an attack on a pro regime news channel in syria kills seven after president assad declares on national t.v. the country is in a state of war. london two thousand and twelve is actually starting to look more like a security event but it's not a sporting event the games organizers are under fire for flaunting battleships and rockets what it seems the olympic park is still easily open to attack. the u.s. senate committee passes a bill banning russian officials believed to be implicated in human rights violations. in russian custody three years ago.

online on screen international news and comment live from the new center here in moscow twenty four hours a day one of syria's pro-government news stations has come under attack leaving at least seven people dead that's after president bashar assad addressed his cabinet on national t.v. saying the country was in a state of war we can't live expert opinion very short here not in the meantime. is the scene. what you can see behind me is what's left from the main building of the syrian state run television syrian news body years after what government says was a terror attack according to the syrian news agency sana early in the morning about four a group of terrorists broke through the main gate of the studio's headquarters two security people hostage who explosive devices inside the building and destroyed killing at least seven people talking to those on the ground we've been getting a little bit different information about exactly how many people have been killed

but it still remains unclear who these people were a son is reporting that three of them were workers of the television while others were security newly appointed syrian minister of information has also visited the scene and he has said that this what happened is an attempt by terrorists to stop the syrian media to deliver troops to the world this is indeed a very symbolic attack because it is severe has been known for very pro-government old policy the stories they've been covering in the way they've been doing this all shows this channel as a regime mouthpiece and of course the attack on this channel could be considered as the attack on the regime it's also worth to mention that this incident has happened just day after president bashar assad has said that syria is now in a real state of war we've indeed been witnessing dramatic escalation of the conflict here on the ground this area where we are now where the studio situated is twenty five kilometers from the city center and although it's been known as anti

governmental area it's also been known as quite safe and well protected area where many military people have been and the fact that. these happened here in such a neighborhood just proves how dramatic things really are on the ground. ortiz move from reporting from the scene of an attack on approved government t.v. channel in syria well an international conference of countries which have influence on events in syria is shuttled for this coming saturday in geneva to try to find a solution to the crisis in iran has not been invited though despite earlier statements from the un syria and void that it should be part of the peace process well let's discuss this with the research the university in beirut why sir if you think to iran hasn't been invited to this geneva conference. but of course iran has not been invaded because of the firm u.s. position that iran be excluded from any talks when it comes to syria the secretary

of state made it very clear that basically because iran supports they should be excluded from any talks with that which is an absolutely absurd position to take because washington actually supports regime change so by that you know the countries are marja it should actually be excluded from any talks what's the situation in syria so really this is washington's heavy hand coming down again on international affairs in particular in this region and you know as russia has stated this conference coming together really will have not much impact a bit exclude iran and it is very unfortunate that this this unfortunate kofi annan who are so thank you said insists that iran should be included has caved in to us will on this and has excluded iran from the upcoming event will be a more this meeting is to support the peace plan back a syrian led political transition just how realistic is political transition when now as assad says there is a war going on in this country. well of course as well we don't know what the

political transition means of assad has already undertaken a political transition transition he's. undergone several reforms there is a new cabinet there are some new ministers there's a new parliament and so basically there are changes happening in syria and these are political transformations these are the reforms that are required in places like yemen for a successful cessation of hostilities but according to washington and its european allies and as well as its gulf allies their only choice is regime change and so for them they will not start anything less so with these different realities on the ground of what political transformation means it's very unlikely that the annan plan more get off the ground it never really did it was never given a chance by the western countries if the western countries had believed in it like they paid lip service to they would have actually put pressure on the rebels to stop fighting to stop to not violate the cease fire and not commit the atrocities

that they've been committing over the last several months according to coffee and basically the hostilities right now the attacks from the casualties are as high as they were before the cease fire which shows that the western countries were never took any seriously and they never put any pressure on the opposition just briefly russia and china of course against any form of external regime change they're going to be at that meeting so what hope do you have anything coming out of that geneva conference at all. there are really very little hopes right now unless the western really engages in a serious dialogue with the syrian government and with its allies in the region including iran as well as lebanon as well as iraq all that all these countries in the region that have a country have populations that will be impacted by what's going on in syria need to be involved and really right now if there is a meeting excluding syria's allies how is syria going to be engaged with that although it's just it's going to be the same sort of finger wagging threats of war

threats a regime change threats of everything coming from the west but there are any real change happening on the ground in syria and syria is considered to continue to suffer because of this let me just ask you for your reaction on the latest development concerning that t.v. channel being attacked the rebel forces say they haven't attacked any media tools or who else actually would benefit from a strike on a pro regime news station and just briefly your thoughts on the. oh of course this has to has to really benefit the rebels i mean i cannot say if they've done it or not but this is definitely in their interest and really it's quite ironic that the station gets targeted right after the e.u. places sanctions on the station and so really you know sanctioning these different media outlets and the u.s. actually sanction syrian state television it almost gives a little digital nation for the rebels to attack these places and to commit these atrocious terrorist. attacks against innocent people just trying to get a message if they support the regime that's their political decision that's their

right to support the regime they should not be targeted for this and it's just really quiet atrocious this is happened and of course we won't see the western outcry that we see when western journalists get caught in the crossfire and this was an intentional attack terrorist attack against an institution so thanks very much indeed for your thoughts on this research from syracuse university in beirut joining us live there thanks for being with us here on alt. a biased approach to the events in syria gets in the way of not just politics but also journalism as we report very shortly here in r.t. is an old b.b.c. report cast doubt on the channel's accuracy over its coverage of the arab spring revolutions we speculate whether the broadcaster is losing its way. still to come this hour homegrown terrorists could be flocking to al qaeda training grounds blooming thanks to the arab spring u.k.'s top spy warns of a new threat. but first the london olympics are exactly one month away

but the city's security operations are already under attack while fighter jets and drones are guarding the skies and big brother is watching every move skeptics believe that won't help those inside the olympic park because basic security there isn't up to par with investigate. london two thousand and twelve is almost upon us and with just one month to go it's not just the athletes who are warming up a massive security operation is also getting into gear we've got battleships on the river thames with missiles we've got pilotless drones with laser guided bombs missile batteries dotted around the city personnel with untold numbers of firearms or you've got to question the proper proportionality of this and london two thousand and twelve is actually starting to look more like a security event not a sporting event. a security event with a little bit of incidental sport on the b.l.m. kicks is that you case biggest ever peace time security operation and the numbers

of personnel are staggering on the ground during the games they'll be twelve and a half thousand police officers supported for the occasion by needed at home and soldiers but insiders are saying basic security here at the olympic park is seriously lacking investigative journalist li hazeldean is under cover with g four s. the security firm that won the four hundred fifty million dollars contract for the games he's posing as a trainee and says rule recruits vetting and training a substandard i was asked during the training exercises to be a would be terrorist i was given a knife a real gun and a fake i.e.d. the gun was in my bag the x. ray operator didn't see it it is a good several times he still didn't find it he got behind one did the hand and it didn't go he hadn't turned on least says he's raised his concerns with g four s.

but was told to mind his own business no one from the company was available to comment for this report meanwhile the organizing committee remains resolute about safety security is absolutely the top priority for us and we want the people who come to visit london in twenty twelve to be absolutely confident they're going to be safe and secure and you'll go through security and an x. ray machine a look at anything you bring with you and that way we can check that anybody coming into the park isn't bringing anything with them that can do anybody any damage that's not lee's experience of the operation and he's pessimistic about the safety of visitors to the olympic park i took a huge knife in there you know it's one riot if i mean it gets sued by one person and fifty people go through different pierces that's fifty rounds of ammunition in the olympics and that's a massacre right then and there if a terrorist or a terrorist organization is intent. well getting into the olympics all they have to do at the moment is queue up with a month to go the head of m i five says his organization can't guarantee the

security of the games what people are asking is the point of the heavy artillery if the park itself is left wide open laura smith r.t. london. the u.k.'s top spy agency also believes that homegrown terrorists trained abroad could payson pose a major threat to the games my five said the arab spring uprisings which nato and its allies have supported allowed to move in and create new training camps defense expert tony shaffer believes that nato as foreign current pains are a cause for radicalization. i think people and anticipated wrongly that somehow democracy would just kind of spring forth when given a chance to do that i think people misunderstood badly the idea that you can simply give people a democracy and let them take it from there on i think unless you have a real desire for a democratic process for all voices are heard the default position is really more

totalitarian government and one that fails it is an opportunity when society falls apart like it didn't libya like it's doing in syria and frankly in egypt you have an opportunity for these groups who are probably the best equipped best organized to come in and take advantage of the chaos so i think the people of many people in my government misinterpreted completely the potential outcome of creating chaos where there was no clear path to a safe a stable society look i know i'm a former member of our military. there's a record of us killing civilians in the process of going after these bad guys and what we're doing and i and others on the on the conservative side of cent we have to be very careful of the fact that we're creating the next generation of terrorists so i think in many ways by the fact you kill civilians those civilians that become enraged by what you've done then they they gravitate to these these terrorist organizations were alluding to here and i think that's why we're seeing this we recruit vision of radicalism across the board at this point we've actually

essentially kind of cut the head off the hydra we kind of defeated a lot of the leadership but now you create these smaller groups which are much harder to track so i think in many ways we're actually adding to this chaos and frankly we just don't know at this point what will become of these groups when it comes to the olympics. the ecuadoran embassies in britain and the us are received ten thousand messages of support for june in the senator's bid for asylum in the latin american country while he anxiously awaits the decision a number of prominent american figures of also joined the plea urging president career to allow the whistleblower the right to live there when we cannot talk to robert moment he's from just four american our profit group that actually started this petition now as i said you're behind this petition and personally you delivered it to the embassy last week does this mean you had to do this because you doubt ecuador will actually grant a surge of sign. well i think my sense sense of other people i've talked to is that ecuadorian government officials are sympathetic to their request they

understand the situation the same way we do they understand the threat to julian assange from the united states and the threat that sweden once they got the of assad would hand them over to the united states which would then prosecute him under the very controversial espionage act united states espionage act and i can seventy so i think down or stand the situation the same same thing same way we do i think we are concerned you know we see that in the media many governments in the world has been a kind of campaign against julian of saddam so we don't want to see the ecuadorian government isolated in the world or attempts to isolate them for doing what we see as the right thing which is protecting not only the rights of. an individual but everybody has an interest in this who wants to reform u.s. foreign policy who wants the public to have access to information about u.s. foreign policy that's what's at stake here a much broader issues are at stake in the future of national security journalism so

that's why we want to raise your voices particularly as americans but we'll let you have any impact you think yes you've got quite a few famous names but you say yes i understand the situation but do you think petition that this will have any sway over the final decision i think it's already had an impact i think it's had an impact because we've seen it reported in the media around the world in europe and united states in latin america showing the different sides you know the position of the u.s. government in this issue does not represent all americans doesn't represent americans are advocates for peace that are advocates for performing a u.s. foreign policy i think it's important not only for people in the government of ecuador or ecuador to know that point people in the street in ecuador in latin america to know that they're subjected. often to right wing private media that attack the president and other progressive governments in the region. making it

seem like you know it's something like this that ecuador would be defying the world acted to protect the innocent who were. very different reality which is to support . the joining us roger i mean i met you in the position of the embassy. that he is actually still that because we haven't seen any sign of him whatsoever how do we know he hasn't actually fled sometime. i met with him i met with him personally when i was you know i delivered the. letter and the petitions to the consul in ecuador and then after meeting with the consul i met with julian of saddam in the in the embassy so i personally testify that he is there or at least he was there a couple days ago when i was in the embassy and he's also been interviewed to some of the press from the embassy and for the or anyone who visits the embassy can see been surrounded by british police and british security officials who have said that

the rest of the set foot outside the embassy so i'm pretty confident that they're still there it's funny you were saying earlier that sweden is going to be a stopover for his extradition to the u.s. what why are you so certain about this why is the sound so so has never officially said it actually does want him and he's convinced they will demand his extradition and possibly even execute him why this session well we're certain that this is a real danger we don't know everything about what the u.s. government has done a night or might do but we know that a grand jury was impaneled in the united states to investigate wiki leaks and bring charges we know that bradley manning's attorney believes his harsh treatment in u.s. custody was an attempt to get him to. testify against julian assange for prosecution under the espionage act we know that. the leak stratfor or e-mails. reported that the strength for vice president's private security firm stressful

vice president used to be a top u.s. government official claimed that there was already a secret indictment against. every reason to believe that given the u.s. campaign against. and their stated intention. to go after which been reported to us press that there is a recently that they have the opportunity to try to get him and u.s. custody and they will do so this is a totally rational legitimate document that fear now we hope we would be delighted to see the governments. of britain and sweden and australia and ecuador and united states agree we different now. but that hasn't happened yet the british have refused to say that they will not cooperate in an extradition the united states the swedes have refused to say they will cooperate in extradition united states has refused to say that they won't seek a sanjeev extradition so this this kind of shift that would resolve this crisis thanks indeed for joining us live. well you can watch all the episodes of gene in

the program on this channel at our website at www dot r t dot com you can check out some of the other stories we've lined up for you at r.t. dot com today including when president bush said thirty thousand extra u.s. forces to afghanistan in two thousand and nine it was despite a warning from his vice president you can find out more about that leaked memo in a new book on the conflict. and read it for freedom brazilian inmates can cut their jail time by becoming bookworms but the choices are limited more and that online. a u.s. senate committee has approved a bill blacklisting russian officials it deems to be implicated in human rights abuses the senate has yet to vote on the so-called magnitsky bill named after magnitsky who died in a russian prison three years ago he was detained in two thousand and eight on charges of helping a british investment fund carrying out attacks of asian he's going to check on the

details. senate foreign relations committee has passed the so-called magnitsky a law now at this point it has little to do with the actual person that the proposed legislation was named after sergei magnitsky who tragically died in a washington jail back in two thousand and nine the wording of this new punitive legislation is much broader if passed by the senate it would require the united states to deny visas and freeze the assets of russians generally accused of human rights abuses the fact of the matter is that the u.s. has already barred eleven russian officials allegedly implicated in the death of sergei magnitsky from entering the united states but the names of those people have not been disclosed russia retaliated last year by taking similar measures against eleven american officials accused of human rights violations in u.s. secret prisons in iraq afghanistan guantanamo president putin called deaths in prison a tragedy it's being investigated by russian authorities deems this kind of legislation as interference in their internal affairs a kind of interfere is that will most likely backfire moscow made it clear that

they will be forced to adopt similar measures and the potential list of american officials involved in human rights violations around the world can be very long including torture practices again in iraq of galveston guantanamo so this could trigger a series of tit for tat moves which will aggravate relations between the countries as far as the obama administration they've been working hard on russia's admission into the world trade organization on lifting the outdated jackson and bennett amendment in order to give american businesses a better access into the russian market and later this summer congress is set to vote on a legislation that will strike down this soviet era amendment which would decades had limited u.s. trade with russia but there are attempts in congress to attach this new human rights bill to the upcoming bill on establishing permanent normal trade relations with russia that's what the act is called and frankly moscow is worried about the

attempts to replace one punitive russian legislation with another. the b.b.c. has acknowledged its coverage of the uprisings in the middle east could have been broader and special internal inquiry concluded that though generally impartial context can't accuse the b.b.c. of being slow to highlight human rights abuses by rebel factions in the libyan war and underestimating the nature of the syrian uprising as it began the review also stated that the channel failed to provide international reaction to the events or focus on smaller countries like saudi arabia and bahrain today will come from a media training organization says the b.b.c. is losing its status as a leading broadcaster. there is a bias always baber of the bigger story the true revolution is always going to be more exciting it's going to be a bigger story and that's what reporters want to be a part of doesn't mean it was good journalistic decision but that is that is reality when it comes to major networks the bigger problem for the b.b.c. is there are just so much competition it's easy to be the gold standard when you

really have no competition and that was the case for so many decades around the world these days you have more and more networks you have more and more bloggers citizen journalist web sites and there's a lot of good stuff out there and every level of professional level at the citizen journalism level so it's harder for one organization to be the dominant voice. in its policy on the russian capital dimitris next now with business news and what we're seeing credit ratings worldwide slashed notably in europe russia remains stable that's right actually it's a short term credit rating has been improved from a three to eight or well long term rating that russia has been pretty much over the past couple of years remains that triple b. now s. and p. analysts believe that low debt levels of balancing the risks of the world's top energy exporter on dependence on oil and gas and he has got us of course from bank

of america merrill lynch with his assessment. of course i haven't heard of two other countries russia is much more protected against the potential adept relativity of their viability on the markets and of course these stable outlook is also a good development and basically just reiterate the best one great great thing for russia is always a good thing to have in a great environment. so you look at what's going on on global stock markets and we've had a batch of housing data come out the past two days in the united states indicating that an economic recovery is potentially happening at least in this in this sector of the economy with the dow jones now up three quarters of a percent or nasdaq point one percent as contracts are at the highest level over the past two years and we've seen housing prices finally rise this is the first time in several months on the oil market on the back of this housing data markets are up with the light sweet and brant blends both gaining more than one dollar and

a half a dollar per barrel respectively and let's take a look at what's going on in europe that everyone is looking ahead into tomorrow's crucial european union summit with a foot sea of one point four percent tax one half percent versus remain optimistic that we might find some kind of indication of coordinated effort in resolving the e.u. crisis and on the currencies markets the euro is losing against the dollar now one point two four six three that's on the back of the dollars gains on the back of housing data and also yours losing as a result of italian borrowing costs continuing to increase while the russian ruble continued to weaken now on the on the russian market we've had a pretty good session actually second session in a row with the r.t.s. my six games around one and a half percent this is of course a good trend but the market has still a long way to go to recover completely. at least two out of the three months three

months ago values on the my six interesting stories that norilsk nickel is one of the biggest gainers take a look at the main movers on the my six dollars nichols up for almost two percent as its main shareholder value my plan in commented on the recent buyback saying that it was done in order to support prices lukoil is also beginning. it's a buyback and therefore we might see some gains in the couple of sessions ahead was one of the biggest game of seventy two point two percent two point three percent even and after val's was up one percent but weaker than the market that says the company the car maker has announced it will start shipping cars to south america to door but there. right that's all i have for you this i'll be back next hour. thanks very much indeed to me tree yes dmitri will be back in an hour in fact we'll see him before that because very shortly to be true we'll be talking to

a pulitzer prize winning author on what the future holds for iran amid a new wave of looming sanctions that's coming away very shortly after the headlines stay with us life here in moscow. most of the coolness the magic of transforming airplanes into jet trains dirty

diesels into green rail dreams double down on profits by building up instead of out in the german swollen places east for the self knowledge up here on r.g.p. . culture is that so much different if you choose.