thousands of demonstrators frustrated with egypt's interim government have filled in cairo's tahrir square and other cities across the country. and officials didn't have begun here on top of me or protesters thank they won't leak will be egypt they began fighting for finally because it's a reality join me anything now away from cairo for the latest. is willcox attempts at dozens of protesting activists to reach gaza dozens are detained symbolized by the majority of the delegation did not even make it to tel aviv i'll bring you more in just a few moments. to one zero live plus the final blastoff the last of the launch of atlantis blogs the end of the u.s. space shuttle program and the end of an era.

a very good morning from moscow for me kevin i mean you're watching r t it's just after midnight here now and i'll top story thousands of people are protesting in egypt's tahrir square all day and into the night now the protests their anger at the interim government of the country sluggish rate of reform demonstrators want to keep up the pressure for change on the country's interim military rulers and see former regime officials brought to trial and this is now a in cairo reports. when i was coming here to talk to you are mistaking how well organized today really was basically civilians are doing the security checks they're directing traffic and taking care of everything themselves we've been hearing rumors that they caught a couple of they call them fog people who come here to sort of provoke violence make it look like they're coming to really stage on rasff here in the egyptian capital and they're catching these so-called frogs and tying them up in fact i

haven't seen that with my own eyes and a lot of people are talking about that i just want to step out of the shot and give you a vision of a look at what's happening more and more people are coming to town fear as night falls here in cairo and as i was saying i was impressed with the organizing of the protesters really it seems like what they want is to have a peaceful protest but as we were coming to speak to you here we're doing our our live shot from the only really international wide t.v. station that is that is that is that the target here just a parties have just allowed to work here is a turkish company when we got here none of the staff was in the hotel it was very quiet and we were told that it was very dangerous in fact i had to be here because apparently some of these thugs they're wearing sort of rounds around there has i had told them that they could really do what any live shots from here so i'm we're hearing that it was actually the government who sent these thugs to do that in fact we were supposed to speak to gather what i guess at this hour and he said that he

was just too afraid to come and speak to us on our city because of the situation that we saw as we came to the hotel here it seems like everything is ok they left the building and some of the staff is beginning to come back but that's a sign that these protesters are really ready for anything in the sense that they say they wanted to remain peaceful and the government has promised to stand away i haven't seen one police officer here today but that they're sending people in plain clothes it's really instigate violence so a lot of people on edge that something could happen overnight here on talk radio some of the protesters including the workers union is basically has. the students today so it's like with what we saw back in the winter they're going to basically live on talk where it till they get what they want and what they want is to get rid of all these so-called mini mubarak's they feel like they had the president i'll sit in a lot of high ranking officials but they want corrupt officials to be removed from the universities from the factories and all workplaces across the country they want military trials on civilians to stop they want free press and have full coverage of

what's happening here in central cairo some people will be staying here until the very end then you have the muslim brotherhood didn't take place didn't didn't come and join the revolution back in the winter but this time are taking it critics say that they're really trying to just inflate their position that if there are elections that they can gain some support it's a group that in fact is abandoned in many countries including russia it seems it seems that there's caution about any kind of links to perhaps terrorism but they are one of the groups that is protesting here are talking here but they're not spending the night they'll be coming back tomorrow but like i said a lot of these protesters are here until they feel that the egypt they've been fighting for has finally happened well with her across the story if you want more from egypt you can follow it you can follow what a listener is saying the catch up with her reports on the latest twitter updates now she's got all the details of the breaking developments from tahrir square she's got i would it's a cancer and fresh updates on those protests log on to twitter you can find this in

. the school. hundreds of propane. being blocked by israel in their attempts to reach gaza by dozens were detained for questioning in tel aviv on arrival by the majority were prevented from even reaching israeli european airports paula slee has been the go to in airports throughout the day and the latest. for the last few weeks there have been some six to eight hundred international activists who've been planning this so-called fly turner united under the banner of welcome to palestine and representing some fifteen in geos is mostly french activists who made the point from the beginning that they were intention was to bring attention to the plight of the palestinian people particularly the people of gaza they said that they were intention was peaceful the plan was to spend a week particularly in the west bank visiting palestinian families and really giving them a message of hope and encouragement from the international community but of course

the attention also needs to be on gaza which since two thousand and seven since the must came to power israel has imposed a hippy blockade and the latest word we hear from humanitarian organizations operating in gaza is that the situation is almost catastrophic we're hearing figures of as much as eighty percent of the population who do not have access to basic necessities the problem is that the israeli authorities heard about this fly tiller and already on thursday they issued the names of three hundred and forty two people that were not allowed to into this country and they gave those names to foreign airlines and warned them that if they bought those people here they would have the expense of the responsibility of sending them back to their home countries we know that two hundred people were stopped in european capitals but of the roughly a hundred who made it through to israel most of them are being questioned are being interrogated and as far as we can tell only one woman from england made it through the arrivals hall we caught up with her just before she made her way to bethlehem in the west bank netanyahu sees us as a threat he says us as

a threat to the legitimize a show of israel how can we be a threat and yet he whips up the israelis he gets directly pouring all over the airport he gets the british police the french police to stop activists coming out we never planned to demonstrate we always planned to be here and be here for this day and enjoy the the cultural activities of the palestinians. on the west bank and true with the israelis that's where these radio florida keys have been criticized for the near hysterical response to this whole operation in fact israeli media has been heavily criticizing the government saying that it's almost as if they're preparing for a military operation and not for a protest by sending some six to seven hundred police and security officers to israel's been able to deal with these demonstrators israel is also only helping these activists bring attention to their plight which is essentially to draw the world's attention to the fate of one and a half million gazans who are trapped in one of the most densely populated areas in

the world now israel is dealing a heavy hand largely because of what happened roughly this time last year which has been the first to tell it try to sell to gaza it has humanitarian aid i'm going to be you know it ended with nine turkish activists did we have seen a second freedom flotilla attempt at this stage the eight ships that are part of their fertility are stranded off the coast of greece athens has imposed a blanket ban preventing them from sailing to gaza to sit in lot of attention in the international community trying to help the people of gaza and israel being very heavy handed very worried and very militant in its response. is correspondent paula slater there well you've been telling us a lot about what you think about this story and you can let us know still on our web site r.t. dot com what you think about what's been flown dubbed the flotilla we're asking whether palestinian activists will be able to convince israel to lift the blockade on gaza online tonight this is what you've been telling us by so far close to half

of you say it would only happen if the activists arrive no one in numbers over a quarter of you there on the graph for things that israel would be healed to any pressure eighteen percent say the activists can succeed because they have truth from their side the minority here believe the blockade or going after the palestinians stop attacking israel is still time to have your say there's no what are the same boat com. while you're there google was shut down millions of internet sites after deciding their malicious and they don't meet suitable standards find out what the repercussions are for the rest of the web. and also for most online rumors about barack obama's childhood continue to swirl as an american journalist claims the president parents thought of giving him up for adoption at one stage you want to more about one got the full story at our t.v. dot com.

libyan rebels have battled their way past government forces on a key road south of tripoli they're moving towards the gadhafi held town of guardian which controls access to one of the main roads leading to the capital now is considered the most significant advance the rebels have made in the past four but they say their progress has been slowed down by lack of ammunition and adequate support from nato meantime the u.s. is continuing to fund the campaign despite the opposition of congress let's go to ted well i was a calm columnist and also use joining us from florida thanks for being on r.t. ted it is nato slow response to the rebels needs based on the political situation the delicate political situation or other factors at work what is going on if you think. it's really political need to do is essentially the arm of the united states which is currently at war with troops on the ground in two nations in the middle east. in the political feeling in the united states is that people are just not

willing to support opening a third front with boots on the ground as the expression goes here so people do not want to see him there on the left or on the right. that means that needle is in a support mode where it means a little bit of training and obviously weapons shipment and hopefully financial support but the practical effect is that it has. neither side in the libyan conflict is in a position to close the deal ted we've got a few problems actually this thing should have scuds breaking up will stay with it for a minute though begets better we witness months of nato air strikes but still no successful conclusion as you've been alluding to that the alliance though maintains has got no intention of launching a ground invasion in libya but after months of a strike where can they go. well really if they want this stalemate to move forward in a. direction you know and deep in ghazi based rebels they are going to have to send

in ground troops with the current situation politically both in the united states and with its nato allies i just don't see that happening. and the political situation does not allow for it i want to have support for colonel gadhafi there's been seventy eight days now of nato bombs raining down on his country one of the people think of him that you think. well that's hard to say i'm not going to really find out would be to report directly from those exposed parts of the country you know in countries that are subject to dictatorship people are it's always notoriously difficult to pull public opinion. and he does it too to do so from florida however my experience with bombing campaigns against afghanistan where i did report from was that bombing campaigns tend to bring people on the ground more in line. with the government even if the government is not one that was

essentially popular before hand when the fire shows up it's usually paid for by the government and so there's the people on the ground versus the people in the air. i want to just honestly oversimplify this situation i want to you breaking up a tad about it also one last question last thirty seconds we've got i want to bring in syria now to the equation we're getting reports of yet more violence on the streets there tonight is nato any closer to taking action led you think. i'm sorry i missed your last part of the question i would do well for communications our way you have total absence of more trouble on the streets there are we hearing tonight is nato any closer to going in there at all there's literally no chance whatsoever of nato or the united states being interested in opening a friend in syria let's not forget that we just learned that the united states is involved in a drone campaign in somalia. actually even states has it's been slow not even

talking about pakistan so it is a it is a very very difficult situation in syria the united states probably i think could be the feeling here would probably be. that this is who should be involved in all right ted rall columnist north are talking to us from florida thanks very much thank you. now this is final shuttle flights blasted off with up to a million spectators witnessing the historic launch it is the balls the one hundred thirty fifth mission in the thirty year history of america's space shuttle program exposed some warned of a high chance of the launch would be delayed by bad weather but in the end as you can see there the astronauts left earth with just a delay but a minute or two the clock stopped temporarily as it was counting down to thirty one seconds and then started again i thought is going to should count reports now it was also calling it a moment of course for those who devoted their lives to this program. empty shells of what was once florida's thriving space coast.

up to ten thousand people will be out of a job as soon as the last shuttle makes its final voyage back to earth home to many of the kennedy space center workers rock which is on the verge of becoming a ghost town without the space program or pretty much nothing i mean this is what you know the beach is built on the space program you know just a lot of people are going to be out of jobs sorry to be out of homes feel like welfare left and right food stamps anthony chris a fully spent twenty three years with the shuttle launch team as an engineer with a plan to splice thing off for its final mission it means the end of his career with nasa and the beginning of uncertainty a year ago he started looking for a new job to no avail i have applied for jobs and so far i haven't got any concrete responses there's not that many jobs out there for sure the u.s. scrapped its shuttle per. graham and now wants the private sector to come up with

ways to get astronauts to space and several companies are working on new vehicles but it's not clear when they'll be able to deliver them on one thing is certain though they'll be able to hire only a fraction of the skilled space industry workers will be out of work this is the first shuttle ever it never made it to space but it was put tests before the columbia shuttle first launch into space in nineteen eighty one a total of five shuttles have been used for space missions since the two of them were lost them tragic accidents a nine hundred eighty six and in two thousand and three those lawsuits and the skyrocketing price for each launch gradually led to the cancellation of the program but critics say it's hard to estimate the losses that the end of the shuttle program will bring about both for the space industry and the people involved i think it's a really bad thing for the united states to lose the skilled workforce it's going to be difficult to rebuild for years the shuttle is being the only vehicle that

could very cruel and a massive load of cargo to space officials say one of the reasons the program was scrapped is that it's safer and cheaper to send cargo and people separately something that russia for example has been doing for many years but whatever the reasons for scrapping the thirty year old program for those who devoted their lives to it is the end of their dream job is kind of sad because i've already seen a lot of my friends go in they'll be they'll be more people that probably may never see again it also means the end of a once vibrant scientific community that's grown up around the shuttle. side of the story of course or not many people talk about now for missions in space to missions in russia's northern capital next month and underexposed petersburg's museums mansions and theaters is coming right up.

hello and welcome to the program summer is the perfect time to visit russia at a long weekend here in st petersburg is a must the former capital is bursting full of history and culture so join me as we visit made the logs and take part in various fun filled activities and we start off

here at the spectacular cathedral originally the city's main church in the largest cathedral in russia it was built between eighteen eighteen and eight hundred fifty eight french born architect months around almost two centuries later the gilded dome mostly isaac still dominates the skyline of st petersburg a trip to the top provides excellent views of the city coming from the russian capital moscow out seem troubled by the fast subsumed train network the journey takes four hours and costs around three thousand five hundred rubles that's roughly one hundred twenty five dollars one way you can see here the location of the city situated to the northwest of russia in the eighteenth. it was piece of the great stream to create a window. with the canal network breathtaking architecture and passes that were built to rival who are paying counterparts this vision was well achieved. we think this is very ground. we've been to the edge.

i live in and now i'm visiting st petersburg for the second time i love it here especially the wingtip. is very beautiful misty prospect is st petersburg's made avenue as one of the best known streets in russia i suppose you could control the prospect to the streets in. the area is full of restaurants shops museums and historical sites the main point has to be this magnificent. two hundred years ago it was closed by the. museum of cool services. and today the area in front of it is one of the city's main points and tourist

spots. the church of the spilled blood is located off the main streets here. on the site. of the second was assassinated. in his memory. to show you some alternative sites explosions. we've arrived at the city's. very popular. seven hundred rubles that's roughly around twenty five. similar projects. he's visited. people who seeks emotions since they shouldn't listen really feel our guests also include those who are interested in history literature myths and legends of some petersburg. represents a legend or a myth connected to the city's most famous story literature characters all united

by one theme jack. for example legend has it actually cost died insipidus book in eighty ninety three not because of color but because he famously said his last simply was larger than his entire life hours later. he stands. in the ring shows the body of the person historical figure for species burns by conspires often used poisoned shot and drowned. the pharmacy isn't for the faint but the light hearted tourists among us i think it's the perfect skate and alternative instruments have to be subjected to hours inside the city's palaces. the welcome to the hour isn't same place back and interactive museum dedicated to the myths and legends of the city the one who wants a see through a labyrinth of that same rooms where you come up close and personal to terrifying

exhibits a witness coasting as a process is respected and peter the great. so what other alternative activities can you enjoy it said because by the ford museum of dreams located in the st petersburg institute of psychoanalysis i've been in one thousand nine hundred nine to mark the one hundred years since for its famous book the interpretations of dreams is published there are two holes exploring the psychologist's theories the so-called light school splays historical facts and figures where the guide explains freud's work while the dark cool is a collection of at first sight meaningless things the guide suggests the visitors should perceive to. splay in accordance with their own experience fancies and desires. there's a museum in the northern capital which celebrates the rich history of the world famous drink vodka display cover such a reserve history in russia starting from the eleventh century when it was

originally called red wine and explores drinking traditions and rituals. during peter the great sway in many vodka drinking traditions were established and many of them exist to these day for example they size and cheer a school should big eagle goblet which was a prototype for a ritual of penalty shots for being late to a party the amount of which one had to drink from the goblet was fixed and totalled one litter guess who relate to business balls all done badly broken large to drink . thousands of exhibits amazing broken bottles spanning centuries there are also several unusual items on display which include even vulcan for cosmonauts to drink space after you're done with exploring the items in glass cabinets invited to focus in a room which contains over two hundred very special boxes and next door to the museum there's a restaurant called russian poker room number one which offers of course traditional russian hussein. and if you have a special occasion it's

a petersburg just want to look top notch in the city where professionals will take care of your style dozens of hair stylists make artists and cosmetologists which are constantly upgrading their skills and your top schools are professionals of the industry will help you look your best. the celebrated phenomenon of the white knights is a source of much pleasure in petersburg as the cold business is it's an exciting time to visit the city it's not a little bewildered ring in regards to your personal time clock and to discuss the culture in the city with this insider let's meet this week's guests lower level to me year so. in the living here in st petersburg yes that's right. nature so we try to promote the cultural cooperation between finland and russia. very useful it seems that some petersburg is

a completely different city in the winter than it is in the summer tell me about some of the activities that you enjoy you know what. first of all people act totally differently during the summer time people russian people. love to go out into time they're just trying to get home as soon as possible so people go hang out in the pod in the restaurants terrorists if you had any visitors away any tourists coming to the city where would you recommend that they to visit they had to. pause fortress which is on the other side really beautiful especially during the summer time this really really nice. bell. ringing and take a walk around around downtown because it's amazing the architecture is amazing and beautiful you know what if the weather is bad because you know one that can be a rainy day can be sunny it's a bit temperamental little bit like it was you recommend. some inside activity you

know there's this amazing traditional old russian vodka room called. going to. have a glass of water which costs twenty roubles as far as i remember going to happen if you're not into drinking. i think that the museums the record rolls the well there's a whole range of different. churches and cathedrals all of that. sort of. you want to. immerse yourself with historical sites still considered russia's cultural capital st petersburg reflects the country's extraordinary state of the city there are various ways to see the city by speedboat rollerblading bicycles you can hire them privately or take part in group guided tours either way you can see

all the major sites such as the peaceful way here and for those who crave adrenaline filled activities there are a few other suggestions too like this next form of transport. welcome to the world of the furious these. excursions around the city. and. there are many people who dream of riding a bike. popular destination for tourists so we decided to combine these two facts and to show our city to those who fancy riding a bike from your perspective. can give you a tour and not only tell you about the main most popular landmarks but also provide an unusual tour showing some hidden gems of st petersburg which you won't find in a guide book.