when the fire is un mediator struggle to get warring sides in syria to negotiate london vows to keep cash flowing of the rebels in their fight against damascus. a recent shooting rampage by a french gunman in toulouse draws presidential candidates into fierce pre-election rhetoric over extremism and immigration. spain's new prime minister is set to announce a wave boss ferrety that's a day after a nationwide strike leads to violence between protesters and police cuts are aimed at saving the country tens of billions of euros.

nine am in moscow i mattress i hate to have you with us here on r t our top story despite officially supporting a u.n. appeal for a cease fire by all sides in syria the u.s. and allies are still backing the opposition unconditionally britain's promise to funnel additional aid to the rebels worth hundreds of thousands of dollars amid reports they're already getting weapons from abroad or he's laura smith reports from london. understand is expected to make a similar pledge this weekend's seventy nations summit whose express goal is to unite this opposition in syria which is hugely fragmented as we know and consists of at least four main factions and the foreign secretary here william hague says that he hopes this will help the opposition to unite as a credible force against the u.k. this represents a doubling of aid to the country they've already given seven hundred fifty thousand

dollars which was being used in areas like training for media skills and also to help the opposition to gather information on human rights abuses now it's not clear how useful that money's actually been we've been receiving a lot of conflicting information on casualties from the opposition including from here in london the syrian observatory for human rights which has been hugely inflating the number of casualties lots of conflicting figures but now this money is planning to widen the scope of the help it's destined towards buying equipment including we understand. secure phones to help the opposition to communicate secretly and effectively and there are several main points really here firstly how secure is this money how does the british government know that it's not going to buy weapons is going to be channeled into these more sort of peaceful measures and

the answer is possibly they don't secondly who is the opposition it doesn't seem that we're any further forward in determining exactly who makes up this factional opposition in syria we do know that a part of it is the free syrian army which is a hugely dangerous group known to have killed a number of people and also believes to include a number of possible islamic extremists thirdly how useful is it in diplomatic terms to support one with a view to obtaining a diplomatic solution. we know that president ourselves is very displeased by these gifts of money he's already said that countries must stop providing both money and weapons to the opposition they have to stop immediately if kofi annan six point plan for peace in syria is going to work that suggests that if countries carry on giving money he may just pull out of the talks altogether we're seeing austerity cuts we're seeing strikes and demonstrations literally almost every week here in this country and it's against that backdrop that the british government is sending

more and more money to syria to cover more and more things and who knows where this intervention on this scale is going to. really help the syrian people's to promote negotiation instead of simply supporting one side in the conflict that's if you are in force dot com analyst and editor patrick henningsen. it's unbelievable how it's got to this point where it seems ok to fund the opposition whatever form it is and let's not kid ourselves the u.s. and the u.k. have been backing guerrilla forces in syria for the last year ok and we can't erase that from the history books that has been happening that's been admitted by the u.s. state department has been admitted by the u.k. foreign office and all the sudden they're backpedaling now saying that it's all you know nice arab spring nonmilitary intervention and we're going to help the opposition it doesn't work if they want to help syria they need to engage the

syrian government in diplomatic talks on neutral ground it's quite quite clear that president assad is not going to. you know accept the kofi annan peace plan as the western countries are still giving aid to the opposition and you know has already been caught through proxy smuggling on over the border in jordan and also just problems going over the border eleven on where these coming from ok we know these are coming from these are coming from the u.s. the u.k. their allies in the region doing the party. and coming up later on cross talk with peter lavelle opinions clash over whether the u.s. should weigh in with force to solve the syrian iran. who is not the international law or the united nations to maintain equilibrium after world war two was the united states navy if you're talking about the relative peace that we've had in the world we've had relative peace because of u.s. intervention you might call it imperialism i would call it a part of the role that the united states is playing in maintaining the balance

only with the fully easily heard opened up a can of worms here lindsey you first go ahead virtually nobody in iraq will say the thing has been a success has been also failure the troops had to leave the british troops left several years ago the american troops have now left for the most also have left the country and then left a totally broken country but quite incredibly trying to do the same again both in syria as in my view even more dangerous they in the wrong and. you have to recognize that this view. of the whole of world peace has been that the americans is a holds with what millions of people around the world really think is not an accurate description of the end of the second world war. and still ahead this hour here on our t.v. fuel frenzy drivers in the u.k. russia says there was

a possible new tanker strike plots. it's really creepy to have someone holding up the machines here praising you have no idea not only to help in fact what they're actually use it with their larger purposes of using it is or how soon dishwasher starts flying on you we tracked brothers plans for the privacy of america. but first a gunman who killed seven people including three school children rather france's worst terror attacks has been there. and outside the city of toulouse this after days of debate on what to do with the body of mohamed merah frenchman with algerian roots but as well as being a figure of public hatred as fast also becoming a game changer in the country's upcoming election when he steps are sillier reports from paris. mohamed merah was killed by police after thirty two hours seizure and to lose his life may have ended that day but his story has given france's

presidential hopefuls an excuse for electioneering with ever more radical rhetoric . that's given rise to a huge political debate and what's made it to the foreground of the discourse is mary background she told me from now on anyone who regularly consults internet sites which promotes terrill hatred and violence will be sentenced to prison any person going abroad for the indoctrination in terrorist ideology will be criminally punished. so that's in addition to sarkozy's policy of stripping foreign born criminals of their citizenship further tightening border control saying there are too many foreigners in france and promising to bar radical muslim preachers from entering the country to participate in the islamic conference next month the clearly appropriate thing the political extremist view is not occurring we have freedom of speech in france and they don't see. the restricted to. what the french

citizen any family came to france a very long time ago so. obviously this kind of terrorism. from inside france of society it's not just something that is imported from and also every girl's amelie's. and you cannot. take away french nationality from a french nation or this is not allowed under the french constitution and then there's marine le pen the far right national front party candidate having long pushed a more radical anti immigration line call for the revival of the death penalty for child killers and the deportation of any foreigner who goes on a suspicious trip to places like afghanistan how many mohamed merah are the in the boats and planes that's right in france. an immigrant's mohamed merah is perhaps only the chief of the iceberg it's time to wage war in this fundamentalist political religious groups i kill and i wish ill grant and fred it was slimy

fundamentalism has been underestimated. and i think all that's been announced after these tragic events are proposals put forward solely for the election it goes to the one who proposes the most radical solutions which would aim supposedly at solving the problem but the problem is much deeper with our now the growing number of immigrants in france about six million of whom are muslims is being labeled as a problem by some prominent figures politicians are throwing around what they call solutions but the question is whether any of these policy ideas on immigration or security are realistic or addressing an actual problem or simply the consequences of something more fundamental the core of the problem is the tribute if you can do to create because what is the goal the goal of the problem there doesn't seem to be much consensus on that either does or sylvia r.t. paris there is panic at the pumps in the u.k. were threatened strikes by fuel delivery drivers has already seen stations running

dry there's even fears the army may be deployed to keep the country moving this at a time of emptying oil prices that the governments of london paris and washington have considering flooding the market with their own reserves francis said there's a good chance the u.s. and europe will agree to allow you to release oil stocks into the market to drive down costs past years the war in libya taking supplies countries belonging to the paris based international energy agency release sixty million barrels of crude into the market to cool down the price of new sanctions over iran have also been forwards in the past little political analyst peter irises the aggressive foreign policies of the us and european allies could be to blame for the crisis. what one has to understand is that the reason why the price of oil has gone through the roof is because of the ongoing conflicts we've been in a continuous war for an awful long time now decades a natural fact and this plays

a major is a major player in what is happening around the world economically speaking you know of late. and netanyahu with threatening action against iran they force this pressure on three ran in this tit for tat over the nuclear issue that is now reduced to all flow to europe basically this put the price up which i think was the intention anyway and now to try and recover the damage done by the hike in the fuel which affects all commodity prices and these austerity measures that are throughout the world it's quite obviously for the don't do something drastic and within a short period of time it's going to run up against them in the election. for more of news videos and analysis you can always put on our team dot com here's what's a click away right now. on wall street versus main street two thirds of americans of the happy with the state of the u.s. economy as they continue paying for the mistakes of financial fat cats. and

taking a hit in cyberspace the f.b.i. admits it's fighting a losing battle as it continues to be a target for hackers find out more at our genes top. of the. police in spain of clash with demonstrators during a general strike against labor reforms and further economic belt tightening this is prime minister mariano rajoy is set to announce a new set of austerity cuts for the country aimed at saving tens of billions of euros and making it easier for employees to employers to fire workers or he's jacob green says more from madrid. these are the size sounds of a protest essentially richard that well but in bits and pieces of thousands as i have put parts of a general strike record pace around space you see similar demonstrations.

taking place there but let's also hear possible are not that we sold pilots to sue but clashes between demonstrators and police buildings being slashed by protesters haplessly immaturity and around the country the effort has been against austerity measures but most of the point is being against a reform to labor law this sets the make it easier to sack it was never a job and also decrease their wages not a formal level this labor reform deprives us working men of cryptically all rights and the most outrageous thing is that it's done under false pretenses and they say that it's going to reduce unemployment but no labor reform can achieve this this will have the reverse effect and we've widen the protests we've been having for a year i guess privatization of public service like education and water we've touched on the topic of public debt when the burden of private debt is put on to

the public the reason this is causing such language is owing to some of the economic conditions that the fire is playing it has the highest unemployment office and you know that's a fair that's country at twenty three percent of the population and even of my we're seeing a lot of young people out of astri's aspirants risings things every trace of the reason behind that is all those unemployed the population under twenty five about fifty k. i don't know if it's a toss the choice of their own homicides now is really facing with the crossroads of the one side it has a year or so it has the. precinct that pressure it so he talks to that deficit and they want. more to be done in those austerity plans as you see the timing of prime minister saying this is a threat so you know thirty stay because that's how they the rest of the eurozone

as well and that's why the science primary says we take on this ignoring these thieves of protests and demonstrations stressing that the austerity bill the budget speech on friday will be very very also they now live to result in the cops amounting to thirty billion euros but on the other side helping these protesters except there should be austerity but the question is what costs what should be the ones. i was jake agrees reporting from madrid crisis strategist gonzalo lira says saving spain is a task easier said than done because it's forty percent the size of germany you cannot save a country that size you cannot bail him out like you would be allowed greece or ireland or portugal spain is a big country it is one trillion euros g.d.p. per year. that's simply too big for any country or any group of countries in the european in the euro zone to bail out france and germany cannot be allowed spain so

the only solution and i think that this is inevitable is first spain to exit the euro zone go back to the devalue and start rebuilding its economy and that i think will likely happen in the next government after hoyer who i think unfortunately is going to fail and the government after that will be a left wing government and they will probably exit the eurozone and go back to the cassette and devalue and do what has to be done because this government unfortunately they have the best of intentions and i have no doubt that they are very capable and competent but they just don't have what it takes to do what's necessary which is exit the euro. turning now to some other stories making headlines across the globe north korea has started preparations for a rocket launch scheduled for april according to satellite images taken by a private u.s. based firm photos taken thursday show the work underway to prepare for take off in the north west of the country washington says the exercise is disguised as a long range or is a disguised long range missile test kiran yang insists it's intended to send

a satellite into space for scientific purposes meanwhile the north fired two short range missiles off its west coast thursday believed to be part of a capabilities test. west african nations have issued an ultimatum to the leaders of a military coup in mali to relinquish power within seventy two hours or face sanctions the proposed measures would include shutting off land borders with the country and freezing mallees us assets last week's coup was led by soldiers unhappy with president obama due to money tories policies this uptick leaders have since unveiled a new constitution and announced elections in which an participants would be tarred from standing. in a suspected u.s. drone strike at house in northwest pakistan has killed three alleged militants the attack happened early friday in the town of miran shah an area known as a sanctuary for taliban and al qaida insurgents foreigners are believed to be among the group of those hit the strait comes at a time when pakistan is calling for an end to u.s.

drone attacks in the country. big brother could be slowly creeping into americans lives with even the cia chief joking about spying on people through their dishwashers but according to recent polls people in the u.s. aren't seen the funny side public fear of big government has soared amid expanding unchecked security measures or he's worried important i reports from new york. well ten years ago bio metrics robotic spies and state surveillance were the makings of a psych by flick starring tom cruise from the room today many scenes from the hollywood blockbuster minority report arguably a calm and a note in reality with life ominously imitating art you're walking down the street of the camera that takes a picture of you is able to compare it through facial is able to compare it to your driver's license photo or some other photo of your mug shot maybe

a surveillance photo and say all right marina was on the corner of forty second and . three o'clock last saturday in addition to facial recognition new york city's police department is just one of many law enforcement agencies that also require citizens to undergo an iris scan before being released from police custody. in the past six months iris scans have been taken from hundreds of occupy wall street activists placed under arrest like christina gonzales they really don't tell you why they just say it's another form of identification and it's really creepy to have someone holding up the machine to your phrase that you have no idea not only the health of frags but what there are so we use it with their larger purpose of using it is for iris scans are like a high tech fingerprint but much faster officials can quickly identify anyone who's unique scan is on the database the technology is becoming increasingly useful as

a tracking tool in the u.s. in the virtual world of tweets. facebook posts and search engines every internet user is defined by a data footprint if you think anonymous comments and blogs are protected think again through the use of what's called forensic linguistics. u.s. investigators can now uncover whose fingers are behind every single keystroke to follow have a good in a large enough sample of your writing and your post card control you can compare it i couldn't even put it into a database. database. using that information finding every other post you over to the digital data trail of every american will soon be connected to a massive building in utah a two billion dollar data center is reportedly being constructed for the us

national security agency the complex will allegedly be able to collect analyze and store all forms of personal communication including online purchases cell calls google searches and yes private messages but they're actually looking at de encrypting all of the data that comes out so for example when you use g. mail your all your e-mails are encrypted by default google has given you this service and has allowed you to say my communications are protected now the n.s.a. center is designed around building systems that will d. encrypt that data and remove any protection that you can put onto it earlier this month cia director david petraeus painted a picture of america's dystopian freefall when describing the emergence of the internet of things that freezer for an increasing amount of personal information washington will eventually be able to obtain once all electronics are wired to a network u.s.

intelligence officials estimate that by twenty twenty up to one hundred billion ordinary devices such as refrigerators and dishwashers could be wired up to the internet just the way p.c.'s and cell phones are now that bottomless pit of data could allow big brother to monitor virtually anything it wants even the cia director says. very idea of secrecy will change forever. our key new york. which i got all the latest in the world of business with marina and mobile phone companies using using billions of dollars more about that yes that's right matt if i can hear a cell phone right behind me someone left it on but basically cell phone companies are losing a staggering fifty eight of billion dollars a year worldwide and they say that that's due to believe there are as well as fraud according to the latest report that came out in africa and the middle east that accounts for fifty percent of revenue in europe it's one percent in north america

and point eight percent but when you consider the fact that last year the industry made one hundred twenty billion dollars last doesn't sound rather big in comparison all right let's take a look at some ensor national markets now also with asia which is the only one trading right now and as you can see it's a sea of red with making a losing one third of a percent of the hang over a half percent and basically investors have reactance a number of negative data in japan we have a new report which showed that it does through output and bradbury fell on the expectedly and that was the to lower overseas the bad for electronic goods as well as cars and with the auction decreased to one point superset of compared to january and the home color had different information information of type investors there and that's basically real a stock shares a drop suddenly and that was after the arrest of two prominence real estate

property brokers and they were really in their brothers that were arrested on suspicion of bribery all right let's move on to oil now which is raising its losses after suffering the biggest decline in a week and there we had lain on the price was basically that u.s. stocks are on the rise in the western countries who are discussing the possibility of putting their strategic world reserves on. the markets are moving on to currencies the euro is slightly lower against the us dollar and that's ahead of a meeting of you finance ministers and they will be discussing whether to increase the euro zone emergency intervention phone when it comes to the ruble it's losing against both major currencies but we'll have a better picture on that when the russian markets open which is in just under an hour's time now but what you soon right now is the closing picture on a thursday and what we see there is just it was a sea of red as well with the r.t.s. news and over it super sad and the markets have failed to reverse their long losing

streak there was so it's not some optimism but that the last very long and this has put densmore chewed up in a very successful quarter for all the stock markets here at c.s. at seventeen percent since the beginning of the year overall for them i say that was seven percent and what was helping was gains on wall street as well as strong wealth twice is what analysts expect that we'll see a rise in twenty percent this year. now if we move on and we see that global i.p.o. activity has slumped seventy percent since the beginning of the year and during the same time last year a report by accounting for ernst and young says the u.s. amounts it's roughly fourteen billion dollars to five that's the lowest level in years the uncertainty in the euro zone as well as a small number of large listings from states on forums created on favorable conditions for initial public offerings emerging markets now are still the i.p.o. leaders with china topping the list than the number of deals and russia is out of

the league the last time i hosted initial public offerings was last summer. a merchant economies are joining forces to help stave off the global financial rest so we have the i know bric summit five nations brazil russia india china and south africa all agreed to provide some other loans in the local currencies. from the capital says that this will provide a boost for trade that's why. more work needs to be done. when. russian banks russian initiate a system freely invest in chinese. security then the that's the market will increase their significance at this stage in russia china trades a little for. local currencies will probably reach the calculation you've heard from both the present river even know the cheryl for. trading between russian surely look at currencies only about one percent which is very low compared to many other countries where the sheriff has already reached exceed ten percent so russia

has a lot to do even bill existing currency regime and china. are on that wall next hour there are also markets will open so i have a clearer picture of what's happening all right thanks very much very. well stay with us here on r.t. i'll be back with the headlines soon after that special report on soviet leaders stay with us.

if. you. think i took your thoughts toward earth. this street still keeps its secrets of the mountain time some feel that the soviet files oxys. there hasn't been a thing yet on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact.