syria's the first steps to a democratic reform ridiculed by the us as washington stops just shy of labeling assad a war criminal while allegedly pumping weapons into the water. raging against austerity synchronous nationwide protests are expected in spain and greece as government policies leave economies and public patience at a collapsing point. charged over the murder of russian journalist anna politkovskaya says the killing a may have been orchestrated in london by a fugitive russian businessman and i suspected terrorist. and

in business the european central bank has a lot to do almost five hundred feet. into the bank and i have all the details join me in about twenty five minutes type of business me. a very warm welcome to you from all of us here at r.t. moscow i'm sure i'm not satisfied and still intent on seeing out u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton has now compared assad to a war criminal but stopped short of directly making the accusation her latest rhetoric to downplay the new course of reform adopted by syria to democratize the political process and give the opposition a voice and washington is adamant even pending a new resolution that would place all responsibility for the entire crisis on assad

giving the rebels free rein. now reports from washington. secretary of state hillary clinton says syria's president bashar assad fits the definition of a war criminal she was testifying at a senate hearing on tuesday take a listen based on definitions of war criminal and crimes against humanity there would be an argument to be made that he would fit into that category but she stopped short of saying the international community should bring up charges against president assad pointing out that such a step often makes it difficult for a leader to step down it's very much obvious that the goal in washington with regards to syria is regime change although the administration claims they are seeking a political solution the policies that they pursue basically undermine all efforts on the part of the syrian government to actually reach that political solution washington discarded the results of the recent referendum in syria where the majority of syrians voted yes to a new constitution

a constitution that would end the ruling parties fifty year monopoly and pave the way for free elections but the signal from washington to the armed opposition groups was to carry on fighting and to undermine the results of that landmark referendum which could bring about that very political solution that everyone says they want for syria he's gone a chicken and reporting one of the campaign to see assad out however isn't stopping it just threats resolutions of free syrian army general now says his militia group has been supplied with french and american weapons including missiles that's not it's more of an oceanographer it's from syria it's only adding to fears that outside interference is fueling the bloodshed. but the borders doors and windows to a state despite international isolation syria's borders have remained opened and easy to pass through and that may have played a crucial role in the militarization of the country's conflict almost immediately

after the crisis began here last march they were reports of weapons being smuggled through to arm president al assad's opponents one thousand dollars for a truck full of weapons capable of delivering wholesale destruction and that's how march al qaeda will pay to smugglers usually iraqi or lebanese drivers according to ziad ismail chief of the customs service on the border with lebanon. these people bring weapons here to destroy our nation to try to kill syrian people and the syrian territory to arm our enemies. syria has more than two thousand kilometers of front year with five states israel iraq jordan turkey and lebanon the syrian cities where the most violent clashes have taken place homes and there are all over the in an hour of the border is a fact that some believe has determined their fate or destiny is this is one of

three tech points on the three hundred fifty kilometer syrian lebanese border in the last year as we've been told here there were only three attempts to smuggle weapons across the offices confiscated thousands of bullets dozens of guns and hundreds of kilograms i have little metal pieces like this one used to make worlds but the source is main concern and made little points like this one but parts of the border where there isn't any security at all but here look at this in the middle of nowhere there is nothing only one road across the road right now and at the same time are crossing the border and i'm already in lebanon. and further south you see remains extremely vulnerable the city of daraa the cradle of the syrian. uprising it all started here and it continues to play a role in the country's crisis where the water was jordan just several kilometers away from here and numerous reports suggesting that foreign weapons and troops going to is only flow through it that are has become one of the weakest points in

the country's security. the city has become the scene of fierce and bloody clashes at least twice in the conflicts twelve month history the authorities have claimed that many of the so-called free syrian army have in fact come from across the border. that they appear shoot and kill and then they disappear immediately they arrive from abroad but they are not from jordan they use this country's border many of them are from africa. we are showing their weapons allegedly seized in military operations now. in the army we don't have weapons from israel and america sniper guns and night vision binoculars advanced developed weapons we don't have it in syria this what we confiscated is killing innocent people and kill even more. while the international community condemns the el assad regime and supports its opponents many believe all sides in the conflict should be held responsible for violence

across syria and with so many foreign russians involved it's clear that the crisis thresh is far beyond these borders reef an ocean r.t. reporting from syria. we're coming to you live from moscow and still to come on the program that of comparing conflicts with. what they now call homes the capital of the revolution just as they once called the loser the capital of terror as fighting continues in the syrian city of homs we take a look at the u.s. media's approach to iraq's crisis in for lou just ten years ago about the american soldiers fighting with the government and against militant forces. it's a day of mass protests across the e.u. as people railed against austerity cuts and economic hardships which they say are not their fault well i mean time in the czech capital prague are thousands of students protested against planned education reforms which would give businesses

and politicians and president in power over curriculums crush demonstrations are also brewing across greece as the government seeks to implement the drastic course measures that came with the latest e.u. bailout the demonstrations that will be synchronous with those in spain where people are angry at their own draconian cuts and bleak prospects our correspondents are both in athens and madrid. you can see this iconic building behind me it's not become an icon for particularly good reasons but in that for a full parliament behind me and in the streets around that have been so full of ferment a day of protests today not a surprise a lot of people across the country in public sector unions there are doctors out on the street at the moment and there's also a lot of words a lot of alarmist words very financial words that didn't used to mean a lot that are suddenly taking on very serious meanings indeed one of them the d.

word default and today a later on today a meeting of the international swaps and derivatives association which sounds boring could turn out to be very important indeed it may decide that the greek government is not capable of paying out and that essentially means that technically greece will have defaulted which is exactly the kind of financial disaster the government has been trying to avoid all this time yesterday the greek government force through very painful cuts to the minimum wage of thirty two percent cut if you wrote under twenty five and half of greeks under twenty five are unemployed if you can see a recipe for unrest there it's harder to find a better one after two years of austerity after all of these painful cuts the message here is please this is enough tom thanks for that sara over to you but there's also a lot of austerity anger in spain what's happening where you are today well this

morning the students were out on the streets in their thousands they come here for the ministry of education to protest against spending cuts that they say have really affected education very badly there telling us that some of their car seems dangerous even have basic heating they told us about their job losses for teachers in their thousands now the protest movements marched along the street a little bit further here talking to some of the studio. and they were telling us that as well as protesting against the spending cuz they're also demonstrating in support of the students in valencia it's another spanish city where last week we saw clashes breaking out between the right place and the protesters now speaking to the people here they will tell you exactly what it's like to be a student in a country that right now has more than forty nine percent of the u.s. unemployed that sixteen to twenty four age bracket really struggling i mean it's a very bleak picture this being painted for them as the government continues to introduce these spending cuts they'll tell you that really they feel that they're

being punished for years and years of government waste and that the debt now is being dumped on them and they're being forced to pay for this with their future is really very very concerned about what the future holds for them and indeed yvonne the country you can see evidence of years of this government waste this sweeping finding out lifeless and empty welcome to want to spain so-called ghost towns these are supposed to be life in your apartment blocks in the town a sustained year when the crisis started. the real estate bubble phased out and of course companies started going back dropped and the whole of the whole economy blew up these apartments are now in by the banks that have resulted to selling them off a cup prices to try to entice in the buy is big billboards announce the bargains and you won't have any trouble with noisy neighbors because well there will be many

. such low prices these are going to fill up quickly and with very young people looking to buy one for our son we will be more confident we are going to. yes writing so. what made you want to buy one because it's. elsewhere in the country and there's no hiding the empty air ports the flamboyant but unnecessary building projects all that have cost the taxpayer billions but given little return. it's a legacy of government waste. the government's recently changed with the country my is an economic crisis asking people to pay back through a story to the money that was wasted by the government has caused widespread anger and brought people into the streets now hundreds of thousands. in custody it's crazy know the neighborhood that cost one hundred eighty million euros and it's empty no one is working there. the flight was back in says same year the cheap prices might be able to breathe much needed life into the area everything can be

fixed with clever marketing many people in the country now feel that the banks and the government selling off not just a nice houses but their futures as well towns like the sun you're on unique all across spain right now you see these large areas of new build homes now that hopelessly abandoned it's a sign some say that the country often described as too big to fail already had. the time to send us. and our next hour here on our tour we talked to a spanish economist about how close the euro zone's fourth largest economy is to collapse and whether its future even lies within the block and in just a few minutes here on the program with out of revenge a wave of arrests in europe and south america sees a quick response from online activists find out how you know groups struck by interpol. and the presidential candidates in russia are trying to make the final

days before the election r.t. visits to the neighboring region of the show how difficult it will be to please all of the people all of the time. nearly a quarter past the hour now here in moscow a fugitive russian tycoon and a suspected terrorist both living in the u.k. could be linked to the murder of celebrated russian journalist and the public the revelation comes from a former russian police official currently on trial and charged with masterminding the killing artie's laura smith reports on the latest twist in this case. the man who is making these allegations is a man called colonel dmitri. who is charged with organizing the killing of an appellate court hears a former senior police official he is supposed to have planned that killing the people who he say ordered it now are bodies but is of ski the the oligarch who

is living in london akhmed zakayev who is a suspected terrorist who is also living in london now russia has requested the extradition of these two people on numerous occasions. on charges of terrorism on charges of fraud now that extradition has never been granted by britain and what public school most senior police official is saying is that politkovskaya who of course was a prominent journalist and it's believed that it was just journalism that in fact in particular revelations of human rights offenses in chechnya what public jenkins is saying is that politkovskaya quarreled with. his old ski in london and that is what led to that essentially ordering. now lots of people have been arrested for having organized the killing but nobody has so far had the finger pointed at them

for ordering it so this could be a key development but certainly particularly for betty's obviously this is not the first time that his name has come up in connection with the murder of public it's come up lots of times before. laura smith reporting there war you can track the entire course of the political trial just by logging on to our web site of course r.t. dot com now let's check out what other stories are just a click away for you right now on our web site viewer of this political exodus the e.u. recalled twenty seven ambassadors from below roofs as a diplomatic fallout between the country and the union grows. and bringing destruction from above scientists warn the earth may need to protect itself against a giant comet could smash into our planet in the year two thousand and forty. the chances of all of that happening at r.t. dot com. we are coming to you live from moscow now the hacker group known

simply as anonymous claims to have brought down the international criminal police organizations website it crashed shortly after interpol announced the arrest of twenty five hackers in spain and latin america as part of the agency's operation and mosque artists are syria has more on the latest battle in an ongoing cyber war . interpol had said the twenty five a legit member of the anonymous online how king activist group or hacktivist group were taken into their custody right after their own website was attacked now right after the announcement was made their own website again failed to load an act not of us a wrote on their twitter feed not the message interpol adown so there are speculations that this is their response to these are reports of arrests and this police action is just the latest in a more in a bigger operation that intergovernmental and police operations hoping to crack down on the activities of a non of us in recent months we've seen

a certain bills so call the soap people and act are all arguing in favor of protecting intellectual property rights however this is made a lot of people and we had polarized opinion saying that passing such bills will actually infringe on their feet in my speech as well as the openness of the internet these are precise precisely the issues that anonymous claims to be fighting for but at the end of the day such arrests again will not stop their activities they repeated several times in the past that no arrests can be made on ideas. reporting they want to get first hand information on the ongoing anonymous raids on u.s. government websites just head over to see dot com one of the group's operatives spoke to us shortly after they shut down the cia and f.b.i. sites his discussions are available twenty four seventh's online at our t.'s web page.

just a few minutes away from katie in the markets but for now our russian voters have less than five days to make up their minds and decide who they want to see as the country's next president because of its powers of persuasion are not winning everybody over the spirit of a visit to neighboring regions which clearly highlight the differences between the haves and the have nots. the tale of two regions more dorthea and lie side by side all of the life there is quite different in the two thousand and eleven parliamentary elections united russia wrong to home with over ninety percent of the vote in more doria while they took less than forty percent in that is down with just a few days to go before sunday's presidential vote whoever steps into the top job will have to win over russia's regions each having their own wants and needs

evidence of redevelopment is clear to see in more davia including the building of a new stadium which will be used in the twenty eight team football world cup finals in a village near the city of surrounds a cement manufacturer is the major employer we live with during per store we were paid in coupons not money the country was in chaos we didn't get paid in currency were got coupons that we could take to the store in exchange for goods that's pretty difficult to imagine today considering how good we have it it's expected that prime minister vladimir putin can count on support from the area in his bid to become president. our life keeps changing for the better every year the elections are coming up and i'm going to vote for putin and i think most of us will the cement factory isn't only an employer the company also provides loans to help those who work there buy homes like this one however half a day's drive from one region into the next and we see

a different story. when you cross the boundary from more into resign the difference is a clear the road quality for one is far inferior on this side and alongside those road stand emptying villages and the bund and factories. so why is there such discrepancy between the two regions those living in d.c. and blame local government. we're sick of carpetbaggers here and resign we've had one governor come from a different region than another one when the new governor came into office the region had a public debt of one hundred million dollars now it's almost five hundred million many businesses are shutting down we have a lot of places here that only exist on the map the actual villages are deserted all the residents have moved out just outside the city of busy and we find another village with another cement factory. of the latino work there for

twenty eight years she tells a story of a very different life than what we saw in. this way i'm called you my dear it's very cold here we don't take off our clothes day and night even in bed life is not great but there's one thing we desperately need heating something we got a pension right but it is not enough sure. voters in the clear about what they want from their elected officials who still feel the town has been given a facelift but it's not enough there's not enough confidence either. we knew what he has his life is rough and my pension is so small i'd love to get more i'm sixty one and i still have to work at being that we need stability pensioners need a better life it's simpler for the young people but we need stability the task for whoever wins sunday's presidential election is to try and eliminate discrepancies in quality of life and bring people the stability they crave peter all of the r.t.

if you like about our top story now here on r.t. the ongoing crisis in syria are the world's media flooded with stories and images allegedly depicting the bloody results of the syrian army's assault on the city of homs but few have compared the clashes to the massacre in fallujah iraq which happened on nearly ten years ago and saw u.s. troops fighting alongside the government against the rebels we want you may find some of the images in this report disturbing. well they now call homes the capital of the revolution just as they once called the capital of tear different conflicts that share more in common than actually meets the eye now each is the third largest city and its country in each the site of a bloody urban war one of them now in history books the other still raging as we speak now in homes as in fallujah poorly armed insurgents faced off against a superior military well equipped soldiers armed with mortar snipers tanks and

airpower and in both cases officials claims that only heavy handed force could bring peace blaming the violence on criminals and terrorists here's a chief military spokesman for the u.s. forces in iraq we will hunt down the criminals we will kill them or we will capture them and we will pacify flu. and here is syrian president bashar al assad. look at our priority now is to regain security which our country has enjoyed for decades this can only be achieved by using the terrorists with an iron hand. for those who are using weapons to kill well civilians now in both countries that iron hands targeted a sunni muslim opposition in wars that took on increasingly sectarian tolan's in fallujah u.s. forces and the shia iraqi troops were seen as infidels in syria their religious wrath is aimed at assad's alawite forces according to some disparaging comments

salah white monkeys satanic troops those are just some of the many slurs now amid the violent clashes gut wrenching images like these showing the human toll of war streets littered with bodies of the wounded not to mention those of the dead but this is where the similarities end civilians did suffer most in both wars and yet the stories of pollution innocents remain largely untold most reporters in two thousand. for were embedded with the u.s. troops today the few who do sneak into syria all often stick with the rebels and the difference in the coverage as well self-evident. americans hit the military to me and others. got more out of them by actual i mean during the main hospital in block and he he proved they need help from the outside world medicine the most basic supplies witnessed acts of uncommon valor from the u.s.

soldiers and always with protesters fearless protesters really. now those who dared show images of the civilian casualties in full loser were often dismissed as propaganda their viewers even got the following advice from the pentagon. change the channel to a legitimate authoritative all honest news station the accusations from the syrian government are eerily similar. today lies in the media have gone beyond common sense television channels have launched a profession. now it is often said that perception forms reality and nowhere does this ring more true that in syria and iraq in one battle the press told the story of the besiegers in the other that of the besieged and in both cases it would seem it's the truth that suffered most. of our watch.

or straight to a lot of stuff in the markets there are three with hello to you our european banks have got some support from their big brother what kind of sums are we talking about here yeah that's right rory well the big brother you're talking about is the european central bank and it's a lot almost five hundred thirty billion euros in low interest loans into the blocks banking system is the second three year long term refinance operation by the e.c. be the first round took place late december bank's board almost four hundred ninety billion euros the extra funds are banks stronger and encourage them to loan money to businesses and consumers but the say it's not about restoring confidence in banks but rather keeping them afloat. but we're going to head over to the markets which check out the european markets as you can see there it is a mixed picture sort of mostly higher though with banks leading the gains after

that decision encouraging investors in the region let's see how russia is doing at the moment as you can see they are indeed in the black you've got the yes there and the my six adding around one percent each. experts say in the presidential election with this is in really boosting confidence to investors and drawing them in to the market that we're now going to move on i do believe and. check out those currency right as we see that the year is edging high after the offer from the e.c.b. both against the dollar and the ruble now the ruble is losing value against the greenback despite the stronger crude prices so talking of all let's see what the situation is right now as you can see they are indeed in the black ahead of the best month since october in new york and its size of an economic recovery as well as concerns the tension with iran threatening global crude so all eyes are open to

sting prices at this hour that so for me this hour i'll be back in about an hour's time to join me then i'm going to update his market because boy.