all. and nervous wait for join us on track with doorways of the death threat hanging over of the world's number one whistleblower if he is eventually transferred to the us before the ring its verdict on is a plea for political asylum. as opposition forces in homs stage a mass offensive against syrian government troops despite a red cross brokered truce we reported on how intimidation to join the ranks of the rebels has meant death for some refuse. the military barracks election commission delays the results of the presidential runoff in egypt the move has outraged manning in the country who see it as part of a coup aimed at keeping the army from rulers in power. the st petersburg international economic forum kicks off with president bush with expected

to give his views on what's going on in europe and the russian economy join the twenty but it's time with the. ten am in the russian capital you're watching r.t. with me welcome to the program now ecuador says it will deliver the final word on whether the world's top whistleblower will be taken under its diplomatic umbrella later on thursday join us on just now and it's london embassy seeking asylum to avoid extradition to sweden which could eventually see him falling into u.s. hands british police are also on alert to arrest him for breaching bail conditions sara for us has more. held under house arrest and oppressed by the government in an effort to silence a pro-democracy message to the public but we're not talking about famous political dissident unsung suchi she's now free and being wildly welcomed by the british

government we're talking about the wish to explain and freedom of speech the charges of the vote against julian assange. yet he still spent more than five hundred days under house arrest fighting extradition to sweden and possibly the u.s. now he's desperately hate being equitable in the safe haven in d.c. the latest dramatic twist in the case of julian assange is once again called the eyes of the world's media behind the could do it and to see those julian assange takes recchi that away from the height and his supporters say that this is a dark a tale of a man he's been abandoned by his own country persecuted by the u.s. and failed by the u.k.'s legal system but he's not looking for consular assistance he's looking for political and diplomatic assistance and he's looking for history and government to stand up for and son just fights has been a long one eighteen months of legal wrangling in the case a result in the rejection of his supreme court's appeal against extradition to

sweden what this was about was once julian assange gets extradited to sweden he's in prison in sweden the next thing that happens is the u.s. assuming there's an indictment lodges an extradition warrant in sweden eventually the u.s. gets his hands on him they stick him in a prison in the united states fears of what might await him across the atlantic may well have prompted his latest me i think you'll end up actually the united states facing very serious charge probably life in prison if not the death penalty and it will be a stacked kangaroo court against as are seeing with the bradley manning case united states now has the records rather than we'll of course these on time found it concerns as a long list of u.s. biggest if a pin equals not only for songes incarceration that even his death this guy's a traitor a treasonous and he has broken every law the united states the guy ought to be and i'm not for the death penalty so if i'm not for the death penalty i want to do it

illegally shoot the son of a and here's why because of his work with wiki leaks this guy has made some powerful enemies you know the collect. well murder video shows american helicopter gunships shooting reporters the iraq war logs the afghan war diaries all of this the cable guy makes president barefaced the american british government's freedom fighting in the twenty first century is a whole new ball game with new rules new players and unexpected moves even the first songes legal team this was a complete surprise so we found out about it on twitter a songes law is one of many who submitted a letter of support the ecuadorian embassy in it she details from a very personal experiences western silencing campaign. i am writing to someone who has suffered immensely harassment at the hands of the united states government because of my associations with julian assange a day and personal friend my case is well documented and if you require additional

information i will gladly provide it i believe that the swedish british governments are acting with the malice of forethought knowing that the us wishes to persecute julian assange and that the request to extradite julian is in bad faith sweden has taken every measure to him to justice in this matter and say the man who revolutionized whistleblowing and through wiki leaks released groundbreaking stories has in another twist become the story himself and there are many now hoping that the next big release. himself served the r.t. london. ok based investigative journalist tony gasoline but we've the case shows countries which preach wilders for democracy clamping down freedom of speach. it's pretty shocking i think in a way britain has lost its moral soul tonight what we've got is a crazy situation where somebody who's actually not even been charged formally with

a crime is being hunted down whilst we've got a mean we've actually changed the law in britain over the last year or so to allow people like zippy livni the israeli military minister who in christmas two thousand and eight launched operation car cast lead. we thought it was really military attacking school children and innocent civilians ultimately you know this is a war criminal is allowed to walk the streets and somebody who's done more for radical publishing than anybody else probably in the last fifty years he's being hunted down all these think it's absolutely appalling. and while the world is watching where the latest twist in the sand is legal saga will leave him spoke to a spokesman for the website that made its founder household name christine happens and admits that the furore over we could leaks itself has cause more of a stir than the crimes the website was exposing the full interview is coming your way later this hour. most probably that they took part in the collateral murder

video. release in april two thousand. i was surprised by the fact that the bigger stories were actually on the leak itself. so it could be on julian assange it's. the fact that this is a video that is exposing. a war crime got much less of a tension and it hasn't gotten the attention that this were. but it is the media for you. the media will decide where to focus is. a syrian rebels have apparently launched a major offensive to retake the baba amr district of homes under the cover of a red cross brokered ceasefire sources say that dozens of army checkpoints have been struck that's as reports emerge of violence intimidation to force people to join the rebellion often at gunpoint has this report. every

evening cause a man has a spends time with his grandchildren but the stories grandpa tells the kids about bad and good people aren't fairy tales they're real wonder. who is this mohamed where is he he's dead. what they kill him because he didn't want to bring down president bashar assad gazan is the leader of a five thousand strong tribe his son and youngest granddaughter were shot dead by terrorists after he refused to join the movement against the syrian regime. when i saw him here they came to me masked men carrying the al-qaeda flag with kalashnikovs and many other weapons they wanted me to demonstrate and bring my tribesmen with me then they came in the night and started shooting in my house is covered in bullet holes from floor to ceiling. later cars and saw them on t.v. once arrested the militants confessed to many crimes and mentioned carson to the.

store and cause him of his house we were shooting and set fire next day where arranged to meet another victim but when we called him back for final details a stranger picked up when they had what is more hardeen. you want more d.n.a. yes i will give you them all and bashar al assad. how is basra related to mundine we'll bring you all the heads dogs whereas martin bring me bashar al assad the motel you where. the hell is this your freedom of kidnapping and killing people. sure. you will be kidnapped too we found a man who didn't hours later in hospital fortunately alive he told us he'd been attacked the gunman stopped his car took his money and mobile and shot him in the

leg. they came asking to join sensory months ago this threat and me and they took my family and loved the city hard as i was told they were following me but what should i do it has a came i don't even know why me was a little while my head dean is wondering why him mahmoud the last of the two matt knows exactly why people with guns visited his home and threatened him in his restaurants he used to feed syrian army officers and was also delivering center which is to the checkpoints. i cannot feed the army and i now have to see them for free free syrian army also wanted me to lead an armed group just like many others a mash mood has fled his native the city known as one of the syrian opposition strongholds which has seen several deadly terror attacks and now hiding in neighboring aleppo change in location every ten days and just like others he says

he's already lost a lot but his ready to sacrifice the rest if it helps turn this dark page in this country's history while the west continuous a pile more pressure on the syrian regime in the hope of the posen president assad it's remains unclear what kind of people would take his place with open support for the syrian rebels and a rise in the use of terror tactics the question many are asking is that what kind of direction would these force take the country. or if national our team from syria. and coming up for you later in the program just a rap on the knuckles for actions which bring a nation u.s. troops involved in burning the koran in afghanistan in february may get off with fines and a reprimand was a few years the mild punishment could spark a further wave of public anger in the country. and egypt the election

committee has postponed the results of the presidential runoff until the weekend it says it must review complaints presented by both candidates there's uncertainty too over the condition of the convict the former president hosni mubarak who said to be in a coma policy or looks at developments in cairo. the latest word now is from state television which is reporting that the election results which were due to be given on thursday have now been delayed and we're talking here about the first post mubarak democratic election now those results are results that people here have been waiting for the runoff was quite tight in terms of the two candidates the muslim brotherhoods mohammed morsi and the. fix from the former regime of hosni mubarak we understand that the reason for the delay is that the election commission says it needs to investigate the complaints have been put forward by the various candidates here we're talking about some four hundred complaints at the same time we're hearing from international monitoring groups who say that they cannot say

that these elections have been free and fair largely because they had insufficient axes with which they could view the whole election poster is so certain there are fears here in egypt that the army is trying to hang on to power we're hearing the word coup being bandied about by the muslim brotherhood which is expecting its candidate mohamed morsi to win they've called to the figure of fifty two percent compared to suffix before to eighty percent of these africa's that are being supported by most of the media here as well as independent surveys indeed this is not going to be greeted rollbar the thousands of people who are gathering in turkey is clearly a mostly muslim brotherhood supporters and they will do this in the strongest possible terms of remains to be seen though if they turn their anger into wide scale protests it cannot be denied that the former president is probably quite sick and quite unwell we're hearing different reports on the one hand we are hearing

from egyptian state media he is in a critical condition they've gone so far as to actually say that he is clinically dead but then this is being refuted by the authorities they say that he is critical but that he is not clinically did the skepticism by many egyptians is why is the army always making announcements about his deterioration in health at a critical time in egypt's political life with the suggestion that they're perhaps trying to detract attention from other things that are on the go. site said a professor of political sociology at the american university in cairo thinks the run off has forced a majority of egyptians to choose between the two vehicles. those three options now you will have a confrontation when they announce that general and that would leave the muslim brotherhood and move on you should know is mobilizing again this him and that would leave the country in big chaos the second scenario is that the military council and the muslim brotherhood would reach an agreement in which there is the vision of the

political party between the military and the muslim brotherhood. option is the commune the the muslim brotherhood can do that is a window and in this case there will be. a violent reaction in this to be but there will be sadness in the country this is the first time in seven thousand use. that the president but this was not the most favorable choice you want that. evolution this was that we don't want. and we do not want a military is the. house movie on our website r.t. dot com including a case of consumer discrimination in the us. the american teenager who says she was stopped from buying an i pad at an apple store because of her iranian ancestry. plus in france more on the government claiming to have links with al qaeda who was finally captured after taking four people hostage in

a toulouse bag. american soldiers who were involved in burning the koran in afghanistan may get away with a light punishment involving just find and a written reprimand a u.s. military investigation has reportedly decided not to press criminal charges against up to seven troops and recommended administrative discipline a step several copies of the koran were thrown into a garbage fire pit in february said. deadly end to u.s. riots and washington. afghans have been expecting stricter punishment and it's feared the lighthouses could trigger a new wave of anger so as vans director of the new internationalism project believes that nato troops have created an environment which fuels violence in the country. the relationship between the u.s.

and its government in kabul has been very difficult for a long time it certainly isn't only about this question of the burning of the qur'an there's been the killing of civilians and most especially the use of drones that have been responsible for the deaths of so many civilians across afghanistan these troops that are responsible for these outrages should be held accountable and there should be severe punishment there should be severe punishment right up the chain of command to those who have put them in these situations and set up the scenarios that have led to these actions the killing of sixteen. afghan civilians just a couple of months ago by allegedly one u.s. soldier this kind of activity highlights what is the reality of a longstanding war that from the beginning has been characterized by the deaths of civilians and other violations of international law military occupation breeds outrage by the people who are occupied whether that is palestinians occupied by

israel whether it's afghans occupied by the united states iraqis that were occupied by the united states for so long you know that in these situations the incidents the specific incidents that get a certain amount of attention are really only the tip of the iceberg. south korean japanese and american troops are holding their largest ever joint military exercises near the north korean border around two thousand troops are expected to be involved in the maneuvers which have been condemned by the north which says they are in preparation for an attack professor joseph chang political analyst at hong kong university says the war games have escalated tensions in the region. what we see is one it's a size one been a three. and so on but at the city kind you know appears that all parties concerned would fly to. come indications minds open and they certainly do not want to see any shop ration patient ships countries like japan and south

korea so to me in strengthening the security ties with the united states and the united states has been exploiting these have been strategies to strengthen and is returned to a strategy china understands that excerpting pressure on the countries concerned issuing a strong part what can be counterproductive so it will try to continue to improve relations with japan and south korea and thereby to weaken security and military dependence on the united states has back to staring raise for a new probe a lot of coalition government is on course to finally implement the cuts that sparked a social and political crisis in the country is now also preparing to release a billion euros to athens being seen by some as a reward for good behavior there

a leaf in the euro zone may be short lived however with auditors poised to unveil a preliminary report on the state of spain's troubled banks on thursday depending on what they find that may be facing a crisis of new proportions as spain is seen as too big an economy to be a lot spanish government politicians are adamant that the new call from athens will help soothe the euro crisis but that is out economics blogger says that any respite which might flow will only be temporary. everybody says oh yes all the situation and then five minutes later it was like oh are back in the doldrums and we're going to get as high as sugar. over kong for the next couple of it is all right you know . and you know come thursday before i do everything i started thinking well you know i didn't solve anything and we're still in the same hole that really four because you're trying to do two things also you see on the one hand bro and on the other and so on there are there are civil list and on there are governments in

order to comply with the. you know you can't do you can't do the same thing and you are suppose that same time it's either one of you i mean if you squeeze the people all of the few people are going to scream when the screen governments fall and that's what we're going to be seeing in the near term future of this government receives these austerity measures which have been ineffective over the last two years and so there's no reason to think that they're going to be used for the next six months now with a new program our government in greece loan payments from the e.u. and i.m.f. are set to resume the critics say too much of that money is going just on debt maintenance and will be of more use and directly on the economy the kaiser report estimates in an hour's time and host next kaiser says the real winners are not the greek people but bankers and creditors. j.p. morgan estimates only fifteen billion euros of four hundred ten billion total aid to greece went into economy rest to creditors no wonder they are cross.

well we have seen this in wartime all the time and you see this now during the financial war the aid comes but you know ten cents of the dollar a five cent than dollar actually makes it to the ground the rest is stolen by the gate keepers there who are negotiating these horrific aid packages that benefit only the insiders and the bankers you know this is what's going on in egypt for years right the pentagon would give aid to egypt as long as they buy toys from the pentagon the money hitting the ground nothing same thing in europe it's really a leper colony and it's just a race to see who's got the most fingers right now greece is losing that race and the. only thing they can do to help themselves would be to get out of this leprechaun the nation of europe catastrophe and maintain their sovereignty. and now look at some of the stories making headlines around the world the chief negotiator for the palestinian ministrations as it's ready for peace talks if

israel stops building new settlements in the west bank the statement came after a meeting with u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton and washington earlier hamas said it had agreed to an egyptian brokered cease fire with israel after three days of clashes in the gaza strip fighting began after an israeli man was killed in a cross border attack launched from egypt's sinai desert since then nine palestinians have been killed and over one hundred rockets have been fired into israel. pakistan's president has nominated a political rival of former prime minister yousuf raza gillani to take over as from here the current textiles minister has been named for the role as follows his dismissal after being convicted of contempt of court two months ago for refusing to reopen old corruption case against the country's president the parliament will meet on friday to decide on the new prime minister. alex hohl for me this our time now to get the latest from the world of business.

well it's the first day of russia's main economic event of the year saying that his birth form ideas meeting of the ngo is there for us. so what makes the gathering particularly important this year. well actually for many reasons do we read basically the forum has always been governed by the russian president and this year it's again and he's just come back into power more just a bit more than a month ago so will be very interesting to listen to his plenary session speech which is scheduled in around four hours time you'll be giving his views expected to give his views on what's going on in the world economy particularly in europe and russia's prospects in response to what's going on in europe and of course the ever changing economic environment and financial background this is also making this

forum specific because right now we have a lot of sessions and round tables going on and the elephant in the room that nobody can avoid noticing is of course the crisis in europe what's happening in greece what's happening in spain so to talk more about this let's now join john ma the chief economist for greater china with the bank thank you very much for being with us here at the forum so basically what do you make of the situation right now in europe where we have we've just had the greek elections we've got bailout money coming into space what do you think is going to happen in europe and with the euro in general i don't think the immediate resolution to the european crisis private going to be a process that's lasting for a few years in terms of a crisis getting worse in the european or storage fees and i met e.c.v. taking additional actions still it's essentially what i call muddle through process for a few years the reason is that eventually the machine will reply establishing

a fiscal union together with the monetary union but moving to what that the russian the five loss of political will and also. for some tax piercing logic countries like germany and our friends also revised the resolution from the crisis countries are in order to relieve our undertaking these are very tough well sterrett he programs still are what i'm saying here is that the other countries including china russia will need to be prepared for additional shots are going forward and if to do you wish now these shots from the domestic get out and go we're just out of one of these shots actually coming in there at the g twenty summit in mexico we've had china agreeing to provide for the i.m.f. forty three billion dollars in help do you think that's enough for why is china actually doing this what's it expecting in return. for you in terms of whether it's enough i think i'm if it's just a one of the few. mechanisms to support is our european stability and

a larger part of the rescue efforts we have to be done within the euro zone. now in terms of why china is contributing i think is really two regions one is that the china wants to help in the process of stabilizing the european situation which will in turn are helping the rest of world in china itself through the trade channel and secondly our china believe that it. helping you or pursue i.m.f. is probably a safer evan you will get saying ruslan to with the reserves are because it's international organization and it certainly are relative to investing in individual european countries sovereign bonds especially in crisis countries i think it they will also serve the purpose of protecting the safety of chinese reserves chinese reserves are of course very very big and the country has been. pushing to diversify away from the dollar as a reserve currency do you think that's actually working it's been calling on

different countries to deal with the national currencies i think that it's working china being moving in a direction of international law. it's own currency which is r. and b. and if you look at the r. and b. tree settlement which is a tree settlement between china and other countries did not meet in local currency used to be zero back three years ago and now it's closer to ten percent and to chinese currency is now also being gradually used by intention investors as well so i think going forward china will make it much more progress this through the process only driving the cap to account and one specific recommendation i would have is for china russia to deal with each other in the commodity trade so you have it all and guess where it's in your local currency including r. and b. all right thank you so much that was the chief economist of your bank within the greek to china talking to us at the st petersburg economic forum and of course join us in the coming hours we'll be providing you live updates of what's going on here

we'll have many guests and of course we're looking forward to that plenary session speech by the russian president absolutely mitri a lot is going on there and we look forward to getting more updates from you from st petersburg in our next form which is the uncle thanks very much for now. well and now back with an update of our top stories very shortly stay with us.