inevitable when you,

when you turn up the volume on these measures for eliza, that these things take time and the to you have to change what's available and what's delivering that to that program. and i think that's what we need. i think that so what we see is, is governments being nervous about leaving the stable boy from the horse to bolt because that's what's happened before. and they don't want it to happen again, much will transmissible. so that trans miss ability mold and i would take the any central drop in violence, inability to cause disease from people. then you'll end up with a big burden on, on society and on its health care system. after august spots, drones strike and afghanistan that killed 10 civilians, most of which were children. no u. s. military personnel will face punishment. the pentagon made the announcement on monday do not anticipate there being issues of personal accountability to be had

with respect to the august 29th here strike lou. busy busy busy busy out of the 7 children who died, the youngest was just 2 years old. the man targeted and the strike was mary amadi and aid worker who the u. s. mistook for a terrorist. we heard from his grieving brother of the key up ashley themselves. so the news came as a shock, we feel betrayed because no one will be prosecuted, they should have kept their word. we held that the people who ordered and carried out this attack would face justice. the americans claimed that they can spot a needle in the ground from their satellites. so how could they not see the innocent family they were about to kill?

they found no connection between us and his nomic states. so why didn't they do those checks before launching obama to us? it looks like no other countries forcing them seek justice. there is no one to challenge them because they're superpower. that's why the americans have failed to keep their promises. i spoke with former u. s. military drone operator brandon bryant, he told us why he thinks the pentagon is reluctant to punish those behind the drone strike. you can watch that full interview on on heard voices project on r t dot com. clickable incident followed a long string of similar disasters. according to the bureau of investigative journalism, up to 900 afghan civilians have been killed by us drones since 2004. and that includes dozens of children. the brother of one of the victims again says that despite promises of justice and compensation, he wasn't even contacted by the us authorities. bismark, almost o'clock to the whole the shuttle of the americans promised justice and compensation, and they would take us to the us. we found out on the news that they would take

some measures, but nobody approached us. no one contacted us and we were given no information. how can they compensate us for our family members? all the wealth in the world means nothing to was no, we've lost 10 of our relatives. my brother was working for foreigners. he was innocent. all of our children were innocence. what did they do? they followed shortly. british government is planning to reform its human rights laws by adding a healthy dose of common sense as the justice secretary put it. some of the proposals have long been called for including deporting foreign criminals. but the overall package has drawn a wave of criticism from the opposition and rights activists. this bill represents the biggest legal assault on international refugee law ever seen in the u. k. a future where the u. k. brakes his international law, obligations, and ox out of human rights protections is a very bad future. these conservative governments attacks on the rural of floor must top the human rights act, does not stop as depaul in serious criminals threatening to weaken people's ability

to challenge the government. just because the course sometimes rule against you is that of dictators and despots, not democrats. the proposed changes would apply to the u. k. human rights act, which has been in place for 20 years. among other things, the conservative government wants greater powers to curb foreign criminal's ability to appeal deportation. and to give british courts more flexibility and interpreting rulings from the european court of human rights. option. rotten, see, host of going underground r r t told my colleague union o'neill that the timing of the proposals may be significant. viewers around the world are going to say, you know, this is just coming days after a, a british court accused of corruption by some overturned to previous judgment, that the julian assigns of wiki things can be said to the united states, to raise a 175 years for revealing war crimes. so why, why so soon as we learn of that judgment and his stroke in a high security prison?

do we suddenly hear a reform or consultation document on the human rights act, which will, which will and on the table is a reform of european human rights at court affiliation of the british system. one of the reforms, one of the main points of it is that the u. k. wants to make it easier to deport foreign offenders. that's something that a lot of conservative voters have been asking for for many years. why should that one be a problem? the numbers are far in offenders that have been coming to britain. if you look at statistics, our miniscule in terms of over turning the entire human rights act, one could maybe say that britain is acting quite intelligently about this britain off to rule knows exactly the scale of the refugee crisis from countries that it participated in the annual bombarding of it was britain, of course,

that destroyed africa's riches per capita. country libya on the mediterranean, there were thousands untold, thousands of drowned and course in and france were involved in that we have refugees drowning in the english channel. and of course, england and britain was responsible partly for the aerial bombardment of iraq, afghanistan off syria, that britain knows where and why refugees seeking solace and asylum from countries whose economies and whose entire populations have been destroyed. u. s. department of homeland security is under fire after it was revealed that the agency had secretly obtained information on journalists, congress members, and possibly even its own staff using databases set up to track international terrorists. the associated press, whose reporter was one of those targeted is demanding answers where deeply

concerned about these apparent abusive power. this appears to be an example of journalists being targeted for simply doing their jobs, which is a violation of the 1st amendment. what we have in question is a secret border patrol unit called counter network division. and apparently it had very few rules, very few guidelines. it operated and well abided by and according to the report that has well, that has made the headlines views to proudly some of the america's most sensitive databases to look into and to vet people. when i say people, i do not mean known criminals on poor people. charged with something or even people suspected of committing a federal crime. when i say that people, they were rather vetting journalists or world congressman or congress people or just and your workers. they were vetting them as they were considering working with them this well counter network division and the sort of information they could get they could obtain from databases like for example, a terror watchlist is well,

quite expansive. for example, they could get their financial logs, they could get their travel logs, they could even pry into their personal affairs. for example, the apparently used they're the most sensitive databases and all sorts of tools to look into well into a journal less than a political reporter who was well, romantically involved with a senior senate staffer, they called the operation a whistle pig, apparently inspired by a very particular brand of whiskey and they used the information that they had obtained to ensnare said senate staffer. now these revelations, they have caused quite a stir and of they have been condemned. these practices have been condemned by journalists by privacy advocates, and even officials. if true, there's abusive governments surveillance powers to target journalists, elected officials, and their stuff is deeply disturbing. if multiple government agencies were aware of this conduct and took no action to stop it. that needs to be various consequences

for every efficient involved and department of homeland security. and the justice department must explain what actions they're taking to prevent this unacceptable conduct in the future officials. they have said that quote unquote, they do not condone the investigation of reporters and one person who was singled out as a member of the secret unit. jeffrey rambo has also dismissed the reporting as sensationalized. he has said that they did not do anything out of the ordinary that it was all common practice. this secret unit by the way, it is still operational to this day and a party operates according to the same rule book. journalist and commentator chadwick moore told us that the u. s. government, spying on its own citizens is nothing new. deeply shocking and chilling, actually to put it more accurately. but this is also nothing really new. and this is something that. a transcends administrations that transcends democrat and republican administrations, and there's absolutely no reason why. so implement government should be looking at

your bank records, who you're emailing your travel records. it goes fundamentally against everything that this country stands for, that's in our constitution. so it doesn't matter if you have something to hide or not, it's wrong and it should be illegal. it probably is a legal and it's not, it's representative of the values of this country and the people in journalists are being deceived. and this is all being funded. by our government, it seems like congress should be able to do something about it. they won't. you put up quotes and congress people who are saying we're deeply concerned. i don't think anything will happen. oh, might be, i don't know if it's too far to say that maybe because these agencies have every bit of dirt. they cannot members of congress, maybe iris, people are frightened to come out against these agencies and it's elgin services in any kind of meaningful way. that's possible. but congress could actually do something, but they haven't, and i don't think they will. okay. prosecutors say the wife of an american diplomat charged with killing a teenager will face criminal proceedings after all, and the coolest fled back across the atlantic. after her car collided with teenage

motorcyclist harry dunn outside a u. s. military air base in england, the tragedy took place over 2 years ago, after which mister colas was accused of causing the death by dangerous driving. she claimed diplomatic community and was allowed to leave the u. k. the done family then filed a, an extradition request to which was initially rejected by washington, but has now been granted. lawyers acting for school is previously admitted that she did drive on the wrong side of the road before colliding with harry dunn. they say that's because she had only been in the u. k for 3 weeks and took the right hand lane. instinctively rad seager and adviser for the don family earlier spoke to the program and said that their long campaign for justice is finally making progress. we sort of feel this is a combination of almost 2 and a half years now of relentless, tireless campaigning for this appalling decision by the u. s. government should deny mary's family justice. we don't know why this happened. all we know was that

it, it was a, it's a terrible decision on the part of the u. s. government. and supposedly our strongest ally, why you would want to condemn a totally innocent family to, to this torture. this mental torture is beyond me, but we're very pleased now that i'm with your help and your colleagues helping the media that they have now clearly been left with no choice other than to change their decision and allow justice in whatever form that takes to now take its, it's natural course, i think the attorney point was when president biden came into office, can we know he suffered a, a similarly similar family tragedy himself. and we, what we learned from, from him that he was going to take a different approach to under president trump. took, i think my other theory is that inevitably, governments, when they make

a decision, find it very difficult to change their minds. but the, the courage of this family and the help of the media all around the world, the americans, ultimately we're left with no choice and other than to change their decision. these things, unfortunately, do take a lot of time is now led up to americas inflationary spiral. spiral wholesale prices in november were almost 10 percent higher than the year before. according to the latest data and analysts have come up with some rather surprising advice for cash strapped consumers killed mop and has more with prices on almost all goods and services. rising, some media have come up with some advice that isn't going down too well. they say copy inflation ravaged argentina and simply blow all your money before it evaporates. in high inflation economy. money that sits in the bank is losing value each day. those $100.00 and deposit by a little bit less. as a result,

many argentines spend their paychecks as soon as they receive them, cards in a way, weeks worth of groceries in a single shopping trip. even if some of it excess me chicken fish will sit in the freezer for months, so won't burg offers asked to spend more. that's as consumer inflation costs of jumps 6.8 percent the highest and 41 years. no doubt, many have pointed out how disconnected from reality such a solution is. in the weimer republic, the price change so fast. the customers bought beer for the whole day in the morning. it's coming. or the fed can stop printing trillions of dollars, making us all poor in the process with a decline and currency that also works. yeah, you definitely should start live in a hand to mouth because of temper or a blip in inflation. it's not the only example in a recent washington post article, a leading columnist, aptly suggested, not expecting very much. rather than leaving constantly on the verge of throw in

the fit, and rescan taken it out on the la whelmed service, struggling shall pony later ivan delivered it pupil. we'd do ourselves a favor by consciously lowering expectations. a recent article from locks recommended reducing holiday requests in order to not feel the crunch of by nomics . the mission to my alas with more intention is achievable for everyone, especially affluent shoppers. it's incumbent and americans, the wealthiest people in the well to come back, come and be critical of their consumption. many c biden's policies as being directly to blame while an infusion of treasury bonds may have been necessary at the beginning of the pan annex. the strategy of printing money seems to be backfiring. everything costs more grocery stores, of pretty much everything universally costs more. everything's got up gas, food, everything. so it's not dead. i'm a small, you know, black home business owner and all the prices. i'm a products have a coffee shop in brooklyn, in prime grand coffee and like all the,

all the beans or more expensive and it's harder to get like even little products like napkins and cups and all those stuff. so it's kind of bad. you know, i dont think biden has been handling any situation. i think biden has just been sitting in office, says, kind of a doddering man. joe biden seems bored of explaining how he sees it, not too interested in defending his actions. if we were all going out and having lunch together and i said, let's ask whoever, whoever's in the next table, no matter how were what restaurant ran, haven't had them explained the supply chain to us. he can't understand was what we're talking about. why wouldn't biden be trying to stop inflation if apparently he's the only one who knows what it is, but even economics nobel laureates writing for the new york times say they did not see the inflation coming. trying to clarify my own thoughts on inflation. i got inflation wrong, i didn't see the current such coming, but why?

i didn't think the fiscal stimulus earlier this year would boost demand as much is summers. that's how predicts it. and in fact, so far it hasn't. now at this point, 60 percent of americans blamed joe biden for the crisis, but mainstream media seems to disagree and tell them they should blame themselves, not the people leading the country. there's nothing that upsets american voters more than having to pay for ever higher prices that are going up dramatically by demonstration. can try to blame the energy companies and private is all the want. but it's all happening on his watch. and i expect that the democrats are going to pay a very serious price for this and the next election, if we make it that long, we don't know what inflation is going to be at. by that time, i'm very much afraid that, that we're going to be facing a reckoning of without any kind of historical precedent and anybody's lifetimes.

more details on your top news stories, you can always check out our website, r t dot com or follow us on twitter. stick around for your world news headlines in just about 30 minutes with all central banks. all banks, all unfair bible committees, all of their bible centers of our, our to run. some of them are very corrupt. some of them are extremely around here in el salvador. their money system is completely absent depending corruption because it's only dealing toward the pure monetary premium and truth of bitcoin. and on top of that, been rock up true. you can build a fantastic country. the fantastic culture a

with the one of the, the retailer has decided to actually take a break from social media. but is it for their mental health, or is that actually for yours? we will discuss this. facebook said it's fast checkers are from a 3rd party. therefore, facebook themselves are not venturing one line of ideology over another. but what

if facebook fail to mention they are ok, but the fact checkers having their own opinions, it's all in the details and we will discuss. and during this latest outbreak of deadly weather across the mid south, did companies choose to put a profit over the safety of their workers? we will give you all the details and discuss with our expert panel. and for sandra has tried again to have complaints of abuse against him dismiss, or at the very least field we will let you know everything that's happened up until now. and they just plain mexico. i'm getting used in these stories and more on today's news views. right here on our team. erica, let's get started. ah, it's great to be with you today. you know, we all know major.