the u.n. forges ahead in its efforts to mediate peace in syria with russia backing the push for a diplomatic solution. but the syrian opposition admits it's been on the front of woad while some continue to cause for military intervention. gunmen attack an afghan government delegation visiting the site where sixteen civilians were killed by a rampaging u.s. soldier leaving one dead and three injured live analysis on this story a little later on r.t. . as the e.u. approves the second bailout to greece to stave off bankruptcy we report on how the nonstop flow of regulations from brussels is forcing firms out of business for the

eurozone crisis rages on. shares in the world's largest element in producer roussel plummets free point four percent as the company's chairman a victim of acts of bird resigns from his post moralism twenty minutes time in business. international news and comment live from moscow with twenty four hours a day as the international community remains at loggerheads over a solution to syria russia is bolstering its push for peace and moscow wants a cease fire without preconditions and is indorsing the joint un arab league peace effort led by kofi annan meanwhile damascus is going ahead with more democratic reforms with parliamentary elections now join may pull a slip. we continue to hear reports of spiraling violence with new reports of

dozens of people being killed on both sides we're hearing from the leaders of the syrian opposition saying that they have been promised weapons from abroad but they are still calling for a political and diplomatic solution the russian foreign minister sergei lavrov has expressed his concern that these weapons could end up in the hands of al-qaeda is also said that cause one qatar for some kind of military intervention and so far all attempts to reach some kind of cease fire have proven to amount to nothing on monday yesterday the united nations security council met and there moscow expressed grave concern and said that it was of act most important that a cease fire is reached immediately and now the former head of the united nations coffee anon was in syria over this weekend where he did meet with the syrian president bashar assad to try and map out some kind of agreement and we've heard from the man that he has reportedly put forward concrete proposals on the table at

the same time the russian foreign minister sergei lavrov has urged and that this proposal lead to something he has court for the bloodshed to end immediately but he has said that he needs to be a pragmatic approach let's take a listen the people who are fighting in syria against the government. among them you have this free syrian army there are reports that some groups of like. and they do have arms in their hands so. if the past is to say that acid is responsible for everything therefore he was just like a prestigious maybe it's something which catches the eye of the people who watch t.v. but if. this if your ego is not a boat or rating such public opinion but is a boat stopping the bloodshed then we must be a bit more pragmatic there is largely a media blackout in syria which means it's very difficult to know what's happening

there a difficult to confirm sources we've been following up on the porch with the whole office with three members of the they wus authors of al jazeera who have resigned over what they say is unfair biased and propaganda live reporting particularly over events in syria and this is just one example that shows just how big and how difficult to manage this information war is how dizzying setting within music and. fitting the news agenda will be set by it's a channel once held it is a mouthpiece of freedom and change its past becoming an instrument of political pressure and propaganda that's been ongoing since last april when you know of two thousand and eleven their senior people from the know the head of the bureau and. many other people because of the biased coverage and and out right into the government and dictating editorial policy over libya and now syria. when he quit

a year ago the head of the bureau said the channel had abandoned professional and objective reporting claiming it has become an operation room for incitement and mobilization and it is you have to believe that al-jazeera and other channels were not balanced in dealing with the events all are responsible for instance with respect to the events in syria in bahrain we started to invite guests from america who only criticize the regime in syria and support the regime in bahrain and persons who justify nato intervention this is unacceptable. set up fifteen years ago al-jazeera is owned by the state of qatar its english language spinoff and launched in november two thousand and six three english channel when it was said was always intended to be a much softer version of the arabic trammell of the channel likely was largely set out to the please. share show there very clearly there were

a few critical program stumpage who are just zero but it seems now both are working in tandem to channel is seen as widely influential in the middle east watched by some sixty million people it's been boid by the recent arab uprisings that critics claim it's increasingly become a tool of khatami and western policies and. it's very disturbing to hear al-jazeera is now becoming this regional player for foreign policy in a way that some would argue really say the b.b.c. and others have been for decades where does her because cover the story of syria is completely one sided. a chargeback top i'm not al-jazeera staff a complaint by e-mail that his bosses refused to publish pictures of armed fighters clashing with a syrian army the former i'll just see where they would correspondent to channel often ignored a bit from random on the new constitution in syria as for libya leaked reports

suggest that some of the channels coverage and set up some tripoli were fake. last year the channel was miraculously granted access to the american media market after initially been banned in the united states word is that american officials saw how influential al-jazeera was in covering the arab spring but it's raised a number of our brows and given weight to those critics who say the channel's changed its tune digging the question whether al-jazeera is once we've aleutian every voice has been drowned out by and louder noise the agenda of its sponsors r.t. contacted al-jazeera as head office but the channel was unavailable for comment policy or r.t. tell of. houses or across an alley. in his resignation a week ago and r.t. caught up with him for his view on the row over coverage on syria. but there is no independent media anybody who is agenda is paying the money for the media out there you can see what's going on on the television in the bedroom and. i think it's also

the government through n sync the thwarts because some people are fueling this war are paying the money are giving money given on it's not only you know those who are being brought by both all of those who are being you know. sort of like that but. this is just the crux and it's a proxy used by it's the end of the. right for the government by maybe the west to i brought with you in this war. in afghanistan one person has died and three others have been hurt when an afghan government again came under attack while traveling to the villages where u.s. soldiers shot dead sixteen civilians on sunday u.s. is apologized for the incident and the unnamed thirty eight year old staff sergeant is under arrest being held at an undisclosed location shooting it's a very strained relations between afghans and foreign forces with the american

rallies reflecting widespread fieri meanwhile u.s. president barack obama is to hold talks on afghanistan with the british prime minister david cameron focusing on the timetable for pulling out alliance troops result he's got to check on reports the patience of the afghan people they will be running out. on. sixteen innocent afghan villagers slaughtered in cold blood nine of them children u.s. officials are going out of their way to present the american surgeon who apparently committed the massacre as just one bad apple that's not who we are as a country and it does not represent. our military this is not who we are in no way does he represent. the ethics and morality of the american serviceman and service woman and i think afghans understand that but afghans don't seem to be buying that at all. the rage and humiliation felt by afghan people appear to be way beyond what apologies can make up for they've heard

them all before in the last few months all too often and each one very similar to the next just weeks ago the white house apologized for the burning of the copies of the koran by u.s. troops an incident that triggered a surge of violence this was a deeply unfortunate incident that does not reflect the great respect our military has for the religious practices of the afghan people and weeks before that in january apologies again over footage showing u.s. marines urinating on dead afghans but these actions do not represent the values of the vast majority of coalition forces. nations on ripley contrary to what u.s. officials say some analysts believe that those incidents are symptomatic of how the military operation in afghanistan works it is increasingly the case that this is looking like. a brutal occupation which is killing a large number of afghans were afghans film selves humiliated insulted and

incidents like this will be regarded as symbolic of exactly what is wrong with the american occupation it is an absolutely cynical operation to say that they can't take it in afghanistan for another free how many more people will die how many more instances like this the only solution to this is to bring the troops out a month for these for these governments just opens of a name in countries where they have absolutely no rights when the vote with copious apologies handed out by the administration don't seem even to appease war critics back home let alone the afghan people what about the whole idea of in aiding a country in occupying a country. disturbing their country creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and suffering this it ever get to a point where apologizing about the qur'an is rather minor and some of the other problems that we have i have created the taliban has about it will take revenge and analysts expect

a fresh surge of violence children shot in the head women slaughtered it's incidents like the latest soldier's rampage in afghanistan that extremists of all kinds used to it new people to their ranks those new recruits go out to kill not even the most heartfelt apologies don't change the minds of people dead set on revenge it becomes a vicious circle that we need even more danger spreading far beyond the borders of afghanistan i'm going to shift our reporting from washington marking. where we'd like you to find out would like to find out from you what you think about the situation there in afghanistan go to a website. to participate in our latest poll and some a quick look and see the numbers now on the screen well so far thirty nine percent of you say the surge of tensions in afghanistan will make the human cost of war even higher over a third believe it will bring afghanistan back into taliban hands the view that increased tension will force an early u.s. troop withdrawal comes with fifteen percent you can see that one in last place with

just eleven percent of that stupid in the college the u.s. to stay several more years to go along to cast your vote. good to hear from you while you're on our web site check out the stories we've got for you there at the moment including. our evolved as presidential race seems a losing heat so it shows his support for living as gasoline prices rise also on the website at the moment cheese or rather choose golf no photos allowed as the authorities in st petersburg banned the use of cameras and video equipment in the cities metro system was. i on our team dot com. well back to those events in afghanistan now and joining me live from detroit is

patrick not and he's a member of the editorial board of the world socialist web site i've just been reading an article on your website you've just written and you compare the latest killings of afghan civilians to the notorious my line massacre in vietnam one of those two incidents very different a single soldier acting alone this weekend in afghanistan compared to a platoon acting under orders. to massacre of a five hundred people. there are superficial differences but they both express the both the. hostility that was building our between the invading force and the local population and they expressed the growing demoralization of the troops themselves after all to carry out orders. orders that were carried out nearly forty four years ago.

one has to be a bit mad what about in general of the afghan compound campaign as a whole that can be compared with vietnam. i think so our i mean the the. the major thing which is in common is that they are the expression of. the development of american militarism and particularly of the militarism of a society in deep crisis i was struck overnight by one of the comments by a an american general in afghanistan who said who told the press well this is like the school shootings in ohio or in colorado some offense just can't be explained at all well when you have a society where college students go on to a campus assassinate thirty people is as one young man did virginia tech

or were workers and in factories regularly. you know with some frequency attack their supervisors and even their coworkers and were similar events take place within the military forces themselves dealing with a very profound disturbance within the nature of the society itself in some ways i'm not sure washington woodruff in washington would agree with those comparisons in some ways in the way that it's apologize for the actions of a rogue soldier saying he simply doesn't represent the military and of course you see the response of demonstrations and revenge action taken by taliban militants what more do you think can the u.s. and nato do to repair the damage that has been done. well they can't do anything to repair the damage that's been done the only thing that they can do in our view is to get out of afghanistan as quickly as possible and stop the killing which is now going on for more than a little more than ten years this is the longest war that the united states has

ever been engaged in and yet david cameron barack obama meeting today to discuss afghanistan have said that. they're very happy with progress on the war there why do you think they see it that way i don't think they do i think it's just the public relations snow job they are compelled to resent the fact is that as i understand it the british public is overwhelmingly opposed the war certainly the american public is. a large majority opposed to the continuation of the war and once the troops the people at home do you think it doesn't find any expression in the official two party and political system. the u.s. and its nato allies would point to the democracy they brought to the afghan people as evidence of the success in their mission whatever the country's problems now is it not better off than it was before the invasion. well the.

the so-called democracy has been bought and paid for with billions in american aid it's a raid system. there is no relationship to one any any thinking person would call them our prosy you've had in as i noted in the in the column in the last couple of weeks reports about the past of billions of dollars and a reports that the afghan air force is being used to transport drugs and illegal weapons are all of the. phenomenon that we saw in vietnam that signified the terminal decay and inner rot of the regime are being reproduced in afghanistan and whatever the exact military outcome might mean and one can't predict that exactly. the though the least likely

outcome is the establishment of a democratic afghanistan under the tutelage of the united states let me quickly ask you and finally you see the u.s. campaign office in afghanistan as a disaster do you think america will be more clashes in the future after its experience there does this explain perhaps the u.s. backseat role in the libya campaign and indeed the reluctance as you have in the pentagon talk process today to intervene in syria. no i think in in fact if anything in the afghan campaign and the failure of the afghan campaign at least insofar as the professed goal of nation building. encourages them to engage more recklessly in other types of military intervention using bombs . missiles special groups of assassins like the british as they are sort of

the american. seal team six or special forces these are what they're going to be using is what they used in libya what they're using now in yemen and will very likely use in syria live from detroit martin member of the editorial board of the world socialist web site we really appreciate thoughts thank you. walter the fitch ratings agency has upgraded greece from restricted default to be after the country carried out the biggest debt write off in history with its private creditors it follows e.u. approval for the one hundred thirty billion euro pick up for greece eighty it from going bust but u.k. independence party european parliament member paul nottle is told me that he thinks that southern european countries would be better to set sail alone. police in serious trouble i mean you just gotta look at the amount of people who are out on the streets demonstrating at the moment suicide rates are up to what minimum wage has been caught there's rush homelessness in that country at the moment all the

european union is doing and going down the slide it's encouraging the cradle of civilization to head towards revolution because that's what will happen if we continue with these austerity measures there's only one hand so nothing comes out of the all altogether back onto the track. the value sets its own exchange rate other combatants of level get this exports moving the idea that greece spain portugal and all of these mediterranean countries could exist within the same euros old used a country like germany was completely facile from the start and reset it we predicted this it was impossible out of her way so the only way that this thing can move on is for probably the north or country for form their own euros all over the country to fall out altogether to go back home for their own currencies. in crisis that spain the euro dream is fast becoming a nightmare is madrid says it can't meet all stary targets set by the e.u. there's been huge protests against cuts new labor laws which opponents say will make it easier for workers to be fired in a country where unemployment rates are among europe's highest but

a financial crisis isn't stopping more new regulations and red tape from brussels badly hitting some businesses as our correspondent cilia reports. there is much ado about the spread of creatures. and jan first of this year the european commission's welfare of laying hens directive that the use of battery cages like this and now requires at least seven hundred fifty square centimeters of cage per head. and. they look amount of investment to make they will say no thank you i will not work just on my life. so that's. when still could completely. be taken over by the bigger ones and then welcome scenario and already crisis hit a new countries but michelle is one of the lucky ones he shelled out more than

three million euros to build the new cages house i thought. it was not so i was. knocked on my space thinking round them or see. that it's. actually i think. they also now have to be trained to lay eggs in a special nest which isn't exactly easy to build cases in love with her. really bringing it up north. but the issues extend beyond these cages manufacturers in france for example have called for urgent help after several farms were forced to stop egg production for failing to comply with the rules and that drove prices up by as much as seventy five percent in just four months in belgium union say prices of more than tripled since january

a level not seen since the two thousand and three avian flu outbreak and while there's all the ruckus about having to follow new rules in fact farms and thirteen countries including belgium and france still haven't complied a e.u. commission has launched infringement procedures against the states which could go all the way to the european court of justice if needed but the fact that we have taken the procedure is a clear sign of the commission remark by bell on in the meantime these cheaper illegal eggs could still make their way on to the market much to the dismay of more ability and member states in our country they spend four hundred million pounds of road money gets you there yep sure. systems legal and of course they've been very very worried when they look across the english channel and they see people with each fifty million bird stood in the in the group back to cage with live with regis prospect of them coming up that is what british producers are so obsessed with it that it pays to disobey the law. a law that has ruffled a more than

a few feathers in the industry but at least some can go about their business slightly happier. this or cilia artsy brussels. for the business update let's check out some world news and briefly this hour israel and palestinian militants agree to a cease fire after four days of deadly clashes the deal was mediated but it gyptian intelligence offices separate negotiations with each side at least twenty five palestinians have been killed in thirty five israelis wounded in airstrikes and militant rocket attacks since friday the violence was triggered by the israeli assassination of a palestinian resistance leader. american drone attack has killed six suspected militants in pakistan near the afghan border the pakistani army has been trying to clear the region of militancy still have bases in the area american drone strikes aimed at local terrorist began in two thousand and eight out of killed many civilians to some of that criticizes the remote controlled air attacks publicly but

the government is believed to have supported the covert cia run program. a ferry sinking is left at least thirty one dead in southern bangladesh the boat capsized after colliding with a small. making the river dozens of people to safety but police say more bodies could be trapped inside the vessel. accidents in the region a common with schools killed in a similar conditions every year. that's promises time to check out what's going on in the world of business dimitri is there keeping an eye on all the latest for a set of retreat the world's largest element in mind it has lost its chairman. has resigned as chairman of the world's largest as you said miner and he says it's because of the differences between him and the management terms of how to run the company which has led to quote a crisis situation now rousselin it says the victim backs about for

a long time more than a year has not been. he has not been respecting his obligations as a chairman and so they were essentially looking for a replacement already on the site other potential reasons for this accord and that's the management of the nickel twenty five percent stake that they have and also about the country of the companies dividend policy. analysts say that the impact on the company's management will be short term. of the situation has come about because of the disagreements escalating between mr. we don't believe that result is in a crisis situation. so it is very manageable for position and it was a market so there is no crisis situation there but you believe. finally. this will put some pressure on the share price or

a longer term depending on who is elected the new chairman of the board who could be positive for the sure will. also you have the market reaction to this news overall the day was positive in russia with the r.t.s. and my six caning but if we look at the share price of roussel you'll see that it was the outsider of the day down three point four percent if you can take a look at those figures while love financial stocks for example like burbank were gaining one and a half percent so really a bad reaction taking from from the investors secular to what's going on in the united states and it's all positive with the psychological marks of thirteen thousand and three thousand british for the dow and the nasdaq respectively on a good retail sales report in europe also everything's looking positive as ministers improve second bailout ways for greece and also fitch rating agency has already upgraded greece's rating to the miners from a potential default and now let's take a look at commodity prices they are up despite several opec ministers saying that

oil prices are already up the high end of the price range and when it comes to currencies the euro is losing versus the dollar on that retail sales of course while the ruble strengthened against post cards. all right more news on our web site of the dot com forward slash business and i'll be back in two hours time with an update to join if you can.