it appears that one weapon did not strike the intended target due to a weapons systems failure although officials in tripoli claim more than eight hundred civilians have died in nato raids there nine people they say were killed in sunday's bombardment of the city have become the first civilian casualties officially acknowledged by the alliance only on saturday nato has also admitted and other mistake in a strike this time on rebel forces need to leave in oil port of bragger with a number of casualties not been disclosed we hold me till you hold mr cameron mr starr was just going to scorn me mr obama has already and he gave me this possible for the deaths of these innocent children innocent why isn't here an innocent fathers and mothers you cannot justify this that dichotomy this up with that incident in. sunday's fatal error occurs in the rising concerns within nato

about his admiration in northern africa only eight out of its twenty eight members have joined the mission to protect civilians in libya which raises the question how many would support one to kill them ration option or r.t. tripoli. but with a civilian casualties in libya mounting a no end in sight those paying for the intervention might be something of mormon bargain for the u.k.'s announced that its tax payers might see one point six billion dollars of their hard earned cash diverted to fund the intervention and is out is there ever reports negs is little patience left among an already dissolution public. they're already calling it the billion pound war it's calculated that if the war in libya goes on for six months it will cost the british taxpayer one point six billion dollars but that initial humanitarian mission is now get rid of gadhafi operation and that could take a lot longer assuming that.

this could potentially be. extended the operation by another three months that's unlikely to be popular with the british public that government spending like a hawk already feel seeing services and jobs slashed even so downing street swore wall it is open and it's taking the lead in libya data gathered by britain's guardian newspaper from defense ministries and news reports shows that britain has flown twenty five percent of all sources in libya second only to the u.s. by the second week of may six thousand strike missions had been ordered blogger daniel rennick says the u.k.'s likely to have weighed up the cost but with a warm wind blowing westwards from libyan rebels and us movements britain reckons a billion pounds is a pretty good investment about having control of. the

transitional council that seems to be some bombs cost up to one and a half million dollars each and with the u.k. cutting defense spending analysts say they may not be replaced and when you're dealing with such big numbers small things make a big difference the food costs maybe one hundred thousand pounds per hour to fly so small changes in the number of hours you estimate produce big changes a cost estimate for the upper end. was always expensive but the costs back home. could prove harder to afford next in line to strike a million public sector workers who are being asked to work more and get less disruption to services could run in two weeks the commitment to continue in libya for however low suggests a blank check at a time when there is little in the kitty the deployment of apache helicopters

doesn't appear to have given nato the tactical advantage it hoped for and every time a plane takes to the sky or drops the bomb the cost for britain and its beleaguered european neighbors create higher and higher lower and it's arty young to. live in struggles to break out of a continuous loop of bombardment of violence still go to michael maloof a former pentagon officer the get his take on this protracted conflict mr maloof thanks for being with us i mean a bombing campaign in libya is entering its fourth month is nato actually making any progress there as you see it. i think the progress that's been made is inflicting more collateral damage at this point i think it they tried to achieve a certain level of humanitarian effort and initially but the protracted bombing is now increasingly hitting civilian targets and it's creating a very negative reaction i think it does raise the question what is nato's role continued role going to be there and i think that there's no easy answer and as you

pointed out the they're running out of ammunition and i think the united states is probably going to be called upon to try and make up the short falls if the congress approves even the congress in the united states is very concerned about what that what that role is and especially the u.s. for. i think i think this whole this whole effort is call into question at this point what is nato's true role and what is the end game of what do they hope to accomplish while in dayton arrested if you mention that although the original objective stated publicly anyway was a humanitarian intervention this mission is now morphed into something else what you mean there. it's it's questionable as to what they're trying to accomplish it looks more as though they're trying to basically ultimately split the country gain the resources. of oil in the eastern part consolidate

a hold on that so that europe can continue to receive the oil which is vitally needs from from libya the western part in evidently could go to khadafi since seems to be very well entrenched and there's been no sizable degree of. having kicked him out and in fact his forces continuously are able to be reinforced with with their own ordnance and their own and can to still have the capability to fight so the question is what is being what has been accomplished. short of continuing to bomb targets which ultimately are hitting innocent people and i think that's probably one of the things that's going on right now is that we could after forces probably are moving closer and closer into. the more civilian areas and as a consequence there's collateral damage of innocent civilians going to bombers have blasted over his headlong rush into libya resonate and the ensuing stalemate and

cost everything we're seeing coming out now do you think you made a mistake who obama i'm sorry i didn't hear the first party i just made a mistake by backing the intervention in in going. well i think that. the question is what is the strategic value of the united states being in libya at this point we're already involved in gauged in two wars in two muslim countries we're now involved in a third one in yemen and now we have we have libya as well that's four muslim countries the united states is involved in the question is what we are trying to accomplish as a nation from a strategic geo strategic standpoint and i think it's highly questionable at this point what our role is now each country offers a different perspective as a different has a different outcome and but when you look at it in its totality in terms of trying to support democracy on the one hand although we're supporting the rulers the

embedded rulers like in yemen or in bahrain it does it can has confused the american people i think it is to just what is our and game in any of these disputes at this point and i think it's being manifested by what you see in congress right now just briefly i mean good taking in everything we've seeing in libya now looking with syria on the horizon what lessons do you think we can learn from the continuing strife in libya. well syria is a different issue altogether from that it has a more of a geo strategic. vantage point for the united states. the talk there is that it's it's a popular pro-democracy uprising but. there's also a number of folks that i've spoken to who say that it's really a lot of has to do with syrian muslim brotherhood and support from saudi arabia in trying to unsettle the. assad regime because of the

saudi concerns for iran and the proxies hamas and hezbollah so it offers an entirely different set of parameters for the united states for just a political standpoint then does libya and and i think that we should be very very careful in. trying to take one side or the other at this point i think the russians have been very very cautious with respect to. syria and certainly libya as well and i would say that with syria if if approach so-called prodemocracy whatever that is does get into syria the russians have a lot to lose from a. geo strategic standpoint because of the base in tartus michael maloof thanks for the program the former pentagon officer as you are joining us live from washington d.c. tonight thanks. ok let's take

a look greece now their workers at the state of the company have gone on a forty eight hour strike against austerity measures succumbs e.u. finance ministers have failed to agree on conditions for releasing the next installment of last year's bailout package for the country now that decision was postponed now till july with the stipulation that athens must implement fresh budget cuts workers at the utility meantime are angry at government plans to privatized their company as part of the austerity measures that are seen as crucial if the country is to avoid a default. fears of greece defaulting may british banks hold back billions of your of the market despite a job gone of the e.u. referendum campaign it told me beliefs will be next on the list of financial failures now if we just keep pumping money into greece it's only putting off the death of their economy they are already bankrupt we have to wake up and smell the coffee and say enough is enough greece is going to go all in is going to go portugal and of course the big one that everyone is worried about is the state of

spying that is what some of our banks like barclays have been reducing our liabilities in spain because clearly the property slump in spain is much bigger than a spanish government is telling people they say there's only been a drop of eighteen percent on the radio shows in spain people are losing seventy percent sixty percent in the fire you have their homes and their developments spain will be the next one to topple but why should the united kingdom which is already facing massive recession massive cuts in our social services massive cuts in our essential services and public services cutting down of our armed forces cutting down of our police etc etc why should we the u.k. taxpayer pay energy the german taxpayer pay for the ineptitude of the greek government i say we shouldn't i say let's get out of the euro and the now present value of still keeping russia in the rest of the world guessing whether he'll make a bid to stay chief of the kremlin for a second term however it interview with london's financial times newspaper he

appeared to rule out a putin medvedev face off in next year's election on his country as of reports now what else the president had to say. but it's definitely the question that the russian president has been asked most frequently in the recent months but to begin with they decided to keep the suspense up for a while. but it is the new leader especially one who occupies the president's seat has to be willing to run for reelection however it's not a question of whether he would make that decision for himself i suggest waiting a bit longer and keeping the intrigue. of course the main intrigue of the twenty twelve presidential election still remains but with the image they give did answer some questions in relations to who will run for office and one thing is certain both he employed him and put him will not run for the same office it will just be one man's course still remains to say cool well that man but. it's hard for me to

imagine. both running for president of the same time for at least one reason we strictly speaking represent the same political force competition between us would bring harm to the goulds on task we've been working on for the past several years it wouldn't be good for russia and it wouldn't be good in this particular situation it was a very long interview that the russian president gave to the financial times that of course many issues were raised throughout the course of it both of course pertaining to russia's national and foreign policies many aspects that are interesting both to people living in russia and to those observing russia from abroad specifically of course questions relating to the goals that the russian president set out for himself during his term in office modernization battling the option for snow interviews that is taken by western media source has gone by without the issue of we have that move see the former c.e.o. will join us being raised russian president reiterated his position that that is

the least should it happen will not in any way be a danger to society unlike any russian citizen who's currently serving time that he has the right to an appeal more so it wasn't just matters of domestic policy that were touched upon the russian president speaking quite harshly about the nato military intervention in libya saying that some of russia's partners basically chose to misinterpret the resolution passed by the united nations security council resolution that russia let pass hoping that it will be observed and kept to as it is worded. but of course the mediator said that basically a very good resolution turned into a meaningless bit of paper with nature's military intervention in libya and that precisely because of that no resolution will be passed on syria but the serious matters of course that were discussed we do know that the russian president is very fond of his gadgets he's fairly secret out despite any did it slip that he has

a special on it that lets him monitor exactly what his employees are doing and which of his tasks have already been fulfilled is a very useful thing i personally like to check out the app store to see whether it's been specifically custom made for the president or whether it's available for the general public. well you can log on to our website there you can find that interview with president ford leave your comments if you like as well it's good to hear from you. while you're very even though the angry bird you gave is not one of the applications the russian leader frequently uses he still gave a special create to why. not also in the more serious note who is next in the terrorist crosshairs we are. going to see it hit list preacher and to get official u.s. politicians one of about two from us tonight on.

the five day long nuclear security forums kicked off of the end of the japanese atomic crisis has prompted a comprehensive discussion about the future of nuclear power delegates from most of the hundred fifty member states of the international atomic energy watched. the gathering there to work to universal safety regulations for reactors japan's expect to be criticized heavily for its slow response to the fukushima disaster it has already submitted a report admitting it wasn't prepared for an accident on such a scale. thomas traveled to one city while outside the official exclusion zone but nonetheless where officials are still. very concerned over high levels of radiation . the ominous and constant ticking of geiger counters and scientists working in fukushima city concerned one or similar i'm in charge of the group of radiation detection and survey from fukushima university where now thinking their creation protocol and process set up by the japanese government is not enough and

myself i think i should evacuate from this area but because of my job at the university i can't my family and my friends families are evacuating. officially fukushima city is in a safe area eighty kilometers from the daiichi plant reactor one and a full sixty kilometers outside the band danger zone but still radiation levels here and watch higher than normal. just to give you an idea of the consistency right now the ground is really pretty quiet tonight micro ring it's about thirty times what it is more than the accepted level but if you come down here to where the soil and a lot of it collected the radiation will quickly jumped out and it's still climbing earlier we got a reading of night and now i look at my career which is about a thousand times more than a wildly accepted level of state relations. but in order to claim that fukushima is truly safe from leaking radiation the japanese government has had to be creative with the numbers but the government did they change the redish

a quantum level down by the levels from one. to twenty million. twenty times. the standards before the accident and now. they raise the. the standard so that they can say it's safe but actually the standard has changed the new higher levels mean that fukushima can be classed as being outside of the exclusion zone some say that evacuating the city would be simply impractical given the huge numbers of people affected to try and mitigate the circumstances to some degree a group of scientists have teamed up to find simple ways to reduce the radiation levels. you're just trying to do a pilot project do d.d. contamination. by ourselves and we are not to using especially men we just use

normal child bolts. scoops. just the. top soil is a small effort to bring some security to a community facing a scary and uncertain future in fukushima city sean thomas our team. will stay with the story next as well as he takes a closer. work out the nuclear crisis in japan we talk indeed to the country's number two nuclear officials that chap coming right up. a little bit with.

the we are here with he day he call in the shiite man who is with the ministry of a commie here in japan specifically with the agency that deals with nuclear safety and thank you very much for taking some time to be with us today now as this. devastating event has happened in the news has spread out around the world it's become clear in the past three months that the information coming from the from the nuclear plant has gotten worse can you tell us what's the situation on the ground right now the situation is improving. for example we're steadily in introducing a water to their reactors at fukushima daiichi you need one two and three and their fear is stabling could. already asian. exposure is becoming a less and less

a problem is best done under water which originated from that water we introduced into the reactors and so we are now at the find there are testing the process of introducing establishing waterproofing a system people on the ground say that they have doubts about the information that is coming from the government why do you think they. have these doubts and what is the government doing to get this information out there. the japanese government tried to. distribute. make. available or the information we've got from that call and from our monitoring systems so i think we hope that people can understand that stayed right the situation right now we have to explain in the manner in which people can easily understand the situation that's our task there's

a perception out there that the quality of information is coming from the government isn't what it needs to be what do you think this perception exists. it's very difficult to understand for ordinary people how. dangerous those numbers are we think that except for places and very close to the nuclear power plants because she made a huge you. know big risk for the. ordinary people so we should make them understand that point now we were in fukushima just a bit ago and there are some spots that we measured personally where the radiation levels are one thousand times the safely recommended dose there are mothers who are concerned that their children go by these hot spots where you have to say to these mothers our government especially mystery of. education is in charge of monitoring all of us out of japan and they and they

publish that they obtained throughout japan and. they asked nuclear safety commission to evaluate their that so and you could see if the commission is publicizing their comments every day i think the problem for. is that it's difficult to understand how safe or how dangerous those numbers are and it's basically it is said that. radiation those is more dangerous for children and that's the point that we should . make people understand that more currently the accepted level is twenty micro sieverts. which those standards were actually raised to twenty micro sieverts from one micro sievert do you think it's responsible to actually change the standards so

that. they are now considered to be safe we do not say that. twenty meters see that it is safe but. it's. a pretty standard in this type of emergency situation scientists say there needs to be more cooperation with outside agencies and outside governments would you say to these critics they don't know that fact actually. from the time of their accident we have been consulted with. the united states france and russia and other countries in terms of technical support. equipment and machine ready to support and we closely exchanged information regarding the status of plants and possible measures to take japan a country which has faced

a two nuclear tragedies with your shimon nagasaki there are many critics out there who say that it's irresponsible for a country that has experienced such tragedy with the nuclear field to be building nuclear plants. in an area that may be unstable seismically known to have earthquakes what's your response to this so far. we have a. forty years of more than forty years of history of safe usage of. that to make energy. and this was caused by the unprecedented a tsunami. very high it's not a nobody and it's an expected that that size of a tsunami so you can bring us that you failed but this was foreseen by anybody or of what they wanted of course we are responsible for this accent but it should be grossly and reviewed whether we

should we could have taken any other measures to prevent this and as of right now can you imagine a future japan without nuclear energy moving away from atomic energy altogether and right now no we depend thirty percent of. the souls. on you could energy so we have to use nuclear energy in the near future at least.

fellows are to moscow our top stories at half past midnight here in the russian capital nato admits it launched the airstrike that killed nine civilians in a tripoli suburb while british taxpayers wary of reckless spending and handed the bill now over three months of bloody stalemate. international atomic energy agency is expected to slam japan for for handling of the fukushima crisis and nuclear safety forums opened in vienna aimed at improving safety regulations and trying to prevent a repeat of the japanese crisis. and you're of finance ministers perspiring a decision on a fresh bailout for greece they say more study needed in the country already shaken by violent protests against rent is to be saved. next we'll bring you the story of

an emotional crusade an eighty nine year old u.s. world war two veteran outraged by what he believes is the indifference of his country towards the memory of fallen soldiers. in the fall of one thousand nine hundred eighty three america began a major campaign against the japanese differences in the central pacific. over thirty five thousand u.s. marines and naval forces were assembled for an invasion. on nov twentieth america launched an infinity of says salt against one of the most heavily fortified japanese islands in the world. tyrone. on board a higgins landing craft ensign leon cooper who was responsible for the lives of

hundreds of men. for the thousands of marines riding to the shores that morning no one could imagine the ferocity of the battle to come or the death and destruction that would soon face. in february of two thousand and eight leon cooper a navy veteran of the tower of babel and a film crew left los angeles on a journey that took sixty five years. who might. be at the for. a while doing research for my recent book the war in the pacific of retrospective i happened across and they associated press a report.