video on demand. she's mine. an r.s.s. feed in the palm of your. machine on the. breaking news this hour here on r.t. french fighter jets are going patrolling the skies of libya to enforce the u.n. sanction of no fly zone. so government forces reportedly advance on the rebel held town of bengazi despite declaring a cease fire as colonel gadhafi brigades all close play you in no fly zone. world leaders meeting in paris agree to use all the necessary military means to stop any aggression from colonel gadhafi. frenchie across the ready to intervene against any threats on civilians join us later for the details. engine is locked in a desperate battle to avoid meltdown at japan's tsunami damaged fukushima nuclear

power plant struggle to restore electricity. its totally cool existence could be functioning on some day small traces of radiation and now being protected in tokyo said. it with r.t. live from moscow the french military jets are already over libya to enforce the u.n. backed the no fly zone foreign leaders meeting in paris said they are ready to do whatever it takes to stop colonel gadhafi from targeting civilian areas reports from libya suggest that forces loyal to gadhafi are carrying out attacks on the rebel stronghold city of benghazi despite the government ceasefire. has more on this from the capital tripoli. french fighter jets flew over

a video there waiting of course for the international call she inforce this no fly zone and that latest word from that meeting in paris is that they will be acting immediately now it is listen twenty four hours since the libyan government said that it was in force in any media cease fire but here on the ground intense fighting continues particularly in the rebel held town of bengazi what we're hearing there are very different stories coming out from the rebel side as opposed to the government forces the rebels insisting that they are being fired on by three runs they said at one of those fronts of the mediterranean sea they say that they had in a strike there is intense shelling and that among the targets being hit are civilians the rebels saying that many people have been injured and many more have been killed now the rebels did capture a tank belonging to gadhafi steeps they've been parading this through the streets there are still conflicting reports over a plane that was shot down there this morning saturday not yet clear exactly who it belonged to and who shot it down the gadhafi regime for its side is insisting that it is it here into this cease fire that it put into place on friday afternoon it

says that it is the rebels that are on the offensive it is very who are breaking the cease fire and it is them that are intensifying the fighting on the ground to try and mobilize the international community to act as quickly as possible from gadhafi himself we are hearing harsh words he said that the international community can move with great if they interfere in libyan affairs he also said that this is an injustice this is a key aggression and it is untold collating risks for consequences he is of course talking about the u.n. resolution one nine seven three at the same time gadhafi said that this resolution was invalid because the international community is not allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state we've also been hearing from gadhafi son say fall islam has also been taking on local state television he has warned against infertility tax that's what he's been calling for the uprising that is happening now in benghazi he also said there would it is time for people to join in the fight now it's not really care what's happening in terms of the cease fire. there are those that think that the government is insincere there are those that think that this is the sign of

a crumbling regime trying to save itself but when we listen to what we all leaders and particularly the opposition are saying they say that essentially the duffy is lying and he is trying to buy time but even amongst the rebels themselves there is agreement that there are two areas in this resolution that are cause for concern the one area is the terminology all necessary measures and the other areas when it talks about the need to feign people who are under attack or who mighty under attack now these are very different nations there now for a lot of intervention to take place and that is why the concern here in libya is that what might be the start of international intervention here in the sense of a no fly zone could quickly develop into something that is much more long term and far reaching be the millions are very much against having foreign troops in their country not least of all because this country was occupied by italian troops in the past they have seen the consequences of u.s. troops in iraq and in afghanistan in iraq particularly where there was

a twelve year no fly zone people here do not want to see this no fly zone extended and dragged out for that period of time at the same time we're hearing from the united nations human rights they say that they're very worried because they have no record of what is happening to rebel fighters who have been captured they have no record of what is happening inside the prisons and inside the security services they say that they can be some kind of collective punishment that is under way here at the moment so essentially the international community's call for the fighting to end on the ground is a question in terms of where it will end one of the demands by the international community is also becky duffy needs to retreat and people here are asking well what happens if you treat if he takes his soldiers out of certain towns when the rebels then move forward into those areas where not only is he late the fighting on the ground. three of their reporting from tripoli as well but a meeting in paris this afternoon french president nicolas sarkozy said that his country's planes are now over the town of benghazi preventing any attacks against civilians our correspondent daniel bushell is across the story. president sarkozy

made the announcement after the summit as you say attended by the big guns of world defense the decision has been taken at the top level u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton among them then mark and canada will supply fighter jets to the air fare to italy france and spain will provide air bases for support in the region while other arab states saudi arabia qatar jordan and the united arab emirates have said they do back the deployment of a no fly zone over libya near space and the main role along with those arab states will be played by the u.k. and france u.k. leader david cameron says that he fully backs the deployment of a no fly zone which will in effect ground their fees jets and helicopters and the arab states will play a supporting role of this new key their support in the region france says its number one concern is to defend the civilian population and we're seeing other western powers after this summit coming round to that point of view germany's

angela merkel said that the fact that germany abstained from the u.n. vote on establishing a no fly zone does not mean they don't support that vote only that they will not use direct military intervention themselves germany will not be sending forces to the efforts let's listen to exactly what nicolas sarkozy had to say. as we agreed to use all necessary means in particular military means to enforce the u.n. security council decision that's why an agreement with our partners in fools will oppose any aggression from colonel gadhafi against the population have been gone xenical as of now and graphed not preventing planes from attacking the town as of now other french aircraft are ready to intervene against tanks all armored vehicles threatening unarmed civilians so a growing unanimity between leaders here in the e.u. about military intervention but also growing concerns among the population at large if you speak to them about the double standards here many are saying

a stay out of libya and b. if you're. going to intervene in libya then why not the other places where there's horrible escalating violence in the region and the concern is that libya is an rich place where the west the e.u. the u.s. have be commercial interests and other places like bahrain which is also suffering here men ivory coast to see horrible violence the west is not so interested parties trying to push are reporting that now with concerns that a no fly zone over libya could be a cover up for foreign and for scaling gauge and antiwar activists jim brann says that you were solution is full of holes you can interpret so many things and then i mean what on earth you mean by protecting civilians presumably it means protecting civilians from both sides because there are clear suggestions of atrocities on both sides and you know one sided thing but of course i think the central point is that the whole thrust of the intervention is not seems to me is not

a principled thing and that accounts for the for the contradictions and the holes in the resolution i think the whole thing is a mess so the resolution itself is full of holes because i think you have to question the whole process and once you start on the process the hair of the contradictory then you end up with more and more pitfalls along the way you have this thing that. for example stayed very largely out of it and then suddenly when the resolution was passed yesterday he makes a very specific demands which clearly were not in the resolution that demands that for example the government forces pull back from a series of towns that kind of thing so you have you have clear intentions to. different parties to make of it what they will and i think that we'll see that process roll on. now the audience is raging across the arab world but the u.n. security council has only moved to act on libya people to modern changes in

countries like reign have been left to fend for themselves lauren lyster explores the difference in attitude and you may find at some images of this report just awful. god is great. words of this purported peaceful protesters in bahrain. before he appears to be shot allegedly by bahraini security forces since martial law was declared this week the bahraini government has crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. clearing them out of pearl square where they've been demonstrating. and viral videos the details can't be confirmed have been surfacing on the internet appearing to show police shooting protesters. point blank it's reminiscent of another uprising against an autocrat i want to address the situation. when images in reports of violence against protesters they could doppies hands in libya reached the u.s. we saw the president take

a stand. as last legitimacy to lead to leave early on president obama called for plans for a no fly zone over libya now here at the united nations the security council has since taken the lead on that but meanwhile the united states has already said warships along with humanitarian aid in libya's direction it's tough economic sanctions on the country essentially freezing it out of the u.s. banking system and reports suggest the u.s. has also played a more cofer role in the north african conflict and opposition that the cia. for thirty years is right now. according to people in direct contact with activists on the ground in bahrain they too are begging for help from the u.s. .

the u.s. has a military base in the island country the navy's powerful fifth fleet and six thousand troops are stationed there. and in response to the brutal crackdown the u.s. president has wielded his authority to pick up the phone and call the king of pop praying the president expressed his deep concern over the violence in bahrain and stressed the need for maximum restraint words the forces on the ground now backed by one thousand saudi arabian troops and you don't appear to be listening to critics say that talk doesn't amount to any help for the bahraini people it amounts to this absolutely there's a double standard in the way the u.s. deals with a friend versus fellow a michael libya the brain is a strong u.s. ally in the oil rich persian gulf it's all about oil it's all of it also all about geo political military strategy the u.s. has a lot of military assets in the persian gulf right now and we want to make sure they

stay there u.s. interests coming at the cost of people's lives and at the cost at the values of human rights and democracy the u.s. claims to care so much about and some of the blood is worth this and the media blood is more important it's just critical as than gore's it goes against everything we believe in and the spencer joke in there the american old. gunships you know rejecting an armed protesters in the capital and that is where the united states stands on the issue of tacitly behind autocrats. or against them depending on the threat to u.s. interests not to lives were in mr r.t. new york i mean british opposition and colgan says that his country has been very selective when deciding where and when military intervention is necessary. i think there's a lot of double standards going on here because what is happening in libya is

obviously terrible and obviously gadhafi should have heeded the views of ordinary people and come to some kind of accommodation with them all removed himself from office but. there's been no condemnation worthy of anything against bahrain saudi arabia yemen or a martin who've also been killing large numbers of civilians totally over the last few weeks and i think the west has been very selective about this it's all about securing a future status with whatever government comes out of libya libya has vast oil reserves whose libya also has the potential of being a very big investor in the rest of the world indeed it has been for a very long time i think this is much more about european and western influence in the new new emerging countries of north africa and i think the west is trying to assert itself in libya and i am also suspicious that we might end up as a division of libya almost a partition into an eastern part by those that are currently ruling the roost in

the western part led by gadhafi and the remains of his government this is a very sad very tragic situation. thank you all as i follow all the latest developments in libya on our twitter and facebook pages we've got her links to all of our videos and of course regular updates. it's going to get. a lot such as our attention to japan out there maybe absorbing a dangerously high levels of radiation but teams at the fukushima power station are

continuing their battle to restore electricity to the plant's crippled reactors it's believed to be a plane restarting the cooling system and averting a nuclear catastrophe as i prepared has the latest some power actually has been restored to parts of the nuclear plants not the crucial areas cooling systems in the reactors and that's what they're aiming to get but what they are doing and what that have done is in fact power cables reactor number two trying to do it so the other reactors electricity hasn't yet been turned on because if they do that they fear that it might malfunction so what they're doing now is doing the checks seeing if they're if their elections will go through i would out the problems if that does happen i think they will we have to get. cooling systems and calling palms will be a massive relief for those states the workers who are doing everything they can because that's what they were trying to do for the last eight days get those cooling systems up running get the temperature down in the meantime what they've done is bronson core water and storage is in there it happened again military our

engines on the ground shooting cannons of water into the spent fuel pools all the belts the reactors number three in thought because the water levels in most is believed to be. dangerously low if it falls below the fuel rods and expose exposes those to the air then there is fear that radioactive substances could escape as early as last saturday we can get when there is news of the first explosion of the year one of the reactors at fukushima it will go on bottled water and even in tokyo as far west as that as an east came out and the government was issuing warnings to people just in the area of the saying don't remove all true case of contamination so that he was spreading south to take you all the way up the coast there up as far as sendai where also it's weak bottled water as it was in short supply even if it is going to take. you down as people were trying to avoid contact or different fears of contamination now those fears spread just as well and the government did

their subjects on milk and spinach in neighboring prefectures difficult she met and they found radiation levels the normal again no danger to one's health but there is is obviously now with the garneau the government spokesperson a cheap cabinet secretary has said that radiation levels outside the. exclusion zone and not harmful to the human health but a lot of governments are believing that they're getting their nationals out and also and it's really the fingers are being pointed now questions being asked who was to blame for this could have been avoided and the main issue that's coming up now months x. experts worldwide is the issue of privatization of japan's nuclear power because tokyo electric power company owns the fukushima plant and the questions now being asked is was safety compromised for profit. no matter how hard they try disaster still looms from. attempts to cool the reactors have been applauded for bravery but

it's been a week since cooling capability was lost and there's no end in sight to this crisis the implications are that radiation already has spread a fair distance we were probably will be an area around the plant like turn or will that will be uninhabitable for the foreseeable future could get far worse than the us that wants cooling systems may have been crippled by a natural disaster but some are now questioning the merits of the manmade decision to build reactors near the so-called ring of fire this is completely human a good sastre because that plant should never have had located there in the first place and citizens had run up that out the fact japan's nuclear industries also in private hands has led to accusations profits were put before safety fukushima's owner already has a questionable past with a history of falsifying safety records at the site back in the eighty's i think we also have to review the idea of privatized nuclear power because privatized nuclear

power cutting corners and i think we're watching those corners being cut today what we'd like to see is the government take over these nuclear reactors from private corporations because private corporations name for existing is the next emerged profits and by next making profits in the nuclear sector we're talking about minimizing concerns the public health and safety and last private investors may be needed to get the ball rolling it's the other way around if things go wrong i think it's we're going to be inevitable that the state will take over in order to contain these plants though they will probably need to be covered with concrete and sand much like trouble was and i think the state will take over responsibility for the. i think whether the state has it or private companies do it. it's very difficult for anyone to astra to parents no stranger to nuclear tragedies this is where the

second atomic bomb was dropped in one nine hundred forty five and trying everything they can it for pushing metal first another disaster because nuclear watchdog is already expecting wider consequences the question is how many will be affected by bennett's r.t. like a sack technicians and emotional teams working at fukushima know the bare mission to avert a nuclear disaster could kill them possible three mile island cleanup in pennsylvania that was after a similar accident in one hundred seventy nine now explains what risks the workers are facing what the people in japan are going right here right now it's kind of hard to tell because no one has access to them as far as i see and i fear for their safety in fact i fear for their lives sometimes the radiation is so high that a person going into us a hot room can only be inside there for maybe three minutes and then they have to come out someone else has to go in to finish the job so you can imagine the intensity let's try and just say trying to change a valve you go in with

a welding machine and. it takes you three or four minutes just to bring that in there you haven't even plugged anything in yet when you have to leave you're done for the month we don't know the conditions inside the plant though most of us. from the industry confirm that it's very very dangerous i think for in water in massive amounts and they should be probably poor in boric acid or boron in in massive amounts as well is the really the only only thing they have left it's almost like a hail mary pass my only real regret is that the entire area was not evacuated sooner as soon as the evolution started that would have been the moral thing to do and that is not been accomplished and for that i'm pretty disappointed. and a robot al darren's who is an expert on environmental and energy policy says that there are many dangers lying within the stricken fukushima station for making the situation more difficult to control the. japanese authorities

appear to not still have control over the situation they are taking measures that are of a desperate nature that are i guess you would call it improvisations on the playbook and it doesn't appear at this time that they're working the concern i have had about this is the hazards of the spent fuel storage pools the water has either completely or partially drained and it's likely that the spent fuel. has is to catch fire is already caught fire cesium one thirty seven is really the bad actor in this because it well to wise's and it has a half life of thirty years it gives off external penetrating radiation so if it lands on the ground in any significant quantities and you're standing nearby the gamma rays coming off they are exposing your whole body multiple organs of months

when it over time it mimics kept potassium in is accumulated by accumulated in biota in the food chain and so it sticks around for a long time the rule of thumb is that it takes about ten have lives for this material to get b.k. down to levels that are presumed to be safe. supporters of nuclear power say it's a clean and relatively safe way to protest and change but with the current crisis unfolding at fukushima people are being forced to promise the benefits of potential dangers over atomic stations that we have next. as your pen struggles with the nuclear crisis are you concerned about the stability of nuclear facilities near you this week let's talk about that. so the field is called muster nuclear plant in england but it's pretty safe you feel like it's safe should be over when we ourselves live across the river from

a nuclear power plant virginia it's it's it's it's it's a concern certainly it's better than spending a lot of tax dollars on a new energy source to some people you know it's like this go to you know you look at cell phones you know cell phone service where you ways where if a report came out tomorrow that cell phones cause cancer people to put their cell phones down now they're not so people take their nuclear energy if it has to seep in works people are really interested in you know surfin wins and different kinds of alternative energies leaving about those. so enough companies put enough money into the research there's enough research dollars that it's not going to be a viable alternative and what pays for those there's tax dallas right correct so if you stop spending money on war we can start spending money on energy getting that would never happen. hopefully in my lifetime i find it amazing the amount of energy what's being used here in eric rose in light specifically here in times square so i

think people are. maybe a bit too much used to use loads and loads of energy so i guess it's what's going to be quite hard to get them to use. to spend more on green energy because they're going to be more expensive do you support nuclear energy you know right now. well because it's a disaster i think you think it's a disaster waiting to happen absolutely so what should we do because we consume a lot of energy on idea i have no clue i go if you don't know then how can we rule out nuclear energy we can't fire still many people so afraid of nuclear energy i go that this is the happening right now but most plants are pretty safe show i think it centers on people always thinking the worst and maybe that's a reaction from nine eleven even but people always think of the things that can get bad so i think there's that armageddon feeling whether or not you support nuclear energy the bottom line is that with all of our energy options there comes in one

form or another a high price to pay. here with us here live from moscow let's check out some other stories making headlines around the world this hour educations are taking part in a referendum on a constitutional reform if approved changes will shorten the president's time in power from six to four and he has and i'll know more than two times over trying to gyptian the house he left for thirty years performs well and parliamentary elections in washington and presidential elections in september this year. i mean gaza a member of hamas as we know killed by an israeli airstrike after more than fifty rockets were reportedly fired into israel police say it was the heaviest attack by gaza militants in twenty four months with two israelis reportedly being injured four civilians were also hurt in the israeli response to the attack that according

to the health ministry in gaza. and former u.s. secretary of state warren christopher has died of cancer at age eighty five he had been a key negotiator in the former yugoslavia and was praised for his efforts in ending the bosnia herzegovina war he also tried to promote peace in the middle east while serving under president bill clinton after retiring from office christopher practiced law and taught international affairs with. well just a few moments here on r t we explore terrorism and russia and why many incidents involve suicide bombers from the north caucasus that's after i've given you the latest updates on the may new stories and i'll be back in not just a moment.