markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines. of the reports. hello and welcome to our team for today's news on the week's top stories battle in syria the rebels and the regime or in the country's second city the syrian army sense thousands more troops and artillery while the un hopes for a new peace envoy after kofi anon steps down. the trial of anti putin punk band pussy riot divides the country the three women could get seven years behind bars for hooliganism after performing in the stands in russia's main cathedral in february. and violent crackdowns on regime demos

escalate in the gulf states but the world stays silent on the long running on the run. and soldier were killed in saudi arabia on friday while dozens were injured in clashes in. the u.s. is considered by many to be a place of piloting standards but critics claim the notion of general wealth and well being is just an illusion a leading a u.n. health economist and renowned americans to titian now explains the social and financial ills of his country. in the promised land of stars and stripes us presidents have always reminded citizens how lucky they are and where people of every background can work hard and we want to serve drinks the old fashioned american dream. yes we did

just this i don't call it america is an exceptional nation of freedom and opportunity and the story of america reads much differently when facts are taken into account the measure of a nation is a new book comparing america against thirteen other wealthy nations to see where in fact the u.s. stands author dr howard stephen friedman sat down with r.t. i mean it was initiated by a conversation with my cousin when they were discussing the patient care and affordable care act patient patient protection and affordable care act and he had been defending the current system in america saying that it's the best in the world and i ask you how do you know that and his response was well i have no idea interestingly just a couple days afterwards i was doing some of my work at the united nations and i was looking at the human development report and it dawned on me that the data to compare the united states to other wealthy countries is readily available you can look at it you can see how we're doing and from there you can identify if we're

doing better or worse and in the areas we're not doing as well one of the lessons we can learn from other countries so when you do the comparison what you find is overall the united states doesn't do that well on health safety democracy and equality we get some of the lowest rankings for education roughly in the middle but one of the disappointing factors is we used to be one of the best in most of those categories in the case of social mobility you found that america is not the land of opportunity it promises to be as a matter of fact you say countries such as canada and germany. rank better than america what exactly did you find out this is what i found to be one of the most surprising results in the book i grew up believing in the american dream work as hard as you can and you can go anywhere and it's true some people really do move up from work classes to the wealthiest but the chances of moving are much lower than

in other wealthy countries someone who was born in the poorest part of the united states not just geographically but the segment of the population chances of them moving just even out of that group are almost fifty percent that is almost fifty percent of those people are going to stay there and the rags to riches story going from the poorest to the richest group is lower in the united states than the other wealthy countries for which there is data that shocked me so what happens to this so-called american exceptionalism the country prides itself on where you know american exceptionalism is really a tough concept because at some level there's almost there's almost a faith it's a denial of facts and just looking at this ideals from a religious point of view and i find american exceptionalism as an argument to look at what i call competitive intelligence for america as a problem because people they would say well the united states is exceptional you can't compare us and i view that as just a self-defense mechanism or just a way of someone trying to maintain blissful ignorance on the other hand

a frightening reality according to your facts is how america's level of inequality compares to europe and other wealthy nations so when you talk about income inequality there's really two measures there's what's called the pre adjustment and the post adjustment just made is just that roi income you earned post adjustment is after you paid taxes and after the government has provided supports welfare social security as it turns out the us has the highest level of income inequality both pre and post adjustment why the. it's true is an interesting question this level of inequality has gone much larger over time as we've seen changes in the pay structure the weakening of the unions degradation of the minimum wage in the united states as compared to other countries so a lot of factors are affecting that pre tax income inequality but for the post tax income inequality it's all about many of the changes that happened in our tax laws

there was a time where we really had a very progressive tax system now with capital gains taxes being taxed much lower than regular income with hedge fund managers earning millions and sometimes billions and paying fifteen percent look for example at mitt romney a man has earned many many millions last year you paid a tax rate that was probably half of what you kate in case our viewers are interested you found japan spain korea and italy to be among those nations to have the best levels of wealth inequality switching gears how does america's democracy compare to other wealthy nations that's another one that's problematic there was a time where i think it was fair to say the u.s. was a leader we came up with that constitution the declaration of independence the whole idea of a modern representative government but now we've slowed down if you look at our turnout for voters it's one of the lowest of any wealthy country at the same time

our two party system with a winner take all single seat election is unusual most countries don't do that and the reason why is that type of election ends up alienating a lot of voters most countries use proportional representation where the representatives in congress actually reflect the voting they also use other systems such as preferential voting where you rank order your votes so that if i have a candidate i like but maybe they're not from the largest party i could still vote for that candidate and not have to worry about my vote being discarded to. any other wealthy nation allow private money to fund and fuel presidential elections the way the united states does i didn't specifically look at that but i can't underestimate the impact of money on the american political system and in fact there's some interesting analysis done by political scientists that showed that people from the top third of the economic class have

a very strong voice and government people in the middle third have a weak voice in government and it showed that people in the bottom third of the economic group united states have no measurable influence that's hype of information is powerful and if you look at the politics of many other countries around the world it's shocking to think that there would ever be true the voice of people who are in the poorest third of their nation still have a powerful voice and i think that's a real challenge in american democracy is to make sure that we really are in a world of one person one vote instead of dollar equals vote are you hopeful that the candidates currently running for president could make any reforms or changes that would elevate america to better global position right now i'm not terribly optimistic in the reason why is there hindered by a few things in the factors that i think are preventing the united states to from really moving forward or one most americans just aren't aware of how we're doing

they're just not aware of our situation they think we're doing much better than we are the second is complacency. we're relatively comfortable in our world situation so people aren't dying in the street so there's not a as much of a passion to see change the third one which is very important our democratic process really resists change if you look at our structure of government it's basically designed to not move much and it unfortunately suppress the voice of a lot of the americans who really could benefit from change so we have those factors that are all playing in the last factor is there are groups in america who've benefited greatly from some of the issues that we have that are preventing us from being great in health or from excel it's not just corporations though for that's not

a system that enables lots of americans to have their voice heard but at the same time those two parties will defend a two party system so corporations are certainly one aspect but even the groups that are benefiting from our political system will defend the current political system and i give you a great example. for the presidential debates there's a committee that was brought in that said you have to have at least fifteen percent polling before certain dates to participate the only reason why that rule was put in place at that high level was to prevent third parties from being on that stage with the candidates of romney and obama the american government has always position to itself as a global leader of human rights and justice however you say that the u.s. is the least peaceful wealthy nation what exactly do you mean by that what we looked at was crime rates we looked at incarceration rates those are internal

measures of safety at the same time i also took a look at external that is our military spending our tendency to have external wars so internally looking at measures of violence and crime and extremely the type of safety the war interactions and as you look at it what you see is our incarceration rate is multiples higher than any other wealthy country at the same time our murder rate is much higher one of the things that most americans don't realize is our gun policy is completely different from any other wealthy country at least the ones i included but when we talk about external military interaction we need to reflect on the fact that the united states plays a very different role than other countries the other countries that i compare in my book many from western europe canada for your pain and south korea they receive somewhat of the protection of the united states so that's the one example in the book where the actions the united states takes really do impact the actions of

other countries by the united states spending far more on military and being at least viewing itself as more of armed to protect many of these countries it ends up letting those other countries spend less and that's exactly what you see in the dynamics. in what areas does the u.s. find itself in a leading position among other wealthy nations there are a few areas where we excel we have some of the best colleges in the world so that tertiary education are graduate schools are outstanding some of the strongest in the world our hospitals our technology overall is world class and overall those types of advantages i would draw as the best talent in the world here students come here in order to learn and hopefully we can keep the opportunities for them not only to arrive here but for them to stay our technology that allows us to innovate and create some great companies that still exist and are entrepreneurship the

government rules that allow us to create new companies and to patent things really as outstanding u.s. universities and hospitals may be excellent but if the student debt bubble is above one trillion dollars and roughly fifty million citizens are living without health care how are americans benefiting from their nation's excellence they're all emblematic of one of the things that's true about the united states which is we have the extremes of excellence and a public system that seems to drift behind if you take education our undergraduate school or some of the best in the world and they're extremely expensive that's a challenge so it's only accessible to a certain percentage of the population but for those who can access it they're excellent our graduate schools same thing our medical system for those who can afford it we really do have a great health system our public health system is way behind that's all the time we

have dr friedman thank you very much for sitting down to speak with r.t. my pleasure thank you very much. the music should be good leverage surely to mccurry was able to build a good age most sophisticated radios which all included lead goes into good don't amount to anything change mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans in groups this is why you should care only. to be soo much brighter than if you knew all about song from phones to parachutes.

these friends don't on t.v. don't come. today's news on the week's top stories in the battle in syria as the rebels and the regime fighting for the country's second city the syrian army sounds thousands more troops and artillery while the un looks for a new peace envoy kofi annan steps down. the trial of an top who punk band pussy riot divides the country the three women could get seven years behind bars for the look at some after performing in a political stunt and russia's main cathedral in february. had violent crackdowns on the anti regime demos escalate and the gulf states but the world stayed silent all day long running on rats a protester and soldiers were killed the saudi arabia on friday while dozens were

injured in clashes frame. up next all the latest sports news with paul. thank you very much karen welcome along the to the sports headlines here's what we've got for you. on the grass serena williams claims a limbic gold in female tennis blitzing maria sharapova had a totally one sided affair when will the. saints go marching on the knicks and peaches well maintained their politics start to the russian premier league season with victory of a fellow title hopefuls moscow. and the russian roulette genco whiles i was audiences with a thrilling routine at a later stage of the cliff diving world series.

but first some breaking news in the last few moments russia have claimed a surprise bronze medal in the women's marathon at the twenty twelve london olympics starts you want to throw around the right of her life to come in third in a time of two hours twenty three minutes and twenty nine seconds that's a new personal best the gold went to tiki of ethiopia who also set a new olympic record all silver went to kenya's discard to. russia up and running on sunday while elsewhere in london russia came up short of a golden triumph on saturday but there were at least a few silver linings for the country richard ron paul has more on the ups and downs starting on the tennis court. but maria sharapova was looking to complete what would have been a golden saints by adding a little bit gold to the four different grand slams but she's won so far in her career however she was blown away in straight sense boy serena williams six six one the school there has been american ways to victory in just over an hour sharapova

had to settle for the silver medal while there was some unexpected success for russia in the badminton women's doubles. i mean of these managed to win a bronze medal for russia have really had much success in this sport in the past and in fact this was our first ever badminton medal that they've managed to win to be olympics. was. the bronze medal match was nerve wracking but we managed to get our emotions under control we didn't want to finish fourth as we knew we would leave london without a medal however we played well and were the superior team on the day against our canadian opponents and i'm really happy that we managed to get a medal for our country to do it you mean that. salvaged a medal won in the women's heptathlon following a good last eight hundred metres was still a long way behind the eventual winner i was just going to miss great britain. the shining the cover of a silver medal for russia in the discus of the leaderboard shouldn't he was

a major hope for russia but the two thousand and eight olympic champion fainted just two kilometers from home in the men's twenty kilometer war we had been taken to hospital i know we kept there overnight but his condition is more serious but better news for russia's men's basketball team who continue their find tournament so far as may be the reigning european champions spain seventy seven seventy four the rush of an eye for an oh and according to lithuania sleaziness clear russia has certainly going to be one of the many many contenders for a medal i'm most proud. you know coach they go to coach that. pretty a pretty good system that's a lot of players no i don't think. of course is a whole different thing but the system is. it's a lot of it was an hour or so of russia in the weight lifting how does an even more

finishing second in the minds of all kilogram category but not for the first time of these olympics gold went kazakstan. in richmond battle fleet r.t. london. well at wimbledon russia will today be looking to add to their tennis tally maria kirilenko another patrol over taking part in the bronze medal match in the women's doubles that starts in around ten minutes time they face a tough test against american jew only so very mundane result huber huber is ranked as the number one doubles player on the planet kurylenko of course will be looking to go one better than her bronze medal match singles defeat victoria azarenka on saturday. pulsar getting underway in about ten minutes time as the men's singles final it's a repeat of the wimbledon final four weeks ago between roger federer and andy murray world number one federer came out on top in four sets that day and is looking to add a limpid goal to his seventeen grand slam titles. when martin del potro novak djokovic battling for

a bronze del potro having to dig deep into his energy reserves after a record breaking defeat to federer at least was a rain delay there is currently three to two in the first second. meanwhile russia's female basketball team have secured third place in the group created this after a sixty five fifty four defeat to france in the last group stage six just chorus so a call of the season started starting well claiming the support of the team ten but the french then took control to seal the win. now want to positive for team russia so far has been success on the judo much three gold one silver and one bronze medal for them on top of the sport's medal table and the returning stars arrive back in the russian capital hoping their success cannot springboard for other russian athletes. sunderland those very skilled it's a historical achievement for russian judo there's no doubt about it we're very proud to be the first afterwards to win this medals at the olympics and hopefully it may help our country mates do better in other sports with the other is that for

me personally the success of our giudice means a lot especially in terms of bringing this point to the masses i really really hope that after these olympic games many kids in russia will start practicing judo think your. well away from the olympics into football where russian premier league champions any dealt an early blow to title rivals taskbar moscow base in pittsburgh side recording a three one away win in the russian capital then a finnish fifteen points ahead of test car last season and have already put clear daylight between themselves and the army men in this campaign the match is good is over after just half an hour so i sum up topping home alexander kozak of trust just ten minutes and three minutes later and it was to nil this time so much was brought down in the box. because you cough the chance to hold his fourth goal in three matches so far this season. confusion in the taskbar box would then allow someone

to sell the points on thirty two minutes leaving kazuki on the strike before halftime a consolation of three wins from three for the reigning champions. the opposite side of the equation for the fourteenth moscow the railway man seeing their one hundred percent start to the season shattered by f.c. class no doubt that despite really paisa sido putting new visitors ahead on ninety minutes. the house side were jumping to life in the second half an early goal from roman public and followed by right is just.

heading in. forty seven c. on the day to remain on course for his first p.g.a. victory in almost two years the twenty ten p.g.a. player of the a watching his soul birdie on the second hole the gated bio on the twelfth with the american breaking the rest of the way around twenty twelve masters one a lot new west paisley's one shot clock one of his three birdies coming here on the twelfth the twenty nine year old south african thus on track for his third picture

you yes you can bradley hasn't lifted a trophy since the twenty eleven p.g.a. championship the american now finds himself in ranger four strokes behind the leader. and finally jumping off a perilous rock faces that for a living is something that might not appeal to many but for athletes competing in the cliff diving world series it's all part of the day job this is initially more a small island off the west coast of ireland the stunning area played host to stage five of the red bull world series on saturday nine time competition champion orlando duque a show just why he has dominated the sport for so long but even that wasn't enough to earn the colombian top spots instead he had to play second fiddle to watch him still chunka the russian coming back to back wins in the competition for the first time with an electrifying new dive a but stand with a blind entry and he intends across the board the result means he sits third in the standings will do. almost now to lose all.

that is all from the world of sport for now but i'll be back with plenty more in just under two hours time here on r.t. do join me then but the world weather is next. well. science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered.