the u.s. president today put syria and russia on notice a trump tweet warning of a military response to the latest alleged chemical attack outside of damascus nice new and smart missiles that could soon target syria's gas killing animal bashar al assad and the russians giving him cover golf in berlin this is the day. russia chose protecting a monster over the lives of the syrian people when you smile when you say your threats of aggression and that your maneuvers your misinformation your lies and your terrorism will never do you realise our music if there was to be american strikes. but it gave you. the rockets would be shot down and even the

sources of the strikes but we targeted most of the year long as for you that they're threatening each other by tweeting that my missile is better know my missile is better than him by the same logic i'll put who's paying the price for it the civilians and the poor. upstart of the situation in the world is getting more chaotic the president is talking to other allies i hope that things will come to an agreement on a concerted. joint effort with the response of a military response i think so. also coming up of facebook under fire and the non grilling of mark zuckerberg on capitol hill there is a common misperception as you say that it's just reported often keeps on being reported that for some reason we sell data i can't be clear on this topic we don't sell data

. we begin the day minus the element of surprise in syria when he ran for office donald trump repeatedly lashed out at his opponent and president obama for revealing too much and always giving the enemy an edge where now that he is president mr trump is struggling to keep a secret as he decides how to respond to yet another alleged chemical weapons attack in syria today he tweeted a serious warning to russia for its support of the syrian regime and at the same time warned of incoming missiles tweeted russia valves to shoot down any and all missiles fired at syria get ready russia because they will be coming nice and new and smart you shouldn't be partners with a gas killing animal who kills his people and enjoys it or. heard the message his troops have spent the past forty eight hours repositioning

themselves along with vital weapons so far the battle over syria has been played out at the u.n. security council where both the u.s. and russia have made it clear they do not believe what the other resay. these images shocked the world the young survivors of an alleged chemical weapons attack in duma eastern ghouta last saturday what happened here has sent tensions between russia and the west soaring to new heights u.s. president donald trump said syria would pay a big price. u.s. secretary of defense james mattis said the u.s. military was still assessing the situation but didn't rule out a strike we stand ready to provide military option to their appropriate as the president determined. u.s. warships left port on wednesday on route to the middle east they're not due to arrive for weeks indicating washington means to keep up the pressure.

meanwhile russia has moved fast to establish itself in duma this amateur video purportedly shows russian police investigating near the side of the attack moscow says it and the regime are ready to allow a probe which shouldn't assign blame and the kremlin has argued that caution is in order. we do not participate in twitter diplomacy we support a serious approach we still believe that it is important not to take any steps that may harm the already fragile situation in syria we are also still convinced that the excuse regarding the use of chemical weapons in duma is made up and cannot be used as an argument for military action the alleged attack has already shifted syria's battle lines here displaced people from duma arrive in syria's rebel held north resistance collapsed in eastern guta after the attack the refugees are a reminder of the brutal intensity of this war which the international community has so far remained powerless to stop. take this story to the u.s.

. is standing by the. i have a question for. a u.s. strike against russian forces in syria how credible is this threat president trought clear i'll start with you. at this point a military strike certainly seems like a real possibility and if trump decides to go this route it won't be the first time that his administration has carried out strikes on syria if you remember it was just about a year ago this time of year that the united states took its first military action against syria striking an air base in an effort to punish the assad regime for what was widely seems to be as a nother chemical attack so the question becomes if this ad hoc attack that we saw

last year was clearly ineffective as a deterrence to prevent it from using chemical weapons against his own people and then what would it be about a strike again a single one off shot that could potentially change his calculation this time around and it's also unclear what trends long term plan on syria really is if you remember it was just earlier this month that he was saying he wanted to pull all two thousand u.s. troops out of syria and that was against the advice of his military advisers who wanted to stick around and make sure that they really had this so-called islamic state in check but now we're seeing him very openly calling for military strikes in what could very well as the situation. seriously. well a moscow has to take it to seriously brand that's why moscow at least publicly is taking to strong warnings a senior russian lawmaker said the president and i'll try to be to reflects at

denge arista lights minded approach to critical station constantin cause that shelf the hatto for on the fast committee in the upper house of russian parliament sat it was really scary to think what kind of people control the large largest military arsenal the planet has ever seen and president putin spokes person about it and we did this call for me i just heard it in the report sad ironic of the russia didn't participate into the diplomacy on the other hand brand russians also say very clearly they won't hesitate and would fight back if needed. we are getting a report is just coming across that u.s. president trump has said that he holds syria and russia both responsible for a chemical weapons attack last week and that is definite that is just coming across on the wires so clear let me. for you and let's look at a tweet from truong another tweet in which he said this our relationship with

russia is worse now than it has ever been and that includes the cold war now this is not the donald trump that we have known the last two years i mean is he doubling down on russia to take some of the charge out of the special counsel mole or is russia investigation. well the investigation is definitely what's been dominating the headlines here in the united states however the president is risking a direct confrontation with russia with this kind of rhetoric and you have to remember russia has been one of the strongest allies since long before the war they have regularly use their veto power at the united nations to deny security council resolutions that are meant to condemn the assad regime for its actions and it was their intervention in twenty fifteen that was widely seen as the thing that helps change the course of the war in favor of bashar assad's government so we are

talking about a humanitarian crisis that has killed more than half a million people has displaced more than half of the country's population and any kind of serious military action that we're going to see from the united states is going to require a serious long term strategy and it's not apparent that trump has backed clear himself. how. strong. well russia's ambassador to lebanon mr was a soup can warm for example in case of an attack moscow would shoot down any u.s. missiles fired at syria also russia would obviously target the launch sites all of the missiles which means u.s. military bases or aircraft carriers and the dozen goalscoring gulf for example three weeks ago i myself was embedded on the along just a u.s. aircraft carrier in the world on the guess as to the roosevelt from which missiles

attack targets in syria and iraq so it may well be that from their missiles right now launch to attack president assad's armed forces on the ground that warship was one of the largest brant londoner largest of washing in the world with more than five thousand marines and u.s. navy officers and what if russians attack such and such an act of carrier and americans can face a great danger and your we know that russian president vladimir putin has called on israel not to take any action that could further destabilize the situation in syria basically you know asking tell of the not to fire any shots right now is the kremlin concerned that it could quickly lose its power and its influence in syria. i don't think so i think the climate is the really of warre it's about the potential gas attack in syria the kremlin wants to avoid to direct confrontation

with washington i'm absolutely sure about that by the way i also think that americans do not want a war with russia so israel in this very complicated context seems to be just one more player in the region who also tries to achieve its own goals namely to war in the round and russians obviously don't want any additional trouble at least on these on this front and they don't want israel to poor even more oil on the fire by the way there are experts in moscow who see israel as a potential media to a negotiator between the united states and russia so we'll see if this is an interesting point yuri we're also getting a report that the white house is saying that all options remain on the table in dealing with this alleged chemical weapons attack in syria so we don't have any clarity to report tonight clear what about the american public trying to have popular support for his of since of course in syria.

well we don't have polling numbers for this particular possibility of a strike but we know that for his strike the last year there was a majority of american a majority of americans were onboard with that so it's going to remain to be seen whether this is equally as popular or whether people are going to look at the past year and the president's past comments and have a change of heart over the correspondent claire richardson in washington there at the white house and our moscow bureau chief. to both of you thank you. or we have watched and listened to what was supposed to be the grilling of facebook c.e.o. mark zuckerberg on capitol hill there are disappointments and some surprises to report let's start with those phone grillers. the senators now perhaps it was a case of not doing their homework or simply not being tech savvy but many senators wasted their allotted time by revealing to zagreb or how little they really know

about him and his social media giant one senator today mused about the positive aspects of facebook for his elderly mother some senators treated the hearing like the political theater that it was with one line zingers such as your user agreement sucks mr zucker bird mr zuckerberg the boss of a company at the center of what could be a corrupted and rigged us election he did not exhibit the insider knowledge that you would expect from a moon lineal billionaire i mean how many times did he reply to questions from senators with my team will follow up on this and get back with you and what about that philosopher king treatment that was given to zucker bir instead of pushing the c.e.o. of the topics of regulation and more transparency concerning how and why our facebook feeds show what they do senators asking for is

a berg's opinion do you think we should regulate do you think your company is a monopoly well some would say who cares what he thinks he should care what lawmakers are thinking take a look at part of what was said today. yes or no will you commit to changing all the user default settings to minimize to the greatest extent possible the collection in user and use of users data you make that commitment congressman if we try to collect and give people the ability i'd like to answer yes or no if you could will you make the commitment to change all the user to changing all the user default settings to minimize to the greatest extent possible the collection and use of user's data that i don't think that's hard for you to say yes to unless i'm missing something congressman this is a complex issue that i think is deserves more than a one word and well again that's disappointing to me because i think you should make that commitment one to phase learn the cambridge analytical research project

was actually from tiger targeted psychographic political campaign work congresswoman it might be useful to clarify what actually happened here do well know i don't have time for a long answer that when did facebook learn that and when you learned it did you contact your c.e.o. immediately and if not why not. congressman yes we learned in two thousand and fifteen that a cambridge university researcher associated with the academic institution that goes into that people shows they know what happened flip them but i'm asking you some answer how much to write when when we learned about that we want johnny fifteen you learned about it yes and you spoke to their c.e.o. immediately we shut down the app did you speak to their scenario immediately we got

in touch with them and we asked them to today we demanded that they delete any of the data that they had and their chief data officer told us that they had. yeah so many unanswered questions coming out of these two days of testimony i want to poland it did as you he is an expert in facebook marketing and he's the chief technical officer at blitz metrics he joins us tonight from below and yes if only it's good to have you on the day that we get your take what did we just see these past two days on capitol hill and we saw circus where you have a lot of elderly folks that are trying to grow a technologist about a situation that they don't understand and they know the public is demanding that something be done but they don't know what to do so this is actually just a show me a show and at the same time they're asking zuckerberg to do something that he really doesn't want to do right i mean he doesn't want to be regulated but he can't say that and he doesn't want to reveal his you know his algorithms it's almost like

coca-cola doesn't want to reveal it or divulge the recipe for coke right but i mean something has to happen just take a listen to what he said today a little excerpt a little exchange and not with no data included in the data sold to the malicious third parties your personal data yes it was are you willing to change your business model in the interest of protecting individual privacy going on than we are have made and are continuing to make changes to reduce the amount of how are you willing to change your business model in the interest of protecting individual privacy congresswoman i'm not sure what that means well i mean i don't the congresswoman who did she know what she met dennis what do you think. now these are signs of questions imagine someone asked you have you stopped beating your wife yes or no just answer my question yes or no if you stop beating your wife

so what facebook's trying to do is to be willing to agree to some kind of regulation which is bait because it the way they want to avoid is being broken up right being broken up into instagram and facebook being separate companies just like eighty just like what microsoft was able to avoid right they want to avoid any kind of harsh regulatory action so they haven't actually done anything wrong in terms of allowing that as an advertiser you cannot export data from the platform that is that user data that has never been allowed a lot of the apps that can be generally because that's all marketing companies that are trying to pretend they can scare people that they can manipulate elections so they think dealing with the problem is actually a education problem of the government and the users and not actually a security problem so the slight appears that he's a face of it but isn't who's going to educate people because. is it is it mark zuckerberg responsibility to make sure that two billion users know all of the the

technicalities of private data privacy for example. that's an almost unsolvable problem because really who's responsible is it disclose is it you know the user where they have to be able to beat a six pages and pages of whenever they agree to use an app i think fundamentally you're seeing that there's that is a trade off where people are willing to trade privacy for convenience. what about the situation here in the europe you know there is a new important law that's going to take effect next month and i'd like to show our viewers one of your tweets you posted a photo of mr zuckerberg snow which he used during these testimonies and i was struck by what you see right there in the lower right hand corner the g.d.p. hard course everyone here in europe knows that you know that stands for the general data protection regulation and if you look closely at it you see his notes there.

through these notes tell us that facebook realizes that the europeans have created the gold standard for data protection as it stands today. well the way the g.d.p. are as written is very hard to enforce and no one understands exactly under what situation there is going to be enforceability on how much data do you really need to be able to deliver results and then how do you make sure that if someone has your data that they're able to remove it right facebook has an unsolvable problem where if we say you can only have some data for the purposes of specific marketing where does that stop and where does it end they don't even want to open that can of worms so marks p.r. nodes is instead of say yes we comply with everything it's to not even you know they try to avoid that question entirely and be able to say generally we agree with protect users generally we want to do everything you know i've met mark multiple times and we've talked about this i truly believe he wants to do the right thing i

truly believe that he is here to actually bring the world together instead of to make money even though he is a billionaire i mean do you really believe it is because i know a lot of people watching the testimonies the last two days and when he kept he kept throwing out the word community building community and you could see a lot of eyebrows that were rising there and in the chambers people didn't know whether or not he was giving a line or if you really meant that. is it plausible that he really did want to create communities ten years ago but ten years in social media time is like a century isn't. yeah and he was that the geeky kid where i would see him in palo alto sneaking around behind the backs of the restaurants trying to avoid the crowds before he became ultra famous and he truly did want to be the big king and the trouble is when you have a benevolent test dictator it's like the robot that absolutely kills everybody because it's trying to you know eliminate you know human errors or you know eliminate humans if you've got someone who firmly believes in bringing people

committed bringing people together and the algorithm is determining what you need to see or what's important to you that's actually a fundamental question that congress needs to ask that other government leaders that as users need to ask how do we get to control what we're seeing there's no dials to do that but it's the algorithms and. up until now we haven't been granted access to those algorithms is it going to take an act of congress basically to open up those algorithms to the public so we've actually consulted for the federal trade commission and the f.c.c. about this issue because facebook should imagine that you know it when you go to facebook and you have these different dials on different interest that you cared about and you can see more about sports and less about you know politics or whatever it might be imagine you could do that kind of balancing facebook doesn't want to open that up because that just creates a whole can of worms imagine right these these senators are having trouble even understand the basics of what an ad driven economy looks like imagine if you expose

the algorithm right imagine what that does to. between facebook apple amazon all the other players that are competing in the data space they don't want that. i was struck by a comment that mr zuckerberg made yesterday when he was talking about the the russian threat to democracy around the world but particularly to the twenty sixteen u.s. presidential election and he said that the russians are constantly improving especially their bots and the threat level is always increasing and he said we have to stay one step ahead of them he sounded like the secretary of defense from the pentagon do you think he's aware of the responsibility that he has or or the position he finds himself in in this nexus of so many huge factors that are coming together do you think he realizes where he is i think he now realizes this but before he was

able to brush it off by saying look we're social media so anybody can post anybody's opinion but now they are just too big and when they hit that kind of scale then the question becomes well who's able to decide what is news and what isn't news facebook is now where people go if you're under forty to get your news and there needs to be some kind of regulation but he doesn't know how to do that because he and he think about freedom of speech you want people to be able to say anything that they want so it was lost at what point do we had you know intervention it ended because the algorithm is unbiased right now whatever has the most engaged it is whatever shows are subject to you know a few other factors should that change is the question. yeah i mean lots of questions but fascinating talking with you dennis you the chief technical officer at blitz metrics dennis thank you and please come back i'm sure there will be plenty of reasons for us to talk again in the future thank you you thank.

well mark zuckerberg testimony was of course a social media event in itself sparking endless meems in-joke smitty internet users poked fun at the stereotype that older people don't understand technology here we have comedian stephen colbert quipping almost feel bad for his or her bird there's no way he left that room full of old people without have set up their wife by there was also much amusement about the thick cushion that exact on during his testimony this twitter user judge mark zuckerberg in a booster seat looks like he's about to ask the wages for chicken figures and apple juice. our the day is nearly done but as ever the covers they should continue go online you'll find us on twitter brant off t.v. you can write directly to me to use the hash tag the day every member whatever happens between now and tomorrow is another day we'll see that anybody.

could. enter the conflict zone my guest this week here in kiev is stateless he's a former president of georgia a former regional government in ukraine i'm hanging over him multiple allegations of criminal activity and he's mikail saakashvili once the dawning of the west for spearheading the rose revolution in georgia that has you know made too many enemies

and run out of road. the first next couple of weeks. that will make history. on some to. the german chemicals trying to set up a controversial american g.m. company. to sell to make a company will dominate the global agricultural sector. but at what price. office of greet. me forty five minutes on d w. what does a football loving country need to. to

be taken seriously in the world of work here's what's coming up. on. the t.v. superhero on a mission to change. smart. and legend. creasing dangerous. my guest this week here in kiev is stateless he's a former president of georgia a former regional governor in ukraine and hanging over him multiple allegations of criminal activity and a three year prison sentence for abuse of power he's. really the darling of the west spearheading the rose revolution in georgia in two thousand and three but has

he no made too many enemies and run out of road.