is the top of the hour and you know what that means time for our to international i'm donald quarter welcome to the program. spain germany france and italy have all suspended the use of the astra zeneca covert vaccine over blood clot concerns with all the details hears charlatans. well spain has now become the latest country in the e.u. to say this is suspending the use of the astra zeneca vaccine decision came hot only heels of decisions made by france germany and italy on monday all saying they were holding the rollout over this particular vaccine now we know that the world health organization is to hold a meeting to discuss the issues on tuesday and we've also heard that the european medicals agency this is the body which approves vaccines here in europe and had approved the astra zeneca vaccine is to hold an extraordinary meeting on thursday to discuss the issues now when france announced that it was suspending that vaccine that announcement was made by president marconi whose previously raised questions about the efficacy of the vaccine for older persons this is what he had to say. on . the decision which was also taken in accordance with our european policy is to suspend vaccinations with astra zeneca as a precaution hoping to resume it quickly if the opinion of the allows it so we are suspending its use from tomorrow afternoon. well they came fast in the footsteps of decisions that had already been taken by island the netherlands denmark so what's the problem well originally this issue of a safety was raised off a day in denmark but since then there have also been questions raised over whether or not astra zeneca makes the people who have the job have blood clotting issues in germany they say that this is a professional law a political decision comes after 7 individuals are said to have had that issue in the country now the world health organization has said astra zeneca is safe the european medical's agency has also said it stands by it and says that the effects outweigh the benefits of this particular vaccine and of course those who created astra zeneca are also standing by it a careful review all available safety data of more than 17000000 people vaccinated in the u.k. with covered 19 vaccine astra zeneca has shown no evidence of an increased risk of palmer and believes deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia in any defined age group gender or in any particular country well this is of course a huge blow to astra zeneca but it's also a huge blow to the european union's vaccine like a vaccine that has already been my problems and disquiet is being painfully slow there's also being new tit for tat between astra zeneca and the e.u. over the fact that the company couldn't supply the contract in demands from the e.u. as promised the dea may which is only approved for vaccines be used which include dusters and again in the e.u. is also coming under fire for not approving vaccines quicker and the rollout as it is painfully slow we're talking around 10 percent of adults across the european union that have received one job. meanwhile the e.u. has admitted to failures in its vaccine program with the commission's vice president saying the block is struggling 6 member states have broken ranks and written a letter complaining at the huge disparities in the way vaccines are being distributed as taylor reports. trapped in a never ending vaccine nightmare the bureaucrats in brussels must be thinking mon dieu promises unreality have so epically failed to much for the european block that they've been left with no option but to apologize it is true that mistakes were made when ordering the vaccines in brussels as well as in the member states the main issue has been delivery to laze of the astra zeneca job the initial deal of 18000000 doses was slashed to just 31000000 with the recent warning promising another months long hold up all this leaves the e.u. as target of 70 percent of adults vaccinated by late summer looking like a pipe dream but it's not just getting vaccines off the production because despite all its pledges to defeat covert 1000 with coordinated responses and united fronts some feel the e.u. is not living up to its core values as a tight knit family if there are clues that point to so-called bazaars where additional agreements between member states and pharmaceutical companies remain what kind of bizarre well the austrian chancellor is convinced that not everyone is being transparent and that certain member states are doing separate deals with pharmaceutical companies on the sly he's also annoyed that some countries like germany are picking up fact seen so far unclaimed by others and he's not the only 15 e.u. countries that's almost a 5th of the entire blog have the same complaint accusing brussels of not fairly dividing up the facts in pie if that system were to carry on it would continue creating an exacerbating huge disparities among member states by this summer whereby some will be able to reach herd immunity in a few weeks while others would like far behind nothing says e.u. solidarity like feeding yourself whilst your brothers and sisters go hungry a coup. into this uneven system multo would get more fight scenes them bald area which has a population almost 14 times launched an equation even cuts in coast scratching their heads and feeling like they've been cheated cheated out of the shot they say is our only shot at a return to normal life that we can leave behind soaring unemployment and so that people don't feel pushed to the brink and onto the streets. but it's not just knocked down fatigue it's a you fatigue apparently now sizable chunks of the blocks population feel that families image has taken a big hit over the past year proving that best failed vaccine rolled out greed to stop piling on public infighting during one of the vote it might be time for brussels to rethink its strategy and revive the good old idea of a one on one for role more european countries have expressed an interest in russia's. according to the russian fund behind the shot a number of e.u. based companies have all agreed to launch production if the vaccine wins approval in the block my colleagues and a farmer and nicky aaron discuss the details. since the start of the pandemic the company that producing this vaccine the russian direct investment fund has been very open about its plans to cooperate with partners all across the world including those in europe but what we saw was a lot of pushback and hesitation from europe towards the idea of using a russian produced vaccine it was criticized over having a lack of data it was even called a russian propaganda tool and that was even after the scientific journal the lancet published a study showing it was over 90 percent of the active so what we're seeing now is quite a remarkable change of tack with the company revealing its broken deals with companies in germany italy france and spain let's take a listen to what the c.e.o. of the company had to say currently there are additional talks underway on boosting production in the e.u. this will allow sputnik the to be supplied to the european single market once approval is granted but the european medicines agency we are actively working with the e m a is part of the rolling review procedure in addition we and our partners are ready to start supplying those e.u. countries that independently authorized sputnik v. so we should emphasize again then here is the approval by the blocs medicines agency although not everybody seems to be ready to wait for that well that's right you're hungry and slovakia have already bought the russian shot with slovakia receiving its 1st shipments of the vaccine on monday it will no doubt come as a massive relief for the country hungry meanwhile has already started vaccinations over in france we have the mayor of nice who is a pill to the austerity is to greenlight the procurement of these to his citizens and the bavarian prime minister has also made similar appeals to the e.u. to starts considering opening itself to the possibility of using alternative vaccines be it the russian or the chinese now the e.u. has really struggled throughout this entire time there's been production glitches and. that's still ate the program has been highly criticized for that so as the 8 year is faced with this colossal job of inoculating 450000000 people this really comes as a positive sign i mean this quick turn around if they give the go ahead to the russian vaccine it could speed up the fight against the pandemic it's also a diplomatic win between russia and europe as well. it's been 10 years since the outbreak of the war in syria throughout that decade hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and millions of civilians displaced the country's economy is still in ruins and according to the u.n. half of syria's children don't even know a life without war. you can see here what the war has done to syria this is the western city of holmes the site of some of the fiercest battles of the war and a 3 year see each government forces recaptured it in 2014 and efforts to rebuild the shattered city are now under way throughout the country young syrians have paid a heavy price almost half of those aged between $18.24 surveyed by the red cross have lost loved ones in the conflict with many suffering injuries themselves 2 out of 3 fled their homes and almost half lost their livelihoods any of the young syrians surveyed are still struggling to get basic necessities finding it hard even to put food on the table here some 1st hand accounts from people who were forced to leave their homes. i was annoying for a grade when the problem started everything was relatively normal until the 26th of november 20th 11 the next day things escalated in the village and the schools were closed that was the last day open the book in town and these 10 years have been psychologically draining everything was destroyed and we had to rebuild on top of rubble i've experienced many bad things you concentrate your emotions the physical damage was nothing compared to the emotional wounds. 10 years have passed since the crisis 4 in syria and $610.00 we're now entering the 11th year it is heartbreaking but we managed to adept. throughout the conflict. as do you have covered key events often from the front line and spent time documenting people's lives in the war torn country in this special anniversary report he looks back at the defining moments and forwards to where the country may be headed. what i saw in syria will always stay with me it's shocking when you see a father cradling a baby killed by a bullet but when you hear the cry of a mother who's just found out that her boys been torn apart by rebel shell this is what war looks like this is what happens when you put a gun and someone's hands and call them right shifts. do you do it he asked. a lot of my dear go. back and read a little on are related. we call it the syrian civil war but it never was for years syria has been bled dry by a war that was largely fed and fattened from abroad we know that now courtesy of hillary clinton's leaked diplomatic cables making the point repeatedly that the regime wants this to look like turn into sectarian violence and the very least that can be broadcast back into syria in various ways that will encourage protest as the united states we knew funded and drown propaganda campaigns against assad millions and millions of dollars since bush was in office they got what they wanted the you very action tens of thousands of jihad this from all over the world flock to syria they said this far and then they had the gall to call it somewhat out of the civil war which they didn't want to get involved in. i have resisted calls for military action because we cannot resolve someone else's civil war through force particularly after a decade of war in iraq and afghanistan the situation profoundly changed though on august 21st when assad's government gassed to death over a 1000 people including hundreds of children. the images from this massacre are sickening. men and women children lying in rows killed by poison gas. yes the gas one of the absolute lose of the war hundreds died in the biggest such attack in damascus suburbs in 2013 both sod's the government and the rebels blamed each other and then again and again and again in late today as it was almost always the white helmet 1st on the sea a rebel propaganda and rescue group funded by the same people who put guns and missiles in militants have just so we're clear whose side the white helmets well on they operate only in territory controlled by joggers so the kurds for example wouldn't let them anywhere near their towns or with the syrian government or the syrian democratic forces for good reason this group is by all reports poison we heard at the un panel what do these that they got up to in their free time organ trafficking staged rescues and when the cameras are off a little fighting on the side they told me that while they were not affiliated to mr front despite the fact that their center was actually in a no sort of front complex the news for front headquarters where directly next door to the white house center that i visited they told while they had an era for us for a front it was very likely that every other white helmick group in syria did have a variation on us or front were led by a nurse or a front militants and then the other situation this would be a scam a racket if you are of a bunch of thugs to manufacture cancer and then you say hey look chaos let's do something about it like the infamous duma a chemical attack of 2000. and a teen when they accused asaad of dropping gas on a random house after he'd won the battle for no reason that makes sense so horror that the great reason to let loose dozens of cruise missiles at syria except you know bad production. we were in the basement my mother told me that we had run out of food and wouldn't have anything to eat until tomorrow i heard noise outside somebody was shouting that we had to go to the hospital so we went there when i can mean some people grabbed me and started pouring water over my hand. after almost 6 months of investigations i can prove without a doubt that the duma hospital scene was staged no fatalities occurs in the hospital older white helmets activists and people i spoke to are either in the lip or euphrates shield areas only one person was in damascus year after year i reported from syria and many of you may have followed the wall but take my word for it until you see these with your own eyes you have no idea how bad things really are entire district cities demolished you'll find views like this in aleppo in daraa here in homs in damascus and the question isn't where did you start it's what do you start with they said it would be the good guys who'd fight as had the freedom fighters but it wasn't it wasn't the democrats it wasn't the liberals it wasn't the freedom fighters it was the radicals the extremists the jihad that's who rose to power and what moderate opposition there was was crushed and catabolic. riginal of the argument was we don't know them very well when we got to know them but it was they don't have very good backgrounds i was there it wasn't the moderates who took it it wasn't the moderates who besieged aleppo and the rebels are pushing into aleppo again. they've regrouped according to community. intercept. people to get back get back girls. with the moderates moderates less ideologically and religiously inclined. more commercially minded and tripper nerds who saw the shiny guns that were being handed out by the pentagon lot as a tool to fight oppression but is a commodity to be sold for profit when we learned that our unit's leader was selling arms to ice to terrorists we reported it to the us head of the base but after a report no measures were taken americans only ramped up the support for him it was never a secret that jarvis hijacked the revolution in syria what it was was an open secret everyone knew about it but you just didn't say it out loud otherwise you would legitimize acid's claim that he was fighting monsters terrorists quickly became upset a spectacle in a blood soaked circus they kept saying the same thing that it was all for the good of the syrian people the united states opposes the use of violence against peaceful protesters in syria and we support the universal rights of the syrian people for the sake of the syrian people the time has come for president assad to step aside for 10 years syria has and literally been in the headlines the president would condemn what's happening the pundits would call for more boardrooms the common sanctions would be filled with war more than is calling for blood here's a test a basic test they do know that selling american or european medicine to syria to this day could land you in jail ass these are called sanctions and they were strict almost all trade with syria i once reported from a cancer center for kids in aleppo and who are out me where little kids dying from perfectly treatable forms of cads or just because it's illegal si to sell them medicine when's the last time. you heard anything about these sun c.n.n. or b.b.c. this is 3 year old martha she had i counsel they could have treated it but western sanctions made getting the medicine impossible and the only hospital that specialized in cancer in aleppo in the hospital was taken by rebels and destroyed in fighting they had to amputate her but she's fine now she lives many other kids will. almost over children who died of cancer have done so because of european sanctions we asked the european union and humanitarian agencies to lift the sanctions and let cancer manson in because children are suffering for all his many many sins former president donald trump had one thing going for him he would sometimes tell the truth uncharacteristic of presidents yes but with trump it was it was shameless the hell with international law customs or even simple decency or oil. and that is what america is in syria for we're keeping the will we have the oil the oil is secure we left troops behind only for the oil i like the oil we keep in the o.l. it's a remarkable situation one of the world's richest countries all coupon in the oil fields of one of the poorest countries in the world syria the truth these few even know what's going on anymore one of the 1st things that biden did when he came to power was launch more strikes in syria so what people have stopped being told about syria and suffering a recent poll in britain found that only a little over hof of respondents even know that the syrian war is still a thing this tragic commemoration of 10 years of this brutal conflict is being compounded by the fact that in the u.k. . and throughout the west the suffering of the syrian people is being forgotten and ignored seems to be little hope for syria there is a new belief that tomorrow is going to be a better day earlier my colleague unit o'neill discussed the totality of the realities of the war torn country with a panel of experts syria still at war we know that the u.s. government just bomb syria 2 weeks ago u.s. troops continue to occupy a vast swath of syria most people don't know that the u.s. is quote safeguarding the oil fields in the northeast part of syria from isis even though isis has been defeated this year and people need to be allowed to live this is by no human rights catastrophe a huge tragedy foreign forces who are there illegally especially the united states need to leave syria as you know it's in the headlines often enough when it comes to war news but but what about those people in need do you think there's enough attention to to their problems is that are in need for a more aid indeed a more concerted focus from foreign countries. well that's part of the equation you look not forget that the sanctions against the syrian people that have been placed score lower than these past 10 years were made in place so it's not even necessarily ate it's just the same passions so they can actually begin rebuilding their country and rebuilding their lives in fact the opposite happens happening we saw the u.k. just put additional sanctions all these sanctions do is to hurt innocent people and prevent the country from recovering people over there feel that they are being punished for taking a certain side and this war and this is so it's not going to lead anywhere and as mentioned earlier a lot of your guests you know they cannot they are now not allowed to get their own wheat their own water their own oil they have to import everything now which is really stacking up the bill and this is not going to help at all should the u.s. be made accountable for the for the chaos i suppose it's democracy seeking a protest turned or helped turn syria into the other guests were saying being pummeled with sanctions clearly appears to be hurting the people more than the government as well. yes i mean the united states has been on a regime change course against the syrian government it's targeted it just as it did with iraq and with libya but the u.s. is using collective punishment depriving people of food and medicine in order to carry out a foreign policy objective and didn't earn trials those are characterized as work crimes and crimes against humanity so yes the u.s. must be held to account this is not simply a tragedy it's not god given this was imposed on the syrian people by u.s. government policy and its principal allies in the region. for exclusive coverage of the war in syria check out our website r.t. dot com i'll be back in about 30 minutes with your world news headlines so all sea of. the world is driven by shaped by those great. thinks. we dare to ask. americans love by and homed. this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country at large understood the bargain you get a hope and then you know rebel right as the things you don't revolt if you have a stake in the system. be really interesting to dial it back and think about the longer deeper history housings men in the united states not just that old question of the american dream but the bigger question of who the dream is for. this is a boom bust the one business show you can't afford to miss branch of boring washington coming up following a record spike over the weekend bitcoin the price has fallen back follow 60000 dollars straight ahead we analyze the price movements with some boom bust favorites plus the fight for global vaccination has had a small speed bump as some nations have halted the use of astra zeneca oxford university's vaccine will take you inside the ongoing saga and the trade has begun to set in as the u.k.'s exports to the e.u. have cratered to start the year packed show today let's dive right in. and another week and another all time high for big as the world's largest crypto currency topped out at just over $61000.00 has been an incredible run for the digital currency even though as of monday it's fallen back to around $56000.00 so what continues to drive this incredible surge for big oil and will it come to an end anytime soon joining us now to discuss boom bust co-host and crypto analyst ben swan an editorial director with the american institute for economic research jeffrey tucker thank you both for being here it seems like about every other monday we're in the same position talking about the latest meteoric rise of bitcoin so ben what happened. and what happened over the weekend to drive the price so i. yeah see it's kind of interesting so you're absolutely right we're talking about this all the time now it seems like every single week there's a new high and it's not just a new high right it's 5 to 10 $1000.00 higher than we were before which is a pretty significant jump and watching kind of move through this meteoric pace there's a couple things happening what is institutional investment we've talked about this a lot over the last few weeks which is that we see.