starting to quit. global news twenty four seven this is r.t. live from moscow i'm a rule research showing tensions between iran and at the west are soaring ever higher with fresh calls on terror and to stop all nuclear enrichment they've come after an urgent a un security council session was called by france in response to reports of a new at some of the facility in the islamic state meanwhile u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton has dubbed terror on his recent threat to close off the vital oil trade route as a provocation the u.k. has also reportedly sent its best equipped a warship to the persian gulf saying it's ready to send more if iran does move to block the strait of hormuz. nature can now looks at the latest in a deepening dispute. the cold run of tension between iran and the west is

simmering. it seems the slightest increase of heat could make it boil over into an all out confrontation. but where will be that boiling point the point of no return we're getting closer and closer to war with iran the iranians are playing with fire problems in a crisis if you get where any small thing can really set it off and it doesn't quell washington that the international nuclear watchdog these arm side closely monitoring iran's nuclear activities are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon no but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability and that's what concerns us and our red line to iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon iran's main source of livelihood is oil export is in danger the u.s. is imposing fresh sanctions that will dramatically complicate transactions through he ran central bank iran is also close to losing europe as

a customer the reason that this is happening is that this is the logical conclusion of our current strategy against iran we have sanctions in place with no diplomacy the only way that that and is to confrontation cornered by crippling sanctions iran's threat to block the strait of hormuz a vital oil artery through which a sixth of the world's oil is shipped the u.s. replied by moving its fifth fleet to the region and saying if iran goes for it they will attack experts say the policy of isolating iran may lead to other threats from tehran and the possibility that one day they will go through with their threats but washington signals that it's ready or it wants everybody to believe that it's ready could weigh if we had to without using nuclear weapons ourselves take out their their nuclear capability well i certainly want them to believe that that's the case well is that i absolutely want them to believe that the secretary would you add anything to that some believe. it's just

a war of words and neither side will go for an all out conflict considering what it is that aster it will be for the whole region frankly speaking this tension is artificial it doesn't have to happen it doesn't need to exist the iranians would do themselves an enormous favor by saying less. and we would do ourselves a favor by ignoring most of it all of this sadly i think is connected to israel and the israeli fear of iran for rhetorical reasons more than military ones it may be a war of words but actions are already showing thousands of u.s. troops are being deployed to israel an american citizen has been sentenced to death in the rand convicted of espionage iran might feel cornered and therefore make drastic moves right now it's in a war of words but one bullet shot and the powder keg can blow up the question is what's going to provide that deadly spark i'm going to check our reporting from

washington our team. meantime iran is blaming america and israel for the assassination of a nuclear scientist and terror on on wednesday further destabilizing the delicate situation columnist and a veteran of war correspondent eric margolis believe tehran is willing to retaliate but it's being cautious as it doesn't want to spark a worldwide conflict. it's either israel did the killing murder and the united states certainly didn't condemn israel for doing it and gave its assets through a major financial supporter of israel i'm surprised that in fact these attacks have not invited bringing in retaliation against suspects it in syria and international crime violence in international law and see issue has not been raised that the u.n. security council which it should be retaliation could be directed against this really or american scientific personality. i

think. just very anxious to get revenge but they're being cautious now because it seems not so far away in the gulf american forces massing and there are a growing threats war against. and here at r.t. we always like to know what you think of the stories we cover including this one on our website r.t. dot com we're asking what you think will come next in the standoff between iran and the west and this is how the opinions are lining up right now from our web site here at the stands almost a half of the votes say the u.s. will attempt to provoke iran into an all out war just under a third think washington will simply strike and worry about the consequences later the rest are fairly evenly split eleven percent say iran will try to scare off its adversaries by claiming it has nuclear capability just ten percent believe tehran will forge an alliance against the u.s.

with countries in south america to log on to r.t. dot com now to cast your vote. now with the iranian standoff gaining momentum its bitter rival israel is coming in for some stinging criticism at home had on the program here on our t.v. we report on the wave of anger over planned new laws which people there say threaten their freedom of speech and human rights. worldwide protests mark guantanamo bay's tenth anniversary with activists and human rights agencies are condemning president obama's broken vow to shut it down. yet another scandal has engulfed u.s. forces in afghanistan this time in the form of a you tube video which appears to show american marines urinating on the corpses of afghan fighters the video went viral in just hours causing outrage on revulsion among viewers the u.s. department of defense has promised to investigate. the lobby and group the pac

nationalists for and believes incidents like these will only endangered the lives of u.s. troops. let's not forget that the americans came to understand with the explicit objective also off transforming this country into a more humane country into a democracy and what we're seeing happening right now with the appearance of this kind of a video is the opposite and it is having an impact let's not forget that this is a region where religious values are really very deep deeply entrenched and the way you treat bodies and the way you treated dead it is something that is treated very secretly here and with this video you can you can rest assured that this will have an impact in terms of the kind of reaction the kind of backlash to this will generate this video will generate against the very the. the american soldiers who are there right now in a modest and it really in danger is their life so what it is fair to say that with

this video surfacing the lives of american soldiers in afghanistan have become more let's say in a more precarious situation than they were before this video. and speaking to us a bit earlier here and m.t.s. ghoul the head of the center for research and security studies said that he believes that such incidents as these are only joy of afghans are straight into the hands of the taliban this i think reflects a very very alarming aspect of conflicts wars where the united states and other forces have been involved in starting from of college down then going back to iraq and their detention of a number of other qaeda and taliban detainees at guantanamo bay it suggests that there is not enough regard or the fundamental law is not enough respect for even for the dead bodies that. that these people have basically it's ume that all of mercenaries the americans are not in the habit of offering an apology look what

happened in pakistan in the border area when twenty four soldiers were fired upon and killed in cold blood so coming back to what has happened in afghanistan or what happened there before dieted abu ghraib by the blackwater mercenaries i don't think there is any apology would be forthcoming if i think if something comes out that is just an expression of regret such videos such scenes or incidents do play into the . operations that taliban and other militants are conducting this obviously falls in sync with what the taliban are trying to tell the world as well as their own people that here you are dealing with foreign occupation forces forces which have little regard for the human rights for the locals and even for the dead bodies and i think a lot of damage control would be required. he watching our to the world's most controversial person has just turned ten years old the anniversary of kuantan him

obey was met with protests around the world with fresh calls on obama to keep his election promise and shut it down but today that's a fading fantasy after washington enacted a new law now allowing the military to indefinitely detain anyone that it deems hostile slower smith investigates one zero zero one. i don't know i am absolutely today is probably just another day for the inmates of one town i'm ok they may not even know that people around the world are campaigning for them but as far afield as london demonstrations are held to demands the release of the hundred seventy one men still held without trial in the cuban camp after ten years one of those men. who's earned the dubious distinction of being the last british resident held in guantanamo he was in afghanistan or nine eleven he says doing charity work

digging wells and building a girls' school in couple. when the u.s. invasion began almost went into hiding from an increasingly wary northern alliance but his freedom didn't last shuckers supporters maintain he was sold for a bounty went into the hands of the northern alliance who were warlords basically and they actually thought oh the americans my goodness it will save me from the torture that he's had lots of torture by them but no he was transported to time and there he has remains despite president obama's original election pledge to close guantanamo altogether despite being cleared for release and despite being a legal permanent resident in the u.k. with family. which includes one son he's never even seen and fought for a movie. being closer to being freed shuckers supporters see worrying developments in the u.s. is attitude to extra d.

to detention obama recently signed the national defense authorization act which places domestic terror investigations into the hands of the military and extends a ban on transferring prisoners out of there i'm very sorry indeed president obama for reasons of a. lack of political will or he would say complete inability to deliver those norms. lived up to that promise and indeed is now bracing to book american citizens to trials in military commissions which are very far from being fair trials we. the british government has requested the release of but there's been no movement on the case since two thousand and seven meanwhile as his family grows up without him he lives out his life in a tiny windowless not knowing whether he can ever expect to be released laura smith r.t. london and a more news on that story online there are two dot com let's have

a quick look now and see what else is available at our web site or right now for example a crying shame north korean authorities have reportedly begun to punish citizens who didn't display enough sadness so the death of former leader kim jong il. that we examine the claims of the first reason to be considered up to no good by british police has become that of skin color. in about ten minutes time is the business news but for now a foreign journalist is being killed in syria for the first time since the turn of regime uprising began. a french reporter and eight more civilians died when shells struck a pro-government rally in the central city of homs but the country's government and

the opposition were quick to blame each other for being behind the attack meanwhile one of the arab league monitors in syria has abandoned the observer mission claiming it was unable to achieve its goals another monitor has threatened to follow suit within twenty four hours despite a growing tensions president assad is still backed by a large number of syrians during a pro-government rally seen here he was once again accusing foreign powers of sponsoring the unrest and online journalist james corporate says the syrian leader may actually have a point. it's important to understand that when he speaks of this conspiracy that he's going to strike down and these foreign terrorists who are invading his country that this is in fact not something that's open to debate it was actually revealed in documents that were leaked from the u.s. state department last april that prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the u.s. state department has pumped in at least six million dollars secretly and covertly into syrian opposition groups since two thousand and six the arab league mission

there is is pretty much pre-ordained no matter what the mission itself comes out with if there is even one dissenting voice the one dissenting voice will be given all of the media attention so it's a question of which way the powers that be have decided this is going to go and unfortunately it looks like it's going to stack up in the in favor of military intervention once again that was the view of james colbert an independent news journalist up based in japan. meantime professor of international relations on markham and says that even those opposing assad still prefer him to the idea of a foreign intervention and the risk of more bloodshed. the problem for president assad is that the main centers of resistance to him are based around the borders and that also however is a sign of the limitations on the support for an armed insurrection against him that it really depends upon getting money weapons and even perhaps personnel across the border from lebanon turkey and to some extent from truth so we have

a kind of standoff president assad has a lot of support the armed opposition has support we don't really know what ordinary people feel but i think one of the themes of president assad is trying to do is to say do you want to see libyan style civil war and chaos or would you or to see this or that happened in iraq a few years ago and that's quite a powerful argument for people not necessary to be diehard supporters and certainly not to want to see themselves die in a brutal civil conflict that could spiral out of control. and we have explored this issue in more depth with a professor of middle eastern politics that of professor jeremy salt he believes the death toll figures in the conflict may have been exaggerated and that they're not all the fault of the regime you can watch that full interview next hour here on our t.v. but for now a quick preview of. the human rights council report four thousand but there was no explanation of that where they go now

a few days later. who's the u.n. human rights commissioner he threw up the security council and said five thousand. well and if we get echoes around the world and i think it lodges in the popular imagination it's five thousand people being killed by the syrian government security forces by an order whatever whereas in fact i don't think it's any doubt at all that a large number of military of civilians have been killed by armed gangs about it but by this so what we actually need to do is to aggregate these figures. now or nearly twenty minutes past the hour here in moscow the chorus of critics is growing in israel against the so-called boycott law it punishes anyone who speaks out against the country's settlement construction in the west bank she went right activists have turned israel's supreme court to overturn the legislation but as

artie's paula reports there's a whole raft of other controversial bills that might not be to their liking either . gershon baskin is a wanted man in israel for his outspoken views against the government's policy of serial meant expansion it's not monic because if it wasn't for this left wing israeli activist it's dark for israel would have security of recent prisoner swap that's the israeli soldier gilad shalit exchanged for palestinian prisoners after five years in captivity. and says it was his contacts within her must that allowed the two sides to reach an agreement but now a controversial so-called boycott law threatens to find. if he steps out of line he appealed to the public is an arab appeal. there is a competition of who is more strongly advocating a position which is a very arab what the law says is that any israeli could face legal action just for speaking out in favor of boycotting says woman is the first steps to fascism are

quiet so. i i hope that the supreme court gives us a loud screaming. telling us that fascism shouldn't pass but for now the supreme court is keeping quiet the state attorney again this month asked for more time to consider the arguments angering gabion who team who filed a petition to another law the morning after it was passed in parliament until the court rules otherwise israeli owners of companies based in the settlements can seek damages for boycotts called against the goods but i don't i don't accept any boycott. by the. right not boycott the boycott law is one of several controversial pieces of legislation being advanced by the netanyahu government a number of similarly criticized bills are currently under discussion in the israeli parliament another bill aims to dramatically limit foreign funding of nongovernmental groups critical of israel it's expected to receive cabinet approval

soon this is a very conservative right wing coalition they have a solid majority in parliament but still they sort of promote these bills which which are preceded not only by the left but by the previous by the courts. is not encouraging democracy ok or sort of limiting free speech in israel many here think it's a way for the right wing coalition government of prime minister netanyahu to stay in power but for people like gershon baskin he says he'll continue to call for a boycott of the settlements and far from since when him the law has only strengthened his resolve to stop israel's growing onslaught on democracy policy r.t. tel aviv. right before we get to the business with daniel let's check our b.r.t. world update for you some other brief international headlines a mudslide i know severe flooding caused by two days of heavy downpours of killed at least twenty nine people in southeast brazil almost

a dozen messing with thirty thousand residents forced to flee their homes more than thirteen hundred people died or went missing last year because of floods. in the same mountainous region. a south korean a fishing vessel has burst into flames in the southern ocean in the antarctica claiming three lives thirty seven crewmen were rescued including seven who were severely burned in the fire which is about it in the living quarters the boat which is still said to be burning has to be towed away from the from antarctica to minimize the impact on the environment. well have a look at some amazing pictures here on our sea of adrenaline junkies storming the russian railways one did evel climb the roof of the country's fastest train just before his departure to some petersburg from one of moscow's main railway stations by this right here is the hair raising footage that he had killed as he defied subzero temperatures and speeds of up to three hundred kilometers an hour at

a video has proved a huge hit online ok let's get to the business now with that. welcome to business despite the financial challenges of twenty eleven russia's become the third force this growing economy in the world of the china and india the latest economic data revealed by prime minister vladimir putin should four point two percent added to the country's g.d.p. last year meanwhile industrial production rose four point seven percent the fourth best result in the world at this point major global economy is suffering budget deficits in twenty eleven finish the year with a surplus. the threat of oil supply disruptions continue to trouble investors as japan the second largest consumer of iranian crude but new sanctions against the islamic republic saudi arabia says it has an oil pipeline it could stand in for a portion of the missing supplies but energy strategy. believe that in the worst

case scenario alternative energy routes will not help to plug the gap completely. if the straits of wrong moves were to close and again we don't believe this will happen alternative routes of getting middle eastern oil to market need to be examined saudi arabia already has a pipeline that cuts across the arab peninsula to the red sea which is not being used at the moment that could take two million barrels a day or so of production you eat about to start a pipeline that will circumvent the straits of hormuz again that's right about one point five billion barrels a day so taken together that's still a small proportion of the oil that would be lost if the straits for moose were to be closed. let's have a look at the markets now oil first britain's got over one hundred fourteen barrel up from two week lows early in the week it's triggered by concerns that an oil worker workers' strike in nigeria and threats of more sanctions against iran's nuclear program will hamper world supplies of crude markets in the u.s.

open the lower this government report indicated that sales that u.s. . increase point one percent in december which box early expectations of a much stronger holiday season performance both the dow and the nasdaq losing a third of one percent. stock markets have shot up in italy and spain however after boring course fill in debt auctions today in a sign that those countries may be getting to grips with the euro dates was. three percent of london and frankfurt are also higher this hour. markets are closed flat continuing a pretty lousy week for the r.t.s. and most exposed indices are suffering contagion from world economic fears this have a look at some of the share moves on the minus six today energy majors a mixed gazprom is down after announcing plans to spend five point seven billion dollars on the sort she went through lympics in twenty fourteen will never take is flat preliminary results just felt say it's natural gas production grew forty one

percent last year but carmaker after birth has accelerated for a second day some recent reports the renault nissan alliance plans to increase its share in the russian carmaker to fifty percent in the first quarter of this year. and the russian market. thirty nine percent in twenty eleven. european businesses says they reached over two and a half million vehicles that's much higher than forecast still haven't managed to get back to pre-crisis levels expects the market to grow at a much slower pace this year and reach two point eight million cars. the worst case scenario is very much linked to what may happen with the global economy the impact of that may have on russia. because clearly russia won't be immune from that i think the would be upside is very much around the continued opportunity within russia in terms of a low level of car ownership in a relatively low number of vehicles on the road provided we see a stable economic situation good availability of finance which is very important

both for for retail customers but also for businesses and also for retail. those who want to invest in universities then we have the potential to see upside from the g one dates but two point eight feels the the right level and finally the russian cinema industry has got a present for the new year locally produced movies outperformed foreign ones at the box office over the nationwide winter break the magazine because bulleted says russian films generated forty seven million dollars or fifty four percent of the total box office surprise given that the total share of local movies for the whole of twenty eleven was around thirteen percent in the russian market so grossing film was still a foreign one that's sherlock holmes game of shadows. that's the business for now to join us for more next hour.

wealthy british style. that's not on the tirelessly. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report. if they shoot something inappropriate for public they can easily be

sean jackson took as his walk ok. i wish he would have never happened but it has have. been a war a t.v. camera becomes an unnecessary what does their own safety all foreign nationals including journalists and inspectors should leave around. and it's clear what happens with such witnesses i got on my site. one. many objects to. a. merciless shooting on our.

if you are just joining us a very warm welcome to you this is our to you live from moscow your headlines now a storm brewing over iran as the west accuses it of provocation i mean suspicion it's developing nuclear weapons this well it's iran blames the u.s. and israel for the assassination of a fourth scientist in two years. violence in syria claims the life of a foreign journalist for the first time since the unrest began as the arab league vows to continue its observer mission despite one monitor.