more explosions and gun battles rocks syria as the un's voting to decide on extending its observer mission to the conflict zone. meanwhile rumors are run right over the fate and future of the embattled syrian president himself. true or false bashar assad is ready to step down as president and leave syria peacefully i'm john thomas in moscow and coming up we separate fact from fiction. police agreed angry crowds with tear gas and rubber bullets on the streets of spain as the public rages against the latest wave of austerity imposed on the country in return for a bank rescue by the e.u. .

live from moscow city center this is r t with me roll received witnesses are reporting that damascus has been rocked by a large explosion that as the fighting rages into a fifth day right there in the capital about holzer also continuing throughout the country syrian state media claims that assad's military forces have won back control over the rebellious me down district right in the center of damascus meanwhile the u.n. is trying to verify reports of up to thirty thousand refugees having fled to lebanon activists claim with the army has launched attacks on border crossings with turkey and iraq which were seized by the rebels yesterday. keeping across developments for us in damascus free syrian army soldiers now controlling all four border crossings at the syrian iraqi border and the dog told officials has also

said that the iraqi guards have witnessed. from the side of free syrian army soldiers from opposition fighters we also been able to see the to posted on you tube from the syrian turkish border where gunmen have been shouting religious slogans and shooting. portrays a free syrian army has been able to take control over crossings at the border that means that they they are very determined in large scale operation against a regime of president bashar al assad but that doesn't necessarily mean that they still keep in this control because everything changes very fast we have to be very careful with information and even with picture is we see because since the beginning of these are it's also been media war and just recently we've been hearing from opposition that they've managed to take control over the airport just

yesterday we were at the airport here in damascus it's it's functioning normally been here on the ground for almost fifty days already and i have to say what we've been able to see in the last five days has been the most dramatic moment for the syrian capital of the clashes between the army and the rubbles have been taken place in at least five districts all damascus and it's been extremely difficult to get in side these districts but on thursday we've finally managed to do that and what we saw really devastating destroyed streets abandoned houses and no people of variously and many many traces of war and a very fierce clashes we've even seen many tracks of tanks and all are not totally on the roads but on what used to be the cars obviously all shops are closed and we have to understand that these districts are not remote. damascus

not far from the center of the city center we've been here for one the month now and we've been. to these districts many times. by something talking to people and of course it's been very sad to see how different the picture is right now people are trying to deal with this situation and we are in mazed how brave they are in this situation facing horror of war that has come to their home they say yes we know it is happening right now here in damascus and in our country it's been here for seventeen months already but we cannot do anything with these and life has to go on and we have to leave so they're trying to do with this is just waiting for this nightmare to end this is what they say. well you can always i stay up to date on exactly what is happening in syria you can just follow maria's twitter feed she is one of the very few international correspondents still reporting right from the heart of the fighting in the photos are from the scene and impressions just find

maria. underscore. meanwhile the word has been going around that assad may be ready to step down with some international outlets citing a russian statement but officials say the diplomats words were taken completely out of context by the media and calling for a more cautious approach to such reports or it will argue sean thomas now attempts to break down the rumors. they say that russian ambassador to france alexander orlov has said that syrian president bashar al assad is ready to step down but in a civilized manner the diplomat said that during a meeting in geneva by the syria action group on june thirtieth a final communique provided for a transition to a more democratic regime was accepted by assad he agreed to leave it but from a civilized way now in essence if there was a meeting they adopted a communique which allows for a transition to

a more democratic regime assad was there he agreed to this and even appointed representative to discuss this with the opposition and agreed to leave it done so in a civilized manner we had are to have contacted the russian foreign ministry and they have not confirmed this but they are monitoring the situation very closely also various syrian a fashion officials within the government there have not confirmed this information as well now assad has said in the past that he is indeed willing to leave if it is the will of the syrian people and not if he's going to be forced out by foreign evolvement now there are also rumors that assad has already fled the mask that he has been injured even though there are television reports showing him an injured in the case also rumors that his wife has fled here to moscow now the foreign ministry has commented on this general idea of rumors and they say that and this is quoting from the foreign ministry the world is usually awash with rumors these rumors tend

to gain some information ground and spread very fast i would not like to comment on any rumors today i think that it is a very dishonest information trapped be careful not to fall into it and that's the word coming from the russian foreign ministry so obviously they're looking at the situation trying to see what's true what's not right now they're just saying pretty much rumors at this point. sean thomas reporting there now of the u.n. observer mission to syria expires later on friday with the security council still split on whether to extend it to new draft resolutions are up for a vote after russia and china both vetoed a western backed proposal which they called simply unacceptable parties marina portnoy has details from new york. russia has from the get go that he would not support any resolutions on syria that would include the potential of sanctions being imposed or even military intervention this western backed resolution that was drafted by the u.k.

called on damascus to immediately seize any kind of fighting and the use of heavy weapons and withdraw from populated centers and the resolution gave the syrian government ten days to comply with those demands otherwise sanctions would be imposed. what was attached to that illusion is a forty five day extension of the u.n. supervision mission in syria so that is quite clear why russia would not give its support to this western backed resolution because it was putting all the pressure and consequence on the syrian government and not putting any pressure consequence on the armed opposition that are participating in the violence in syria that has been increasing as we've seen over the past seventeen months the russian ambassador to the united nations vitaly churkin did address the media saying that there is still time for the security council to reach a consensus but he said that russia would not support any moves or past for

military intervention into syria and he also warned western countries may be trying to destabilize syria to possibly of move further in and around iran the clock is ticking because if this mandate expires and it is not renewed then that means that the united nations would not have any force in syria that is verifying what is taking place on the ground what you came back to the u.n. said is that they have drafted britain has drafted a new resolution that rolls over the u.n. mission in syria for a final thirty days. and that is something which the security council is considering but according to work and there are still very many questions surrounding this new drama that has been proposed by britain the united nations at the end of the day does need a mission in the ground because if that mission is removed then the situation in

syria can get worse without any objective reporting that's tied to the u.n. . oh of course want to report my reporting very well earlier russia's envoy to the un gave an exclusive live interview to our colleague bill dog. lashed back at criticism from western countries which he says are simply pursuing their own agendas in syria. unfortunately they haven't done anything at all in order to set them train a productive positive process in syria instead they have been working. with the so-called friends of syria in fact the. this is a group of countries who are enemies of the syrian government i wouldn't call them enemies of the syrian people but certainly those who want to topple the syrian government this regarding the consequences which are extremely tragic which. inevitably entails because the government or president our side it's not simply one

individual or a group of individuals they represent of course a certain segment of the of the syrian population a certain power structure which has existed there for decades so to break it would cause and is causing trying to break that considerable trouble and bloodshed to reform and through dialogue this would be much more reasonable a line of action and this is what russia has been advocated dialogue hasn't achieved anything so far is that now an overwhelming global sentence is something has to be done to stop the killing of innocent people and what about intervention on humanitarian grounds is not acceptable to moscow moscow is very concerned about chapter seven i don't want to get into technical is the chapter seven leading to perhaps military intervention but what about some form of intervention to stop the killing. well in a way the monitoring group which. is

a way of sort of political intervention in trying to a practical intervention and trying to deter while in some fortune. it hasn't happened been successful i mean you said the dialogue has not achieved anything the problem is that the dialogue has not started yet the opposition groups refuse to enter into a dialogue with the syrian government which says it is prepared for the dialogue. at all for all the syrian government to enter into dialogue this is a major makes a missing link a major impediment in the way of. activity. and of a full version of a fatality chokin seclusive interview was airing in the next hour right here on r.t. you can also watch it though on our web site right now at r.t. dot com here's a taste of what else you'll find out when the war between u.s. officials and whistle blows intensifies as defense secretary leon panetta tightens

the screws on american media all the details on that plus. more than a third of children living near japan's of crippled nuclear power could suffer from in the future a shocking report just revealed online. and is israel planning to use the ball garia tourists as a pretext for war with iran. the extensive analysis of the possible consequences of such a tragedy. so good to have you with us here in our to you today police have fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse angry protesters are thronging in the streets of spain dozens of people injured and a number of activists detained during that latest nationwide and the austerity demonstrations in

a major show of strength hundreds of thousands have been taking part in the protests people marched in eighty cities across the country to protest against. more suffocating austerity which is to come it's all off to the german parliament gave the green light one hundred billion euro bailout for the country's battered banks the use finance ministers are now expected to approve the conditions for the financial lifeline to madrid let's get some more details on this now and talk to us sociologist at the university thank you for coming on our team today know that it is good for the spanish banks are being bailed out here people in from all the bits of austerity that's been hitting but quite some time now i mean is it fair to say this is a vicious circle when will it come to an end. well it's really hard to say when it's going to come to an end i mean it's certainly a vicious vicious spiral because what we're seeing is a massive transfer of public private debt into public debt and that's that's where

it really begins to harm the actual citizens of spain it's this sort of this these plans. are not even being done on a large enough scale to really have any effect any positive effect for sort of working people in spain it's just something that's going to basically like i said several weeks ago is just an effort to buy up toxic assets that have no value never had any value and have actually been the tool through which citizens in this country have been conned well let's let's talk about just for a moment here the true reaction of the people in spain of the protests unlike those in greece traditionally quite peaceful that is until now with no end to the crisis inside is there a danger that tempers will boil over again and why is it the normal normally laura botting people are now basically toting vod and people some people calling them who look. yeah well i mean it's because their very livelihoods are what are what are

what's at stake i mean the people when you take their food you take all that they have you take their homes they they respond they respond quite viscerally i mean yesterday you know we saw in madrid for instance wasn't you know violent an artists and a group that decided to burn a bunch of dumpsters what we saw were police charging against other police protesting police we saw them charging against fire fire meant firemen and women we saw them working against public sector charging against public sector workers and chasing them through the streets of madrid and you know neighborhood neighborhoods in madrid the actual people that lived there were actually throwing flower pots from the balconies at the police now that's a qualitative change from what we've seen over the last year in spain to suddenly change as you say though i do know that last year during the occupy movement in america in new york we had some examples of the police actually crossing the line

and joining the protesters now that's that's where i would look at the issue of unemployment in spain is the highest in all of the e.u. twenty five percent unemployment here comes another one hundred billion euros to tell us something here what is this money going. it's just going to buy toxic assets i mean that's all it's doing it's money that that's being sort of thrown is it's a very small patch over a massive massive gaping hole and that gaping hole is private sector debt it's private sector debt that is the result of the housing bubble and the result of of banks trafficking in toxic assets like the preferred shares which are you know financial instrument that are typically reserved for experts but they started selling them to you know older folks with alzheimers and provoking a small scale run on the banks by not allowing for instance eighty year old you know retired folks to access their savings by and putting ten year blocks on those

with us i mean that's just in we need we need to address the issue of the social impact here because as we have one hundred billion euros coming into spain basically from the euro kratz in brussels we look at austerity measures pensions going down all sorts of benefits covering doubt you would about your social impact what would take us to that part where you the social impact the social impact is massive i mean the social impact is misery i mean that the reason i guess i don't want to you know expound on it that much is because i think it's kind of obvious if you're here i mean you see people living in a.t.m. and a.t.m. buildings right in the late t.m. services and you see them living out in the streets looking in the in the trash you know for food i mean these are people that that two years ago were working ok and they were working and maintaining families and now they're very livelihoods are threatened and of course tensions are going to boil over i mean i think what's surprising is that we've gone a whole year and really seen mostly peaceful protests but what's happening now at

the social level is you know last year we were talking about the indignados now it's not just the indignados now it's public sector workers it's really all of society that's coming together that's why you had over a million people in the streets yesterday and that's why you had you know. actual fractures opening up. within the actual state strongly i mean a true truth is used it's absolutely astonishing as you say you know upwards of a million people out of the streets if we as we've been talking we've been showing these pictures here all basically molotov cocktails all shops on fire old sorts of people breaking through barriers lines the social levels you address there but what about the political levels of as well because many of being calling for the removal of prime minister is it the question of his personality or of the political system itself that is failing it and frankly does he have any control i mean is his control based in brussels his control is entirely based in brussels at this point and i mean when i say that it's because there is a real crisis of an of the institutions in spain so no it's not just limited to his

personality actually practically has none he's a perfect bureaucrat in the sense he's a guy who whose main personality is just sort of being the guy who last of what they did two times. but beyond that what we're seeing is you know judges caught up in corruption scandals for using public money to kind of have twenty party weekends right just ahead of the coolant to like the supreme court or whatever but then we have we have bankers that are on trial as well with thirty three members of bankia for instance on trial who have been members and ministers of government i think in some of the country and when you look at the amount of people on the streets and then you talk about these people in the upper levels who are being held to account perhaps at some point at the end of the day maybe some people will be held to account for all the years that have pump a. life on oxy thank you very much for coming on the program thanks for having me. well spain or maybe that you use the fourth largest economy but it tops the ranks

when it comes to the number of unemployed as we were just talking about twenty five percent unemployment six million people out of work desperate to find ways to survive as a carlos was just saying he sees people on the streets are sleeping in the little terminals of a.t.m. cash point some are also turning to other countries in the hope of finding a better life for the desired are silly and now reports that they might have to go a lot further than just neighboring eurozone states. twenty four point six million people are without jobs across the european union seventeen point four million of them in the euro zone countries with unemployment at its highest levels of the single currency was introduced in spain unemployment hit twenty four point three percent the worst rate in the e.u. and among the spanish and greek youth it's more than half. statistics may paint the big picture but they don't quite show the human story real people struggling through each day like this one gary

a man who came to belgium three months ago that's taping in a street and then i never did before so it's really really hard i accept any you know i don't want b.b.c. or if i'm mean i don't want i don't i don't want to leave yeah good you know is that. i want to work i want to get ariel the current levels of unemployment around acceptable. it's a big baby it simply cannot continue this way and it also leads to reliance on state subsidies a plight faced by job seekers across all sectors and all levels of society when you are within the european institutions too early to be detached from the tea and you are among the. euro crowds when they see unemployment benefits are too high compared to paid salaries this is the wrong way to see the problem most people

aren't paid enough for their jobs in two thousand and ten more than twenty five percent of the e.u. g.d.p. was devoted to social benefits seen as a heavy burden on a crisis stricken europe since then various cuts have been made by member states particularly greece portugal spain and ireland a sportive e.u. imposed a stared even powerhouse germany is joining the crunch a local newspaper reported seeing a leaked directive from the labor ministry blocking a basic unemployment benefits for people who moved to germany from some e.u. countries and it's been a target as an attempt to curb abuse of the system by discouraging immigration from struggling e.u. economies you can't really blame the individual people they are just a victim as everyone else from an economic system in which they're living on the economic. many of those who don't turn to the state for unemployment benefits which may be reduced if it hasn't been already to continue the steady across the e.u.

budget cuts have also stunted economic growth and job creation but since the job seeker at exactly the same spot. state dependent and increasingly extreme cases living in desperation just are still here r t brussels. shortly will join me in for the business for now the world update will start in colorado where at least twelve people were killed up to fifty injured after a shooting at a movie premiere in the u.s. city of denver the gunman rolled a tear gas canister into the cinema before opening fire during the late premiere of the new batman film police have confirmed they have arrested a suspect carrying a knife a rifle and a handgun a second gun was also recovered from the same people the fresh anti-government rallies reportedly held in the capital of bahrain activists claim they've begun blocking roads both in and out of the city the protest movement demanding political reform and an end to the ruling regime has been going on since last february and as

a ready scene more than fifty killed the government's been trying to suppress the opposition by banning rallies and arresting activists. a woman in china lucky to be alive have a look right here talk about a narrow escape from who could have been i suppose it is a dramatic road accident very close shave indeed c.c.t.v. footage showing the woman straying into the part of a cargo truck which then smashers straight into her scooter who should reportedly failed to spot a red light she does face prosecution for causing that crash. part of the carrot here as promised there she was good to see you today i do understand very well the pressure is on in europe do tell us about. brit got a picture to look out right now we've got european stocks dropping off the longest we rally in six years about the euro down got commodities dropping and i was all

our finance ministers meet to consider tyson bad as we got the figures on the screen just and as you can see we've got the clients and that's the yields for the spanish bonds over german farms. that's the difference between the two and that's responding news is that the euro area crisis is indeed do you think that one of the standout losses today losers should i say is vodafone which also over two percent of posting coarsely service sells that trail forecasts is going to the exchange rates will be able to see how the euro is responding to all of this and it's probably no surprise that it's declining but it won twenty two ninety five just that just as for the realize the mix of form is as a positive card as you can see that it's going to be actually markets here in russia than i would assume but the client has well off to a pretty lackluster day all round and a lot of that is because oil is declining so let's see the prices they are continuing to fall and that's from a nine week high that's all speculation that the recent gains were extensive i made it was expressed worse than expected i should say economic data signs that demand

the weekend as a result now let's talk about something else now russia's arms exporter has lost a multi million dollar contract with the u.s. pentagon but also oberon exports how to deal to sell ten am i seventeen attack helicopters they were to be used by afghan forces after the u.s. would do all small must got a son in twenty four seen now washington has got the existing agreements claiming the russian company is arming the syrian regime. now while the financial turmoil is in capsule a thing of the world is becoming increasingly hard for people to find secure investment opportunities really now we've got a report by citi group that apparently says that russia has all the credentials and we've got the tasha sun it's going to she's got all the details for us the eurozone crisis is three years in the making and there's no end in sight so working retail

investors safely for their money to wait out the storm banking giant citi group says russia why while their answer is simple russia's economy is stronger and has more potential than most european economies see for yourself russia's g.d.p. may grow as much as four percent this year that's according to the economy ministry europe while most of it expects negative growth in two thousand and twelve even the strongest economies show a meager rate's debt debt related problems are investors nightmares while turns out russia has the lowest levels of government and corporate debt of any country in europe around nine percent the average for the eurozone is ten times that while europe struggling with double digit unemployment russia's jobless rate when they fell to the lowest level in thirteen years and this is stimulating consumption russia's already europe's biggest consumer in many categories and this year expected to be the absolute leader germany in terms of course sales how can you capitalize on russia's relative strength citigroup suggests investing into global

companies with sales in russia. but the business and the the headlines are next. culture is that so much as i can which of course he was on a couple of years a the trials and tribulations of g.o.p. presidential candidate mitt romney because romney's rich history in less than transparent business records too much for voters. to be soon which brightened if you knew all about sound from feinstein's crash and saw.