zation made up of former soviet states the u.s. was quick to veto the idea after a private dialogue with the u.s. representative to nato rasmussen took all mention of the two organizations growing closer out of his address to the alliance in two thousand and nine but why would the us try to pressure its allies. as one of nato is key players the u.s. tries to prevent the alliance from growing too close to the russia in the former soviet bloc because the region is of strategic interest to america they of course would prefer to build exclusive bilateral relationships strong ties between two military organizations such as nato in a c.s. that is not in u.s. interests. this is an odds with the image of the alliance tries to project a strong union where every opinion matters even the people in the street understand that washington is calling the shots. left right left or right. this is what is happening in reality that people know the documents

published so far haven't exactly uncovered anything groundbreaking but if every member a nato is supposedly equal it has raised questions over whether the u.s. will really trust the alliance at all gas trainers are the r.t.e. . shock waves from a peoples in tunisia and egypt spread all across the greater middle east with opposition protests sweeping through other countries in the region clashes between rival demonstrators of once again gripped yemen in what's now the eighth day of unrest government activists have been using social networks to call for as many people as possible to hit the streets on friday they're demanding the country's president ali abdullah saleh to step down after more than thirty years in power clashes also erupted in jordan's capital amman where anti-government demonstrators are calling for reforms and abolishing the peace treaty with israel protests turned violent in libya where at least twenty four people have been killed in recent days and clashes with security patches police are reported to have used firearms to

disperse the crowd meanwhile in egypt people once again gathered in tahrir square to celebrate a week since hosni mubarak to huge pressure on him to quit the presidency or the military council which runs the country suspended the constitution and dissolved both houses of parliament for more analysis on this let's cross live to middle east specialist james denselow he's from kings college in london james good to have you here on r.t. it all started in tunisia egypt was next then other countries so what led to this wave of mass protests all across the region and why do you think it's happening now happening. i think there are certain structural problems facing all these states whether you talk about their state of their economy the high rates of youth unemployment some twenty four percent across the region the fact that the leadership has had very little freedoms and democratic choices given to their people about the leaders have been in power for often decades i think all of these things set out the kindling on what would be triggered by certain numbers of events

in particular the death of one young man in tunisia who burned himself to death in protest against the government's actions and that of course set out a sort of shockwave throughout the region the genie has well and truly been let out of the bottle and the reverberations from what happened in tunisia and now being felt in every single states and i think that you know as the persian tales go if there were to be three wishes from the genie out of the bottle the governments would wish that the populations would accept their compromises they've made the population seem to wish that their leadership disappeared and the international community seems to be busy wishing that it knew which side of the fence to sit on so what happened in egypt could also happen in jordan or libya or indeed even iran . well i think we have to first of all check our principles in terms of what has happened in egypt is interesting to see today crowd celebrating the successful ousting of mubarak yet this hasn't really been a revolution in a traditional sense mubarak's power structures his cronies are still really in

a similar place as they were before this so while the battle to our smooth has been won the war over the future of egypt has really yet to be fought and we see what happens next in terms of real constitutional change changes to the state of emergency whether political parties can rise out of the ashes of mubarak's authoritarianism what the future will be for egypt so it's about no means any certainty that actually egypt is a model to follow because simply we don't know what will happen next you were talking earlier about the social aspects behind the uprisings clearly discontent among the people towards those in power but there are those who suggest there's more behind the unrest than just people. well i think it's people power combined with say the structural problems behind that i mean there's an interesting report that came out early this month from the president of the world bank saying that some forty four million more people have been placed into poverty by rising food prices something that north africa the middle east has has witnessed first

hand and i think it's very interesting that in countries like iraq the government has previously planned to buy eighteen f. sixteen that now scrapped that order to replace it with food subsidies for the poor so we're dealing with very basic problems here if these countries can't secure the basics for their people it doesn't matter how secure their police forces are these people are going to stand idly by anymore and i think it's a combination of new media and the internet as a social organizing tool that has allowed them to circumnavigate traditional security measures and make these protests as they are and it's interesting again in bahrain that they are very conscious of the fact the occupation of the central square gives a sort of focus to these things which i think is why they so violently cleared it last night but the u.s. is interested in some ways my question was a veiled reference to the u.s. because so many say obviously u.s. policy foreign policy has been behind the fall of mubarak in egypt what about the position the influence of the u.s. now in the region is it gaining influence or some suggest actually losing influence

what's its main agenda now in the middle east. well i think the u.s. is at a crossroads i think in part its relevance has been shown up by advance in egypt i think it's interesting again that the u.s. was seen to be a check on the overreach of power of mubarak temptations to use have high levels of violence against his own people things that have happened in iran and in the past in syria didn't occur really the same scale in egypt i think that's partly because of american influence what's going on in bahrain again is very interesting to see these are u.s. made tanks u.s. funded and supported security forces the home of the fifth fleet and i think the u.s. is torn between a desire for security and stability to regime that is supported to decades and the promises that could come from being an ally to this new democratic force that i think in terms of principles is far more closer to american values themselves so it's a real dilemma right now the americans in terms of which side to support. the u.s. would like to see a regime change in iran do you think that really could happen bearing in mind what

happened a year ago and what's happening now well i think events in iran are a lot harder to predict simply because there are a lot more robust security forces in terms of their ability to clamp down on any protests and rebellions which has been proven over the last year i think that iran will perhaps be the least likely to fall of all these regimes it is much more prepared for these things and seemingly much more ruthless when it comes to putting down the protesters but of course it does face these issues today and and as we saw in egypt sometimes of momentum from the people kind of it is simply unstoppable by the state less it chooses to use stream levels of violence let us not forget in syria nine hundred eighty two a serious uprising against the regime was put down in a bloodbath in hama in which thousands of people were killed that i don't think will happen in any western supported country but in iran who knows great to have your insight on this thanks so much james denselow joining us here on r.t. from king's college there in london thank you. thousands of mourners have gathered

in bahrain for the funerals of anti-government protesters killed in a brutal crackdown there police in the gulf state reportedly use supplies made by british companies to clear protests while human rights watch dogs are calling for an embargo on arms supplies and disclosure of what export licenses were issued. from the campaign against trade says britain should reconsider its trade policies we can see across the middle east that the government is selling to repressive regimes all over that this could happen at any a point in and we've got to be aware that when we sell the both non-lethal and lethal equipment those will be used and. generally at some point that they will be used on someone innocent the u.k. government needs to seriously reconsider how approaches arm sales in the first place not only have these arms be licensed to be so dioceses in the case of bahrain . they are actively promote. the u.k.

government and actively promotes arms sales to a number of repressive regimes this very weekend the u.k. government is sending representatives out to the large arms fair in abu dhabi it's called i debts. which the arms industry trade body in the u.k. claims ten percent of its exhibitors will be british at this spare and the u.k. actively encourages is these companies to sell including the very equipment that is being used to protest this in the middle east to seriously look at not just whether selling to a specific country in which i is a good idea but whether but how it should be selling arms and if it should be selling arms at all. is the these weapons are widely misused and the u.k. is a arms export criteria which look good on paper very rarely applied with any record . and as those tensions rage across the middle east debate is heating up over which country is going to be next and having its leader toppled later today and crossed all people of our losses guess if iran is likely to follow the example set in

tunisia and egypt or whether that would just be wishful thinking from western governments. but what risks facing as we talk about massive changes going on in the arab world part of the problem is that no one knows the extent of the opposition because most of the logs go off the leaders will force on the ground after the after the demonstrations in june two thousand and nine after the election so the true it's true level of discontent with the government remains very very hard to quantify so no one's really set out on this program but i'll ask you the question just point blank as i always do are people tired of having the islamic republic of iran i didn't vote for mr ahmadinejad other than i've said this on numerous occasions there's there's it's clear but there's no doubt that he is highly popular throughout the country every province that he goes to is like a rock star you have tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who surround his

but it's easy to relate as we're lots of programs the demonstrations it's very easy for them to do that and that's not true if that was true then they gyptian regime could have done that now it's it's obvious that it's that's not the case. to us from the five hundred program of care about their second walk on a virtual surface of the red planet part of a unique project that simulates an eighteen month mission when a shell from the european space agency explained the meaning of the imitation. so we have to ask. this is xander from russia and. china are doing their second moscow work and you see a simulated martian surface which is no more than forty square meters and what we see the two when the in their space suits which are pretty so close to what we

would expect for real martian martian mission and what the two are doing is also what we would expect the first humans doing on mars namely collecting soil samples and preparing them to bring this back home if the cord which of course would not be there or on the real mars and their core supplies the other two as to know it. with electricity and also with air and of course in a real martian mission that all would be in the big pic to us you know it's scary and they are on the break they are doing very well so. everybody was really surprised that everything is going so well everything one of the reasons for that it's. really very interesting goal of simulating the first walk on the mars and also if you would expect

a real mission on mars we could expect that after ten or fifteen minutes astronauts would would have to take a small break the. major point here is that they are really of everybody of them is really focused on their task and that's that's the main reason why this is so so real and so close to reality you always have to do a first step and this is a very good first step because it is very clear that. the mission the main mission to mars would be international and it's a very good simulation it's also an international simulation if you participation in chinese participation. in. if you look at the future you know that right now in the process of. extending the international space station for another ten years and then afterwards we would do maybe the next steps but this is right now still in discussion which would be the exactly the next steps for human

spaceflight there is a crew of six and it's of course i'm really a russian project or if international participation. and you've had quite good relations with the in situ for biomedical problems and that might be the reason why we are involved but there's no particular exclusion of anybody from the project and in fact there is participating scientifically but not for their own astronaut and about a week and for the whole mission to mars on a web site that's at dot com and if you're a cosmic fan a british cartoonist may have something for you the story of the fuss about his face here a guaranteed trip gets retold once again in a comic adventure book placed on the true story. was on the website a glimpse of the personal and professional life of a man who changed the world the nobel prize one of the first and only president of the us i saw.

him. japan's chief cabinet secretary yukio edano is going to view russia's lesser couldn't islands from an airplane it comes after recent visits by russian officials to the archipelago which tokyo claims earlier russia said it would not tolerate japan's radical approach towards the territories and announced reequipping be could military garrisons yarns in the pacific ocean were handed to russia as part of agreements at the end of the second world war over it seems that other parties are interfering in the dispute with washington once again underlining its position over the lesser could all change saying the territory belongs to japan. from russia's commerce and newspaper says the u.s. is pushing russia to review history. again comes as

a double surprise because of the let me remind you of the. san francisco agreement of fifty who gave up all the claims for korea i want and in addition as you knew united states were our area in the second world war so now there's an attempt to reconsider the results of the second world war on the part of. gently pushing us where. more and more americans bear the brunt of the recession but major banks profits are still on the rise and one of these thriving companies is j.p. morgan which cashes in on food stamps used by those struggling to survive on a daily basis. find out how the rich benefits off the back of the pool. americans are generally known for their healthy appetite some eat what they crave while others like gabrielle jemma can't use the food stamps here for me to express of only eat what is affordable is there a way to give me two dollars worth. of these go look for the sixty one year old is

unemployed and maintains a monthly food budget of two hundred dollars gabrielle is among the forty three million americans relying on federal food subsidy here's what they call an electronic benefit transfer card allows food stamp recipients to spend their allowance the plastic lifeline for the hungry and unemployed is also a money maker for j.p. morgan chase the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the u.s. meaning an increase in food stamp recipients equals more profit for the investment bank every time i use my debit card goldman sachs or j.p. morgan in this case make a little money off of my transaction j.p. morgan is responsible for the fact that i want to play so it doesn't surprise me that every every aspect. of this program and everything else has been privatized j.p.

morgan chase provides food stamp debit cards in twenty six states and the district of columbia the firm is paid per customer and in the state of indiana j.p. morgan makes roughly one hundred eighty six thousand dollars per month critics say the investment bank is making a fortune off american poverty as long as the out of line rate remains high as long as families are struggling there's sort of this perverse incentive for j.p. morgan chase to continue to benefit off of high unemployment and they're letting this person say no because in many states they're actually offshoring jobs related processing steps to save money. j.p. morgan has been routing benefit card customer service calls to india where employees reportedly earn more than three fifty an hour. meanwhile in the u.s. the business of economic hardship nearly fourteen million americans like every are unemployed bailed out to the tune of twenty five billion dollars in two thousand

a j.p. morgan. reporting a seventeen point eight billion dollar profit in two thousand and ten the same success can be said for the people forty percent of food stamp recipients are working americans unable to keep up with the cost of living. r.t. new york time now for a look at some other headlines from around the world a suicide car bomb in the eastern afghan city of costas killed at least eleven people including two police officers and wounded thirty on this incident took place the roadside checkpoint police say they grew suspicious of the bomb and opened fire prompting him to detonate his explosives officials a plane the taliban think the target security checkpoints. japanise hold at the whale hunting season following continued pressure by whaling by whaling group before ship fleet was to kill almost a thousand whales this winter but is set to return to shore and activists say they

will continue with the protests commercial whaling has been banned for almost two decades but for the purposes of scientific research. israelis and palestinians have been enemies but for mothers who are desperate to save the sick children the conflict takes a back seat and is ready clinic is saving thousands of youngsters lives for many neighboring countries even those israel has had tense relations with. this report. every our way is touch and go for fourteen month old dollar whose little heart was born with a hole in it without the operation in this hospital my son would have died and in the next ward fourteen year old one yell who was almost did when she was wheeled in one of five iraqi children flown from baghdad to a month and then driven across the border to jerusalem she was almost dead she was so sick that you could not walk very talk she was very blue all these parents face the most difficult decision of their lives bring their children to israel

a country at war with this and risk punishment and even death back home or prepare for the alternative possibly losing their child initially it was a very difficult for them because it was their enemy the parents were very anxious they didn't know what to expect i was very scared to come to israel very frightened . and she had good reason to be her country rock forbids its citizens from traveling to israel just fire them there is there might be a layover in another country like i know for instance from africa they come in there because it's the only place in africa that. before the israeli doctors there treat these arab children the decision is simple doing what they think is right to do and doing anything. in the last fifteen years more than two and a half thousand two hundred have been brought here on third and treated half of them come from gaza the rest come from iraq indonesia and across africa the main

goal of this organization is to help developing countries create the medical ability to treat children with heart problems by themselves in order to achieve that we bring children from these developing countries to israel we also bring doctors from these developing countries for training here in israel and it's a vision that's paying more for not only is so easy you turn to be grateful to the israeli doctors that saved her daughter's life she's now brave enough to tell her neighbors back home what i will tell everyone we were in israel and how they saved my daughter's life i'm no longer afraid to say it because my daughter is alive and so while the politicians continue to have a go at each other and israel and her arab neighbors will further apart on the ground at least in this spot a very different story is unfolding policy r.t. hold on. well now let's get an update from the business to

dimitri he's coming up in just a few moments with all the latest from the world of finance stay with us. it's a pleasure having your company a business see this friday evening the annual russian business week has just ended in london and address the most pressing economic issues facing russia and the world our correspondent laura emmett's has the story. russian business week's become an annual event here at the london school of economics a forum for russian and international business people to discuss the most pressing issues facing russia's investment climate this year the hot topics were the praise

and cons of investing in russia and the development of moscow at the global financial center the feeling at the forum was that moscow isn't just aiming to be a global financial power house but actively meets to become one they can serve all the surrounding countries mineral rich nations like kazakstan and ukraine with markets run in dribbles rather than having to borrow expensive foreign currency is to create its own commodity exchange without having to go through london's banks the gap between perception and reality had a big part to play in the discussion of the investment climate as a whole with speakers saying it's entirely possible to do business cleanly in russia providing as in any country you're careful and fully aware of who you are dealing with similar programs exist in russia as in other emerging markets for example tenets of accounting standards and different it just makes it that market participants are positive and the state is most attractive for foreign investment according to participants retail insurance and infrastructure. it's moved to the

markets finally so it's in the us with the dow and nasdaq poised for a further week of gains in a row caterpillar's up two percent on the biggest gainers boeing is up one point seven percent. russia indices are down point one seven percent at the close of friday's session with shares being the biggest drag overall the week has been positive with the obvious gain in one point two percent m i six point eight percent . more than you see on friday's close norris nicol was one of the biggest and heaviest losers for yet another session is running a massive losing streak but it was down two point three percent at the close on news of planned measures to slow the pace of interesting rate increases new coil was in positive territory as a percent on news of proposed changes in the way russian oil industries taxed. so we have time for enforcement they had lives on next on the with bill to go away.

from. me it is easy to. see he's here. to. see.

the bull. bringing you the latest in science and technology from russia. we dumped the huge earth covered.

top stories now. america has been spying. to prevent russia. and bring the real thing. between. special report on the damage oil corporations are doing to the amazon rain forest and the indigenous tribes living.

would you believe the locals were affected by cancer when it matters. hygiene conditions are terrible actually all the drinking water in eastern ecuador is. we have a mehlis results that show the water contains excrement residues meaning that it comes from the native steph occasions that is what causes cancer and all other illnesses if you constantly drink water with feces at it since you were a child let's see if that doesn't cause you some serious illness. and all of stomach cancer is definitely. another cause of cancer.