below to the a movie this is the case we go to the grand imperial truly the george west coast coromandel you can tell the closeness you see don't need to go and. read this in the kennel was her job as a treat. today's top stories in the review of the week from t.v. some of the task of recovery rescuers are preparing to lift the russian cruiser from the bottom of the volga river where it sank in a matter of minutes last sunday claiming around one hundred thirty nine. relatives and investigators are looking for answers as to why the ship sunk so fast we'll bring you all the details from the recovery site just among. the scandal claims another sculptor britain's top cop quits is the focus of the fury of the phone hacking scandal switches to the police that's after former news international c.e.o. rebecca brooks is a rested earlier in the day. banking on change libyan rebels

now have full diplomatic recognition from washington and with it access to colonel gadhafi is assets frozen in the u.s. . intercontinental cash crunch shows america faces up to the possibility of default europe's debt crisis contagion piles more pressure on the year. you're watching the weekly on r.t. with the main headlines of the past week and the latest developments it's being described as the biggest disaster in russia's modern history in the space of just three minutes a pleasure cruise a with two hundred eight people on board went down in the volga river taking over half of its passengers with barely hundred thirty people were killed many of them children a week later the operation to raise the ship from the bottom is on the way. as tom

barton reports the bulgaria is still under the water at the moment behind me you can probably see the tops of two enormous cranes that have been brought up from further downstream and they're attached to them or is it an enormous cable that goes down and is threaded underneath the ship and that cable is going to be used first of all at the moment divers and the crane teams are in the process of trying to write to the vulgare it was leaned on its left side and then once they'd write it they'll be able to start to lift it up a lot of the complications that divers are facing are do to the way under speeds that the ship sank. firstly the fact that it's on its left side will mean that divers will have to go under that left side as it's righted first of all to check that the ship is structurally sound to be rich to be raised and also to try and look for some of the fifteen bodies which are still to be accounted for which still haven't been found then once they start to raise the ship divers are going to have

to first of all try and find essentially the hole that let in all the water and some of the ship once they have found that builds want to seal that hole and all the other gaps on the ship so that once it's partially raised they'll be able to pump out the water from the ship making it light enough to raise it more easily a very complex operation visibility in the water is very poor for the divers there's a lot of algae in the water at this time and so it's proving to be a drawn out process but one that is crucial for all those people waiting for answers a mountain of cuddly toys never to be played. they are the flowers and candles a testament to the children those who drowned when the pleasure boat to bulgaria sank in the poll last sunday. the most we studied together for a year she now had arguments with a new i'm sure was a very kind girl and it was always really help. it's

a ship sank in just three minutes turning a summer afternoon on the river into a scene of horror didn't people who were basically buried alive and giant metal coffin we managed to get out through the windows i was there with my ten year old daughter i couldn't rescue her she swallowed too much water when i was pulled out i realized my child was gone in the chaos to escape many other families were also torn apart one five year old boy lost his mother and grandmother and was only kept afloat by a man who grabbed his hand another man unable to hold on to his son in the strong current oil slicks had to watch him drown and from. yuri was the d.j. for the disco on the bottom deck he only just managed to escape things i remember clearly the water was rising very quickly it was a matter of seconds i survived because we saw two in the cellar started pushing

people live through it at that moment waves on the surface and then it's all over the board was already underwater. over half the bulgaria's two hundred eight passengers and crew including the captain is wife and child never made a sound. meanwhile as the arabella another pleasure boat arrived at the scene and she was surrounded by people screaming and drowning unable to reach the banks of the vast river three kilometers away. as we approached it was hard to distinguish in the dark water people who were alive from the rubble that was floating around people were in panic when we rescued them in a state of shock some suffering from other traumas they were all covered in oil field that was leaking from the sunken ship it was a terrifying picture i have to say despite a huge search and rescue operation after the initial survivors were picked up a few hours before. the divers and cranes working in this water had been trying to recover just something of the lives lost and families destroyed in those few

terrible minutes but they've also been working on the question of cost so much why did the bulgaria sink and sink so fast. as the list of bodies recovered from the ship grew so did the number of revelations about an ageing dangerous and badly managed vessel eyewitnesses people connected with the ship came forward with damning accounts of its poor condition and the stingy management forced it to keep sailing. i became captain of the vessel in two thousand and seven ship hadn't even been renovated for a while before that there were big problems with the engines and power generators repeatedly mention that to the management and even had an argument with them port authorities say they were lied to the ship was only supposed to carry one hundred forty people but was loaded with over two hundred they were told it was carrying twenty more tales of bound including a broken engine electricity generators failing so that no s.o.s.

signal or tunnel instructions could be issued and blocked emergency exits criminal cases have been opened and arrests been made to the bulgaria sinking and more controversially into why two ships which we've seen before. all the arabella didn't pick up a single person reports the crew members instead took her pictures on their mobile phones. and you hold the passengers were shocked there were about seventeen people on a raft and many have cuts and then hereis that were bleeding we yelled for help i saw the boats passes by any different direction towards. the slow process of raising the ball carrier has now started up with it will come the potential for instance but also terrible memories in particular associated with the ship's place where a group of children were gathered when the ship sunk. just some of the young victims

in what will go down as one of russia's worst and most avoidable shipping disasters on bottom forty. the captain of a ship who helped rescue seventy seven people from the sinking gary has been described the horrific disaster scene in an interview with r.t. and you can see that in full in about twenty minutes from now or you can find it right now on our web site at alatri dot com there we have all the latest reports of the intense search and recovery operation since the tragedy happened and you can keep up to date there and by the way water online you can check out our you tube channel for all of you dio solved the selvage mission. is. the.

london's police commissioner has resigned as britain's newspaper phone hacking scandal escalates still further from his revelations he hired a former news of the world generous as a media adviser at the same time as his force was supposed to be investigating the paper's conduct just hours before that the whole news of the world executive rebecca brooks was arrested amid claims of hacking and bribing police media analyst phil reese told me earlier that the practice of police being paid for information by the media is not likely to disappear anytime soon this is a good exam. you know what the police have been doing in a kind of murdoch years they've been using a recipe in leaking they've been paid for telling people where the celebrities have been arrested so actually manipulating the rest of people is actually a practice that has become in trying now in my view as a result of the kind of bribery thing so this would hardly be out of practice but i

don't think it's going to deflect opinion i mean there are so many m.p.'s now and indeed so much of the british establishment which for so long kowtow to murdoch is now prepared to get to the bottom of this and weed out those people who have been corrupted at different levels remember that four years ago right the police had these bags with i think it was a level of thousand letters about four thousand celebrities and victims of crime and all these other people and they knew they were taking part investigation and these bags were just left there i mean it's amazing it's remarkable that it took four years for them to do anything about this meanwhile senior police officers were wining and dining with members of the and ok empire they were making them for drinks privately one even hired them at a thousand pounds a day to work for him so you know what does this tell us about the relationship between the police and the news corp employees well it's very very serious and if this can happen at the top of the police look at the example that gives to officers

down down the lines now you could well you know can any organization properly examine itself so much is at stake but if that operation is seen to be corrupted as well i think we've got you know an even bigger problem and i think so many people now are watching it including you know members of parliament select committees things that investigative bodies within the british political system they're all all eyes are on this let alone all the journalists who are looking at what's going on so i think that the ramifications of this is so big i mean you know britain is this is shaking it is each day it's headline news and people are asking who's next . the more rupert murdoch is trying to rescue news corp's crumbling reputation he spent the last forty eight hours apologizing for the phone hacking scandal with full page newspaper and that's while also meeting the family of a murdered teenager whose voicemail was intercepted and was there and it reports it's a watershed moment for be cozy relationship between britain's politicians and press

. good every media outlet and own t.v. radio even the scale of it is when art imitates life the long running simpsons takes a shot at it only rupert murdoch aka montgomery burns in an episode broadcast apparently coincidentally this week. but it's not the only piece of timing in the extraordinary phone hacking case it seems to get more scandalous every day the list of something like four thousand names which the police have had since about two thousand and forty thousand and five and yet they promise racy evidence of criminal activity by these individuals and boy or the murdoch empire and yet they have not acted on it so why now just as the murdoch deal to take control of satellite t.v. giant piece guy be looked sure to go ahead he supports rival the guardian newspaper

releases catastrophic allegations of a moral journalists and their shady practices that when the deal collapses the times for example which currently loses money could have transferred some of the profits from. into investing in the times and if you are for example the guardian or the daily telegraph we would welcome that it's not just the rival newspapers who stand to gain from murdoch's empire crumbling the b.b.c. could retake t.v. territory lost to b. sky b. and the labor party which was were. by years of relentless attacks by murdoch papers can finally take revenge where will all this lead. you know. that would suit the government just fine the british press is famous for

its sharp teeth and no holds barred talk at most particularly where its own government is concerned prime minister david cameron has all but shut down the press complaints commission and already talks of statutory controls to govern print journalists back in springfield mr burns is as the townspeople open up their own newspaper and he's almost right. is it is possible and truly the media business of rupert murdoch. murdoch sounds as did mr burns that you just can't buy all the newspapers those outside his control have been gunning for him think it is and this time they may have succeeded just as he looks set to consolidate control over a lot section of the case media markets the drugs being pulled out from under him and it's all over the hidden scandal now reveals that the police have known about

it for years nor at its artsy. still ahead this hour the dangers of a debt default we examine why the u.s. is on the brink of a financial nightmare and what it might do to try to avoid it. and also still to come. yes red square a four wheeled frenzy of high speed formula one super car screech through the center of moscow. but first a senior advisor to the afghan president hamid karzai and a member of parliament have been killed during a suicide attack in the capital kabul. incident comes less than a recall for causes half brother was assassinated the taliban claimed responsibility for the killing describing it as one of its biggest achievements in a decade meanwhile the us led coalition started handing over control of some of afghanistan's territories to local security forces but journalist gerry van dyke he's been held hostage by the tenet and says the u.s. led efforts in the region was seriously undermined by the death of consonance

brother. while the karzai it was not just the governor or the shadow governor of kandahar he was the most powerful and the most popular person throughout all of southern afghanistan this shows that right now with the canadian troops pulling out and with the u.s. trying to tell focus on eastern afghanistan feeling that they have controlled the south there is now a vacuum who is in power who can the west rely upon what the taliban have claimed responsibility for this but it's not clear that the taliban are responsible it could very easily be a power struggle i've also heard in others have reported that he was responsible for perhaps starting to bring the taliban together with the united states to negotiate therefore someone would have had a definite reason perhaps pakistan perhaps the taliban to stop this we don't know yet who is responsible because they killed the person who had all the information.

and i was generous jere van dyke commenting on the killing of the afghan president's half brother. and he ran out of nato airstrikes rattled the suburbs of the libyan capital tripoli as colonel gadhafi fell never to leave his country in the face of assaults by the alliance and the rebels this comes after the opposition became the legitimate authority in the country in the eyes of more nations the u.s. and more than thirty other states recognize them at a diplomatic meeting on friday saying they would deal with them until an interim government is in place recognition by contact group on libya also gives the rebels access to billions of dollars of daphne's frozen assets in u.s. banks political commentator ted rall says the move is a radical shift from the international stamp. united states usually doesn't extend diplomatic recognition to a regime that is not in the capital that is in our it doesn't even seem likely to be able to achieve power anytime soon that you can look at the situation in

afghanistan during the one nine hundred ninety six to two thousand and one civil conflict there between the taliban and the northern alliance the northern alliance were the former regime that had power in kabul and the interior diplomatic relations with the west even though the taleban controlled ninety five percent of the country it's always just wishful thinking and frankly if i were a diplomat i would find it disturbing it's a bizarre situation if the u.s. knows who these people are they're not seeing and certainly there's no doubt that traditionally there's always been a very high component of jihadi around because the so it's unrealistic to assume that that is not still the case the u.s. is going to be easing up it of shipping skids full of hundred dollar bills to third world countries and expecting them to end up in the right hands and really going to happen. the high level recognition of the rebels may bolster their spirit but it's a different story in combat fierce fighting for

a key eastern oil town has ended with heavy casualties among the opposition as daniel bushell reports it's thought france is now trying the talking tactic with the libyan regime after failing to deliver a knockout blow to get happy. hawks is like bragging will destroy their reply lives they're often wrong it gets a mills the surprise i. french foreign minister should pay both did france would with libya in quotes days or weeks the wars in soft fourth month the final round inside nicolas sarkozy with his western allies seek short little opponents fighting back well it's not just an embarrassment for sarkozy from embarrassment for all nato and the whole west paris even admits all the libya's rebels but on some somalia went to libya for training within the last two or three years. documented we have the fly records and everything else so

it seems strange and many ways the whole western support of some of the rebel groups in libya must be questioned because in some cases of it we are effectively arming al-qaeda. it's all making a mockery of the u.n. vote on foreign intervention you have a country. none of. this. witnesses they too will be go of libya's causing widespread atrocities for every one military person that was supposedly a casualty there were ten civilians frauds categorically ruled out the same day grilled troops but exposed predict is the only way you know it's a great libyan. the moves the splitting the nato coalition silvio berlusconi head of keep italy admits invading libya was

a mistake brochure of the un's votes will be bombs would bring havoc in libya which paisley abilities told through child support so they could live rock loyally diplomats meet for a plea deal with elections just annoying months away so go it was this said a successful war could bryza wrecked his chances instead one paper writes libya's becoming a slow motion call crash for france's deeply unpopular president sarkozy's a jogging fan's excessive sweating is understandable this is libyan spring is turning into a mouse and a new bush will see paris. russia's foreign minister was in the u.s. capital this week to get clarification on washington's missile defense agenda and iraq are a steaming ahead with deploying its anti missile shield in europe despite objections from moscow u.s. claims the project is aimed at protecting the continent from any potential attack

from iran or north korea but russia feels the system could compromise its own nuclear arsenal it suggested a joint missile defense program but that's been brushed aside by washington and nato the u.s. is also refusing to provide legally binding guarantees that system is not aimed against russia so you love to stress to voice of russia radio in washington of the need to prevent a new arms race facts on the ground being created on the basis of a miracle national design of missile defense which was not accepted by us as a reasonable way to respond to what is received as being the purpose of the system we want at this particular moment to stick to the original agreement that there would be no parts of the system which would. compromise which would. create risks for the strategic stability and for the but then short in the strategic stability area in the midst of the egypt arsenals of the participants of

the system. now let's have a quick look at some other stories from around the world at this stage of the world update in egypt's former president hosni mubarak has suffered a stroke and is in a coma or according to his lawyers doctors were reportedly working to bring the eighty three year old proposed leader to consciousness but health officials and state t.v. have denied the information saying barrett's condition is stable it comes out of the country's prime minister reshuffled his cabinet in response to renewed public protests demanding political reform. but it's when i'm president hugo chavez is back in cuba for all kinds of treatments including chemotherapy and more diligent cells have been found off he had surgery to remove a tumor from his pelvis region he's transferred some powers to his military during his absence but didn't agree to opposition calls for a temporary handover of all presidential authority his battle with cancer has raised doubts over his fitness to leave the country but officially he still plans to run for reelection next year the time is running out for american politicians to

agree on the next move in sorting out its soaring debt the deadline to lift the nation's fourteen point three trillion dollar debt ceiling is looming ever closer as nor make a struggle to find a compromise present bomber's urging democrats and republicans to ignore their differences to avert armageddon leading credit rating agencies say there is a risk the u.s. could fail to resolve the deadlock quickly or effectively and even if the budget is approved fund managers say it's unlikely to solve the problem of america's debt. you know how to states already has been downgraded in the world markets every i'm not the only person who knows if united states is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world look at the value of the u.s. dollar is down fairly significantly over the past few years they have to increase it ceiling for the moment there's no question about that their choice though for the future is they've got to take an axe you know they've got to take a chainsaw to government spending and do something about it they're not going to do that they might announce they're going to do it for this to get the budget ceiling

passed but it's not going to have any effect everybody sees that washington is not going to solve this problem and more and more people are looking for something to replace the u.s. dollar. things are a little better in europe with this really now the focus of stopping the eurozone heading into oblivion runs approved a tough seventy billion euro cuts package to avoid the need for a plane up it's the euro zone's third largest economy and could prove too big for its neighbors to say meanwhile eight out of ninety european banks failed stress tests to see if they could survive another financial crisis but. not all believes the latest developments prove the single currency is simply not working. this was always about politics it was not about economics the idea that you could have economies in the mediterranean in line with economies like germany fast growing economies like germany was never going to where the only way to get out of this mess is for those countries to go back home to their national policies devalue

growth moving. into exports going in at the moment they can't use their debt because they couldn't see the controlled by frankfurt they control by the european central bank they're not controlled by athens or listen or even thought we see the people out on the streets in athens i just wonder how long it will be before the people out in the streets in rome run in lisbon and this thing is contagious this thing will move right across the continent specifically in the mediterranean and the big issue now facing the european union is italy italy is the third largest economy in the eurozone largest economy in the world i think eurozone can actually cope with greece and portugal the smaller economy goes the whole thing could cave in because if italy goes into these economy is intertwined with spain's spain and italy go then we are in serious trouble. several moscow streets were impossible on sunday often in not because of beating the tourist traffic jams they were sealed

off to temporarily become the realm of the fast and the furious and high octane performance formula one drivers in some serious rub up against the amazing backdrop of the kremlin boards. of all the annual moscow city racing show featuring famous f.m. stars in the oneness of world championships as a taste of things to come for russian f one fans of the country will get its own run prix in three years from now. but i'll recap today's and this week's main stories for in just a few moments so don't go away stay with us live here in moscow this is the weekly on r.t. . forty

two thousand americans die each year for accidents will be a thousand. seven hundred thousand people. and thirty two thousand were killed themselves cancer in all its forms kills five hundred sixty thousand of us here part is easy even more devastating to kills over eight hundred seventy thousand americans every hear. me. three couldn't take three months for charges free the

maintenance free. free. free. old free blank can plug in video for your media projects and free media oh don carty talked to tom. morning's today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are the day. some.