history has taught us that sports is never just something that we just sit back. and sports always had an important social function and the history of american sports is no different. japan battles to get power back to the nuclear plant to prevent further explosions . smoke seen rising from reactor number two is engineers desperately trying to restore power to the cooling system. and the tense world watches it was because she was feet and hands of a few dozen volunteers struggling to keep the plan from a completely clear meltdown. and in other news the libyan braces for airstrikes from france and the u.k. is the un security council backs a no fly zone to protect civilians. it's

eight am in moscow i match reza good to have you with us here on r t our top story the race is on to restore electricity to japan's stricken fukushima nuclear plant so that workers can then get the reactor cooling systems back on line it's now been a week since the country is iraq by its worst ever earthquake triggering a tsunami and a disaster that left thousands of people dead or missing or he's ivor bennett has more from japan so what's the latest in the happening at the nuclear facility. well right now they're still trying to reconnect power to the site so they can get those cooling systems up and running and bring the temperature down inside the reactors that seems like the only way they're now going to prevent what could be a real nuclear disaster now focusing on reactor number two because this warning about actually saw smoke rising from the reactor they don't know what the cause

cause was about i don't think it was an explosion because that wasn't heard but this clearly the temperature inside is very hot sauce they've already managed to do that was yesterday afternoon was to lay a power cable from the main cook bridge a kilometer long cable. to try and restore power but they haven't managed to connect it up yet they thought it takes around fifteen hours it's now been about twenty the problems they face is because radiation is very high still and also the out of casing of the reactor the containment vessel was badly damaged in the explosion that happened earlier this week now in the meantime they are trying everything they can to try and keep the temperature down to try to cool the reactors there off of the first fall actually had explosions since the earthquake for example yesterday at reactor number three they doused in sixty four tons of water from causes from above and water cannons from below and the early hours of this morning at tokyo fire department they sent thirty of their fire engines are

throwing everything they got at this test in the last few minutes. ahead of the u.n. nuclear watchdog the international atomic energy agency who's in tokyo right now meeting with the japanese primacy came out and said that to prevent this turning into a full scale nuclear disaster they're going to have to cooperate with the international help there right now radiation levels are the most pressing concern by far what's the situation currently with that. well actually they seem to have improved overnight according to. news and that's according to the japanese nuclear and industrial safety agency where they recorded this warning a kilometer away from the site was two hundred seventy nine one four might receive her hour down from last night's reading of two hundred ninety two point two it's not a significant drop but it is a drop so clearly poorly on water so has helped in some degree but they clearly

need to do more now since then the government spokesman mr dunne who is the chief cabinet secretary has come out and said that although there are record very high radiation readings in some places he says and it doesn't pose a direct. negative to one's health because in these places it's not coming into direct human contact however a number of international. a number of countries actually internet and government the governments don't believe this and what they are doing is actually wanting their citizens not to go when he comes is of a nuclear power plant whereas the japanese government hasn't closed an exclusion zone and twenty countries telling residents within thirty to stay away yesterday i went up the coast a little bit from tokyo robonaut up the east coast towards fukushima with a guy counter to see what residents thought. this is a town of o.-r. i-a around halfway between tokyo and i'm still a hundred fifty kilometers south of the nuclear power plant but already the

radiation levels here over double that of those in tokyo the geiger counter i've got just started beeping wildly and shortcuts and or point five like receive it's per hour it's not harmful to one's health especially just yet it is certainly a concern so much so that the army has started to hand out these face masks here that people are wearing to stop themselves breathing in the radiation that they're going to hear there are very afraid of the radiation but who can do very much but it all we can do is follow the media and trust the government as seen. a tsunami did actually come in this far inland but the town escaped most of the damage however since the earthquake they've been without drinking water here and the residents have to come and fill up the water they need from points like this in the town that have been set up by the army further up the coast it's a similar story we've been travelling along this road for the last ten fifteen kilometers looking for a place to have lunch but none of the restaurants are open. through take another

week until we can loop and we have electricity but we can't do anything without water. this is the start of japan's ravaged east coast and the rain like part of the every just lie strewn all over the place here so walls collapsed over here thousands of fallen down such as the force of the tsunami this is also the point where we're going to turn back because we can argue counties reading the highest it has done all day one point zero people might receive it out in the fourth and some my fear is that i won't be able to live here anymore and this is my home obviously here for my health with the radiation but it's not just about that i'm afraid i will be able to come back here we're only around a hundred and twenty kilometers south of fukushima power plant now if the wind blows this way and even worse if the rain comes and the radiation source arrives to enforce. it already is over better reporting for us there was repair and struggles to prevent a nuclear disaster the fate of millions now rests in the hands of

a few dozen they become known as the face those fifteen teams of workers trying to stop of fukushima facility from reaching a devastating point of no return or he's a really good loucheux has been injured and she joins me live now so in fukushima spin and nathan edge for days now what's the assessment from the nuclear and all those any i yet. well it's actually to cry about a week to get to japan to the scene of the country's most horrific nuclear accidents and to pretty much state the obvious and that is that the situation is grave and the japanese authorities need to closely cooperate with the i.a.e.a. . authorities as well in order to resolve this crisis and now up until now the i.a.e.a. has been making of course similarly. alarmed statements saying that this seems to be a disaster and when the japanese authorities kept insisting that everything was more or less under control but at least now we see that in the i was on scene and was

making statements not just out of the blue from across the ocean from australia wherever it could have been but it was actually on the scene in his home country after all and talking close to the japanese authorities. possibly were they were able now to actually put their heads together. and him and possibly prevent this from turning into a large scale catastrophe larger than it already is. a few dozen people really contain the situation at the stricken facility well that is a good question as a matter of fact because if you remember of course the biggest disaster ever and that is to ensure normal nuclear disaster it took several hundred people and it took several years actually a decade if not more to completely eradicate the aftermath of that disaster at this point four ready weeks we've have about eight hundred eighty people working on the scene working in shifts but they are the only people there and nobody else is

present and we think that's happening is actually in their hands and in the entire situation rather miniscule amount of people with not enough information. being disclosed by the government or it's of corp our friends who are actually in charge of the type of power company who are actually in charge of. when you put all of this together question arises whether or not humanity has actually mastered nuclear energy to its full capacity or whether it's all just wishful thinking as we can. judge from what separates. and then climbs modern marvels reaching the moon a particle collider to uncover the secrets of creation and trying to master nuclear technology but those advances can come to nothing when nature strikes and atomic energy is awesome power becomes hard to contain days after the fukushima plants first explosion japan's leaders implore everyone to stay calm helicopters and water

cannons deployed to call the reactors yet the situation remains critical and it will cause i do not think it will require as much manpower it has been a lot of technological progress made over the last thirty years still it is important to understand the number of people who will have to operate in effect area and who would be affected by radiation will be very launch that's because some things can only be done manually in one nine hundred eighty six and soviet union mobilized thousands of people to battle the nuclear disaster at chernobyl japan now has the face of fifty in a must workers putting themselves up against radiation to keep their reactors from nuclear meltdown certainly their lives or immediately at stake. and clearly they have sacrificed in the long life by being there this was the this is clearly an exposure that jeopardizes their immediate health

this is a union essentially ordered its citizens to separate fires their allies to radiation and that litter novel the aftermath woodchip can is a democratic state so the workers are meeting is focusing more are doing so willingly i mean question is what their efforts proved to be enough to keep this situation from taking a turn for worse the amount of radiation being released now and the amount of regulation good a little girl east of the carmel is so great that the whole global the thirty. you know it does us that to mobile that all you want go with it was a theft it's you know this for the call of the whole google. and all the little disaster cannot be predicted but this and it is going to be one of the worst nuclear disasters in the world history and how they have nasty habit of turning against humans and when that happens the equipment doesn't yet exist to send machines in to put things right in the end it takes human risk and sacrifice to

prevent a technological tragedy from becoming a large scale to be in tokyo. japanese authorities are giving a grim estimate of the number of people who've died they're expecting it to triple from the current number which stands out almost fifty seven hundred there may be many more there are many more missing over twelve thousand remain unaccounted for or he's correspondents are in the region you can follow them step by step artie's ivor bennett entering the loucheux or updating our twitter stream you can keep on top of what they're finding out follow their updates and other developments in japan. underscore dot com. the fear of radiation contamination is spreading well beyond japan's shores people in russia's neighboring far east are stocking up on preventive medicines but often without seeking proper medical advice first as artie's or catarina grouch over a ports this could prove far more damaging to both their health and the local

economy. we see the nuclear catastrophe in japan. we are closing nuclear plants the away from these kind of resort. it's hard not to be gripped by a panic when the world's high and mighty are sounding the alarm the closer you are typical shima the bigger your chances of picking up the panic virus which is spreading more so if you're not a physicist or a doctor people in russia's far is divided from japan by a strip of water four hundred miles across where the quickest to react. my friend called me and said that she's leaving this city i'm not karnik yet i'm already taking iodine just in case. but radiation levels remain completely normal and doctors are forced into sounding a different kind of alarm is the brotherhood if anything really serious happens

there things like consuming large amounts of all red wine that's what people often say they're going to do such things won't help quite the reverse they may seriously damage their health because i don't function and it may well happen and probably will as well everything in japan goes back to normal many of our people will have problems with their thawing plans. everyone wants to be on top of official reports preparing for the unknown namely go even further by personal radiation meters geiger counters price is no object and in the last three days we sold out our monthly stock of going to counters we now have to turn to our suppliers for an additional shipment. taking reasonable precautions there's no but think at all unless panic threatens to become worse than the catastrophe itself that was the case with the outbreak of the h one n one swine flu virus which helped drugs

companies earn billions today in russia spar is the transport companies and pharmacies are cashing in on the panic but at stake is the region's largest business fishing. it accounts for eighty percent of liver stocks accordingly russia's largest city on the pacific ocean local restaurants offering fresh seafood from the waters all from japan are already losing clients customers are afraid of radioactive fish even his syria continues wholesale fish markets could be next to suffer meaning no silver lining to radioactive clouds that may never a rife exist in the future our t.v. still widespread media coverage of japan is being watched by millions around the world high tech images from the country have been taking global audiences to the heart of the disaster zone as the catastrophic events unfolded but as art has got in here on reports when it cameras aren't around it can be

a very different story. images that shook the world tragedy live twenty four seven leading news outlets deployed their best journalists to cover the disaster in japan and the hearts of billions of viewers worldwide have gone out to those japanese who fell victim to the earthquake and deadly tsunami what makes great television images that make the viewer sympathising feel the tragedy of the people caught up in a natural disaster but when there is a lack of such images streaming live from our screens the sorrow of millions can go almost unnoticed let's look back at the both earthquake in pakistan it killed more than seventy five thousand people in two thousand and five while the world's media did notice that tragedy the coverage was nothing as intense as we're seeing now in japan some in the business say japan being a high tech country means coverage is assured whereas less developed nations like

pakistan get much less media attention the world probably got less of the story in some of those other countries because they don't have they didn't have the technology they didn't have the cameras that were right there like they were in japan from different dozens of different angles you saw the waves coming in which is the kind of footage in our business unfortunately that is the dream to be able to get that kind of footage and you don't get that in some of the other third world countries you just see the aftermath the shots of the aftermath of a psych loan that hit mine mars three years ago or horrifying more than one hundred thirty eight thousand people were killed the government of mind more limited access to foreign journalists and there were no live pictures from the disaster zone and as it happens in the news business very quickly the story die down if there is

a disaster in the middle of us and said. aaron africa always you need to have the same kind of images that you have sort of job where he is such a way to explore seven operations that's why this. is so huge in terms of court coverage because there are cameras absolutely everywhere if this was in china i will say western china for instance you have probably one bents of the coverage because the images are not there the earthquake in this province in china killed around sixty eight thousand people and again the coverage was limited and so therefore was where all the interest in the disaster their human tragedy whether in japan or china or chile deserves sympathy but more often than not the attention span of world news channels depends on which tragedy makes it better television or i'm going to check on reporting from washington our team. pans economy was already fragile before the disaster struck and now it's being hit again with the yen

surging to record levels this week ortiz business team has a more developments we're joined now by our he's tears are so you're from the business desk so it's the last trading day before the weekend what's the situation with japan's currency and what are the possible ramifications. well matz certainly the movement of the yen is very indicative of the reactionary mo that the whole of the business world is in right now as you know earlier when the crisis that sparked the yen started climbing very worrying very much the government because this would definitely impact their exports but as of friday the finance minister ministers of the g seven countries have announced that they will intervene this is the first intervention that they will hold a since two thousand the fall of two thousand so after the news of the intervention you saw the stocks on the nikkei suddenly climbing going rising by three percent and you have the yen to tumbling we have to remember that it rose to a seventy six and

a quarter and actually after the year after the. announcement of the g. seven countries the it started trading at eighty one so you see the huge jump eighty one dollars to a yes to the investment world certainly very very reactionary to this if we recall the analysts are saying now that japan's effort japan has invested about six hundred eighty eight billion that's not enough they need the help of the entire world in order to combat this because volatility is very high and definitely stock markets going up and down every single day depending on the news on be a situation in the crisis hit area the crisis of japan so definitely again reactionary mode still money going to be pouring it into japan we wonder whether this will stabilize the markets on the in the long term but definitely for now it is helping to keep the yen coming down a bit retreating a little bit that's helping the japanese government at this point in time we'll have more on that in a few minutes in the business update. turned out other stories we're covering here on r t the un security council has backed

a no fly zone on libya in an effort to protect civilians from airstrikes by moammar gadhafi forces the vote was passed ten dizzy with russia brazil china germany and india standing from the vote in the capital tripoli gadhafi supporters were defiant and showing their anger over the u.n. this is claiming the outside world is misinterpreting what's going on in the country even so there was jubilation in a rebel controlled areas like tobruk with fireworks and guns fired into the air while crowds swarmed into the streets of rebel held benghazi troops loyal to moammar gadhafi are said to preparing to retake the city within hours the country's leaders calling on the rebels to surrender warning there will be no mercy for those who don't guys whose forces are close in parties and we're going to court in new york where the international community has taken its most decisive action yet libya . vote house and a lot quicker than most of us journalists actually even an anticipated took place and in under an hour ten of the security council members voted to support this

resolution and five of the countries abstained it's the poor countries brazil russia india china and germany now this resolution elements of the authorization of the no fly zone over libya i did also authorizes countries top unilaterally so what can happen remains to be seen because that gives countries a lot of room in the ways in which they decide to act russia and china well they are the veto wielding members that abstained within the security council and i think the reason that they were has a ten to begin with what we've heard russia china and other countries say is that they didn't want to take any means that would indicate military intervention in libya they wanted to change more diplomatic approach slower steps because it. fact some experts believe that any military intervention adding to the violence and

conflict that's already ongoing in libya and exacerbate the problem of russian ambassador to the united nations have a telly churkin didn't make some comments following this charity council vote let's take a listen to what he said. in the days of innocence a whole range of questions raised by the russian federation and other security council members. questions which will be concrete and it isn't questions regarding how the no fly zone would be enforced would the reason been gauge would be limited to the use of force provisions were introduced into the text potentially. military intervention responsibility for the inevitable humanitarian consequences of the excessive use of outside force in libya in full fair and square on the shoulders of those who might undertake such actions if this happens the number of the civilian population of libya who some who calls a group holding peace and security throughout the whole region of north africa and the middle east will suffer there's a need to avoid such destabilizing developments. and it's also been reported by

many of the u.s. media outlets that the u.s. pentagon has also been preparing britain is one of the countries that could draft of this resolution and has been making statements that it is prepared already to to go into the air as eric airspace of libya and maybe take other means so we can anticipate that those western countries will be among the ones to first what will come out of it is on clear but this is a quite a development coming out of the united nations here in new york turned out some other stories making headlines across the globe shells have been fired during a series of street battles and i agree coast killing at least thirty people they were launched from military police base in a district in the capital held by fighters opposed to the president of iran but he's clinging to power despite global calls for him to go. after the last and deeply disputed election four months ago the u.n.

says three hundred seventy thousand people have fled the escalating clashes. erupt he an airplane major air bus is facing manslaughter charges over the air france crash in two thousand and nine all two hundred twenty eight people aboard were killed when the airbus a three thirty plunged into the atlantic on route from paris to rio de janeiro it's still unknown exactly why the plane came down but a new multimillion dollar search will start next week to find the flight data recorders. keep close hand by joining us on facebook it's your chance to give your feedback on what you're watching as events unfold around the world we've got links to our video coverage of events in japan in libya and links to the day's other big stories go find us by searching for our team news on facebook. and all the business news coming up next with test ourselves stay with us here on our.

welcome to be a business update now finance ministers from the g. seven group of the world's richest nations have agreed to step into currency markets to try and control japan's volatile currency but it's the first time in a decade that the g seven have jointly intervened in the money markets on wednesday the yen hit its highest level against the dollar says the second world war probably as high as seventy six and a quarter in u.s. trading but it fell back in later sessions where it's currently trading at around eighty two per dollar one alysia coordinated effort by the world's biggest economies would have a bigger impact than the japanese central bank acting alone meanwhile the bank of japan injected another extra thirty seven billion dollars into the markets on friday to try for confidence and ensure liquidity which has already injected a total of six hundred eighty eight billion dollars into the country's financial sector. and now let's see how the markets are performing reaction from the g seven

intervention to curb the japanese shares jumped nearly three percent of the yen and tumbled investors are also showing optimism that further radiation leakage could be contained at the fukushima nuclear plant and stock markets elsewhere in asia as he rose on the g seven bid to stabilize global markets hong kong's hang seng is up about three quarters of a percent right now. and here in russia the r.t.s. and of my stocks open in a couple of hours both verses and a thursday session on the positive note my stocks closed almost two percent less investor stepping close watch and updates on japan's supposed great radiation crisis higher oil prices bolstered the market. global markets have bounced back after a massive sell off at the beginning of the week but those gains could retreat if the situation in japan gets worse from h.s.b.c. healthwise the key drivers for the markets on friday. of course there would be people looking at what's happening in terms of inflation there not too many

releases coming out too but you do have the german p.p.i. for example which could give you some more indication on what the e.c.b. could do and i the same time any news that comes out from japan in terms of you know the radiation leaks and also in terms of any supply disruptions on the oil side from the middle east all of these would have an impact of these other mean things to watch out on friday. there are twenty four hours special economic zones in russia and they're intended to develop industrial production they are the high tech sector tourism and they enjoy a special tax regime well because of the czars your course about the success of the project. is currently the overall volume of investment companies have committed to investing in the special economic zones you see ten billion dollars less in composition investment c b industrial innovation to restore logistics we expect a substantial amount of the song to be invested here for example in april japan his

company you know how much is happening in china plant their total investment over around four hundred million dollars that's all for business more news and less and happen what our. the.