think tank chatham house thank you very much for that analysis here in germany the trial has begun of ten people accused of involuntary manslaughter in the so-called love parade disaster of two thousand and ten and it broke out in an access town to the grounds of the techno music festival leaving twenty one people dead and almost seven hundred injured they've been years of legal wrangling over whether those involved in organizing the festival should be prosecuted now the trial is finally going ahead. panic suddenly breaks out a crowd is trapped in the narrow entrance tunnel to the love her a didn't do sport some of the festival goers are able to get to safety but in the tunnel a deadly stampede leaves twenty one people trampled to death. seven years later many of those affected still struggle to come to terms with the disaster. many are of course emotionally upset and have expectations and hopes for the trial starting in december they hope the trials will shed light on what happened. for parade organizers and six duisburg city employees face charges they were involved in approving the

think tank chatham house a very good day sir is this a break sir. it's certainly a good thing it's the first serious sign of progress we've seen for about six months they had to get agreement on these three big issues in order to clear the way to the really serious round of talks ahead on what the future trade relations and totality of the u.k. e.u. relationship would look like and they got very bogged down on these issues the none of them easy so is the fact that they've gotten agreement now and i hope it will be confirmed next week in the european council then is a good thing because they can move on ok so they can move on but they basically kicked the most contentious issues just down the road. yes i think so even on the irish border because in essence they're still saying that need to be no irish border but also there need be no border between london the rest of great britain and it's very difficult to see how if to resume a insists she's going to leave the single market and she's going to leave the european customs union how you can have new ph

now paul mali is an africa analyst from the chatham house think tank in london no welcome to d w so european and african leaders say this new force is needed. explain to us how much of a threat islam is terrorists islamist terrorism is in the sahal area. well there are really two sort of main strands there's been longstanding activity by a number of jihadist groups in the north of the saddle and stretching right up into the sahara desert and that's been going on for the best part of a decade of course it came to a peak in twenty twelve when they took over the north of mali before being pushed back. in a french led intervention the following year but although the international forces french and african then established. formal control of the north of mali in the rural civilian communities slightly further south where there's been an upsurge in local jihadist activity very often mixed up with local grievances young men disillusioned and fed up with particular the lack of jobs the poverty in the area drawn into violence so give me for interrupting i think you have lines of of the background tha

we are here with anne richards and robin niblett, leading mission at chatham house.u, robin, every article tells me the ballistics of this latest missile are totally different than before. -- will leadicks ballistics of the deval patrick response be different this time? ballistics of the diplomatic response be different? how much will be given they netflix is under threat, allies thelistics -- trump administration -- the trump administration was warned by barack obama that this was "your iran." i think for the trump administration, this is their iran -- they cannot allow the flow and ballistics of diplomacy to continue in their area. phrase -- very good some people tell us we should accept and deter. i think that is an except double. that leads you to what can the united states do? to rely is the u.s. has on china for economic and sherman -- instruments. will --lem is china francine: are you worried that north korea will become a nuclear power house? robin: i do not know about powerhouse, but i think china could live with a nuclear north korea. what it worries about

think tank chatham house thank you very much for that analysis. and again her joins me and markets across europe are closely watching that deal in brussels the so-called breakthrough at the so-called breakthrough. there were really cracking open the champagne on the trading floor the news that the divorce agreement had been reached markets are notoriously unsentimental down there showed a carefully positive reaction and the typical let's wait and see attitude really from the markets as it emerged an agreement had been reached the footsie one hundred rose as did the value of the pound but traders in london are well aware that the next phase of breakfast negotiations may prove yet more difficult. by i think the next few months we're going to see far more analysis of what the effects of the u.k. being outside of europe are going to be for instance one example will be just in time manufacturing how is that going to have to change with custom course set up across the with the number of border posts that require documentation that's going to change the

senior consulting researcher at the chatham house think tank sir thank you. well coming up on this news hour from london the pope wraps up his asian tour and heads home to the vatican but did he achieve everything he wanted to plus playing with fire palestine's chief negotiator warns the u.s. against its reported plans to recognize. as the capital of israel and in sports one of cricket's biggest names is aiming to relaunch his career and he is here with that. but first the thousands of people are rallying against the far right turn a tip for germany party which has elected its new leadership in hanover the demonstrators are against the anti migrant anti islam party that won nearly one hundred seats in parliament and september's election the code for petrie quit soon after to form her own party at the a if he is gearing up to be the opposition against chancellor angela merkel's yet to be formed government will be if the will be germany's official opposition party if i go mark will enters into a coalition with the social democrats it wants to introduce a propos

chatham house what conclusions or what is. your assessment of this g.c.c. summit what does it say about the state of the bloc right now i think it is significant that the summit place at all because this is the first time that representatives of all the countries have made together since the qatar crisis. six months ago bots clearly there weren't very many productive discussions this is taking place at a time when the gulf states could be working together on a lot of rapidly shifting developments in the region we've seen the you say to yemen we've seen the news about trumps and it's been to jerusalem there are a lot of issues of public interest where they clearly haven't really seen the need to work together on those and what is behind that because we've seen definitely a series of very strong and swift unilateral moves on the part of the saudi crown prince are we basically witnessing this disintegration of the g.c.c. it was nor were the saudi arabia and the u.a.e. and thence to new strategic partnership with the eve of the g.c.c. summit no i don't think th

a senior research fellow with the middle east and africa program at chatham house based in london thank you very much for coming in to speak to us and so what we've seen now the fallout from trump's jerusalem declaration that perhaps you know we haven't seen the full extent of their week because that could now arca is this decision in the best long term sustainable interests of israel it's not in doing to this story nor for anyone not the united states which is the interest due to the thinks first and not to use a yes in the longer we know that the limb is the capital of the top of it is the cup we thought because the government says they're the parliament is there the supreme court is there but the serve budget this is in the future negotiations with the palestinians this is the pool if you wanted to work in this is is a couple should have a curriculum is the cup with a future palestinian state and the is the minute that he even pretends to draw. in to do so in new peace initiative. which they're not to say it's supposed to be in the book who will take it seriously know that before tha

information of the regional bloc coerse and in london alex vines head of the africa program at chatham house welcome to all let me start by asking mr farmer this so flow how significant is this election for the liberian people. well this election is quite significant because. this is going to our show any. leader who would take over from. ellen johnson sirleaf. is going to be history because for many many years we have a hard. leader a sitting president turning over willingly and democratically to another person so yes it is historic and it will also be serving as a third consecutive presidential election since the. civil war. so. the election is quite important and we take it very seriously mr guy in the car is the fact that this is the first time that the librarians will witness a smooth transition into democracy that makes this vote very special for them i think it's a very important election not just for a liberians but for the whole of west africa because if you recall when the crisis erupted in liberia in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine the whole world was focused on the first gu

let's speak to dr leslie vinjamuri, who's a us analyst at the foreign affairs think tank chatham houseng. what you make of this, in terms where this takes trust, the reputation of the trump advice committee, so to speak. what is this moving us towards? this is very significant. this is the first indictments towards an individual who was actually in the trump white house. the others were people involved in the campaign didn't actually get in the white house. michael flynn is a senior person, the first national security adviser. the shortest lived national security adviser. he didn't last long because of this conversation with the ambassadorfrom of this conversation with the ambassador from russia, which of this conversation with the ambassadorfrom russia, which he lied about. at what the vidic at about this is that it's a short charge, a single charge. —— what is significant about this. in the agreed statement of the fax between the us government and michael flynn, michael flynn says that he communicated with senior members of trump's transition team before he established contact with t

earlier i spoke to sanam vakil, associate fellow and specialist in iranian domestic policy at chatham house seeing in iran at the moment. i think the events were dead another surprising, and the fact they have continued, i probably will continue for a few more days is indicative of the grievances along all facets of society, not just an the grievances along all facets of society, notjust an economic issues, but let it go, social, cultural and wider grievances. and grievances which are clearly spread around the country? absolutely. this has been and are organised, spontaneous outbreak of popular unrest. economic grievances are big enough fire, bringing all the people out onto the streets, and there has been a contagion effect, but these protests are been a contagion effect, but these protests a re not been a contagion effect, but these protests are not as large as other protests are not as large as other protests in the past, and i think it is important to note that. it is not long since the president won an election, so what has gone wrong since? i think your money and is for quite some tim

chatham house also in the british capital welcome to you all if i could start with so where have all the fun i still find it is gone i mean that even if you add up the claims i don't think you can account for all the tens of thousands of its rank and file yeah i think it's right. as an organization continues to exist sure it's lost a lot of its territory at its peak it controlled up to one half of syria and one third of iraq so it's lost a lot of the citizens a lot of the fighters have have you know died in the battles a lot of the fighters have are in prison a tradition judicial sort of prisons as well as sort of state prisons and a lot of them have escaped there are pockets they're looking to move house where through the region so i mean it really does depend but i think it's an important point to make that this is not the end of the organization the organization will continue to exist it simply going underground and it's part of the cyclical process of this organization is not linear it doesn't have a start and it but it has transitions between. controlling territory and then losi

lina khatib is head of the middle east programme at the chatham house think tank.the de—escalation zone, an area where things were getting better. actually, things never got better in ghouta. ghouta has been under siege forfour years now. it is only nominally part of the de—escalation zone agreement. we are seeing an escalation, as we can see. the ceasefire that was in place for a short period of time has quickly ended. since mid—november we have seen around 250 air strikes in the area. the humanitarian corridor has been shut off by the forces of assad. why is that still in place if he feels dominant there? he does not yet feel he has won. the strategy the regime is using in eastern ghouta has been used before in areas like madaya, which got a lot of media attention because there was a famine in that area. it was used in homes and also eastern aleppo. it is a strategy. until the regime is satisfied that the rebel groups holding these areas have essentially broken down, it will not lift the siege. unfortunately it is not over yet in eastern ghouta. if you're looking

from peter salzberg who is a researcher at the think tank chatham house and he says the situation in yemen is likely to worsen before any deal can be reached. what sallah said today was in effect that he is splitting from his coalition with the who thiis with this this rebel group that took over in september of two thousand and fourteen and he's telling the coalition let's have a ceasefire you guys don't get involved in this right now i'll take care of business here in sun i'll get rid of the who these and then we can work on a deal and what we're hearing is that this is been worked out through back channels previous to to what's happened over the last few days and that there is a deal in principle the people are willing to partake in i think it's almost certain that things are going to get worse before they get better what we're hearing is that the gunmen have been pushed out of key positions in sun then they're regrouping there massing forces on the outskirts of the capital you've got the various tribal groups who sit around the capital getting ready to fight with with them so look

vine's is the head of the africa program chatham house think tank in london he says stamping out corruption and reviving the economy are key issues for whoever wins the election. it's a massive deal because there hasn't been a democratic peaceful transfer of power since one nine hundred forty four so this is a long time since liberia had a transition of presidencies in a peaceful situation it's been previously between conflict and peace so this first time that a new president will be appointed which is not in a conflict situation my deputy head of my program elizabeth donnelly was in liberia for the first round she was an election observer for the national democratic institute right in one of the remote counties and she was really impressed and she's one of the number of elections and said it was a very credible process of course very difficult the logistics were overstretched it was very rudimentary but it was impressive so i think but has worn well for the elections that are going to happen on the twenty sixth of december i mean corruption unfortunately is very pervasive in liberia and no

we'll talk to simon fraser, former undersecretary of the foreign and commonwealth office and at chatham houseow. felipe l.a. will join us for an exclusive interview at vallee.. -- philippe here is juliette saly with the bloomberg first word news. juliette: the pboc race boring cost us hours a fed hike. increasing the rates charged in open market operations and on medium-term lending facilities. retail sales and factory output came in just below estimates for last month. both readings indicate continued momentum as a nationwide effort to tackle pollution ways on growth. donald trump has promised everyday americans a giant tax cut for christmas. in a speech billed as his closing argument for the tax overhaul, he said a typical family of four earning 75 dollars a year with the attacks cut of more than $2000 under the legislation. the white house did not provide any analysis to support his claims. we want to give you, the american people, a giant tax cut for christmas. and when i say giant, i mean giant. [applause] as we speak, congress has reached an agreement on tax legislation that will delive

more necessity now to alex vines who's head of the africa program at the chatham house think tank in london thanks very much for coming in so why is this election so. what's the big deal about it it's a massive deal because hasn't been a democratic peaceful transfer of power since one nine hundred forty four so this is a long time since liberia's had a transition of presidencies in the p. situation it's been previously between conflict and peace for this first time that a new president will be appointed which is not in a conflict situation and what about the process itself do you think it is fair and transparent what's your confidence level on the on the concentration of the book one of my colleagues my deputy head of my program elizabeth donnelly was in liberia for the first round she was an election observer for the national democratic institute right in one of the remote counties and she was really impressed and she's one of the number of elections and said it was a very credible process of course very difficult the logistics were overstretched it was very rudimentary but it was i

hardship for the people of yemen on a hoax that their picture sells for is a researcher at the chatham house think tank he says the situation in yemen is likely to get worse before any deal may be reached what solace said today was in effect that he is splitting from his coalition with the who theses with this this rebel group that took over in september of two thousand and fourteen and he's telling the coalition let's have a ceasefire you guys don't get involved in this right now i'll take care of business here in sanaa i'll get rid of the who these and then we can work on a deal and what we're hearing is that this is been worked out through back channels previous to to what's happened over the last few days and that there is a deal in principle the people are willing to partake and i think it's almost certain that things are going to get worse before they get better what we're hearing is that the gunmen have been pushed out of key positions in sun then they're regrouping their massing forces on the outskirts of the capital you've got the various tribal groups who sits around the capital ge

sold bray he's an expert on yemen from the middle east and north africa program at the think tank chatham house thanks very much for speaking to us the alliance between the who sees and saleh was always one of tactical convenience wasn't it they never really trusted each other but did you ever expected to end like this absolutely the this was a marriage of convenience between two groups who never trusted one another never liked one another and had a serious the dark history reportedly allegedly ordered the killing of the movement founder hussein or hoof in two thousand and four in two thousand and fourteen when the who he's took over in sanaa remember very clearly asking who the support is what would happen with siler and they said at the time you know we will deal with him him eventual this was inevitable the surprise has been the timing that it's happened now and in many ways it's a demonstration from the who the side and from the solid side that they didn't believe the front lines in the war were going to change anytime soon and they were in a position of strength in the case of the who fees

and an associate fellow at chatham house. i'm going to ask a panel to go in that order in just a couple of opening topic questions. i was wondering if we could start if you could talk about foreign fighter flow, the transducing specifically what are the implications for algeria? >> thanks very much. as you see my file and the characters and fellow at the national defense university. so for those of you who are not familiar, we' part of the u.s. professional military education prram which means i have to start all my comments missing a -- i should also say that as having a portfolio for counterterrorism iwork el-haoues chili comes to sometimes i'm in southeast southeast asian sometimes in north africa. in the past two years i've been tunisia and algeria as part of this research by don't consider myself a regional expert. i think i should be taken into context. i come with a focus on four fighters and then what next in the implications for north africa. let's start with basic numbers. according to u.s. government we've all hear

vines head of africa program a chatham house joins us from london good to see you alex it's a bit confusing isn't it when you try to put together how much of a success or lack of success she brought to the country what do you see as her achievements and her failures. well look there are three clear achievements and you have mentioned several of them already jane in your introduction so firstly she is africa's first woman president that's a great achievement and. you know she's a puff puff breaker in that regard secondly she shed a nobel peace prize that's also. really good at scheveningen and thirdly and most importantly in my mind she provided peace for for a for liberia for twelve years as president so she provided that stability which is why we now have an election which is really significant in liberian history because there won't have been a peaceful transfer of power from one president to another for over seventy is the last time liberian sold this was in one thousand nine hundred four so she's stepping down after two terms peacefully and handing over to have a wins the election stand

jacob parakilas the deputy head of the us & americas programme at the chatham house thinktank is herey the director of the fbi and robert mueller the former director of the fbi was appointed by the director attorney general to take over the investigation and run as a semi—independent arm of the justice department. we have begun to see the first criminal charges, first against paul... and then a plea deal with george papadopoulos, now michael flynn, who was briefly the security adviser for the first 24 days of the donald trump administration, he has been charged with a minor count of lying to the fbi. we hear he is pleading guilty, what is the significance of that? we are not sure yet, there is only a bit of information, the charging document is very brief, two pages, relating to statements he made about meetings with the russian ambassador in december. what is relatively clear, michael flynn's lawyers have stopped connor braid sync with the lawyers for the president and for other officials who might be implicated —— have stopped cooperating with the lawyers. which possibly means micha

we are joined now by emily taylor, editor of the journal of cyber policy at chatham house.ood daddy with this morning. does what boris johnson good daddy with this morning. does what borisjohnson say good daddy with this morning. does what boris johnson say this good daddy with this morning. does what borisjohnson say this morning go further than what you have heard from the uk government before on this issue of cyber security? in a way, as you would expect, as he was a guest in russia, at the moment, yea rs a guest in russia, at the moment, years choosing his words much more emphasising common ground, than some of the statements we have heard. both run theresa may and also from the secretary of state, michael fallon. i think, the secretary of state, michael fallon. ithink, that the secretary of state, michael fallon. i think, that there is an element in this, that is a thing that we should be hopeful about, is that we should be hopeful about, is that it that we should be hopeful about, is thatitis that we should be hopeful about, is that it is to be effected that all state

james nixey, the head of the russia and eurasia programme at the international affairs think—tank chatham houses trip? relatively good will, it must be said. the fact of the matter is, although there should be areas where we can cooperate with russia, russia its self simply isn't interested at the moment. it want something substantially different to that which the uk wants. the uk, is still a part of europe and certainly a part of the broader west, it does stick to what we called the westphalia and system, a post—cold war order of where all states that are recognised as independent are just such. but russia believes in sovereignty but not in the area of the former so but union, where russia desires, insists, that it must maintain control —— the former soviet union. as a result of that, the two countries are not going to get on and all there is a change of position between the one side and the other. tony, do you agree with that? i couldn't disagree more! is it so might and interesting charges against russia, the russians have a list of charges against us, they see us as list of charges against

for the crown center for middle east studies at brandeis university, and an associate fellow at chatham housei will ask the panel to go in that order and address opening topic questions. i was wondering if we could talk about foreign fighters, the trends you are seeing and specifically what are the implications for algeria? >> thank you very much. i and the, counterterrorism fellow at the national defense university, so we're actually a part of the u.s. professional military education program, which means i actually have to start all my comments by saying nothing i say represents the department of defense for the u.s. government. i should also say that having a portfolio for counterterrorism, i worked trends regionally so sometimes i am in southeast asia and sometimes in south africa and i have been did in asia as part of this research, but i do not consider myself a regional expert, so that should be taken into context. my comments will focus on foreign fighters and what next in the implications for north africa. basic numbers, according to the u.s. government we have all heard this, about 3