international law on the line as the u.s. talks of tough action on syria but without the consent of the u.n. . in or out irish voters head to the polls in a referendum on the e.u. fiscal treaty which opponents say amounts to nothing more than permanent austerity controlled by brussels this while a backlash against the cuts continues to sweep across europe. the father of poisoned former russian security agent alexander litvinenko blames fugitive tycoon boris berezovsky for his son's death this in a video which is now being passed along to scotland yard.

it is a pleasure to have you with us today here on our team rule researcher live in moscow the u.s. says it's time to consider taking direct action in syria even if that means going against international law this follows the massacre of more than one hundred people in the syrian town of houla with damascus and the rebels blaming each other for the atrocity russia has vowed to block any moves for intervention at the u.n. and washington says the security council can be bypassed. as the latest. well what was exactly said is the fact that the u.s. ambassador to the u.n. susan rice said that the syrian government is solely responsible for the massacres that took the massacre that took place in syria last week those those comments were also echoed by america's european allies and as a result there is now a nother push within the security council for international sanctions against

against syria now the united nations is conducting their own investigation to find out who exactly is responsible for the killings of one hundred eight people in syria last week but the u.s. and its allies has come to its own conclusion now. that if the six point peace plan put together by kofi annan which calls for a cease fire in syria that plan breaks down and if sanctions are not supported within the security council then the international community and council members will have to consider options outside of the authority of the security council now what those options will be exactly is not clear we do know that the u.s. and european countries have already imposed their own sanctions on syria so many are interpret these words as a threat of military action now russia's ambassador to the un vitaly churkin

believes that country should not come to jump to conclusions of with respect to who was responsible for the massacre in houla last week said that all parties should wait for the results of the un investigation ambassador churkin said that he's very disappointed with the fact that there's been very little progress or progress with mr anon six point peace plan and that both sides the opposition and the syrian government have been seen in some ways violating their agreements to a cease fire and many other things outlined by the six point peace plan but ambassador churkin said it's very important to know the fact that while. responsibility of course lies on the syrian government the opposition group also is still carrying out acts of violence and it's important for those that are arming or financing the our opposition group to look at the circumstance and understand that maybe those moves are provoking the violence and further escalating it. is more

important the rebel syrian army reportedly wants u.n. envoy kofi annan to declare the failure of his peace plan the system asked says it remains committed to the world effort now a former syrian ambassador to turkey expects an escalation of foreign funded terrorism over five thousand violations by. the groups have been documented by you and observers. it's very clear that there are local regional and international powers and on a spark of some sort of civil war that is based on sectarian you cry to the and. they are trying now to play their final card which is the sectarian the ethnic fighting so that's why we anticipate that some more massacres will take place

committed by those two groups fundamentalist salafist twenty six libyans who knew germans. and. citizens of other countries have been killed in action in syria and what they call the jihad what we call the sum total of just a good citizen civilians the syrian army and syrian security forces if they decide to take full this is that they have to bear with this is not libya this is not yemen this is. fan now the french president says paris is also considering military intervention in syria and comes as a disappointment to those who hope that francois hollande would reverse is produced as his aggressive foreign policy and focus instead on problems at home with more of those as artie's tester oscillator. i. new president. but not soon new rhetoric just two weeks into his post.

i heard bernard on really very mention of military intervention and that but it is not. going to comment that came in response to the massacre in houla syria. from the leader of a country that led the implementation of a no fly zone over libya last year critics have pointed out that there was no real choice between french president francois launch and his predecessor nicolas sarkozy but for those who thought they had voted for change now appear to be already faced with a case of deja vu one of the pillars of the laws election campaign was the pledge to pull french troops out of afghanistan this has made many hopeful the new president would focus on issues at home rather than spending millions of military campaigns overseas but it seems they were wrong as foreign affairs magazine put it french foreign policy is on the outer part nothing her. french foreign. and that's not the right thing. in the present or in both not

even an issue and. a last words are in line with the position of bernard on the levy a french activists and philosopher who drove an open letter calling on the lawn to quote take the initiative in syria assad knows that time is counted for him the next emergency is to stop the killing in syria minnesotans of livy's active role of convincing former french president sarkozy to support the libyan intervention and should france take the interventionists route again some say it begs a new question what point are we not going to interview the humanitarian argument is used to lower the bar for foreign intervention. before that i mean some decades ago when you. intervene for me when the when there was a genocide you know it's a massacre and we're rooting for you all to twenty even. we want to

intervene in north korea while alarmed is starting to sound a lot like sarkozy some analysts point out that there may be no real teeth into such rhetoric at this time around telling that he will only act with un mandate. it is nothing nothing because. china and russia we can be sure that he can he can do anything and as far as french people are concerned they don't care about the point but you see they'd rather do the president do something to put out the economic fire in their own backyard first and foremost tester sylvia r.t. brussels. it is good to have you with us on the program today still ahead for you in this hour that are fact or fiction we speak with the author of an article which accuses the u.s. south korea of deep level surveillance in north korea or even parachuting in spies to report back on the underground military facilities. that president putin makes

his first trip abroad since his recent inauguration heading for better or worse after ditching the g eight summit here this around. ten past the hour here in moscow voters in ireland heading to the polls today and the referendum to decide whether or not to approve the european union's fiscal treaty driven by germany and controversially plan strict central control of the national budgets of member states who have signed up but opponents see it as a permanent austerity charter with many angry about surrendering power and sovereignty to brussels or smith reports. it's hope since choice ireland has two options is it goes out to vote on a fiscal pact with. e.u. to say yes to writing austerity into law and cede precious sovereignty to brussels say no and incur the wrath of the european central bank and potentially kissed

goodbye to e.u. bailouts and it looks like it's going to be close the reason i'm voting yes this time is that we are in the e.u. now we have lost a veto and it would be foolish to do anything else it is a matter of what we were both looking for to change france. has to go down groove austerity and that's. far and it's not working there's no change in our at the moment so that's why our people want to send a message to the votes taking place against the backdrop of a failing economy unemployment up to fifteen percent welfare payments a cut public sector spending has been slashed everyone's feeling the pinch including publican jimmy killed he's seen his turnover full by hard as locals batten down the hatches we would have had. five full time employees yeah for part time we're now down to two full time to part time we had

a restaurant upstairs which is now closed that's another three full time jobs. possible income is it's a huge factor it's the discretionary spend that people have it you can see it through out not just the restaurant business and people are very very very careful on how they spend their money to pay the economies tightly bound to the ailing eurozone through bank loans and bailouts and many economists think a no vote would mean even steeper. and difficulty borrowing from financial markets and we would find ourselves at the very least being looked at. by foreign direct investment financial investment they would say well are these people really in a. the european core that's arguable the sense of the sensibility of what's going on but if there's a global and they want to be part of us you know you join the army you are the votes we would be rejecting and i think that would be. attractive from

a national pride perspective is it a pride we can afford i'm not sure people think it is thanks to their constitution the arash are the only european people who get to vote on the pact at all but two e.u. member governments have already signed it but if they vote no the irish will be joining a growing anti austerity backlash france's new president francois hollande has talked about trying to renegotiate the pact and germany's angela merkel despite having written the treaty can't get her own parliament to ratify it most of ireland's main political party supports it but not richard barrett of the united left alliance because of all of the gambling debts of banks and speculators of import on to the books of the state that this would mean permanent austerity billions worth of colt's every year for at least a decade or more in order to meet the treaty targets and we believe will do on told

damage to the economy which is already very traumatized for ireland it seems more damaging austerity is up ahead no matter which way it turned here in dublin literally every available post in the city is bristling with referendum posters the no posters call the fiscal pact the bankers tracy the austerity packed meanwhile the yes campaign maintains it's all about stability either way the future looks bleak many seem willing to cede silver and tea in exchange for financial backup but even that's not guaranteed in a bid me good. euro smith r.t. . more on the e.u. fiscal treaty referendum in our interview section and our time here. a lot of the putin is making his first foreign trip as russia's president kabila worse off than snubbing the g eight summit in the u.s. this month we're going to scarsdale the details from the country's capital. russia

did have some rather rough relations as of late it's not exceptionally bad not what you would call bad relations but they did have some disagreements over some of the issues for example as gas transfer from russia to europe but it does seem like those issues have been ironed out lately and it does look like this trip is what many believe to be indicative of russia's foreign policy of the way it's going to develop in that mean the nearest future and it does look like this trip which in is pointing to the observers that he is going to be focusing on russia's relations with its closest neighbors particularly with the bell or it's now traditionally the first visit the first official visit from a russian president has been to one of the c.i.s. countries this time it's bellerose and it comes of course. it comes on the heels of

the g eight summit which was held in the united states very recently to which the russian president was and did not go now a lot of people saw that as a way to spike the west but again you have to remember that that was the time immediately after trying to. take over in his capacity as russia's president and he does have a lot of issues on his hands he did have to reshuffle the cabinet almost two thirds of the ministers have been replaced again this trip to bellerose does seem however to point out to the west that russia is going to be focusing more on the relations with the countries and the states which surround this. could improve the relations of the leadership of president vladimir putin. and they're going to discuss economy they're going to discuss their joint venture on production of drugs they're going to discuss privatization of the russian enterprises by russian business and i would say that quarrel.

with bill it was there were mostly on the line between will question of course and former president maybe if we didn't was always very cautious he never got involved in a very very. angry exchange awards that took place between midriff and we question and there is a lot less bad blood between them and even made a video if you noticed changed his tone towards the question during the last one in the hof years. in about ten minutes time is natasha with the business for now though julian assange has legal team tin ewing what's likely to be a last ditch attempt to stop his extradition to sweden they are reviewing a supreme court judgment in london ordering his transfer of a sex crimes accusations which he continues to deny the wiki leaks founder and his supporters fear that he could be handed over from sweden to the u.s. to face espionage charges these allegations stem from a soldier's web site leaking hundreds of thousands of confidential american

diplomatic cables with sensitive and embarrassing information meantime a u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton visits sweden and within days to discuss internet freedom among other issues journalist and author believes that it's a matter of principle for the swedish authorities to have a songe conflict. what i've seen so far on the net is pretty consistent with what we have seen all along in the past eighteen months or so and that is a mean the hostile and negative attitude towards julian assange in his attempt to avoid extradition to sweden my own opinion is that the swedish prosecutors have invested so much per stage in this case that they're under a lot of pressure to get him convicted of something so i don't think they're just going to walk away from the case but they may surprise us yet everything that i've seen thus far indicates to me however that the prosecutor in charge is rather

seriously determined to convict him of something. we are following all of the developments in the julian assange case on our website our teams are conscious go online for all the updates also one of the latest installment of his own interview show that's where he meets various occupy activists to hear about the past and the future of the movie. not far off from the world update but for now scotland yard has been handed a video in which the father of the late former russian security agent alexander litvinenko points the finger at who he believes was behind the death six years ago litvinenko died of radioactive poisoning in two thousand and six in a case which has caused major division between britain and russia as sarah further reports his this new evidence showed further life on this aging mudda. further twists in the story surrounding the poisoning. of former security official alexander litvinenko

a live in your case has revealed in an interview the names of the people he says of the killers of his son other people he names of the russian billionaire boris a better result and alex told both former colleagues and friends of alexander litvinenko. how do you think alexander first became infected with polonium to turn why do you think this case has been dragging on for so long have been no court case because they don't have anything and if it were to open it will become apparent who was behind it. pays money to some high person as. everyone is covering every one of my boys since it was just caught in the hands of i want to return to russia. justice for my son alex goen he's the chairman of. the live it.

was a very close confidant of the in the weeks leading up to his he was the unofficial spokesman he was the man he wrote the statement at the time of the yankees that accusing the russian government of carrying out that crime though after the death the investigation stake is very heavily over a bodyguard and a little boy he is now a russian and he recently passed a lie detector test that was carried out by british acts but did you do anything that led to the death of alexander litvinenko. were you involved in alexander litvinenko. have you ever had any dealings with. live in your case father volta had previously apologized to him if he knew a thing that he wasn't. in this crime being carried out now in an interview with r t both live in yankee that he was with alexander at the time that he died in that

alexander litvinenko had written down the names of the people responsible for this on a piece of paper he's also told r.t. that he should be used as a witness now and indeed it seems on the back of this interview and these revelations kid now be used as evidence and perhaps we can see this now being a further push for the british authorities to continue the lines of investigation and other attempts to finding the truth of what really happened in this case live from moscow this is our it is a development likely to further fuel longstanding hostilities between washington and pyongyang a media report accuses the u.s. and south korean special forces of parachuting into north korea to spy on underground military facilities the source says an american army general who admitted the missions have already taken place it's been vehemently denied by washington which now accuses the journalist behind the report of simply making it

all up however he insists what he published was exactly what he heard it comes as the u.s. looks to reinforce its naval power in the asia pacific region already experiencing a massive american military buildup earlier we talked to the author of the article david arcs and he told us that the full fallout from his piece would not be known for days. at present both the pentagon and the lower level command whose general ah i heard speaking have both admitted that i did not fabricate the story earlier they had both said i fabricated the story he spoke in the present tense and it was not clear that he was speaking hypothetically not clear at all and it was actually quite apparent he was speaking in sort of the present and literal sense north korea tends to take a few days to process news reports like this before formulating some kind of

response whether that response be an official statement or some sort of military posturing or something so i expect based on what experts are telling me that we'll have to wait a day or two to up to see what the official response will be i hope it's nothing i hope the general it is is telling the truth when he says he was speaking hypothetically i regret that this thing got out of hand. before we join natasha with a business that's got to be off the wall it up there and we will start with italy of our rescue teams of police what's believed to be the final body from the rubble off to choose days of the quake and brings the death toll to seventeen people three hundred fifty others were injured after the five point eight magnitude quake struck north have been long out of the region was hit by another quake just two weeks ago that killed seven. israel has handed over the bodies of ninety one palestinian militants to the government in the west bank and a move it says is designed to encourage peace talks but israel's defense minister

has grown impatient waiting for negotiations saying the country should consider unilaterally imposing borders for a future palestinian state talks between the two sides of the ground to hold you to israel's building of jewish settlements on land seized from palestinians tensions rose last year when palestine pursued un recognition in the face of israeli and u.s. opposition. a series of blasts in iraq have killed twelve people and injured twenty nine others eight people died after a bomb exploded near a restaurant in north baghdad three others were killed in separate blasts in other areas of the city and a car bombing near the home of an adviser to the iraqi prime minister left one civilian. the first serious attacks in the capital since mid may when a suicide bomber hit a police checkpoint killing at least six. as promised standing by the aussie business desk oh do tell us of the markets recovering from wednesday's

losses on the well european ones certainly are and u.s. futures are pointing to a higher opening on wall street and a couple of hours of course we'll bring you that as soon as wall street opens but at the moment it looks like the european bourses a firmly in the block the footsie is gaining almost three quarters of a percent the biggest mover on the foot sea this afternoon is want to peel see the company is gaining more than sixty percent on the news that c.g.i. group is buying it for an equivalent of more than two and a half billion dollars and the markets are welcoming the european commission's initiative to create a banking union a body that would not only oversee and regulate the euro zone's entire banking sector but would also share the cost of bailing out individual banks and that would definitely ease the pressure on the banking sector that many see as the weak link crude prices are higher just

a bit compared to the lowest level they dropped to on wednesday overall for the month of may crude has lost around sixteen percent of its value and moving on to the currencies at the time of uncertainties like these investors run from the risky assets mainly into the u.s. dollar and we really saw that up until today but on thursday we are seeing that the euro is gaining against the u.s. dollar the russian current sea of blue bull is shedding value ganz both the dollar and the euro this hour and the russian markets remain mixed as you can see the r.t.s. is in the rag but the my sense is managing to hold on to its gains for the month of may overall though my stocks lost around eleven percent of its value and let's now check out some individual movers on the my sex. one of the best performers is a case this down model on the news that its first quarter net profit jumped more

times compared to the same period last year because bear bank is one of the. outsiders all in the my sex this afternoon and gals prom is gaining on the news that it has set up a fifty fifty joint venture with slovenia to build the south stream pipeline through its territory and now on to other news the anglo russian joint venture t a k b p may get a third shareholder the company's co owner and former c.e.o. mikhail freedman told former sun daily he says he sees this as a liable option amid all the ongoing shareholder disputes in the company the russian side earlier said that it was a ready to buy out b.p.'s stake in the company or swap its k.b.p.s. shares for stake in british petroleum and to russia and china are setting up a joint venture to build new passenger airplanes based on russia's evolution

aircraft will provide the know how and the technology and beijing that catch the project is worth between seven and twelve billion dollars with an estimated seven years to produce the first plane business archie caught up with the head of boeing international who said russia has a huge market potential. we see russia's growth its economic growth as a huge benefit to an enabler of aviation growth within russia and so the market there as we see it is over a thousand aircraft two russian airlines in the next twenty years valued at over one hundred ten billion dollars. that's alas from the business desk my colleague mitri medvedev bring all the latest in less than an hour current are so many thanks indeed. headlines in a moment but do stay with us because after the headlines it's over to max keiser.

sigrid lumber a jury to mccurry was able to build a new its most sophisticated robot which on fortunately doesn't give a darn about anything.