22/12/2016 Outside Source

Hello, I'm Ros Atkins, this is Outside Source.

The Syrian government says it has retaken Aleppo and 35,000 people

left in the last week. That was achieved with Russia's help. Today,

the commander to Russia says they are doing a live trine exercise.

This is not the conduct of a nation that wants to be a superpower.

The fingerprints of the man suspected of the Berlin attack have

been found inside the truck that was used.

Donald Trump has sent tweets saying the US must strengthen its nuclear

weapons. If you want to get in touch you can use our hashtag on the

screen and my social media contacts as well.

In the last few hours in the BBC newsroom, this claim came through

from the Syrian government, that it had retaken Aleppo entirely, as the

last group of rebel fighters had been evacuated. We understand this

group who were not just the fighters but their families as well, had been

holed up in a small enclave in Aleppo but they were finally

evacuated on Thursday. That was negotiated under a deal which gives

the army and its allies full control of the city after almost four years

of fighting. We can bring in the BBC correspondent in Beirut James

Longman. I guess Aleppo fell a few weeks back so this is more about the

symbolism of the moment? That is absolutely right. The huge moment

for the Syrian regime and they have been making the most of it. There

has been celebratory gunfire heard on the west side of Aleppo. The army

are making their way into eastern Aleppo to physically claim it back

because this is definitely a war about territory claimed and lost. We

know on state television they have put banners up calling this a

momentous victory and there has been a statement put out by the army

where they said this was a deadly blow to the terrorist project and

its supporters. This is the biggest win for the government, resident

Bashar al-Assad, in almost six years of war. Aleppo has been contested

for four years. The rebels have had control of the East for that amount

of time. They were hoping to launch attacks on the rest of Syria are

least claim of them urgent centres -- other major centres. Now they

have the north-western area of Idlib. The rebels and families of

rebels are going up there as evacuees, as refugees in their own

country, but also to regroup. Rebel groups will regroup. This war in

Syria which has been rolling for nearly six years may be over in

Aleppo, but it is certainly not in Syria at large. You mentioned Idlib,

how strong are the rebels in that part of Syria and is the Syrian

government indicating it will turn its military power towards Idlib

instead of Aleppo? They certainly are. The Rebel Alliance in Idlib is

mostly dominated by some of the more extreme elements of the Rebel

community in Syria. One group is linked to Al-Qaeda which is one of

the main groups and another one which is a huge fighting force in

Syria which is not designated a terrorist organisation but extreme

nonetheless. It is fair to say the colour of the Syrian opposition has

over time shifted somewhat, as the government has made a concerted

effort to hit the most moderate rebels first, in order to make this

claim that it is only terrorists in Syria they are fighting. Today in a

statement the rebels say they want to continue to reclaim every span of

the homeland so that would suggest that is exactly what they intend to

do. This war will continue into the north-west, into the province of

Idlib. It does depend on what the Russians decide to do. It is only

because of Russian support that the Army was able to reclaim eastern

Aleppo but it is likely they will support the president in this

endeavour because they have been watching as strikes in Idlib

province over the last six to eight months. I think largely the fight

for Idlib will begin in earnest in the New Year. James, thank you. And

if you want updates on the situation in Syria, you can get it from James

on Twitter as he goes about his work. Before the Syrian army made

this announcement today, we heard from President Assad. He was already

anticipating complete victory in Aleppo. He said the liberation of

Aleppo from terrorism is not only a victory for Syria but for all

countries fighting terrorism, especially Iran and Russia. The

BBC's Jonathan Beale has been discussing Syria with the head of

the Army in Europe. What we see is Syria is weapons capabilities. They

are using weapons in certain situations which are not necessarily

required for that tactical situation, but they are

demonstrating that they have these capabilities, practising if you

will, a live fire opportunity to experiment and train with all their

weapons systems. That is not helpful. And of course, the

disregard for Syrian casualties that we see in places like Aleppo, again,

that is not the conduct of a nation which wants to be a superpower and

be treated like a superpower. We work hard every day to protect

our systems. Our systems are under attack from all sorts of different

sources. Russian? All sorts of different sources. We have

responsibility for training, awareness and procedures to protect

our networks. You are worried about definitely. Let's bring you

up-to-date on the latest in the Berlin attack.

The fingerprints of the main suspect in the Berlin attack have been found

TRANSLATION: We have had additional indications today that indeed the

strong suspect is by all likelihood the offender. We found in the

driver's cab fingerprints and we also have other indications pointing

towards that likelihood. Pressure must be growing on the

German authorities, not only because that man was known to them before

the attack but it is now three days since the attack and they have not

found him. Damian Grammaticus has been talking to me.

Angela Merkel went to visit the security services. She thanked

Germans for their patience and calmness after the event. I think

there are questions to be raised for the police, the security services,

for their handling of the case of Anis Amri before these attacks, but

there is also I think quite a good deal of patience while police hunt

for him. Tell us what is behind you? I can see some festivities but also

some concrete barriers. Yes, this is the market. We are right in the

middle of Berlin. This is just close to where the attack happened. The

lorry came through not just this part of the market but 100 metres

through the market stalls. Here, they have reopened this. We were

here when they were putting the concrete barriers in place along the

road to block the market stalls off from access to the site. The

stallholders are back. Trade is not as brisk as you would imagine, but

many people are coming here to this point where they have been putting

candles and flowers and there are other points as well. This is a sign

of the lunar is trying to get back to normal to say we are open. --

people of Berlin. We spoke to a stallholder who said the importance

is not to be afraid, not to let the people who carried out the attack

win but to get back to business and show they were back to normal.

There are various reports in German media of his his links

This is a news website - it says he'd been seen

in the company of a man who was arrested with

Spiegel magazine reports he offered himself as a suicide attacker.

The BBC can't confirm either of those stories.

Also The New York Times says he was on a US no-fly list -

and that he'd researched explosives and communicated with

the Islamic State group via a messenger service.

We've also been getting information from his family in Tunisia -

they live in a place called Kairouan.

This is what his brothers told journalists.

This is the home that Anis Amri grew up in. He was barely 16 when he left

his hometown. There have been outbursts of anger from his siblings

who have gathered here, since we arrived. His sister came out at some

point. She was crying. She was shouted at some of the journalists

saying everyone was trying to vilify her brother and the entire family.

She does not believe that her brother had anything to do with the

Berlin attacks. His brother also came out at some point and talked to

us saying that his brother had told him he might come back to Tunisia as

early as January. TRANSLATION: We were waiting for our brother to come

back with a new work permit. We did not expect to hear the news that we

heard. I last spoke to him ten days before the attack. IS operatives

have been recruited from this country for over two years now. Some

come from big cities like the T miss, others from sleepy towns. They

have also come from different backgrounds. Some have been from

from wealthy families, had a higher education. Others have been average

Tunisian is just trying to get by in life. And some like the suspect and

his family come from abject poverty. Friends and family say he grew up

like any other youngster here. He loved spending time with his

friends, he listened to music and he drank alcohol. We'll so know he had

a criminal history. He was sentenced in absentia to five years in jail

and he was also imprisoned in Palermo in Sicily for four years

before he moved on to Germany. It is not believed that he ever had any

Islamist links here before he left the country, so if he did get

radicalised, it happened during his stay in Europe.

And you can find all the BBC coverage of the attack collated in

one place on the BBC News website. Let's look at what could be a major

breakthrough in the treatment It's concerns a drug called

Ocrelizumab and that appears to be able to slow damage to the brain

in two forms of MS. The findings of a the trial

were published in the James Gallagher has been telling me

how the drug works. If you think about what MS is, it is

an immune system is starting to attack the brain and wants it

attacks the brain it disrupts chemical and electrical signals

throughout the brain and that is how you lose control of your body. If

the immune system is attacking the brain, let's attack the immune

system. So what Ocrelizumab does is it selectively destroys part of the

immune system to ease the assault on the brain. This trial was of 2000

patients. Is that a significant number? Can we draw some big

conclusions? And has the latest trial and it is the most important

one. Trials go from a couple of people where you test it for safety

and then bigger numbers where you say, does it work for patients? This

is a really significant trial and it shows it does work in patients who

have relapsing remitting MS. That is the kind that gets worse, then it

gets better and then gets worse again over time. For people with the

type which just gets worse there is no hope. We have the details of this

trial published online. What now happens? It has to move from a trial

to real life. The first stage is getting an official license to be

prescribed by doctors. It will go to the US Food and Drug Administration

to get the license. It is expecting to get that by the end of next year

and then it is the case of who wants to pay for it? Expensive? They are

always expensive, Ross, you know that. This is a really innovative

piece of medicine. How you pay for it is almost as big question is

developing the drugs in the first place.

Not for the first time at week from Donald Trump has raised a lot of

questions. We will have more on that and be with Barbara Plett-Usher get

reaction. Around 70 to 80 prisoners have taken

control of a wing at HMP swell side in Kent. The category B training

prison houses prisoners on life sentences. This is the fourth

disturbance at an English jail in less than two months following

disturbances at Bedford, Birmingham and lowest -- HMP swell side.

Swaleside is a very difficult place to work at the moment. There is a

shortage of staff. It is a tough prison. Prisoners are there for a

long period of time. They are big, powerful guys. There are a lot of

drugs in prisons at this period in time. It is a particularly tough

place to work and if you short staffed, staffed, it makes it even

harder. Hello, I am Ross Atkins with Outside

Source. The Syrian army says it has taken

control of Aleppo. BBC Chinese reports that Japan has

increased its defence budget That's seen as a response

to tensions in the South China Sea - The draft budget takes spending

next year to a record BBC Swahili reports that Opposition

MPs in Kenya have stormed out of parliament alleging

they had been assaulted. This all happened during a debate

on changing the electoral laws for The initial debate on Tuesday also

saw MPs exchange punches. Separatists in the east

of Ukraine have held the self-proclaimed republic's

most patriotic cat. Owners were encouraged

to dress their pet in the colours About an hour ago, Donald Trump

tweeted this tweet, "The United States must greatly

strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time

as the world comes to its senses As is often the case with Mr Trump,

he tweets but does not offer a great deal of detail on top of that. That

can sense the media running and to work out what is going on. Let's

bring in Barbara Plett Usher in Washington, DC. I see we have been

offered a little help from one of Mr Trump's press advisers? Yes, Mr

Trump is Mac transition team have been left with the task of

translating that remarkable tweet. They say what he meant to say was it

is important to prevent nuclear proliferation, especially regarding

terrorist organisations and rogue states. The transition team also

pointed out that Mr Trump has been emphasising the need to modernise

America's deterrent capability. That is the note on his website. If that

is what he is saying with this tweet then it seems as if he would be

supporting President Obama's current policy which is to modernise

America's ageing arsenal, but if that is what he was trying to say,

he did so in a way that caused quite a lot of surprise and alarm. There

is a difference between modernising and expanding and it is the word X

band which drew a lot of attention? That is right. -- the word expand.

President Obama has been all about reducing stockpiles. Some have

criticised this because of creating a new cruise missile and updating a

nuclear bomb. There are some changes which people say could increase an

arms race but it is not within President Obama's policy to expand

nuclear weapons in the world. He entered office talking about a

planet without nuclear weapons. So when Mr Trump tweets he wants to

strengthen and expand they question it. And if he tweets without any

policy discussion or policy details or even a position he -- a position

to make policies because he is not president yet, then this is what the

Clinton campaign were saying, that he is too erratic and this will feed

those concerns. We are new territory with Mr Trump in many ways. I don't

think America has had a president before who tweets and then has

colleagues to translate for press and country.

We will carry on talking about the President elect because he continues

to expand his team. This is a billionaire investor who will advise

the government on regulatory reform or to put it another way, reduce

regulation. He says it is time to break free of excessive regulation

and let entrepreneurs do what they do best. Let's try and understand

what that means. Samir is in New York. What is this describing in

practical terms? When you are talking about Carl Icahn, he is an

activist investor. He is someone we have talked about before. He is very

well made people on Wall Street. He will take on the role of advising

Donald Trump on regulations. What he argues is that any rules which

confine business in any sort of way actually reduces how much businesses

can put out in the world and say what he wants to do is to say, look,

if we get rid of a lot of the rules which are tying down businesses then

that will allow us to flourish. That is a Republican held belief. Donald

Trump, by appointing him into his team of advisers, is really

signalling that he wants to get rid of a lot of these regulations. We

have talked about this before with a lot of the banking regulations which

force banks to keep more Capital One hand or keep more liquidity on hand

to try and protect itself from any sort of big moves within the market.

This is another one of these moves in which Donald Trump wants to try

and get rid of some of the rules to allow businesses to flourish. You

mentioned the banks and this looks like a reverse. If we go back to the

months of 2008, the lack of regulation was the thing that people

highlighted as one of the primary causes, wasn't it? And macro that is

absolutely right. What many will argue is we have gone too much in

the opposite direction and we have too many regulations now which are

really hampering banks. This is why you are always hearing the words

Dodd Frank. Those are the regulations put into place after the

financial crisis. Mr Trump says he wants to rule back -- rollback of

some of those regulations to free the bank to do what they do best.

Thank you, Samira. We have had reports from Lebanon and

now we are turning our attention to China. Ali Barber is done in -- much

of the business of Ali Barber is done in China. America has put it on

a blacklist due to the counterfeit sales online. The company was

accused of selling high levels of fake goods. Alibaba rejects those

allegations and says it polices the marketplace much better than in the

past, and it also says that today's political climate in America at have

something to do with the fact it is back on the blacklist.

President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly accused China of stealing

intellectual property and has appointed an outspoken critic as

head of the trade body. But Donald Trump has not taken office yet so

the authorities would probably disagree with Alibaba's speculation

that it is back on the blacklist. Just before we finish this half of

Outside Source, let me remind you of some very significant news. This is

the HP quoting the Syrian army says it has retaken Aleppo entirely, as

the last group of rebel fighters were evacuated. Militarily, the

battle for Aleppo ended a couple of weeks back but nonetheless, this is

a city which has been fought over for nearly four years. For the first

time in that period the Syrian government is backing control. Speak

to you in a minute. -- back in