not an individual level, it's not individual willpower. and if we go on believing that never change is obesity epidemic. that industry has been influencing very deeply. the medical and scientific establishment for what's driving the obesity epidemic. it's corporate. ah, ah, the week's top stories, frivolity, russia unveiled a list of proposals to nato for maintaining joint security, with the deputy foreign minister saying the goals now in the alliance is called when it comes to the escalation over. you correct? pentagon says no u. s. military personnel will be held liable for august botch. drone strike in afghanistan would kill 10 civilians, including 7 children. we hear from a grieving relative with nobody approached us non contact to those,

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 now. we've lost 10 of our relatives to get to flagging posts as false or misleading facebook admits, and course that it's much vaunted fact checks are actually based on opinion. and i'll tell you if i was to keep fighting in response to a string of attacks against its brand new german language channels. in the last few days, it's been taken off youtube and accused of lacking the necessary license to broadcast in germany. ah, well that's sunday on our teammates, we're going to take you through some of the biggest stories we've covered here over the past 7 days. also keeping watch on the weekends developments as well for you 1st the friday. so russia really so list of proposals for deescalate intentions with nato. am it phase of a flare up in ukraine, among the demands or a scale back of military activity near russia's borders?

the west military alliance says it'll consider the document, adding, though that any outcome will require input from kiev. our senior correspondent, i guess the reports on what moscow's put food for years now. we've heard the same thing. oh, things have gone too far. a. we don't want war, we want to be friends for both nato and russia. but things keep getting worse. escalating the russia has taken its step publishing proposals for the us and nato, its wishlist for return to normality. something to start talking about that it begins with a call to de escalate. to end the constant threats and true build ups, which only lead to more of the same. the parties shall not use the territories of other states with a view to preparing or carrying out an armed attack against the other party judge for yourself. where in previous years they threatened each other with, with sanctions or legal action. now, openly, both russia and nato,

a talking and fearful tones about war and of the cuban missile crisis. i'd like to believe that this is rock bottom, but there's no guarantees and guarantees are what russia wants. guarantees, for example, that us missiles aren't stationed within a few minutes flight time. to moscow. the parties shall not deploy land based, intermediate, and short range missiles in areas allowing them to reach the territory of the other parties. moscow sees nato slow and unexplainable encroachment towards russia's borders. as an existential threat, nato argues that it's peaceful but right then the u. s. military doctorate. russia is referred to as an adversary. the closer the nato and u. s. troops and tags and missiles moved to russia, the more unpredictable the game gets,

which is why putin has set his red line. nato states committed themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of nato, including the accession of ukraine, as well as other states. not that nato things much of russia's concerns. not long ago, secretary general stockton, burge announced that roger has no vito, no se nato operations and no right to any sort of security buffer or fear of influence. nato has proven on the last year's daughter. our open door policy is not only something we are support in words, bottles in deeds potter by inviting to new countries. montenegrin north m madonna to become members. so we have enlarged the line so the last few years for to new members, despite protests wrong or from russia. and also, we are supporting ukraine in ukraine's efforts to a con, closer to

a natal membership, which sets us back all the way to square one. if the policeman, this is not an attempt to revise the post cold war order, it's a response to western expansion which has been conducted in a hostile manner. the gist of that proposal that, that the u. s. nato and russia have a requirement for security as essential as food or water, that they must all equally respect. nato has received the proposals and says that a little discuss them amongst themselves and with input from ukraine. there isn't much cause for optimism. rushes requests of largely been rejected, summoned in private, summoned public, consult mockingly for the cameras. but perhaps this time, sense willed, prevail. moscow's proposals come as the west's been accusing russia. we're preparing to invade. you cried something the kremlin strongly denies. nature's chief, also stressed,

ukraine's request to join the alliance will be decided between kiev nato, at its allies alone. on the same time highlighting what he called a pattern of russian aggression. the russian foreign ministry spokeswoman says remarks like that only create more attention at the chena lotion, and this is as information campaign that aims to crate. firstly, the image of russia is an aggressor, a secondly, additional pattern and the region, including the black sea, the russia, green border, and se ukraine look. so this will not bring stability and security either international relations or the regional janda. it will undoubtedly complicate everything. meanwhile, journalists, primarily of course western door noise freely used the word aggressor for into our country over to you. what right of the have to do this. i tried understand this every time. when was the last time russia tag to anyone? if people need to back up this claim with arguments and how many times have need a countries at texas her in states, in the last 20 years, how many special operations were carried out by the nato countries. can you show me something in close to that from the russian side?

now, there is nothing you need to figure out where there are facts and where there's propaganda was unfold, so that andrew pharma spoke at length earlier this week with formal austrian foreign minister current council. she outlined ways which she believes could help overcome the current political deadlock between moscow in the west. ah, yes, we are in a stalemate. no doubt about that. but in such a stalemate, it takes people with some sort of creativity. that's what diplomacy is about. international relations and not only about self impaired digna's, of national security interests and so on. at the moment we have bass, i saying russia saying, look, we've got grave security concerns about nato. we have eastern european countries, we've got great security concerns about russia and a potential invasion. so what, where's the meeting point where the meeting points can only be achieved by saba, pragmatic, diplomatic trust building. there is simply a complete disregard for historic and contemporary a worries on, on,

on the russian side so that i think that should be taken into account and. and to overcome that stalemate, it requires genuine diplomatic creativity. also on the side of nato officials, you and, and to your administration, we see that at all, anywhere. unfortunately, we are in times of a decline of diplomacy, diplomatic practice, if we are in a world of unilateral statements. first of all, this looked at this armament of words. i mean, this terminology is kick. it cannot be continued as, as it has been the case over the last few weeks. the media should act in a more responsible way of quoting this, this german paper, the bill to which, which had as effect planets on. so there is many people are required to act in a more responsible way because the stakes are simply too high. such

a language was not present in the court war days in the seventy's eighty's. maybe because we still have people in office who knew what war meant. some of them well after the 2nd world generation. so they, they wouldn't play around with words like nuclear at tech or a fully fleshed war because they knew what was most about. we have to seize this more moments now to do really something like confidence building back. and i saw that the us side. what would put this priorities in a different way and that seems to june meeting some more saba and product matic approach. what, what will be on the agenda? no, u. s. military personnel involved in august bought a drug strike, an afghan,

assembled face any kind of punishment. 10 civilians were killed in that attack. most of them were children. we got the reaction of grieving relative to the announcement the payment made on monday. do not anticipate there being issues of personal accountability to be had with respect to the august 29th here strike flock . the key operation. the news came as a shock is humiliating for us to hear that 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 claim that they can spot a need on 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 islamic states is a why didn't they do those checks before launching obama to us? it looks like no other country is 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. but what the americans promised as justice and compensation, and then 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 us. now 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 on one of russia they could throw. this girl was among the children killed in the strike. she was just 2 years old. 3 of the children had been in a car when it was hit by a missile in totaled, 7 youngsters were killed all from just one family. offending internationally defended the cobble strike claiming a targeted members of islamic state. more than 2 weeks later though, a quote tragic mistake was acknowledged. we discuss developments with form a u. s. military drone operator brandon bryan. you know, it's been 10 years since i blew the whistle and the u. s. drone program will be 10 years in 5 days, actually. um and to see that nothing has changed, even when it's blatantly out in front of everyone's face,

how we operate them and no one's being held accountable. like we've been talking about this for 10 years now. when i 1st started talking about it, people called me a liar. people tried to defame me, and now that we see it for what it actually is, innocence had been killed. not just innocent and innocent aid worker who was there trying to help. i really think that the united states has lost knowledge on how to conduct warfare. and it's now a business. they're not gonna punish the people that make them money. they're just going to punish the people that are so the suppose it enemies in the ones that they test this, munitions on who should be punished or the officers. they said that there's a breakdown in communication, but that is mostly a lie. m, m must have been that there was there, there must been someone miscommunicating something. but they have everything should be in a chat program. like it's not just a radio call instantaneous. you spin up your mess when you shoot. it takes like 5

minutes to get ready to shoot a messiah. this was not an emergency situation. no one was under spire. no one was under duress, no one was under stress. and so they had all the time in the world to make the decision on whether to shoot or not. the cowboy 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 driving since 2004, including thousands of children. of the new york times found that hundreds of civilian deaths were on, accounted for by the pentagon. brandon brian also shared with us his experience of operating battle drones. there is no way that anyone who has ever done this job and sit there watching these people live their day daily lives out, can not look at them and say, these are not people there. people because you go home and you go out into your own community and you see the same, keep same types of people doing the same thing. they're going to coffee shops there, go into bookstores, they're hanging out with their friends and family. there is no disconnect for a drone operator. there's so much connection. like if, if

a drone operator were to go over there and to meet the people that they interact with. visually, they would probably have a emotional breakdown and cry because they would see that these people are suffering and no different than themselves. and that we're perpetuating that suffering because of our actions. we're doing it. facebook uses may have to reassess some of the information they've been getting from the site after its parent company meta augmented in court. that so called fact checks are based merely on opinion. while revelation came during a legal battle initiated by a journalist whose posts were flagged as misleading, his saskia taylor turns out the famous fact checkers who are busy labeling things false partly false, misleading, have actually been a bit loose with well, the facts. facebook yet again, found itself in court. this time up against a john list. he didn't like the bay slapped partly full sticker on one of his post . so he sued for defamation. and because facebook where he spent millions of

dollars on legal fees over the years and got creative this time and claimed that fact checkers don't decide what's false or not based on fact, what a 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 lease. so matter identifies potential misinformation, for fact checkers to review and rate. it leaves the ultimate determination whether information is false, 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 dot com. instead, you'll learn about how they interview thought, says and consult data and 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 users worldwide, one, sorry, pleased. after all, many of them had probably used these fact excellent. akin with their friends. and now it's turned out they were just quoting some random person's opinion about embarrassing railing, so that campaigning for face may not 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 fat checks 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 op eds or editorials. also, facebook are fact check labels can not be false or defamatory because they consist

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 loves giving people a voice, especially donald trump. it's dedicated to openness, transparency, and of course, democracy. i mean, it says all the time, 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. 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. without he for moscow still had the on the weekly, the omicron cobit strain is now with nearly 90 countries,

causing alarm and more locked downs. after the break, we discussed the threat. it's opposing with the w h chose regional director for europe. doug, go away ah to what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy confrontation, let it be an arms race is on offense, bearing dramatic development only personally and getting to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful. it's very difficult time. time to sit down and talk. ah, i mean with

oh, hello again. health experts in the united states, a warning that the new coven omicron variant could be the dominant strain there in a matter of weeks, and potentially overwhelm the health care system, is also spreading in europe, the netherlands is imposing the strictest lockdown measures yet across christmas from well into mid january, there's also a nationwide surgeon infections in britain to in london, the mass re declared

a major incident, meaning the capitals, emergency services and hospitals can't insure their usual level of response. the well health organization says the new variant is now in 18. 9 countries, despite his rapid spread early studies, though from south africa and hong kong suggests over, kron is less likely to cause severe illness than the delta, very, and very few deaths have been linked to the new strain. but countries worldwide are ramping up their vaccine. and booster campaigns, artillio per tank, got more details from the w. h o's, regional director for europe. how much more do we know about our micron at this point? we know much more. and we have the tours and about, oh michel, it's to, it's the latest variant. it's spreading much more faster, but i always tell, we're not in the business of fighting one variant when the business of fighting all variance and stu, delta is dominant. what we need to do is to implement, well they call fife on their mic stabilizers. number one,

increase vaccination coverage. number 2, boost boost, boost number city. double the number of people varying mosques. endorse number 4, ventilate, particularly in classrooms. keep the schools open and fife, implement new treatment protocols. how valid are the concerns that vaccines might prove ineffective against on the crone where we know as of to date, that vaccines are still effective for the 1st or the 2nd dose may be little bit less, but it covers with a cert dosed well on the european union, specifically, we've seen a range of different approaches. why aren't we seeing a more uniformity from the block in particular, do uniformed, it has been growing over time, but i take the point that it's still really aleck, off uniformity, with a cold political here it is. and it's confuses the people. that's why dublin was

advocating to establish a bung european health senate council at the high level to half uniformed in policy . but ultimately still health is a national competency. it's a decision by the country. speaking of sputnik v, a r t, we've heard from a number of experts that the issue has been politicized. is that true anyhow? house including vaccines. go beyond politics. we should never take into account the country of origin. i shared the optimism of the president of the russian federation that this doubly chal, emergency use listing for sputnik will be there soon. our brand new german language channel r t d began broadcasting this week, but it didn't take long for a smear campaign to kick off alongside it. the channels being accused of not having the necessary documentation to broadcast in germany. party management responded saying its license was obtained in accordance with all european rules and

regulations. it's been a rocky start for r t d. the new channel was taken of youtube. the day that had launched on thursday a, technically there's no connection between that and the tv broadcasting dispute in germany, by one media watchdog official, had some ominous words for the fledgling channel. the license must be issued in germany and the application must also be filed. her, 1st of all, this is a real irritant, and we will take care of it. he called the r t d essentially a peskin and little nuisance that is going to be taken care of. so that is some are interesting language there right off the bat. but the, the crux of the issue is that are in his view, we are have no business broadcasting in germany. he is claiming, ah, incorrectly a dot r t d. a news channel is actually based in berlin, when in fact, it is based in moscow, quite literally down the hall from,

from the studio. and the news programs are coming out here being filmed here, edited put on the air and so forth. and they are out there doing that via a license or through another country to serbia through another european license and are in full right to broadcast across all of europe, including in germany. our license was obtained under what is known as the european convention on trans frontier to transfer into your television, which are under that convention gives us the right to broadcast to 33 countries across europe as long as broadcast from moscow. and those countries include germany, but they also include other countries with majority or significant german language populations, such as austria, switzerland, luxembourg, and so forth. this is where the separation is really important. the legal action is

being launched against our tv production, which makes some, you know, makes some of the shows r t d e productions does not need a license, because our tv production is not a channel. it channel is our tv that is coming out of here. and thus moscow, our headquarters, our parent company applied for i applied for, for the license in serbia, the amount of pressure that, that our new german channel has faced even before it went on the air. difficulties with banks, difficulties, not just with licensing, but you know, the pressure on our guests and so forth has been really unprecedented. the pressure again, as you've mentioned, the beginning on our digital platforms, we are ready to keep to keep fighting with the latest member of the alta family getting flack from all sides. already. we spoke to a number of high profile journalists today what they think you can't separate what's happening with our tea. it's chinese television, with other broadcasters,

from the political situation, poor relations between germany and russia right now, for relations between united states and russia. right now, the correlations between states and china. all of this is linked in my view. it's purely politic. there is a sense, so i can only speak here in america where our tea has been sanctioned in the past, by being labeled as something a part of the foreign agent regulation act. 1938. you have the same application to chinese television. you have a situation where the nations do not have good relations with united states or germany, yet penalize journalists are not an irritant. the people in power are called propaganda us. it is, we should always have an adversarial relationship to power. that's what journalism is about is about shining a lens as much as possible on the inner workings of power. so the public knows

what's going on. but i, i actually blast when i, when i read it, i thought it was funny. i mean, i guess not funny in terms of the consequences, but i just thought it was, it showed how utterly naive or tone deaf he was about the role of journalism. that's the weekly for this hour on the way looking at, even though how science can give us more answers to both problems. i never get full . that's still an information overload that's causing confusion and deadly levels of ignorance. and it's next on the international join me every thursday on the alex simon, sure. i'll be speaking to get us on the world politics. sport, business. i'm show business. i'll see you then. mm. oil and gas manufacturing, electricity, telecomm guys potations. all of them now have i o t type of infrastructure

connected to the internet. so clearly realizing this disruptive potential so that those countries can't ignore it because it threatens national security issue. but if we take the nato and you countries, virtually all of them subscribe to certain doctrines and maintains cyber task forces, they are a cyber army on behalf of a country. that's their job. with as low dose. this feel a doesn't act like a typical poison. it acts as an into chron disruptor, meaning that it disturbs our hormones. the molecules that regulate, among other things, are reproductive system. with the tiniest observable doses,

it can have devastating effects. in other words, between the dos and the effect of a product. research is starting to find some very unexpected relationships and this is shaking up the world of toxicologists. 8 we were rejecting their dog while they toxicology community has not accepted it. they said we reject this. the resistance of the toxicologist was well intentioned. it was also providential for the manufacturers of plastics. it's not always that people intentionally want to derail science, some people unwittingly, through no fault of their own can at times be ponds in other people's efforts to produce strategic ignorance. there are many ways that ignorance is produced.