for the full story we've gone to. the biggest issues get a human voice ceased to face when the news makers.

to rescue the last five. years around the globe conspiracy. theory. is struggling to come up with the arts. plus europe's asylum policies last year.

the blank check. the spread of. people. with the top stories of the week this is. now more than three hundred people still awaiting rescue the stranded on board of a ship that is now stuck in freezing waters off russia's far eastern coast it's the last of five vessels that became trapped in the ice more than a week. following the rescue mission. the operation is now in its final stages or at least approaching them there are two ice breakers currently trying to get ready to tow out the last of these ships on december thirtieth the first ships

became stuck there in the ice at the height of the drama there were five ships stuck in the ice two of those managed to get free themselves two of them were towed away and now we're left with just one the largest of the ships with three hundred people on board and it's required these two ice breakers to come together to try and move it the last ship stuck in the ice is a supply ship used to resupply the ships at sea so it's obviously a very big ship one of the other ships being towed away now the will be ready to to start that operation they've been there obviously for over a week now. all these three hundred crewmembers there is no immediate danger to them there they're in an ok state we managed to talk to the captain earlier and he told us about his hopes everything depends on the weather when the wind comes down the rescue operation will become quicker right now the cross an icebreaker is on its way here we have enough water and food supplies that can last us for four

months. it was the weather that really caused all of this crisis in at the beginning very cold temperatures for the season about minus seventeen degrees and a lot of very high winds have created ice formations very fast and very thick ice which made all the ships get trapped in the first place and then slowed down the rescue efforts. artie's tom barton reporting that it's been pounced on by conspiracy theorists puzzled scientists and start up a media frenzy of alarming trend of unexplained mass animal deaths in different parts of the globe everyone guessing it all started on new year's eve with reports of black birds falling from the sky in the american state of arkansas then there were flocks of birds dying in sweden and in italy and finally millions of dead fish from brazil to new zealand have triggered some fevered online speculation experts

have suggested a range of explanations from a changing climate parasites and poisoning conspiracy theorists a secret government experiments could be behind the deaths with some even claiming it's a sign of looming armageddon miami based a veterinarian pedro lewis race told r.t. that authority investigation is needed. and it's impossible to see for sure what's happened to the birds and fish until proper investigations are held in fact i don't believe that these events are interlinked he followed one answer another that attracted universal attention it's not the first time that the world is observing such phenomena it's happens in other countries too at the moment the investigation in arkansas claims are not top she has revealed the bird suffered from internal bleeding but the research has yet to be completed so we could also be dealing with some new virus or so into it is another possible explanation but i repeat that flu investigation is needed to establish the cause of what's happened

and find a scientific explanation for it. just now twenty five minutes past the hour here in moscow and you with our still to come in the program the misplaced hope all immigrants in the united states. they really have that american dream of coming to the u.s. they know that they've invested in their education and they think that the united states is the place to put. into words with the greatest possible. reality getting a green card is only the start of an adventure which making many people long for the life they lead. people do not live here anymore but same cannot be said about flora and fauna we look at ukraine's controversial plans to turn the disaster zone into a. security is being tightened britain's main transport hubs amid

fears of an attack by terrorists on european countries authorities say they've several serious attack the wave of recent arrests is proof that they're coping. it's going off reports now from austria where the e.u.'s asylum policies have come under fire for potential terrorists to walk straight through europe's front door. like many others small you would be and downs in southern austria seems quiet and peaceful while never judge a book by its cover one of its residents is now under arrest suspected of being the brains behind network recruiting extremists and planning attacks in the heartland of the european union and the ethnic chechen was detained at the airport in vienna as. to mecca news about the incident went around the world or streams none of the locals seem to know much about it. we didn't hear anything about it. i'm

afraid i wasn't formed of this. i know nothing about it and i don't care some didn't want to be filmed at all but was it really because of a lack of information. and the deputy chief of one of australia's biggest newspapers has been personally following this case or and with only a voice recorder in he was more successful in getting the locals to share. his with a really big population become unity with chechens so that people are sinking what what what comes next i mean this is just my neighbor he was here with me and now he has his arrested because of for suspect. terror plot with his wife and children really appear to be leading an ordinary life one of the most striking facts about this latest case is that the suspect has hence he claims he lost the after being caught up in while in chechnya well investigators are

looking into or no other version whether his hands off while handling explosives this is raising questions all austrians well asylum seekers are checked before getting. austria as one of the most liberal asylum policies in the european union last year alone the country received. fifteen thousand refugees from across the world with such an inflow of newcomers is becoming increasingly hard to find out who is who we want to know from the government in how many cases actually respect around checks to make sure that this people are not criminal or dangerous second in how many cases austria has received. information from the countries of origin. and search in how many cases asylum seekers actually have been refused the latest arrest is part of

a massive police operation targeting an alleged extremist network in late november twenty six people were detained in belgium and germany and the netherlands all suspected of recruiting so-called jihadi candidates in financing terrorist organizations it can be here in. and it can be in any other town in europe in an effort to get more information seekers the e.u. is no making deals with countries of origin including russia but many experts warn with hundreds of thousands of refugees already living in the union because of the policies of some of its member states still ahead. or d. vienna austria. thousands of immigrants head to the u.s. every year in search of a better life the u.s. government attracts newcomers through official visa lotteries granting them green cards but as artie's lauren lyster reports many people the quest for the american

dream can turn out to be a grim reality. in the united states and here in new york every year countless people play the lottery. entering for a chance to win or a mega million dollar fantasy believing a few dollars and a dream could buy them so for the life of a ticket that could change their lives every year more than ten million people also play a different kind of lottery and fifty thousand when i meet one of them my name is owen and her husband teenage son and seven year old daughter you see here. are immigrants from nepal they entered and won the united states diversity visa lottery this lottery is a congressional mandate it's supposed to be an opportunity for people to come to america from countries with historically low rates of immigration jackpot with permanent residency the prize is not cash but green cards and this startling

experience is due to a lot of we have to start from scratch from zero once we got here two years of struggling with joblessness after finding their education in nepal doesn't count in the u.s. setbacks they never expected this to we didn't know people used to say you're educated it will be easy america is a big country with a lot of facilities life will be better but in reality everything that in the. us to hire. experts who work on immigration issues a lottery winners really are given no resources from the government that invited them here and the struggles of jimena and her family are not unique for most people we have and counted it's been very difficult they reflect a group of immigrants who come to the u.s. not because of a job lined up or a family sponsoring them but for many because of the vision of what they can achieve they really have that american dream and have coming to the u.s.

they know that they've invested in their education and they. i think that the united states is the place to put that skills those degrees and that ambition to work with the greatest possible return. when many find is maybe something though here already an ethnic neighborhood like this one that has southeast asian music restaurants and fashion what many struggle with is finding the economic opportunities that are any better than what they had in their home country or even finding jobs that allow them to survive here we're seeing a lot of the downward mobility of immigrants and often very highly qualified and. finding foreign degrees an experience don't count for many u.s. employers these immigrants end up taking anything it means engineers and business managers and up his cab drivers and cashiers according to a study two out of five ford educated immigrants are either in this situation or unemployed all together it did american dream they want to wake up from if you got

if we had known this we wouldn't have come life was much easier in my country people who see their plight firsthand argue the government should help more i do think it's a state department's responsibility and i think that the united states is going to lose out relative to other countries for taking that step possibly losing out to countries such as canada and germany unless they make sure winning the lottery actually pays off more and mr new york. well look at this hour we'll be back on the streets of the big apple to find out what people this thing about monk twains classic novel. attitude to make it more politically correct. sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hold so no name is ever but offensive to you know because you know what you have to be to have any meaning thank you. when defending its record in the iraq war the u.s.

is quick to point to the tens of billions of dollars it spending on reconstruction between the rampant corruption and gross inefficiency poverty stricken iraq. little sign of improvement to the daily lives that means many are forced to do whatever they can to scrape by sebastian my reports. at seven am every morning fatima crouch is outside her house and along with her sister and cousins begins to sort through garbage displaced from southern iraq that miss family is too poor to center the school and so she works eight hours a day sorting through baghdad's landfill collecting plastic and metal that will be shipped abroad for recycling her reward for carting forty pounds of trash around two dollars and fifty cents behind me says acres of baghdad's trash to many this is just waste but for the families here this is not only their livelihood but also their homes over two thousand people live on baghdad's landfill are. making their

homes out of the garbage that the rest of the city throws away there's no running water or electricity and certainly no access to medical treatment if someone gets sick they have to be taken to hospital the same way they get drinking water by donkey cart can you believe that from iraq he would live in a shack made from garbage people who worked for the family and change so we could see that iraq is still a wonderful place by god if you were gone and we have a new government but the situation we were living in shacks america spending fifty three billion dollars on the reconstruction effort in iraq but the residents of our jet haven't seen a dime of it what they have seen though is the sectarian violence that drove them from their home five years ago. we used to live in abu ghraib you know then america came the war increased in iraq people started killing each other and so we fled because we were freed in two thousand and five gnomes family moved to the landfill and has been living there ever since too afraid in too poor to return home you know

the american occupation turned iraq into a battlefield as well as sowing the seeds of political corruption how can americans stand back and watch without intervening in this situation everybody knows about the failure of the iraq economy this is having a terrible impact on the ground zero. socially and economically. experts worry about the children who grow up too poor to go to school without an education and they're easily preyed on by criminal gangs and terrorist organizations who lure them with money and promises of a brighter future. how can i fulfill a dream when they leave in fear i can't accomplish anything nothing good security if you really want to go back home if there is no work we only need security that's it iraq remains a very dangerous place where kidnappings and murders are part of daily life for these families living on a trash heap is still better than living with sunni neighbors back home but until that is possible until american reconstruction dollars reach the quarter of iraq's

population that lives in poverty children like fatima will continue to collect trash in order to survive sebastian meyer or a t. in baghdad. the site of the world's biggest a civilian nuclear disaster at chernobyl as largely being a no go zone for most twenty five years but now ukraine is planning to make use of the land there which is still fertile despite years of radiation by using it for agriculture the shock proposals have led to a clash between experts over the safety implications as r.t. alexy reports these berries may look ripe and delicious but they're definitely not part of a healthy diet the bush is inside a thirty kilometer chernobyl exclusion zone in ukraine and radiation levels are off the scale people do not live here anymore but same cannot be said about flora and fauna some say it is the absence of anthropogenic harm in the church nor

will exclusion zone which made nature develop here rapidly. after the nine hundred eighty six fallout in chernobyl the environment suffered badly one strip of forest was burned by radiation and turned red people left the area but mother nature stepped in now chernobyl is home to many species of wild animals and rare plants scientists from slovakia studying most in the area made an incredible discovery a lot of the blonde life is immune to radiation. but we still don't understand how it. plans. at the very beginning of the earth when life started. on the surface so. much problem and the millions of hectares of land were left contaminated

a quarter of a century on kiev has decided that this soil no longer poses any threat to humans in march twentieth love and ukraine's government will launch a plan to get things growing again. we will establish what parts of the contaminated areas could be used for agricultural needs there is a possibility that cultural products will be grown there when we have so much unoccupied land why not use it. those well familiar with chernobyl like the idea. of how familiar people works to clean this land of radioactivity now we're being told this is did land this is not true just look at nature's riches in the exclusion zone. however there are those who worried about what could end up on the dinner table critics fear ukrainian and russian markets could be flooded with radioactive agricultural products and there are legal hurdles. ukraine has

a law regulating any activities in the exclusion zone it says no agricultural product can be drawn on this land and for now experts see no possibility of this law to be changed. the dominant view remains that the nearest save zones from the blonde are still hundreds of kilometers away in northern ukraine and some parts of belarus the dead zone in chernobyl is still deemed too dangerous despite some optimists but the fact is radiation can stick around for anything up to twenty four thousand years. see reporting from chernobyl ukraine now you can always check out r.t. dot com for the stories we're covering a lot more here's some of what's waiting for you right now online i mean look like . the training of russian special forces is quite real and it takes blood sweat and years of experience to.

find out why the us police are trying to stop being filmed by the public for a number of scandals come to. american senses have taken. out of the new edition of the classic novel huckleberry finn critics of the move say the book is a work of art and is a product of its time and therefore shouldn't be changed let's find out now what people in new york have to say about it. a new edition of mark twain's huckleberry finn is being published this time without the n word has political correctness gone too far this week let's talk about that

do you think they should be editing it like that no. it doesn't sound the same no no but what if it was a word that was derogatory towards you. and maybe what if it were a word that was offensive to you. i would look at this of a piece of art so some mark of deference no matter what it should stay has there ever been of piece of art that has offended you absolutely. you know i think what about twenty years ago there was a work called his christ by andre serrano. it was offensive but serrano had the right to create that work and i think it provokes some very good discussions as to what or can do and should do what if they wanted to add the bible to take out all the offensive parts. i'm against all kind of things that you should take out so

i think everybody should have their own opinion and they should be able to say what they want yeah i think so what if it was offensive to you i don't listen. that's the way d'etre will think they think it actually adds to the work yes i mean that's what the. term for the times was so if there were words that were offensive to this time period should those be included in our literature and reflects what we're about today. yes who should be governing what's offensive to people and what's not there should be no governing and individual should know if they respect themselves respect their parents they would know what's right and wrong but don't you think people are going to have different points of view. and what's offensive and what's not yes but that's why i just bring it down to if you do respect yourself and respect other people it all comes out in the end you think people will naturally be an offensive to each other. will they necessarily know should they yes sticks and

stones will break my bones but names will never harm so no name has ever been offensive to you because you know what you have to be emotionally disturbed to have any me tell you that there's something more deep within me. so it's ok for anyone to call anyone anything. it depends on how you say it is the pains on in the context that you use the word but they're not you believe the n. word to be taken out of huckleberry finn the bottom line is that we should consider how marginalized and boring the world would be if we take political correctness to five. hundred twenty five minutes past the hour here in the russian capital this is r.t. now for a brief look at some of the major headlines from around the world now six people killed and twelve others including a u.s. congresswoman after a shooting rampage in the state of arizona the gunman opened fire on

a public meeting held by democratic gabrielle giffords. was among the dead as well as a nine year old girl and a district judge the suspect is now in custody while authorities are looking for a possible accomplice. and voting is underway in southern sudan in a weeklong referendum the could see one of africa's poorest and most troubled nation is split into the christian dominated south is expected to vote for independence from the mainly muslim north deadly clashes have marred the run up to the weeklong ballot the vote is part of a two thousand and five peace deal which ended decades of civil war that claim two million lives and displaced nearly twice as many others. well there's a growing consensus among major world powers that they should all work together to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons but it's not so long since the danger of a nuclear strike was a very real one with nuclear states keeping their fingers hope worrying over the red button now though their relics of the past have been transformed into

a tourist attraction. takes up the story. god it's a door like no other designed to stop a nuclear blast is it here to doris was a pretty big thing as a shockwave or one of her stray it has a way to both want point five goals and at the same interest will scar it was a massive new myself was it has a wall sickness about six meters or fraying force of corporate if you had been lucky enough to escape the initial explosion inside or enough food in end to last about two weeks it was to command and control all the. surface forces and nothing more. but you know what sixteen days later nuclear war all fires in or additionally will decrease to the level where when you can walk and breathe in special protective suits those stationed at the shelters would have had

less the ninety seconds to put on their suit should radiation be detected inside and i can tell you that they aren't easy to get on in a rush stock nor are they particularly comfortable to where. it's not just these purpose built facilities they were designed to protect in case of a nuclear attack one of moscow's iconic landmark is also there to protect biggest shelter in a war that has a mosque or metro system the station is. constructed as a bunker and it can see the eyes of people who is. struck the museum prides itself as being very hands on encouraging visitors to reach out and touch the past which means. it's not like an ordinary museum where nothing can be teched here.