well russian authorities are on the hunt for the mastermind behind a terrorist attack on the capital's metro that killed twelve people and injured more than two hundred. and probably lots of rocks the macho killing means all the latest details and reaction following monday's bloody times that coming up in just about the war veterans warn of looming danger in libya claiming the western coalition's been using depleted uranium of poison that's been deployed in other military campaigns. i journeyed to remember russia marks

fifty years since the first human spaceflight and soviet cosmonaut yuri gagarin into a legend and the household name of the world old. business news this hour deputy prime minister igor sechin steps down as chairman of ross now following president medvedev sorta what's up with this was to leave the boards of state companies details coming up now business bulletin twenty. five am in moscow i match reza good to have you with us here on r t before we get to our top news stories there are reports that an explosion has happened at a moscow bus stop in the west of the capital and versions these services are on their way to the scene we'll bring you the latest from our correspondent as soon as we had any further details here on our team. well get to that story later in our broadcast back to it but first the goal of the

metro attack in minsk is to destroy stability in the country according to the bella russian prosecutor's office that an explosion that rocked the subways busiest station at rush hour killed twelve people and left more than two hundred injured several suspects have been detained in connection with that blast our teams are catarina grandchildren talk with some of those who witnessed the bloodbath in the heart of minsk it is a day to remember solemnly here and means the morning after the tragedy you can see piles of flowers candles and icons laid around the entrance of that status to much will station here by the explosion during evening rush hours on monday obviously emotions and feelings are running high as people want to be together on the stand maybe before going to work make a stop over here to observe a minute of silence my guess is that. this morning after the blast terrible feelings i couldn't expect anything like that happening in this country it's such

a crime it's not just thinking that i have to pay tribute to those who died and wish a speedy recovery to those who are currently in hospital among those who remember solemnly on the sterile so weaknesses of the attack some of them how those injured the first minutes after the tragedy by the as one of them. but who do you give first aid how many did years ago and this is throwing me there were a lot one person to get upstairs three others joined in but person was seriously wounded he was all covered with blood it was also a man who had five people to get out it was blood all around and i still have it on . the jury and when we. witness the same minutes after the glass they saw hardly wounded people being carried out of these natural station including those with missing limbs and those injured remain many of them remain in

intensive care units in hospitals across the city to give you an idea this blast happened during evening rush hour where there were so many commuters on the matches system this metro station is the busiest in the capital of minsk this is where two natural lines intersect so this is why those so many passengers during this evening rush hour also it's only one hundred meters from the republican palace where lots of state ceremonies take place and from the central square of means an hour after the after this blast president alexander lukashenko suffered a terrorist attack was the made version being considered he also said that he would turn to russia for a helping hand with all that russia has a huge experience in dealing with the after months of similar tragedies apart from russia he's well and the u.k. will be also assisting belarus and investigating into the cause or solve this bombing well it's the first blast to hit the means to matter and it's also the

first fatal terrorist attack in the country's more than history retreat bad political analyst from russia is a real news agency says it's on the right way the country's political opposition is behind the attack. there is a big temptation for gosh i'm going to blame it on the legal opinion i don't think it's called civil because most of the you know really prominent members so the legal opposition are in jail or they're going through a trial right now because of the discount because those. so obviously these people have no interest in having this kind of a disaster happening now and they're not evil people and some of them may be nationalists still then maybe competent but i'm not. so everyone i think is lost in doubt. and lost in get this right up on the new model for another maybe

smallest of the opposition members they started their greed is still under the soviet union. they you know they have been no no this isn't political fight. but most of them are peaceful people in general though russian some peaceful people and i don't expect any decent position campus to get as desperate as i'm alone in this kind of a terrorist event so with us here in archie lots more headed your way to us our including japan on high alert countries raise the severity rating of its nuclear crisis to the highest level but in the emergency on par with a sure noble disaster. but first military experts are accusing coalition forces in libya of using depleted uranium in their airstrike ammunition a deadly substance can cause cancer and physical mutations in those who come in close contact with it their claims are surfacing as the ongoing nato led campaign is being stepped up with no clear end in sight or he's going to seek you out

investigate just a warning some viewers may find the images in this report disturbing. these leave young men cheer on top of a tank hit by coalition forces unaware of the silent killer they could be breathing in as they celebrate though the western coalition denies using depleted uranium in bombings in the country others say there's a good chance weapons with the highly poisonous radioactive element have been used that kind of damage. there's a really good chance it was a dream you around i'm about in the ninety percent sure that was do you around thirty years to anybody who is on it is getting all rubble radiation exposure who will have all the wind blowing that means the particles are in the air. so all those people in those cars were. melissa styria served in the u.s. military during the first gulf war in the early ninety nine clearing out battle

fields in kuwait back then the u.s. dropped more than three hundred fifty tons of depleted uranium over kuwait and iraq pictures of bombings from libya seen all too familiar you see how those touches are red that's the burning see how it shoots out instead of a cone straight up and you've got a flare at the bottom that's the new explosion the clear did you rein him in military terms is highly efficient relatively cheap and powerful enough to can a trait the heaviest armor nato flatly denies its use in libya even though the e.u. mind human rights commission has called for a ban countries who refused to sign up including the u.s. the u.k. france and this will the smallest particles of uranium nano particles are the most dangerous inhale they get into the blood and spreading to any organ including the heart brain liver also chronicles penetrate your cell tissue this is when you get

all kinds of kinetic new patients and people in iraq for example grieving that contaminated air every day and experts say there is no way to fight it in fallujah or in iraq where the u.s. dropped thousands of depleted uranium rounds after the two thousand and three invasion a quarter of all babies are born with a range of horrendous ever normalities higher rates of cancer leukemia and infant mortality have been found here then after the it tommy bombs were dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki the u.s. and the british military admitted widespread use of depleted uranium in bombing bosnia in one thousand nine hundred ninety five for a legacy felt today with can certainly kenya rates several times higher than normal got toward a medical confirmation all round pollute. iraq that the health effects of the radium are there and we see it throughout iraq are saudi arabia kuwait afghanistan

somalia the balkans and again now we're seeing the movement into libya dr dog rocky was a leading specialist in the cleanup after the gulf war says there is no way of actually decontaminating affected areas but i was given a written memoranda law about the health and environmental protection re-emission he himself was exposed to depleted uranium almost all of the members of his team are now dead some theory that the suffering of those bombed in areas where there will be no western troops will go unnoticed and i think happens in remote villages in libya i suspect just because it is going to find a path and the people they're not going to start saying hey look everybody is dying here they go over fences and there's a gentleman with nations and so forth i don't think anyone will listen to him pleaded you raney and has a hard life of four and a house billion years hence it's description by some as the silent killer that will

never stop killing. our t. washington d.c. . japan has raised the nuclear alert level of the quake hit fukushima plant to the maximum of seven its puts the this puts the disaster on par with the sure noble catastrophe that decision was based on new data showing that more radiation have leaked from the damaged plant than previously thought but officials say the upgrade does not mean the situation has become more critical the operator of the plant appears to be no closer to restoring the cooling systems at the reactors and other powerful aftershock across eastern japan forced the operator to evacuated staff this comes on month after a massive quake and tsunami hit the country leaving more than thirteen thousand people dead for more on this we're joined live by atomic expert christopher silence from the international christian university in tokyo good to have you joining us so high levels of radioactivity have been reported out the plan for several weeks now

lies japan waited until now to raise the severity level to the maximum limit. yes said good evening well the international nuclear event scale is a very complex set of regulations determining how we rate nuclear accidents there's a several hundred page book that details will be different criteria that have to be met. the important thing in this case is that it refers to the total amount of radiation released during an accident and the fukushima dai ichi reactors have not released that much in radiation until now so over the past twenty four to forty eight hours a total amount of radiation that is leaking into the environment has reached the point at which the ainus regime is equivalent to the highest raising that is level seven the same as china mobile and so what does that mean in a practical sense how do the two really compare fukushima and journal. well yes

they are quite different and just because both events are now where it gets set evan doesn't mean that they're beyond can still be amount of radiation is measured in barrels and in order to be classified as a level seven event you need to have several tens of thousands of terra backroads there is a million million back worlds of radiation released into the environment now japan's own nuclear safety agency the be nice out estimates that approximately three hundred seventy thousand tera back whirls have been released into the environment since the crisis yeah three hundred seventy thousand now in comparison a total amount really. from which here noble disaster was over am terra back were also still a much much larger amount of radiation in total now these levels are quite

different in terms of its type of material the rating me i know is raising depends on the type of material the population into which it's released all sorts of different factors the important thing is that the disaster is still going on information that a cheat is substantially smaller than gave them the charitable disaster so what do you think the consequences of this will be for japan for the country itself. well there are going to be a wide range of const. points on all levels i think are talking about now relates to tepco the tokyo electric power company company that owns these damaged reactors and has been involved in this crisis ted kooser. stuff stanley they already had some. poor reputation there been scandals rocking the company

since two thousand and two when tepco was found to be falsifying technical data that is falsifying safety checks from nuclear reactors across japan and i believe seventeen of its two reactors were shut down after it is scandal and they were later restarted so the level of trust in tepco was already quite low for the earthquake and tsunami and nuclear disaster so kept oh it certainly can be shaken up i can assume that the top management will all have to go and hopefully we will see more public or government oversight of the company there will also be much more substantial effect in terms of the japanese economy this exclusion zone the twenty to thirty kilometer exclusion zone around the nuclear plant is a very important piece of land japan of course doesn't have much land as it is this area and fukushima is a major center for agriculture and it's one of these authors are fresh fruit and

vegetables in japan as well as rice and as you've probably heard already it's a major scent here of industrial production so car companies that we are. and he son of fancy big syria was sure i didn't at that moment am a camp supply short steep shock to reason the rest of the world also yet in the sequence is there are significant alright and i have to end it there thanks very much christopher simons the atomic expert from the international christian university in tokyo thanks for joining us it's an. initial reports of an explosion at a bus stop have been denied by authorities in moscow russia's emergency services say that there are construction works in the area in western moscow and that the alleged burning smell probably came from a faulty cable the incident was reported to the police by a city bus driver take a look now it's another stories making headlines across the globe nato is pulled

not doing enough to destroy heavy revenue used by moammar gadhafi forces in libya that's according to the french and british foreign ministers libyan civilians remain at risk for answers our injured pay said despite the ongoing nato led bombing campaign u.k.'s william hague called on colonel gadhafi to step down libyan rebels are posing khadafi have been pushed back a despite the foreign bombing raids the country's going to ravaged by civil war since february with thousands dead and injured. the palestinian authority is now largely ready to govern a state according to un report the findings will be submitted to the palestinian donor nations meeting in brussels wednesday wednesday but the report warned it would be tough for the palestinian authority to make additional progress while the israeli occupation continued and peace talks remain stalled dialogue between both sides has been on hold since last year over the issue of jewish settlements in the west bank. and i've rico's internationally recognized leader our sunny

what tara has urged peace after his rival was finally captured. goes been refusing to step down since last november's elections leading to a conflict that claimed almost one thousand lives a criminal investigation will be opened into the actions of his wife and their entourage president ouattara is now faced with the task of reuniting the country. fifty years ago today mankind opened a grand new chapter of its history by ushering in the manned exploration of space people across the globe are marking the anniversary of yuri gagarin's pioneering flight archy's tests are a solar a force from the cosmic drone that propelled the first man into orbit. i'm here in baikonur where many significant events in space history had taken place not least of which was the first successful manned space flight well it all began here because on this day fifty years ago cosmonaut yuri gagarin boarded his vostok one

capsule and blasted off into space well that launch pad where he had taken off from is now called a good god and start is the very same launch pad used by vs so used to you may twenty one crew when they left for space on april five going to be a international space station they were of course in a spacecraft that had the image of eureka guided to mark this anniversary well since then a lot of there's a long list of achievements in terms of space exploration what different countries have died in that field but we have been speaking to the astronauts and for them one of the biggest progress they've seen really is the it cooperation among countries the international space station is an example a clear example if you will of the global efforts in that regard now of course there are a lot of celebrations plans a two hour mark the anniversary here in baikonur famous personalities are expected to be here and also a special guest who will be a joining in the celebrations for a variety of reasons is

a band called you to go got it. right. through the window i have the owner of taken a great spacecraft to spray so that i was very happy to hear it was only the beginning of april twelve thousand nine hundred sixty one the day utica got it blasted off into space orbited the earth and made history. a feat celebrated across the globe he would arrive early and it was incredible you was hard to believe that this actually happened the national course lysine before this man it was also the day his name shot to fame. you know i didn't he was not a paris didn't know where i was serving they only knew i graduated from punnets academy and that the facility was working it was top secret when they heard that you regard being sent into space so they see that it was me janice came to our

house to interview parents but they knew nothing of the one i think they could help us attach. he had met the utica god in one thousand nine hundred sixty three while working at the launchpad he ended up face to face with a man and introduced himself purple necessitated you'll see what month i was born i said munch and it seemed to me like he was going to collapse even stretched out my hands to hold him up it turned out he was born in march as well one of us like this will serve as a reminder for future generations of mass first journey into space but for bell there are still those who can tell the story of eureka got it and that momentous day from memory adding another layer of color to history adequate off scale was a doctor who prepared the garden for his first flight she recalls that very day fifty years ago. when bugs grow bigger look more pale than usual he was unsociable and client which was not like him and i know he would answer by nodding or a short yes to all questions yes sometimes he would start humming some tunes this

was a different guy would use the money and hugged and i sent you really everything will be fine and he nodded back we're going to see motion over there think as soon as he got in return to worth he was a superstar a hero for his compatriots those who knew him admits they weren't quite sure how to act around him. even to live near simon and we're going bowling ball on the bar in a low going postal will those legal risky he was very surprised he said what song would you post when i get it was it was played against they were giving the widow children there are no statistics that was offended was that it was really fair ok for several years. in the hard times to find someone he knew got it and has a bad word to say after all he was chosen not just reasonability s. as a cosmonaut but also for his demeanor and signature smile certainly not a bad reputation to be associated with pointis you got. this r c r r to.

stay with r t's will be covering the fiftieth anniversary of the very good parents first right throughout the day our correspondent radio porton i reports next hour from new york where the about there is also the. from the nightclub parties dedicated to gary into a new international holiday being declared the year when his daughter america once a lock you know holds barred space race with the soviet union is now exulting the legendary russian as well coming your way in the next hour throughout our team. be back with a recap of our top stories in a few minutes but first korean american joins us with the business news. hello and welcome to our business r.t. thanks for joining me booming commodity prices have done much to support russia's market in the first quarter all precious and non precious metals and soft commodities such as the wheat sugar i'm cocoa have all been setting records there's

been speculation that rally will continue and result in a commodities super spike now to discuss this possibility i'm not joining the studio but on this thought hansen from saxo bank thanks thanks for coming to the studio now now what could lead to this commodity super spike lee plank i think if you look at sort of from sectors if you look at energy first the worry there really is if we see year the spreading of the andress that we've seen in libya if that spreads through the middle east that really is could could cause a lot of problems because we're thinking about saudi arabia and twelve percent of global production so if that if so it's happened. to see a spike so that's one we saw in two thousand and eight and if it turns who are cultural you know the year we coming into this year with very low stocks also the bad weather we had last year so the weather over the next few months is really going to be the deciding factor whether we're going to have an all the spike. in the cost of proposals and what still i mean apart from what you just said what's

driving this pike there is always a lot of investment a month to month for commodities over the last few years from the investor community has risen quite dramatically that has been caused by fear of inflation negative interest rates we have this monetary policy in several countries and it's just made the commodity become a new as a class for for the rest of the now increasingly adding that to the us a project for you now which of these commodities would you make the biggest gains you thank well it's difficult to say from these levels would we have reached already because we're increasing the well. all has obviously. well it's fifty five percent from the two thousand and ten average so there is a risk now it just near term that if we don't see any further escalation that could actually run into some profit taking in oil and it's actually see it right down towards three hundred hundred five so so on that one is a bit it's probably a bit tricky to get in both of these levels or else where we think long term gold

is still the still a good investment we'll just need to see what's going to happen with the quantum easing in the u.s. the next innocent you would rather moderate room reaction that i took also seem to be in short supply for for years and for the next three years so that as well this is a sector that has been receiving a lot of investments and prosperous still but also on the rise a lot of people invest in silver silver has been astonishingly just a couple of years ago you could buy some silver one ounce of gold now that's down to thirty five whether it's going to continue from here it potentially could reach surface to dollars because there is a momentum and there's a lot of interest from investors going into silver no one has to be very careful to really getting into bottle territory eventually and that could we could send lower court for that city so for now if you can't really go against what you have to be prepared for some increased volatility in the road ahead and now looking at this country from your perspective will this super spike be good for russia if we take well which is a prick revenue for the country and you know high prices for really good for russia

well i think with crude looking to stay of off one hundred dollars for the foreseeable future the russian budget current reference will be in balance so most of that's good the ruble will be considered to be strong with revenues from from energy and the stock was also given the best performing songs over the last two or three months over so so that will continue. to be supported from from higher energy prices and it's not hanson thank you very much for joining the program. and to other news now a deputy prime minister intersection has decided to step down as chairman of the country's state run oil major rosneft he is the first to follow the presidential order that top officials should leave the boards of state companies are all reports from the ross new headquarters and ask. because of his role as deputy prime minister it got such an has hot to step down from the polls overall staff no this was because of a presidential really meaning that no senior government officials could feel the

boards of major companies now just how this will affect the major deal the sixteen billion dollars share swap deal between ross left and b.p. remains to be seen section was one of the key architects of that deal he'll now be replaced by serge ition who's the senior vice president at v.t. bank it's now mr shushan job to try and make sure that that deal goes through. dallas and america how the markets are doing for us europe where the markets trough after japan raised severance level of its nuclear crisis commodity related stocks under pressure as for oil and metal prices keep falling says in total fell one point six percent in paris because of my strong three point six percent in london and here in moscow the markets are standing yesterday's losses both the r.t.s. randomize excess setting one point seven and one point eight percent respectively on negative news from abroad and lower oil prices.

and i would have time for on this edition of business bulletin being join me next hour for more here on this starting. with the news just not enough. when it's something really crucial. when you want to get down to brass tacks so we bring you our special coverage.