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post a photo. of the. groom the photo. how would. be. the end in sight. as another. also in the news this week. flocks of birds across the media frenzy. the end of the world. critics argue policies are to blame. them across europe following several recent.

immigrants seeking a better life. and few economic advantages in the so-called. broadcasting live from the heart of moscow this is r t where it is seven o'clock on a monday morning i'm sean thomas and let's get right to those top stories to ice breakers are forcing their way through meters thick ice to rescue the vessels which have been trapped for almost two weeks in russia's far east. has been following the story and she has the latest details. the smart time john they're continuing to play out today and you've really got a feel for the queen on both days remaining t.

shirts the eleventh day now hatefully the end possibly now in sight as the ice breaker crosses in. that position not just to recap what's been happening eight of the poles we saw these three original ships call in for rescue in december thirtieth and then at the beginning of this week another two ships go stuck in the ice we've seen icebreakers the admiral macros and the guys and working very hard in extremely tough conditions to free up these ships like now manage to get three of them to safety the last of which was the science research first though that they freed up on friday and since then the other icebreakers been working a for the weekend to try and free up the remaining two but in incredibly tough conditions we've heard some reports saying that it's probably the earliest i'll actually get them freed up would be cheesed days icebreakers have really had their work cut out for the full swing set to ninety kilometers an hour the incredibly

thick ice and poor visibility you know it's a from the constant one of the stranded ships that the the rescue operation the timing of it coming to an end it's really very dependent on whether these conditions eased up or indeed was. everything depends on the weather when the wind comes down the rescue operation would become quicker we have enough water and food supplies that can last for four months since he said the crew on board the ships have been in contact they've got plenty of food and water supplies and board so they've not been in any particular danger but it's certainly been a long road rescue operation and it's the end now is in sight a series of mass animal deaths across the globe has scientists and conspiracy theorists alike buzzing over possible explanations dubbed the a flock of lips started in the u.s. on new year's eve when black birds started falling from the. on more bird tragedy followed in sweden and then again in italy and finally millions of dead fish from

brazil to new zealand have triggered some fever the online speculation changing climate parasites and poisoning are the main theories scientists are working with but conspiracy theorists point to secret government experiments filmmaker and blogger danny schechter says media hype is taking the focus away from the real scientific call. when one set of incidents happens followed by another set followed by a third said suddenly it becomes a trend then it becomes a much bigger story in the media but it's still sort of a mystery it may be that each example is actually specific to a particular local set of circumstances we don't stone know they're calling it. you know for a flock of birds coming up with new catchy words new ad lives and the like obviously it's it's a something that intrigues audiences even if there isn't a lot of explanation it seems to be a pattern of this sort of thing where you know alarmist headlines followed by

a few examples which then you know lead to sober conclusions about the dramatic events no religion then there's no follow up for it so you know if we really never find out what really happened and this is me in attention of the media maybe even the amnesia of the media the refusal to speak to the people who are most in the know because all of this is sort of chitta lation for the public and yet it could be a very serious still to come in the program a waste of life. despite the u.s. pumping billions of dollars into regenerating iraq thousands still live below the poverty line with some forced to scavenge trash to make ends meet. people do not live here anymore but same cannot be said about flora and fauna really. ukraine's controversial plans to turn the disaster zone into farmland.

liberal immigration policies in some e.u. countries have come under fire for letting potential terrorists walk straight through europe's front door this comes after authorities for some european capitals you got a piece going off reports from austria. like many others small you would be and downs new 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 it network we couldn't extremists in plotting attacks in the heartland of the european union an ethnic chechen that's one way it was detained at the airport in vienna as he returned from a pilgrimage to mecca news about the incident went around the world or the streams really 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. some cities with a really big population become unity with of 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 her suspect. terror plot with his wife and children really appear to be leading an ordinary way if one of the most striking facts about this latest case is that the suspect has heads. a lot of the laughter being caught up in violence in chechnya now investigators are

looking into or no other version whether his hands off while handling explosives this is raising questions all the austrians over hell well asylum seekers are checked before getting the green light as one of the most liberal asylum policies in the european union and last year alone the country received over 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 did this background 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. inserted in the 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 jihad is to get it 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 sequences of policies of some of its member states still ahead. vienna austria now let's take a look at some other major headlines from around the world in brief. at least seventy people are reported dead in a plane crash in northwest iran some thirty survivors have been taken to hospital the boeing seven twenty seven domestic flight from tehran came down near its

destination the city of all room yeah and broke into pieces it follows a number of deadly crashes in iran in recent years experts say u.s. sanctions prevent the islamic state from effectively maintaining its aging air fleet western. u.s. congresswoman is in critical condition after being shot in the head in a bloody rampage outside a supermarket in the state of arizona a gunman opened fire on a public meeting held by democrat gabrielle giffords killing six and injuring twelve others one of her aides was among the dead as well as a nine year old girl and a district judge a twenty two year old suspect is now in custody while authorities are looking for a possible accomplice. the polls have closed in sudan after the first day of a weeklong referendum. it could see one of africa's poorest and most troubled nations split into the christian dominated south is expected to vote for independence from the mainly muslim north deadly clashes have margin in the run up to about one vote

as part of a two thousand and five peace deal which ended decades of civil war two million lives and displaced nearly twice as many others. thousands of immigrants head to the u.s. every year in search of a better way of life the u.s. government tracks newcomers through official visa lotteries granting them green cards but as lauren lyster reports for 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. and touring for a chance to win for a mega million dollar fantasy believing a few dollars and a dream could buy them so for the life 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 meet one of them had 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 the jackpot with permanent residency the prize is not cash but green cards and this startling experience was due to a lot of we had 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 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 the food in the. u.s. to highlight. experts who work on immigration issues say 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 of 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 no year already have 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's an 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 have taken that step possibly losing out to countries such as canada and germany unless they make sure of winning the lottery actually pays off lauren lyster our new york and later this hour will be back on the streets of the big apple to find out what people there think about mark twain's classic novel huckleberry finn being edited to make it more politically correct.

seats and stones will break my bones but names will never hold so no name is ever been offensive to you because you know what you have to be emotionally disturbed to have any mean. when defending its record in the iraq war the us is quick to point to the tens of billions of dollars of spending on reasons. struction but between the rampant corruption and gross inefficiency poverty stricken iraqis say they see little sign of improvement to their daily lives it means many are forced to do whatever they can describe by as sebastian meyer 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 send her to 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 a 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 it's an iraqi would live in a shack made from garbage people who threw the change so we could see that iraq is still a wonderful place by god fueled regime is gone and we have a new government but look at our situation reliving 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 the 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 and 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. 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 i leave in fear i can't accomplish anything nothing good security for everyone 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 party in baghdad the side of the world's biggest civilian nuclear disaster has largely been a no go zone for last twenty five years but now ukraine is planning to make use of the land there which some argue 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 artie's. 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 noble 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. we still don't understand how it's

possible plans are able to grow. at the very beginning of the earth when life start of the. activity on the surface so. much problem and the millions of hectares of land were left contaminated a quarter of a century on key it has decided that this soil no longer poses any threat to humans in march twentieth loven 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.

that half a million 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 you know 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. look see russia ski reporting from chernobyl ukraine more on that story at r.t. dot com this morning you may also want to let us know what you think about the story it's just a few clicks away and there we've also got this online for you as well. it may look like a scene from a hollywood blockbuster but the training of russia's special forces is real and it takes blood sweat and years of experience to earn a spetznaz red. and the cops on camera find out why u.s. law enforcement groups are trying to stop being filmed by the public after a number of scandals come to light the details are at our team dot com.

for many palestinians in gaza every day is like a life under siege it's been denied aid supplies and access to the sea by israel for years strangling the life out of the local economy and with unemployment at forty percent many are forced to grasp at anything they can to provide for their families artie's policy reports. a group of gaza women are breaking new ground literally. they've signed up to work as ditch diggers to help support their families that the work is very hard but life is even hiding these women of a family's breadwinners and with two out of three people unemployed in gaza the burden of responsibility on their shoulders is heavier than the shovels in the hands of the that my family has no one to take care of and we need money that's why i'm forced to dig. three hundred women have signed up their dig holes for water

reservoirs on farms in gaza and the pay little more than fifteen dollars a day hard work for private construction game and better than my has been tested provide for two families seen people if i don't do this work and what will i be left with probably not very much which is often the fate of thousands of gazans left disabled from israeli operations they too have no choice but to work in order to survive aid miller did have a family of twelve to feed and there is no other way for me to meet go even besides using this route with a multitude of futurity just so i scream. they survived by selling cigarettes sweets and mobile phones madhu abu wider makes a living repairing watchers looking at them with got both found this job and i prayed for it i mean. the non-handicapped people have trouble finding jump in gaza today at the end of december it was two years since the last israel gaza war since

then border controls in and out of gaza have been east and more goods allow to pass through but many gazans complain it's done precious little to improve their lives in the next few months the number of trucks going into gaza is expected to reach four hundred four times what it was two years ago but gazans still cannot cross into israel and their economy remains idle policia r.t. israel one american publishing company has taken the and the word out of the new edition of the classic novel very thin critics of the movie say the book is a work of art and product of its time and therefore should not be changed let's find out what people in new york are saying about. 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 you don't sound so 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 someone could 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 piss christ by andre serrano. it was offensive but. i had the right to create that work and i think it provokes some very good discussions as to what art 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 dutch people think they think it actually adds to the work yes i mean that's what the. temper of 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 on 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 of the people it all comes out in the end you think people will naturally be an offensive to each other. will they necessarily.