crisis the quake hit zero fukushima power plant in japan that worsened its natural course a partial nuclear meltdown is underway. despite japanese authorities claiming the radiation level poses no imminent threat to health the country's track record of covering up past nuclear problems challenges the official version of events plus. government forces in libya will be taking even more land from the rebels most countries in the international community are against closing a no fly zone the united nations say to discuss this.

very warm welcome to you this is r.t. live from moscow now japan is struggling to control the reactors damaged by the disastrous an earthquake radiation levels continue to rise and a partial meltdown of nuclear fuel is feared in two facilities the plant workers were withdrawn after the danger of exposure peaked a lot also saw plans to drop water from helicopters abandoned artes are better to use in the region he says that the radioactive threat is causing many people to flee. there's a bubbling under current of anxiety and fear and it's kind of fear now because with the tsunami the earthquake they could see and hear the threats this is the radiation they can't see smell it it's an invisible enemy so now it's a different kind of threat is this morning i've spoken to a young japanese couple minute just a ten day old newly born and they were actually from sendai and they were it in

sendai when the earthquake struck they have been implemented until now this mother was to. the now they are in the tokyo as fast as they can and this is just another more evidence that people who don't trust the government don't trust the vice the radiation isn't spreading into greater area outside. this queue of people with a kilometer long they're trying to stockpile what food is left in sendai most shelves are empty now the people here are getting ready to hide fearing an invisible killer radiation explosions at the fukushima daiichi power plant but the country on the cusp of nuclear meltdown one damaged reactors out a casing and a final two reactors have now lost cooling capability to radiation levels peaked near the plant at four hundred times the amount normally absorbed in a year there are fears it will spread across the country while residents prepared to go to ground for

a news crews are fleeing this team from new zealand is heading for niigata port a flight from there to sucker in tokyo are already fully booked for the next two days the exodus has begun here on the west coast guard the airport has already closed for the night they won't open for another eight hours of people already turning up to try and get on the next available flight out of the country such as their desperation to escape some though have nowhere to run to this was once a village those who lived here are returning to find there's simply nothing left that there is station just goes on on and. more than half a million people have been left homeless their belongings swallowed up and starts out from the tsunami relief workers the searching for survivors all along japan's ravaged coast what's now see if they break fifteen thousand already been rescued but over seven thousand are still missing and some parts haven't even been reached yet i've achieved

a half thousand relief centers are still packed and will be for several weeks it's cold and uncomfortable but this is one of the few places these people can get food and shelter huge parts of the country have been completely wiped out under threat of nuclear meltdown means they could still be more to come after then it's not see they've got such a plan. why do you think japan is struggling to get the nuclear situation under control you can join the heated debate on our facebook page if we're having the right now you can say you can your forty's actually do more like a high tech country like japan and find a way to cool those without as you have your say our facebook account yours and our r.t. news as one word page also has of the latest videos analysis and news on the situation as one of one of our top stories again that's athens facebook page join us that. the french government has accused the japanese authorities of hiding the true

extent of the crisis at the damaged nuclear plant even as levels of radiation a rise in tokyo parties are an approach for who is now in the capital that reports on the country's long history of a son and singer scandals. very nice and it's only about hundred kilometers north of tokyo and about three hundred times the norm in the capital itself radiation levels already about the level times as high higher or higher than they should be or higher than what is acceptable for be exposed to people are being told by the government that the current radiation levels are either acceptable rate there it's unknown flows and injury to health however as evidence shows as history shows the japanese government has exactly proven to be always so always always trustworthy and everything that it does say working forth to the public should actually be checked thoroughly here is reporting that with reactors at the

fukushima nuclear power plants having gone up in smoke fears about a possible meltdown loom large japanese authorities give assurances there is no in the thread to tokyo residents but the past seven suggests they're not to be trusted completely over many years and you can just read and the regulators in japan but also in every society every country that or preach nuclear power you find consistently there's a lack of transparency a lack of will. maybe they just think i think we can but that's too much information why should we provide the information in fact just five years ago the plant operator tokyo electric power company or tepco it's needed to falsifying temperature readings for cooling materials at fukushima as early as in one nine hundred eighty five and with a country northeast in a major disaster the government will be careful in choosing its words. i think what

is going to happen in the job is government accountable of course of the people they're trying to take care of. also they're accountable to other countries another ball which starts in two thousand to a government disclosed that at least twenty nine pieces of damage to the reactor had been swept under the carpet that incident because presidents and some senior officials to quit in scandal in two thousand and three seventeen tepco operated plants ordered to be shut down again because the operator lied about what was happening at these sites so when the japanese officials put on a somber face but give assurances everything's fine not everyone's convinced particularly when the country's already got enough other problems to deal with if you don't have the emergency resources if your employer has been destroyed and the further you go away from the reactor the more difficult the more diverse the

population settlements are the more difficult it is to have after you don't want to panic or probably to get them to sew for evacuees and maybe on with the report themselves in harms way put one thousands of lives on the line such a policy can easily be counterproductive there's a growing distrust among people in japan that the information that we're receiving is not informing us to the extent that we would like it to when it does reduce anik it just makes people all the more uncertain when they believe they can't trust the information they're being as it stands to parry appears to be balancing on the brink of a nuclear meltdown and though the official version of events implores everyone to stay calm history shows not all their words could be taken at face value in tokyo it even goes r.t. how meantime president dmitri medvedev says that although incidents in japan have caused concerns over nuclear energy and sure that atomic power is so. if handled

properly. just now there is a great deal of attention to the newly built nuclear power stations in the wake of the colossal disaster the japan is facing now and everyone is asking a simple question can you imagine the p.c. for us than what the answer is obvious that nuclear energy can be and is see this it is necessary to adopt the right location. project and a lot earlier if these conditions are met nuclear energy is absolutely secret and useful for humanity. that all the latest on the economic aftermath of the earthquake and the nuclear crisis in japan it's coming our way in our business program that's in about fifteen minutes time but for now that's so let's cross over to the business desk and over to the region for a quick preview hi dimitri what do you have for us hello rory well the situation is of course being monitored very very closely it's not easy for investors to come back into buying but we've seen a rebound on tokyo's market the nikkei went up six percent of course it fell much more the previous sessions but this is already some kind of positive sign we're

seeing a rebound on the russian market because of oil prices we've had actually our finance minister saying about oil prices may reach high as of almost two hundred dollars per barrel you find out more on that in around fifteen minutes time. thanks for that i mean to really see you saying now if more of the story let's talk to professor keith ross from the university of south in the u.k. was an expert on a radiation damage. so the energy company that operates the fukushima plant has been defending the reactor saying that they had a good track record but now with reports that the spent nuclear fuel may have been damaged by the fire i mean could it be that the hardware infrastructure was substandard how do they defend their reactors reputation has plenty. well i think that the safety design the reactor has is based on earth is of different kinds of events happening when you are flooded under the same time it's

not completely taking these into account in that county but having said that. we risk of god well understood. before we can expect to lose it when you when you discuss when you discuss the fact that ok so a natural disaster an earthquake or tsunami is not necessarily part of the planning that short in japan it should be when it's on a massive seismic area oh goes but as far as i can see they never expected this is sammy to get as far as high as a house on this occasion it was the quick moving seems to be set in the back to show. how quickly. so working it was only the flood of really caused damage nevertheless clearly you should her responsibility is no and you know we're you know i don't let's talk

about the let's talk about why the rescue efforts and particularly the efforts to bring down the temperature of the reactors are failing because they have the engine introduction of salt water seawater they were spraying it all on the vessels on the reactors to bring down the temperature why why all the unstable reactors proving so hard to tackle do you think. i suffer from a heart i'm really i'm just guessing based on news reports as you are that the problems of pumping soap water out of the us greatest the difficulty is remember that they have good mood opportunity for bringing in road transport subsecond see they have had some current they must be the ones on site already and need they have had problems or heard these accounts and so forth it's inhumane successions of problems due to their standard equipment having been introduced. it was a good thing you need oil so this is surprise them to i don't think it has been

a succession of of problem there's. less. idea of dropping water from helicopters apparently being abandoned i don't know why that. would seem to be a way of getting water through fuel what i have seen you have the helicopter water with was ineffective or perhaps there was a risk of a radiation could have contamination in the atmosphere but let me ask you this i'm running low on time and i'm only now has at the u.n. energy washed organelles plans to send a team of experts to help japan and why while the country suffers has the i.a.e.a. taken so long to act. well i guess that is always the sense of the theory that there are good experts and i don't who should be in a position to deal with it but the idea eight will have a lot of international experience of boilers more reactors of the sky and out of that would be able to offer advice given it's

a very unpredictable situation we have to deal with and under did you situation to deal with certainly. again the fate of many lives also hanging on the line here as well let's talk about the fate of these reactors here i mean do you think they could ever be worse thought all might we see an exclusion zone emerge that could last for years around this area. my guess is that the situation is nothing like as bad as chain over the reason for saying that is that actionable was a. powerful explosion in the atmosphere and then the burning of the graphite moderator which raised up room went to a great height in this case it's only the access nuclear heating and this will be gradually backing away it will be down professional what it was meant to go. so there's nothing that the same amount of energy available to distribute radioactive decay products into the atmosphere around as far as we know oh there's been damage

apparently to one of the pressure vessels if these largely retain their integrity most of the radioactivity will remain saddles vessels and can be seen live. look there may be contamination of the surfaces around the record but really compared to the devastation in the part of just pound with sammy this is going to be i would have thought minute. i think we the houses that people are talking about are really small in consequence a small compared to the poor suffered on the way professor keith ross from the university of south thank you. thank you very much. well in russia all eyes are on the country's far east in connection with the nuclear crisis at the fukushima power plant the region borders japan and some figure could be affected by a radioactive cloud and although authorities are sure the threat is a nonexistent at the moment

a growing number of people are taking this serious because as r.t. secretary regret over its cover. well the whole situation of radiation in russia star is remains normal that's according to russia's main weather agency now there is no immediate rights to these parts of russia first of all because of favorable weather conditions a potential radioactive cloud. current me would go straight out into the pacific ocean away from russia that is if the wind doesn't change direction offshore radiation levels spikes at fukushima daiichi nuclear plant at seventeen our weather stations across russia so far is having polson carrying out checks we're now in the city of libya also but it's russia's largest port city on the pacific ocean with a population of over half a million people and this city is only part hundred seventy miles away from fukushima local residents are taking no chances on top of official reports are also

mourning radiation levels on the road even sold. in the city and out posting regular updates on the citizen fishel website and some are ready to go people voted on bass by quipping berry gordy's with personal readers from the current situation need to go ahead and take safety in their own hands that's why i'm going to stick around to watch. the today's edition of the largest local newspaper also a warning that mine has gripped russia score is just fortune tellers and to see kids are in high demand well i can certainly vote for the latter we left the island . wednesday morning and that was a life meeting for most shortly after that he was both books by some people to passengers which. was between them and also tickets doubled in price the cheapest one for most is about three thousand dollars and you would get

a seat until next monday also as the paper reports. he or done has been sold out at pharmacies across the city of the cheapest geiger counter costs as much as seven hundred dollars but even the price tag doesn't seem to stop or it cost if you answer for those who work in this highly specialized business they have more devices over the last three days than they normally do in a month but especially say it's not enough to just possess a device you also need to be taught how to use it properly. a reason x. rays it also has an additional radiation detection the biggest problem in japan right now is the radiation dust in the air with this to begin to take the level of radiation when you come from. unclean right now. we have also managed to get our hands on a professional pilot shaunie geiger counter. it is the one which for example rushes

a margin says ministry equips us cars and patients with. my family in the studio with us in the city center radiation levels stand between twelve to thirteen microns per hour within within a lawless. area. starting at some thirty five mile per hour or so not yet critical but still the reading is hard. on the island for example. and you get the. latest experiences from russians far east on our twitter account that's all the underscore she's just witnessed of panic concerning radiation fears spillover of sucklings airport where fights are broken out as people try to fly out of the region and follow our first time coverage from the closest russian region to jump on our twitter account r.t. underscore dot com of course we are posting information on our r.t. facebook page and our seats which is we know that currently in japan there are one point six million people without water four hundred fifty thousand

a living in makeshift shelters and freezing temperatures have left a thin layer of snow across much of eastern japan don't forget you can get all the information on r.t. facebook and r.t. . so let's turn our attention to libya where forces loyal to colonel gadhafi are closing in on the rebel stronghold of benghazi which has major world powers are trying to reach an agreement on imposing a no fly zone over libya strikes against opposition forces as well as paulus live reports from tripoli and even if they do reach a decision it could be too little too late. the situation on the ground is very much turning into duffy's favor his troops on our financing towards the bible stronghold of benghazi in the east the government to say that it will have a sixty day with in days and gadhafi himself is again appeared on state television saying that if this is a foreign launch we will crush it if it is to mr march we will crush it resistance inside spin darcy's head on the way to get to the egyptian border which others are

holed up in their homes fearing and massive onslaught by gadhafi forces him into the government officials have said that the town of as jabir which is some one hundred sixty kilometers away from the because it is the last major rebel stronghold the food being ghazi officials here saying that this town to meet in the hands of the justice men on the international stage the second day of a united nations security council meeting is being held to discuss what to do with libya they are debating eight cards for a solution which is essentially you've been told in disgust paragraph by paragraph but now the sponsored resolution has been put forward by livin on it it's with the same thing the i would be as it induces a no fly zone because he placed a but what is complex in council members is that the arab equal says they must be no more an inch a patient and at the same time no arab country has come forward to the knowledge of

such a mission the second part of the resolution is being opposed by pushing and france it looks for the sanctions to be slapped on the gadhafi regime and this seems to have a lot of people searching more people from the international community than the idea of an aside so essentially it's asking for individuals and entities to have travel bans imposed on them and also the assets frozen increasingly it does seem as if there is a schism in the international community with france being the first it should recognize the opposition as the official voice of libya the question is being asked whether or not other countries will follow. if you think. that is defined over. time. why it's national. even. the size we eat just for kicks it is just this simple. it just gave me some

ground. if i could just take place in. the meantime france britain and the us found themselves in the hot water with a hasty decision to denounce colonel gadhafi as a consumer market on monday as a visiting professor of international relations i built and university in tokyo plato. very quickly and how. it could equal terms of the. rebels were out there who. were british or on the bulk of term who went home a very very special mission. and we were trying to be for the rise and there's a core been going. on where you are going to be who we want to and remember hope maybe we can all agree. on it in particular we're going to we're going to go. there were when school was closed so let's face it it would be all.

operational carrier and so far we haven't seen very normal. meanwhile unrest is spreading further in the arab world at least six people are being killed hundreds with this riot police have sacked anti-government protesters are calling for political reforms and equal rights for the majority shiites. declared a three month state of emergency so deal with protests which are of the country for over thirty days and coming up next hour cross talk guests debate the prospects of a democratic middle east and the possible role of the international community in that region. people are free to take whatever form of government they want and you know muslims or islam is can have that kind of government and objectively speaking that seems fair but that's why i'm saying the west needs to understand that if people get what they want which is the other speaker was saying would be a caliphate these things are very much at odds with the ok with the concept of the

united nations for example let me go ahead jump in i know i disagree first of form but every lucian's in tunisia in egypt and in the media have not been islamist at all and they don't have any you know it's not just mr they're the material you know there is our most number of interviews is have not been islamist i agree with that by the way actually i was saying that all those are going to say we have been warning on the world or is what is it ok tragedy going on in london i think that the danger that people in the west face is simply to say look it is not because there is intolerable well the lesson is to keep out of things that support for the last thirty years they are in no position western governments i know position to try to tell the muslim world what you have. if. you can. crosstalk

rules will be in effect in about an hour's time but for now it's the business news to me. with. story germany stocks rebounded sharply on wednesday after two days of heavy losses were of more than that in just a moment however others actors of the japanese economy continue to suffer in the aftermath of the disaster consumers in japan are emptying store shelves in the fear of a lack of distribution of food water and other goods many companies still have production suspended as power supply remains critical in the country the e.u.'s energy commission has just announced that japan's fukushima damaged reactors are quote out of control and could lead to catastrophic events in alice and you while japan's nuclear crisis strengthened concerns on safety of similar objects around the world germany has temporarily shut down seven of its all the nuclear plants adding it should abandon nuclear power sooner than forcing however switzerland has suspended

the approval process for free new nuclear power stations. russia's government has reconfirmed its plans to sell a part of its controlling stake in the country's largest lenders bank authorities hope to sell a seven point six percent stake in the buyback in the second half of twenty eleven however the economic development ministry said the privatisation of the state run bank was close are likely to happen this year yet the first deputy prime minister you could survive reiterating the government's commitment to sell off at stake in twenty eleven should market conditions for the favorable. its market conditions are favorable this year we could also invest a sperm bank stocks we will look to rush the sale and will try to do it is officially as we did in the case of the g b the stocks will be sold once the market environment is encouraging but we will do our best not to delay this process. of these market conditions that japanese shares did rebound sharply after two

consecutive days or even three consecutive days backlog to climb with the nikkei index finishing up five point seven percent by the bank of japan help instill confidence by pumping another forty three billion dollars into the financial markets this is the third cash injection in three days by the grand central bank and the total has already allocated two hundred eighty four billion dollars to the crisis from kong's hang seng was a tenth of a percent asking back a bit of concerns that china makes stuff from japanese economic downturns easing u.s. markets shrugged off statements from the e.u. energy commission of the situation a damaged nuclear reactors north of tokyo or out of control and that it could possibly lead to catastrophic events within the next hours therefore the dow jones was down one percent. european shares are also down further into the red sea down one point three percent of that one point two four percent this is of course on the nuclear worries barclays h.s.b.c.

improved are down more than three percent place out. and in russia another fifteen . minutes left of trading the odds yes and the my stocks are also easing glow it's two zero levels it's yes up a half a percent my face just point three ascetics and forty that's all we have time for this i'll be back next hour with an update the headlines are next with rory stay with us.