welcome back here's a recap of the main stories we're covering for you today on r t borling value are going to rolls towards europe's third largest economy as italy's debt cost rocket while strain also struggles to stay on track at its brussels that's being blamed to push him a frustrated public to vote with their feet on a major march. the u.s. most powerful body condemns syria's deepening violence he didn't rush was called to

rule out for intervention urging internal dialogue it comes as protesters in syria claim they're being quote massacred by government forces and the opposition stronghold of heart on. a failed palestinian suicide bombers are telling our team how she's using her experience to spread peace laughter being caught before blowing herself up in a crowd of israelis she says her second chance allows her to dedicate her life to tolerance on both sides. of full a news bulletin coming your way in about half an hour's time but first we investigate freshwater fears in the spotlight that's up next. hungry for the full scoop we've got it for. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news make us.

feel. for. hello again a welcome to spotlight on aussie i'm elder norman today my guest is me how you'll sleep in. the world's biggest container of freshwater lake baikal is. the first danger comes from the saloon actually polluting the cool water with a lethal dyads just the second call from energy companies who seem to be ready to hound the eco system long lake for the sake of producing several more killed just last year plus a special program to protect the lake but what has been done and as it is now

is the chair of the board of trustees out lake baikal protection found sleeping. the world's deepest leak can still boost water regional security but it may come to an end at any moment the cellulose factory spitting out waste water full of deadly chemicals straight into the lake undermining its unique ecology the russian government has set a goal to help play by call become clearly get but mani sure. here's where private investments to help one of russia's richest man cares about by call he's ready to pump in cash a development and the environment. this is live in chicago thank you for being with us today we're going to discuss a very important matter which relates not only to russians but the entire world as well. led by call is something every person on the earth admires. and it's in the

same category as the pyramids in egypt or that i felt our why did you decide to protect played by call here from siberia but your home town is very far from the lake so why. does it attract you so much. the question is very much to the point which i'm glad that you're familiar with the subject indeed the alter is quite far from a great car. in western siberia whereas lakes is in eastern siberia which reason actually goes back to my childhood when i decided to be a traveller for this purpose i studied geography at my screen versity so this is actually what you majored in i know you know i hold a degree in geography i always wanted to be an oceanographer if so why don't press create everything there is to know about jacques cousteau and all russian oceanographers but somehow i never became an oceanographer in specializing in and very little protection instead and then in the late one nine hundred ninety s.

. as you know russia was going through a difficult time so i saw this movie wall street and became a financial some of the book published today i'm a doctor of economics but with so many things to do with most of. the students so when i finally managed to put together these two things my desire to score the world in my ability to finance this work i came up with this idea to use near submersibles to explore lake because. it serves several purposes it was to him a groom he has. written and in the same time it helped raise it were innocent of the huge problems by call residents are facing. play because it has a special status and there are fifteen different agencies in charge of it because they don't have one authority they would also be apart from the president of course . that's welling because it requires special attention but you mentioned this

guy to the bottom of lake baikal thought it was a unique project and was actually worth putting in the guinness book of records by the way they actually put this in the book right. it's going to yes they have put it in the russian look records look. as good as what the guinness book to order other than being a record just for the fact of it did that by card that had any practical scientific value to this because i think we have four institutes working on this project in each his own research program in the course of three years one hundred seventy five dave took place in a serious point to a guy called wakil with the hundred seventy five yes hundred seventy five. of course in the 1980's an exploration was conducted with places submersibles and the number was was much lower. today mir is the best research deeps immersion vehicles they're equipped with state of the art equipment presented research and you can

dance to any depth and they're in a very mentally friendly which is also important for three years to submarines have explored lake baikal and spotlights. reports on these unique vessels right. in the er submersibles are quite a rare product of corporation between the jewish society and the west during the cold war they were developed in the soviet union and built in finland in menton eighty seven during the twenty four years of their existence they participated in some historic expeditions in the mid ninety's ninety's the new vessels were used by american producer james cameron to film the wreck of titanic in two thousand and seven the submersibles carried out a dangerous mission in the arctic when they went for you three hundred meters under the ice to get to some poles of soil and water russian scientists on board one of the vessels planted this flag on the seabed of the north pole the most recent big

expedition of the two subs has been too late by how three years in the room russian scientists have been diving to the bottom of one of the oldest and certainly the i just didn't deepest. freshwater bodies in the world subs searched for new fission plants and examined. icon's one. ship what is the bottom of lake baikal look like. nobody had actually seen it prior to your extradition did you make any breathtaking discoveries there. there were many discoveries and i believe more will be made later as we still haven't processed all the data we've collected. to you just one example during the first echo sounder device show the bottom of the depth of four hundred meters well we expected it is thousand six hundred thirty four meters i was puzzled but it

turned out that there was a thick layer of planked on reflecting the signal at four hundred meters and then the same things happened again the depth of one thousand meters with a call has a. has layers like a party it has a natural filter to keep it clean. because of different temperatures possibly we don't know that yet all we know is that there are thick layers of playing time and then fish feed on the plant on and so on and the cycle goes on you know and he can africa has the same georgics truck sure but fish if only in the upper layer of two hundred meters because below that level there's too just too much hydrogen sulfide lake baikal is a unique eco system because it's water has enough oxygen even at the bottom of what was you saw that these pictures show the bottom of lake baikal and there's a bottom and indeed there is in fact the rest of endemic fish that go a man who start their day this or face and go to the bottom enters into the surface in the evening eating different things along the way squid how could handle such

pressure difference somehow it can do that it should explode this fish is unique because it's ninety percent fat in the past people used to dry it in the candles of it so there's fish at all depths. and this is because in the fall when the surface cools down the upper layer becomes heavier than deeper layers and layers mix there were other discoveries as well for example we have discovered a large number of living organisms that hadn't been known so far they will probably mean nothing to you in myself but they're still discoveries. for instance what. they call the bottom so nobody had been able to collect them in the past any species a sponge that we've been unaware of. so but. i think the most outstanding discovery were guess hydrates and those seeds at the bottom of lake baikal. which are also it was interesting to

explore the geological history of the bottom structure we used to think that lake baikal had always been that way but it's not true that there used to be three separate lakes there. your explanations extract a lot of media attention including television and peace part of that is because many v.i.p.'s are involved in this work at the present mongolia prime minister putin james cameron just listen to them it was mostly an adventure. but did their participation in your project have any practical value for your work. so that it was not before one delayed by a cult protection fund organize those expeditions one of the projects or other than science was raised awareness of the problems with the lake among world leaders. so when prime minister putin joined the expedition you get firsthand experience of a bike of. some with. you so you're asking for money i

never ask anyone for money i earn money. but what about the fund then he promised to give you a billion or injected. it's different we wanted him to see how people live at lake baikal into perhaps introduce him changes to the legislation. that following his immersion some funds were allocated for research a play by karl am very happy about it but going president elect george was the first president ever to do that in the great cull. this wouldn't i was prime minister of the supreme unit yes and he was the first top level official to do that and goodness knows a lot of news to boost your i'm sure any way he can go in president's head he realised how interconnected we all are of course we are divided by national and ethnicity of borders and i say the selling gas which is the largest river that flows into a bicultural as its source in mongolia therefore the women go ahead was the sailing

effect for a guy called i have a good idea you died with the prime minister say to the depth of a thousand meters after a while he asks whether we're going back to the surface you have enough oxygen and you ask him will you give us the money yeah people ask about that if you will tell them the data is free it's going back to the surface they have to pay for says it may fail sweepin should the chairman of the board of trustees of lake baikal protection spotlight we'll be back shortly after the break so we'll continue this interview in less than a minute. the

people of the united states and their friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that's reddens the peace with weapons of mass murder his regime as an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons and let there be no doubt about we know for a fact there are limits to. this we're just being carried out in the direction of dr david kay respected scientist and former u.n. inspector was leading the weapons search in iraq we are determined to take this apart you have a tremendous a group of dedicated american men and women involved in this with the best assets of the intelligence community and for by. david cheney is not going to be done with

this for quite some time david kay wants more time and he says it could take another six to nine months to make a definitive finding ministration is asking congress for hundreds of millions more six hundred million dollars to fund a continuing search have not yet shiny pointy things that i would call a weapon before we can draw from conclusions we need to let the iraq survey group complete its work. we were all wrong probably in my judgment. and that is most disturbing. sometimes the true patriots takes the unpopular course but helps their country of origin states and even if they come this way at least they track patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels and i think these are scoundrels they have no argument now they have no defense for what they did the country is in a terrible international security situation but i think it's perilous so they're

attacking the patriotism of others. welcome back to the spotlight i love you know often just a reminder that my guest in the studio today is me how you sleep ensure the chairman of the board of trustees of the lake baikal protection found. this not even sure what we did in mississippi. we just now saw mr cameron the film director on the screen he took part in your expedition and as far as i know you have become quite close with him. when he suggested using mir submersibles and other russians in g.'s to help with the oil spill in the gulf of mexico but for some reason that

didn't work out do you know why what happened. mears are indeed the best and the most reliable source of those there for levels of protection the only problem is needed here ship for them other than that it would be easy because they can be quickly delivered anywhere in the world in roseland planes. can you see so you also need another ship yes you need a mothership so that's one reason but actually even that is not a problem i think the main reason why the idea was rejected is because of some commercial considerations and arrogance probably was reluctant to use a russian technologies anyway i think they managed to deal with the problem but this is a big lesson for the future we must be aware of their commercial considerations they have a very negative effect on our life. you just said they are very safe i think they are safe if you invite presidents and prime

ministers for pleasure writes there must be no danger involved otherwise they would have never allowed you to do that they are very safe except that when we arrived at the north pole i think the guys who died there were real heroes because getting back to the surface through an ice whole nation twenty by twenty meters from the depths of four thousand two hundred meters is technically a very difficult thing to do but they did it. wasn't so. difficult you have powerful computers and all that was the problem let me explain radio waves can propagate underwater only have a sound waves hydro caustics and those have the reach of one point five kilometers at the most. of course we had a team that traveled by helicopter in the ice and installed transponders to help the guys down there find the ice hole but still those three kilometers at the bottom when they were diving they were without a radio link. you mean it could be carried away. right they could have been carried away by the currents and would have been very difficult to

find and it's very sad to leave each of the men who had designed near said it is unlikely that somebody will be able to repeat that before the arctic ice melts away did you find any artifacts at the bottom. made by call made by call or the north pole unfortunately i didn't get to dive in the north pole even though i took part in the expedition but in lake baikal we devoted two dives to looking for artifacts and we did see some things that we saw railway cars dating back to the time of nicholas second so the bottom six hundred meters below the surface but we weren't able to lift anything to the surface don't have any mentors at home from the bottom to you there should be something you know when any. you found a fishing where he's got his. cattle but it was something i wanted to take from the bottom of lake baikal is as good as the gulf and the titanic. you know they say that the biggest threat to a guy called comes from that. back in the sixty's sergei get us to move made

a film about it yes by the way yes so this struggle started a very long time ago back in the soviet period and it's not clear who's right and who's wrong on the one hand you're a businessman so you understand the business is want on the other hand your head of the bike all protection front is it possible to reach a compromise say. is it possible to provide other jobs for a thousand people working and like i said earlier the lake has an effective fighting system to definitely be able to cope with the pollution that comes from the paper but this doesn't mean that the lake should be used to the benefit of one company there are a huge number of business opportunities we're not using just tourism and when we see still pipes we're still lignin within twenty kilometers of the mill we know that lake baikal cannot be clean so of course has to go on the problem is how to provide jobs for the people because unfortunately it's hard to find a job in eastern siberia and. it's

a matter of government policy so i came up with this crazy idea. there is this law on gambling zones. how about we turn this paper mill into another fifty. will kill two birds with one stone. first we'll shut down a plan that causes damage to the environment and second will boost tourism you call it a crazy idea but i think that the whole idea of setting up those gambling zones was crazy in the first place so in this context your idea is just following the general trend anyway this way we'll be able to shut down the paper mill in effect people. if you manage to make a scene is move out of moscow which we haven't been able to do so far that's not my job anyway i like your idea i know it's far from moscow for from big city i think it's realistic in addition i'm sure that the airports. today will immediately add new flights to asian countries which will be very helpful because the way it is now

all hubs are in moscow to get from tomsk to tokyo you have to go through moscow did you know that. tourism how do you attract tourists to by car is really a very remote place. on the other hand people from moscow do fly to resorts of the dominican republic. it's a ten hour flight to there is a government program for tourists and recreation zones currently in new tourist and recreation zone is being built near to work or best in place we used as a base for many years the infrastructure is already there next year they will start building hotels convention centers it cetera so little by little this problem of attracting tourists to buy culture is being resolved. now about logistics yes it takes five and a half hours to fly from moscow to lake baikal. so close you think you are right and then there will be tourists from southeast asia japanese companies are

already developing a route from today to learn but or with the capacity of ten thousand tourists a year i'm sure that people from southeast asia who have never seen snow would be interested in going there just see the snow into from singapore taiwan etc there are no ski resorts to call right. there are two places there is a mountain of beach here on the eastern shore and there is a slope near the paper is functioning. the only problem is there is this bad smell coming from the tape from this where we need to shut it down you say that lake baikal can cope with the pollution that comes from the paper mill. but if they buy coal really becomes a mecca for tourists will be able to cope with all the pollution that comes from tourists hotels dumping their waste into the lake while this was somehow are able to cope with all the tools coming to the geneva. recently was in geneva where by the way your new user going to die soon and i asked what do you need submersibles

for because the water is very clear and he told me that the water there is clear because of quicksilver it turns out that lake geneva is even more polluted than the mosque wherever there's almost no fish in it i'm not sure about it that's what they told me. go there and anyway the only kind of tourism that exists in the baikal area today is campaign people live in tents. when fire is in like you said literally sure so i'm sure that if we have properly organized tourism with rules and proper oversight they by car will be one of the best places in russia and all russian people will want to visit it. another problem another issue another thread to buy call our hydro power plants as far as i know there are three downs there already built they say that this is no longer able to swim up the river. and into lake baikal because of the dams they say that the war level and i call has risen by a meter does causing problems to have told you when we die we discovered three

levels of a cult separated at six hundred meters and eight hundred meters that means that by color has been changing present time since the change of the eco system and biggest problem at the moment is that hatcheries should produce to fry fisheries used to be state owned and but now they are being privatized no private business man will ever produce the fright and then release it into the river unless there is a government order that's what we should pay attention to as for the younger river i do not think the situation may have more impact than it has now. there's a government program or a decree regulation saying that level of lake baikal can only change within the range of one meter is that something that hydro power plants control. yes. and they don't like it because they can generate more profit with bigger fluctuations at all of the logging this issue do you do something about that i think any changes to lake baikal are bad for the eco system not like other business

people. you are one of your against free enterprise is that the dams were built back in the soviet times. it is the same kind of situation as with a paper mill any change to the eco system means that the amount of fish will decrease and in addition this causes problems with people living near the. so we need to achieve a compromise we need to regulate the situation was one with which. i don't get it and the water rises in such a big lake play meter or even half a meter that this means thousands of square kilometers get flooded just happen ever mostly where the water level rises because of those dams and breast dam another student depending on their season needs for power generation reduces all my think they should pay for it. and let him pay the bill if they want to change the water level in labor call something they should pay for it wanted to go but if they want

to thank you very much for being with us and just a reminder that played just on the show today was mikhail sleeping children the chairman of the board of trustees of the lake by calcutta and that self and else from all of us both life will be back with will for that comment on what's going on in and outside russia and the length of stay on r.t. and take a listen. to. mission free accreditation a free transfer charge free from a commission three. three stooges freezing and free broadcast live video for your media

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