in the world corrupted, you need to descend, ah, join us in the depths or remain in the shallows. ah, ah! russia vows retaliation after germany expels to diplomats accusing the kremlin of ordering a murder on german soil 2 years ago. moscow dismisses the claim as baseless a frosty future. the you plans to drop all long term natural gas contracts after 2049, despite concerns that much vaunted green alternatives won't be able to meet european energy needs and jailed for trying to protect young girls. denmark's

former immigration minister gets 2 months behind bars for separating refugee child brides with their husbands. we debate the issue if they've been valid, lee married in another country, then that is not for us to split them up on the basis that they don't comply with lee the laws to that country. what we've done now is we've created to society some way through society for the immigrants where they have the rules and then the society for essentially the white people do have that rules. ah, it's early in the morning here in the russian capital and you're watching r t international. my name's donald quarter. welcome to the program. we start this hour with some breaking news from libya. a group of armed men surrounded the headquarters of the government of national unity and the ministry of defense and tripoli on wednesday evening. that's according to the country state news agency.

the affiliation of the armed group is not yet clear, but on verified videos, circulating online appear to show military vehicles patrolling the city. r t has not yet been able to independently verify the footage in several areas of the libyan capital. have also reportedly been left without electricity. it comes just 8 days before the country's 1st presidential elections are scheduled to take place. the story is still developing and of course will keep you updated as more information comes. it also says it will retaliate after germany throughout 2 of its diplomats and summoned to the russian ambassador on wednesday comes after a berlin court convicted a russian citizen of murder. the presiding judge stated that moscow ordered the 2019 killing of a georgia national in the german capital. a claim that the kremlin fiercely denies our europe correspondence. peter oliver can tell us more about that. the courtier in berlin ruled there to well sentenced vadim kasey cove to life imprisonment for

his role in the murder of zaman hunger fairly back in august of 2019 anguish, really was shot dead in a central berlin park in provide and hunting down that sentence. the court said that the killing had been carried out at the behest of the russian government. this is something that moscow has denied since the arrest was made of cassock cove. now it prompted analynn burbock, the new german 4 ministers to summon the russian ambassador to the foreign ministry here and which she told him, but swell to rush and diplomats would be being declared. persona non grata. these are much in startling mass murder on behalf of the state as determined that quite a day represent a serious violation of german law and of germany. sovereignty the russian ambassador wouldn't form that. the members of the diplomatic step of the russian embassy were being declared undesirable. while maria's account of her spokesperson for the russian foreign ministry in moscow is said that there would 100 percent be

a reaction to the expulsion of these diplomats. moscow again maintains they had nothing to do with the murder of hun. gosh, really now, he was a georgia passport holder of chechen descent and was wanted in russia on tara challenges. he was here in germany with asylum status now he'd be wanted in moscow and connection believe to be directly responsible for the killing of almost 100 people in russia's north caucus region. he was also understood to be part of the planning for the 2010 moscow metro suicide bombings. now, speaking more about this, the russian ambassador to add to germany said that the evidence that was presented by the prosecution and the timing of this announcement were all politically motivated. the absurd thesis about the involvement of the russian federation in this case was never confirmed by convincing evidence to accept pseudo

investigations and unsubstantiated statements of the biased media, such as belling, cat. an insider and other speculations is at least strange. the time chosen for the announcement of the verdict is hardly accidental. obviously, someone is interested in overshadowing the dialogue between russia and the new german government. as yet to be amazing, not even a phone call, yet between all our sholtes, the new german chancellor and russia's president vladimir putin. an awful lot to talk about. his relations between moscow and berlin are strained at the moment between the future of the gnawed stream to gas pipeline, the ongoing situation regarding ukraine. and now the hun gosh, really case, certainly going to be a lot to discuss when those 2 leaders finally get in contact. we discuss the issue with the former greek ambassador to canada. he thinks berlin is taking its lead from washington. i wouldn't be less diplomatic than the russian or busted the written in berlin was i have the impression that berlin is

receiving instructions from washington on this issue. i don't forget that washington has expelled very many russian diplomats. and we must almost take. we must almost take into consideration that 2 days ago to berlin stopped the pipeline, which shows that m. berlin is going to follow instructions from washington to be tough on, on, on moscow. because i don't think that them germany would, would like it's such a critical, a face to create such an issue with, with russia. but of course, germany needs a washington's support, particularly the government now as part of the eas, pushed to go green and consign fossil fuels to history, the european commission has suggested an end to all long term natural gas contracts

. after 2049, they use sam, electricity, gas, and hydrogen next, but still with planned assets. and long term gas contracts should not extend by 2049. however, the u energy commissioner went on to warn of the risks to europe's gas supplies, if particularly cold winters like this one are seen. european energy prices have searched since autumn due to market volatility rising more than 6 times compared to the same period of last year. europe's largest gas supplier, russia has repeatedly spoken in favor of long term deals, saying they bring some much needed stability subs. no good if i knew that was still if they made mistakes, we talked about this with the previous european commission or of its activities were aimed at containing long term contracts for gas supplies, giving priority to exchange trading. and it turns out this policy was wrong rusher is ready to work to stabilize the world energy market. but this activity should be

built on a commercial basis. taking into account the interests of old purchase happens, let's assume. and electricity bills in europe are skyrocketing along with the price of natural gas in spain. they're approaching in all time high despite government assurances to bring rates back to 2018 levels. the cost of a megawatt hour is expected to be $7.00 times higher than last december. and electricity bills in spain, in november were up 50 percent compared to a year earlier. people across the country are feeling it in their pockets. well it bodies, me and it changes everything. if you have a sorry that only cover certain things in the proxy and everything else. if you how 500 euros and spend t 100 know through city, he barely have anything left over. what are people going to do? if i were in church? i would if people in government a low salary and see how the quote is very low, surely is reached this level because no one regulates it or good. glad of. okay,

of course if you pay a lot for electricity and charge declines, hello price to fact he a lot. if he charged lions 15 euros and you have to pay ran to electricity cetera. what do you have left you so we're struggling to make ends meet, but hopefully things will be fixed good. that when i get them, i spoke with independent journalists lucrative aim. and he thinks that the decisions coming from brussels are only making the energy crisis worse. you that would be completely crazy if they decided to suppress long term contracts for gas or to trying to suppress gas being a fossil fuel, you know, to, to be discarded. this is wrong. why? because they choose their renewables, wind energy, and solar energy. these are intermittent, so if you're billed when turbines, you need to same capacity in gas turbines. when there is no wind, they will take over. so you absolutely need gas. if you bet on renewables,

everybody understands that a long term contract brings you better prices over a long term and stability. it's the same for gas prices. i mean, the price of gas now all the spot market in europe is incredibly high. is it what europe wants? is it what misses found the land once? we would be crazy to go that way? completely crazy. so this is really something which is trying to enjoy moscow. clash of cultures has seen denmark's acts immigration minister jailed anger. steinberg was sentenced to 2 months behind bars for illegally separating refugee couples. back in 2016, under danish law couples can marry from the age of 18, but during the migrant crisis, girls as young as 15 who had legally married in their home countries arrived in denmark. the then minister ordered the young wives to be separated from their husbands. a danish court ruled that that was unlawful as the decision was made

without consideration of individual circumstances. nestali berg says that she was only trying to protect children, and she has no regrets. yes ma'am. i see i can only say that i am very, very surprised by despair. entities as it were, the only scenario i had not prepared for it before because i thought it was completely unrealistic. mean, but here we are and i take my punishment and they do it without bending my oh boy and agnes, i don't know. there is nothing i have a bad, so i mean simply one has a moral and compassionate obligation to protect the girls. and that was what i did weird from our guests on whether the danish foreign ministers, former ministers, actions were warranted is absolutely justified what she did. just think of the morality of a country that says that it's wrong to separate people in the case where one of them is a child drives and the fact that we are making that had to stop them out. some

blocks should be something we celebrate. not throw ministers in prison for if they've been valid married in another country, then it is not for us to split them up on the basis that they don't comply with the, the laws in our country. there needs to be pragmatism. but where there has been a marriage that has been sanctioned under the law of another country, then there is already existing provision to to actually accept. and to legitimize some of those marriages, i mean, marriages, for example, under sharia law. and what we've done now is we've created to society subway, who is the society to be immigrants, where they have their rules and then the society for century, the white people who have their rules. i think that is not acceptable as it should be. a universal sense of morality, who should be universal set of laws thought. i mean, at the end of the day, we can't impose our own laws on the rest of the world. what they want his own

controlled immigration in order to destroy europe, that they not bothered about the damage system to civil society. and they want to find a way of attacking any politician that attempts to stop people coming out of the border and look at the end the day. we are perfectly happy not to port illegal aided. we're perfectly happy to take on foreign criminals. and the idea of what comes to jail, the midst of that said to stop it robin jail, the people responsible is obviously bothering well. ringback it does seem very severe um, but if i it sends a message the immigration ministers around the world. busy have got to be more careful about the way they make decisions and to act lawfully then it, he has a welcome effect. every time and immigration minister made an illegal decision on the being quite a number of those of over the years the if they were sent to jail. if it would

really. busy change things quite too much cuz he's a very, very worrying trend. this criminalization of politics. well, what you do with your potency, robin debate them. you attempt to find a criminal, a fast to compete of all the idea that you're not strong to take action against people. the children, i think, really just shows eyeball bankruptcy if this whole immigration debates this is r t international. the story of the harry potter author and the great trans backlash, no book or movie this time though, just a whole lot of abuse on social media coming up in just about 90 seconds. ah . ah london love souls, particularly when poles further a certain political agenda when pulling his a checkered history as of late the last 2 election cycles. tell us as much should

we put much stock into polling any more? if so, then why ah ah

oh, come back to the program. now facebook users may have to reassess the information they've been getting from the site after its parent company to meta admitted in court that so called fact checks are simply based on opinion. revelation came during a journalist's legal battle launched after his posts were flagged as misleading r t sauce cattail reports turns out the famous fact checkers who are busy labeling things false partly false, misleading. i've actually been a bit loose with well, the facts. facebook yet again, found itself in court. this time up against a journalist. he didn't like the day slapped a partly full sticker on one of his post. so he food for defamation. i'm because facebook where he spent millions of dollars on legal fees over the years. and got creative this time and claimed that front checkers don't decide what's false. so not based on fact, what to ridiculous idea, but on their opinion. hence the title fact checker. and because opinion in america

is sacred, you can't sue it. it's a very, very nifty loophole. but just to really escape any liability whatsoever. facebook double down on how it gives it fact checkers a very long leash. so meta identifies potential misinformation, for fact checkers to review and great. it leaves the ultimate determination whether information is full so misleading to the fact checkers. and though meta has designed its platforms so that fact checker ratings appear next to content that the fact checkers have reviewed and rated. it does not contribute to the substance of those ratings. now, you won't find any of these details in the giant fact checking section on facebook talk. com. instead, you'll learn about how they interview full says and consult day to look for facts, you know, to really drive home the point about how it's all based on opinion. i think some of

it's 3000000000 uses worldwide, want, sorry, pleased. after all, many of them had probably used these facts when arguing with that friends. and now it's turned out they would just quoting some random person's opinion. i've been embarrassing really, so that campaigning for facebook not to be let off the hook. court filing, facebook admits its fact checkers. don't check facts. is facebook admitted here that it's fact checks are not really fact checks at all, but merely opinion assertions also by facebook clement it's 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 op eds or editorials. also, facebook are fact check labels can not be false or defamatory, because they concede sheet protected opinion, even though we present them. as fact. my question though is, what does facebook need these opinionated fact checkers for anyway, after all, over the years, it's proved, it's committed to free speech. it is giving people

a voice, especially donald trump. it's dedicated to openness, transparency, and of course democracy. i mean, it says all the time 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 ally people. i don't feel comfortable at all saying they don't get to have a voice because i don't agree what they said, our ability to know what is misinformation is itself in question and i think reasonably so fact checkers. facebook favorite friends protecting it from defamation, setting it free for accountability, someone to hide behind and times of trouble, but most importantly, always ready to get their opinion. 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 gonna cost them big time, but it's gonna 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 false. ah, for analysis and insight into the facebook revelations is just a click away for that and plenty more. besides head over to r t dot com, the author of harry potter. j. k. rowling. has landed herself in some hot water. she is infuriated the transgender community by criticizing the police in scotland, who allowed rape suspects to identify as women. that's even if they haven't legally

or physically changed their gender, saying only that their female rollin channels, george or wells novel, 1984 on twitter to make her point. worries, peace, freedom of slavery, ignorance, his strength, the penis thing to vigil her aim to you is a woman. many people have shared rawlings concerns saying the new approach will clearly distort crime statistics and thereby render them useless. but the authors faced a heavy backlash from activists and people on social media for her views. vast majority of sexual souls are committed by men who don't identify as anything other than men . perhaps you might consider using your public profile to come by this. instead, you created an anti universe filled with wonderful characters, fantastical beasts, magic and wanda. but can't fathom the trans people exist. you've gone downhill from the inspiring woman who wrote harry potter from her call. why does it sound like

you am upset about trans people than rapists? hills like you pro, it is a wrong here, babe. now it's not the 1st time rawlings been chewed out by trends, rights activists back in 2020. she was accused of trans phobia. after ridiculing an article that used the phrase, people who men straight instead of women that prompted protests right outside her house and even death threats all the while the writer insist she has nothing against transgender people themselves. earlier, my colleague niel harvey spoke with the director of the project. keep prisons, single sex who believes a dangerous precedent has been set in scotland. i think this is another example of institutional catcher of our public and private institutions by the transgender low bay. the intention was to then be able to roll out to other sexes. so i think the capturing of the criminal justice system, whether it's crime statistics or it's the prison service, has been

a very key tactical made within the crime statistics. we know that sex is an incredibly important variable for analyzing the causes of crime and the response to crime. so if you substituting gender identity to biological sex, you're really messing up the data right at the beginning and you can never formulate an appropriate response. so men are just exploiting a loophole here to get themselves into female presence. and that is great danger to the family. make that, i mean, how do you feel about that side of the argument? once you start pretending biological sex doesn't matter, then you start opening up space is 2 males to men and 2 boys on the basis of what they believe about themselves on the basis of gender identity. and that puts women at risk as j. k. rowling says, this is fundamentally, it's about protecting the rights of women and girls is about protecting the safety

of women and girls. vladimir putin and his chinese counterpart, she's in ping, have held a video conference both publicly committed to strengthening ties. i made an increasingly strained set of relations between the east and the west. rushes leader also reiterated his desire to attend the beijing winter olympics opening ceremony in february. with more on the story, ortiz eager donna reports. it comes amid, as both nations, they face very similar geopolitical challenges, and most of them are coming from half the world away from the united states, both nations, both russia and china, are no stranger to nate bolstering its military presence, either close to the national borders or when it comes to china in the asia pacific, hence in an area, the china that bay ging views as its own backyard. here, both vladimir putin and changing ping. they criticize the so called all cause deal saying that while essentially it undermines the well,

the global nuclear stability and that it is essentially a threat to global security. have a listen concern was expressed by the activity of the americans in re configuring the current situation. in the asia pacific region, and in this regard, both from our side and from the chinese side and negative assessment was expressed about the creation of new alliances such as the indo pacific quad and the american anglo australian union orcus basically this orkin deal is the united states and the u. k. uniting and helping a strayer create its own basically expand its nuclear capabilities, expand the nuclear capabilities of its fleet. so this is an attempt by washington and london to make us trailer, into more into more of an atomic superpower. in fact, on the side note at this deal has already caused quite a scandal between the allies, because initially, france was about to do more or less the same, but washington and london, well, they muscled out their partner, their ally, paris, out of

a very lucrative contract but going back to the meeting between, ah, going back to the spiritual conference between vladimir putin and changing ping, they also express a desire to move further away from exchanges in dollars when it comes to bilateral trade and will increase the volume of deals or in our local currencies, in fact, staying with the subject of economy, vladimir putin has revealed that more than a 150000000 of doses of russia's vaccines against covert. sputnik v and sputnik light will be produced in china as contract with 6 chinese firms have been signed and in general, during 2021. the or the amount. the volume of bilateral trade has increased by 31 percent, which is basically it has reached to levels higher than a before the pandemic. so there you have it and seems both lead as they well they

see i to i and this meeting, this virtual summit seems to have lamented the alliance between moscow and beijing . we heard from politics, professor joseph gregory mahoney and he thinks that russia and china are reacting to us aggression frankly, with the office deal, basically proliferating nuclear weapons to australia ostensibly against china. with reports, the us troops are now in taiwan with biden, undermining strategic ambiguity repeatedly and verbal remarks with ongoing attempts to rally a new alliance in asia against by jane, with constant provocations in the south china sea. with washington propaganda machine constantly dehumanizing china unfairly accusing it of genocide and gross human rights violations. i wouldn't say the u. s. is being careful, i would say, rather, that it's being extremely aggressive. we're in a very fraught moment. the pandemic, of course, has made things even more tight. and so i think what we're saying is to countries

and the case of russia and china that have a lot of shared teaching interest and finding that close consultation benefits, most of them, i think that they have some shared strategic interest. but i think we see it on, on multiple fronts. i think both of them are tired of the dollar as the global reserve currency. i think they're both tired of this sort of irrational flip flop politics coming out of washington. i think they understand that to move forward, they need to find a way to transcend the american lead order. and i think that's what they're working to do. before we go, a quick recap of our breaking news from libby. a group of armed men surrounded the headquarters of the government of national unity and the ministry of defense and tripoli on wednesday evening. that's according to the country state news agency. the affiliation of the armed group is not yet clear. and on a verified video, circulating online appear to show military vehicles patrolling the city or

t has not been able to independently verify that footage. but several areas of libyan capital have also reportedly been left without electricity comes just 8 days before the country's 1st presidential elections. are scheduled to take place, and this story is still developing, of course, and will bring you updates as we get them. that's news for this, our stick around for more and just about 30 minutes. mm hm. with join me every 1st aid on the alex simon shows and i'll be speaking to guess of the

world politics sport business. i'm show business. i'll see you then. ah, a ford ford you guys that was president biden on his way to kentucky to tor storm damage on wednesday. tire bordered mark meadows was worthy of being held in contempt. after failing to appear in front of the january thick committee this week . but does the president even involving himself in and investigate.