awaiting their fate three feminist punk rockers are still to find out a court verdict for staging a protest in russia's main cathedral as we assess how an obscure band ended up hitting headlines around the world. this is one of the most. that are ever see it anywhere in the world in terms of human life loss and destruction. as opposed prepares for his transition of power to a newly elected to assembly continued violence threatens to derail hopes for democracy. and is getting dangerously tense on the border between egypt and israel as karo bombs militants one a new leader struggles to stop violence in the post country our top stories the.

russian courts reviewing the case of the controversial feminist punk band pussy riot says it will delay its verdict until next friday the members of the group are facing three years in jail for storming the altar of russia's main cathedral and belting out what they call a protest punk prayer the trial has deeply divided russian society and triggered strong reactions from abroad peter oliver is following the case and you'll find some sexual images in his report. well and the eighth day of the pussy riot trial the judge has set a date for the verdict to be announced of the seventeenth of august at three pm moscow time now this followed on from the defendants giving their own closing speeches in which they compared their trial to the stalinist trials of the nineteen thirties as well as to the trial of a russian all thirty of the dostoyevsky in the nineteenth century for blasphemy now

each of the three women went on to say that yet again they intended no offense to the russian orthodox church through their protests which took place in february of this year and moscow's main cathedral at their protest was against now what they termed as putin isn't just president vladimir putin but against the whole political system in russia well it's really been quite amazing during this trial the amount of media interest around the world that it's grabbed from the music industry we've seen quite a few superstars of the business coming out and supporting these three women the likes of staying the red hot chili peppers and faith no more the latest to join that group was madonna and how she played in moscow on tuesday night and was on stage with the words pussy riot painted on her back now madonna of course she's no stranger to controversy and city no stranger to controversy regarding the church you cast your mind back to one thousand nine hundred eighty nine and single like

a prayer the music video for which was condemned by the vatican and saw some catholic groups calling for excommunication and in fact it ended up losing a sponsorship from groups such as as pepsi among others so she knows about controversy when it comes to this and she's thrown her support behind pussy riot but it's not just these issues that have been coming out and giving their opinions on this case we've seen politicians from the west from britain from germany from the united states some of them coming here to the course of seven months ago these women were relatively unknown and you'd be hard pushed to find any. he knew really what pussy riot was all about these women in particular were known more for their shocking stunts individually in the past they'd taken part in an orgy in a museum which they invited the the media to they want also was filmed performing a say exact with a frozen chicken in a supermarket other shocking stunts other stunts that have been carried out including the kissing of of policemen on the metro so the way in which in the last

seven months the attention surrounding these women has snowballed is certainly something that whatever the result of this trial is going to be discussed for a long time to come. all these people over there well madonna support for the group is not going down one an all courses radical christian group was so inflamed by her words that it decided to inflame literally find out more about this is well as other reactions on r.t. dot com. also online ortiz correspondent arena was inside the courtroom as the pussy riot is delivered their final pleas in her twitter stream we'll find out what exactly the three women said before the court time. egypt's president mohamed morsi has sacked the intelligence chief and the governor

of north sinai following the killing of over a dozen it gyptian security forces by militants the minute responded to the massacre by launching airstrikes against a gunman and killing twenty suspected islamic terrorists thought and says escalated dramatically in the country since the ousting of hosni mubarak last year all of these paul asli reports. in the early hours of this morning wayne's day egypt's military launched civil air strikes in the northern peninsula and according to egyptian media at least twenty people have been killed several spots were targeted and why this is significant is that this is the first time since one thousand nine hundred seventy three that the egyptian air force has operated in the sinai peninsula it certainly is indicative of an increased militant activity verify that such efforts are being employed such desperate efforts it does follow involved by cairo that it would crack down on what it's calling infidels operating in the sinai peninsula it was a degree attack on sunday night in which sixteen injection soldiers were killed and

just last night truce day there were at least three incidents at joint border crossings a joint checkpoints between egyptian soldiers and egyptian police now if the son is the former egyptian president hosni mubarak was ousted from power last year said here we we have seen growing enormousness and chaos across the sinai peninsula certainly seeing that the militants are starting to act much more boldly we have heard a number of incidents of militant attacks and of militant operations the growing concern is also that this violence is moving closer to the egyptian israeli border and this has been not only tell of this concern but people in the region that this violence might spread further and have regional implications certainly television has indicated and said that it will act unilaterally if it feels threatened. libya's national transitional council is handing over power to a newly elected assembly of two hundred members it's been ten months since the

country's uprising led to the killing of colonel gadhafi the war torn nation is still flooded with weapons and struggles to control outbreaks of violence as a result milton ali mahdi the editor in chief of black star news believes the widespread divisions in libya will be a difficult hurdle towards democracy big countries flooded with weapons the country is split. into almost four or five different almost a semi autonomous zones let's be very realistic and in order for things to start improving on libya i still believe they need an exercise in national reconciliation and national dialogue let's just be honest about it it's one thing to pretend that you want to see something existing and it's another thing to create that existence this is one of the most costly as elections that are ever see it anywhere in the world in terms of human life loss and destruction because let's remember colonel gadhafi had actually agreed to fry and supervised elections in which all parties in

libya would be free to contest but nato washington paris and london decided to ignore that and instead impose the sea in power after virtually destroying libya and in fact the bombardment and the destruction by nato has not yet been investigated even though the i.c.c. the international criminal court had mentioned at one point that it should be investigated we can't sweep inconvenient truths under the rug. rebels in syria have admitted that assad's army has dealt them a serious blow in the flashpoint city of aleppo that's after president assad's troops have taken positions in the rebel stronghold in the area alongside intense fighting on the ground the information war around syria shows no sign of abating either a number of western and arab news outlets broadcast a report from the syrian rebels are killed a russian general assisting also it's showed a video said to be of the general's id issued by the syrian military but emerged

the alleged victim. is actually alive and well and left syria years ago and he even appeared on t.v. to prove it. meanwhile the syrian rebels own allies are now becoming a source of growing concern for them opposition activists are worried foreign islamist fighters who are helping them to topple assad will eventually turn against them and try and gain control of the entire syrian state log on to r.t. dot com to find out more about why and how the stricken nation could turn into a constant battle ground after any regime change. forces there for the moment find out how to change in the law means that business partner of the jailed oil tycoon and russia's former richest man. could be released from jail three years early. the controversial u.s. military contractor formerly known as blackwater will stump up seven and a half million dollars to avoid criminal prosecution it faced seventeen counts

related to arms smuggling and other crimes but now the department of justice says it will defer prosecution if the firm called l.c.c. pays that money to the government the company has previously been the source of strained relations between the u.s. and iraq after five of its guards were accused of killing fourteen unarmed civilians in baghdad five years ago but let's not talk to dr joseph it's a market he's a coordinator of the security and intelligence studies program at the u.s. based. alledge king college. now the list of the firm's violations includes lying to federal firearms regulators about weapons provided abroad and illegal shipping of arms overseas what do you make of this deal the seal between the company and the u.s. authorities. well this case is the culmination of a five year investigation by the u.s. federal government led by the u.s. department of justice and it is what you call the deferred prosecution agreement which means basically that the two sides cannot speak about it especially cannot

speak to challenge the court's decision now this is a case where both sides seem to try to trying to avoid embarrassment both academy slashed like water in the u.s. government and the company this is a company that's actually repeatedly changed its name and now appears to be in effect trying to buy the slate clean do you think it can ever actually distance itself from its past it certainly is trying is trying to basically hide the background through a serious of corporate renaming and trying to attract clients outside of the american government which is proving to be a little bit difficult right now but two years ago blackwater which back then used to be called the services reached a forty two million dollars settlement with the state department very similar allegations i mean does this not look to you like a series of easy getaways and if so why are they enjoying this sort of special treatment. their joint special treatment from. certain parts of the u.s.

government there are bars for example the central intelligence agency has a very cozy relationship with blackwater slash academy the u.s. state department parts of it are enjoying a very good relationship but for example the federal bureau of investigation all of the internal revenue service have a very bad relationship with us so what you're seeing here is part of the american government i mean a cozy relationship with a company but other parts are trying to prosecute it for violations of u.s. criminal codes and that's the tension between the american government agencies that are fighting in this particular interesting situation right said that conflict then explain why it's taking so long to deal with that case where some of those but personnel were accused of killing iraqi civilians was something that five years ago is that the reason why it's been taking so long to come to some sort of conclusion with that that's one of the reasons the blackwater was charged primarily with providing v.i.p. security in iraq for american officials and they are credited by the u.s.

government for keeping alive a lot of these u.s. officials at the same time that did this while being extremely trigger happy that incensed the iraqi population and many americans who want to see a different attitude to u.s. troops in iraq one example i can give you of this is that one of those violations that blackwater slash academy is being accused of is the smuggling of weapons silencers into iraq in cans of dog food that it was using for its canine. patrols for explosives now you know there's we don't have to be a professional expert to know that there's only one thing you can do with silencers they're not particularly helpful when it comes to security. just one thought this company's is is going to pay itself off in effect to get itself out of trouble what is there any guarantee that it won't commit any further violations of this episode what can we expect of its conduct in the future. the companies trying to keep it. very low profile right now if that's what it used to make it special it wasn't the

biggest or the most active military contractor in iraq but he was serving the most trigger happy and and most high profile which is counter-intuitive when you're in this kind of business you going to keep a very low profile company trying to do this now very carefully my feeling is that it's going to have to try very very hard to try to disassociate or softness from his background really interesting here thoughts thanks so much talk to joseph it's and thank you for joining us live from tennessee. well coming up short in the program decades after the vietnam war crews will finally begin decontaminating the country of agent orange the toxic chemical blamed for numerous birth defects affecting thousands of children. in the business palace and in small trouble for. bank stands around town is accused of dirty deals parliamentarians that headed back gold i mean they're part of

a commercial banks all accounts london time and it's pretty self. the first the polish president has admitted the country's missile deal with the us was a political mistake and it should not be repeated consul of komorowski said that poland needs its own missile defense shield in a sign that the country is shifting its policy away from washington's influence correspondent in eastern europe alexia explains the problem and that country's previous administration signed this agreement with washington in two thousand and eight that poland would take part in the european a.m.d. project having american missiles american troops on its soil then when president obama came to office when there was a change of administration in washington this plan was changed was altered and now poland is paying the consequences of relying too much on washington's efforts in building this european a.m.d. project couple of years ago in two thousand turned poland already hosted several sets of the interceptor missiles of nato on its soil in the town of morag in

northern poland something which was certainly criticized heavily in moscow saying that this move like this basically builds up because still it in the region and comes with full contradiction with the agreements made between the two countries certainly it's really early to say what the new statements by bruce are coming off you could mean whether poland may take some kind of turn around and may change its policy and whether it may actually drop itself from the a m d a from the nato. and usa and the project in europe but definitely statements like that coming from the country's leader who is marking two years in office right now is something new and it definitely brings a lot of spice to this rather interesting interesting story as it is. to give them more than thirty five years ago the vietnam war ended but not before some one million people died the toxic chemical agent orange used by u.s. forces to burn away parts of the vietnam jungle still lingers in the area leaving many to deal with its harmful after effects well tomorrow crews will be launching

a decontamination program for the first time well for more i'm not joined by gene marsh the president of the international association of democratic lawyers just how effective how successful do you think this decontamination program will be. well the this decontamination program was started neighing which was a famous airbase in in vietnam it's still active city an airport but the name was one of the areas where. agent orange was used heavily after the the many barrels of it were dumped in the in the soil and in the surrounding area when when the u.s. left and as a result of that. we hope that the decontamination will address that part of. the problem and that will impact future generations i mean the problem has

been that up till this time people have maintained getting some kind of exposure from the soil and the water and the other areas around. and so we and there are there that is one of the twenty or twenty three or so hotspots which have been identified and so cool though it is. just quickly briefly explain those all to fix we're talking about. the legacy this terrible chemicals left behind not just for humans but also for the environment just just briefly. well basically. agent orange was a default it was made up of two different chemicals one of the chemicals in the process of its. synthesis is a synthetic and was headed in purity of dioxin and several types of dioxin this was pretty bad one and as

a result of that the spraying and the. taking to the use of it has contaminated. much of the land area although a lot of it is broken down in the areas where there were military bases. people who are coming into daily contact with that land and have have developed diseases which we know because the united states pays us veterans for disease these diseases many of them like diabetes even. parkinson's and so forth some for various cancers. that we know that the u.s. these are these diseases are connected with agent are and aren't exposure what's really going on now though is in the second and third generations we're seeing children born with very horrific birth defects that the doctors and medical

personnel there attribute to the exposure of agent orange either by their parents or by their direct exposure to the accident in the environment why has it taken so long for this and decontamination program to start. well actually. you said it's thirty five years since the end of the war well it's actually fifty one years on friday will be the anniversary of the first spraying and the spraying went on for ten years for many years after the war the united states did not want to recognize that agent orange was even a problem for its own veterans they have until nine hundred ninety four when normalization happened. they read negative on any obligation that they had agreed to to to remediate to help rebuild vietnam and it's been a historic. denial process that the united states has had

saying that they don't believe there's anything wrong that they did anything wrong or that there's been any problem and so it's really been a process of we've had a lawsuit now we've had legislation the dialogue group has been working the grassroots organizations have been working to try to. turn that there if you are around but you know why why hasn't the responsibility why hasn't it been successful and who should be held accountable for this. the lawsuit was not successful for a variety of legal reasons but the main one was that we allege that the use of agent orange was an essence of poisoned a weapon which was in violation of the hague convention of one thousand seven and other laws of war and the judge said oh no it was really just an herb aside and there was no ban on herbicides during the vietnam war and even though it had

a poison in it but that's that's in a nutshell why and one of the reasons that the case was not successful but it is our belief that the united states and the chemical companies together have a massive responsibility for this this tragedy and need these this ongoing legacy and until it's resolved it will be a ghost of war well let's. call it sure let's hope the decontamination program at least works for future generations thank you very much indeed president of international so she is in the democratic lawyers really appreciate you joining us live. thank you what now for more stories making headlines around the world this hour chilean students have taken to the streets raging over the government's policy on education they say their protest is motivated by a lack of response to their demand to make public education accessible to all

authorities a valid to stamp out what they called the radicalizing demonstrations but the message has so far only fueled further anger. fifteen bahraini policemen have been charged with torturing medics during last year's uprising and doctors have been accused of siding with the opposition for treating injured protesters to the medical staff of always denied the allegations saying they were only doing their jobs and helping the injured. start of the forces downgraded its outlook on greece's long term credit rating from stable to negative agency says the greek economy is rolling deeper into crisis admitted a low by the authorities in athens and implementing a sturdy measures country's rating will be lowered further if the nation fails to receive additional help from international lenders. we stay with money matters financial matters because it's time for business with katie and a round up of all today's market action or perhaps the lack of it judging by what you said last that exactly it's been low volumes today very much indeed and i think

as well we've been witnessing a rally over the last sort of three days really but investors now questioning the foundations behind the rally what was it all about was it concrete information possibly not at the moment really investors remain on the fence because they want to know what the central bank is going to do to boost growth so with that in mind we can see wall street remains on the water line trying to bounce off from a loss is one of the top again as with you the packers over two point five percent up boosting the mood was that mcdonald's does the as well they want those in the way they were down at a negative result in those massive companies just as we can see they're going to mix the color spectrum of this great view that also u.s. productivity rebounds in this. posting a story again as called news generated more goods and services even though that whether this will change in the number of hours they're. made to work harder these days. move or not we've got european stock markets to look at as well if we look at

the closing figures will be able to see that it gave it was a mixed finance finish just the thirty day managed to get out basis points i'll be talking about london a little later on and that was mainly because of commodity banks they were the sections that day in german industrial production declined almost one percent among june but shows that the british investment banks stand a chance if they manage for rebound to the us after the steepest one day decline in decades and that was also the bank was accused of hiding thousands of transactions with a wrong which is subject to u.s. economic sanctions but some u.k. parliament terry and they're suggesting the move is part of a commercial against london the same live impact on american financial regulators say the bank loan did as much as two hundred fifty billion dollars over a decade asunta charge of though they all deny these allegations but if they come true they could face losing their u.s. banking license. brisson so let's go the economists fall from

a cover of the bank of england is lowered the country's g.d.p. growth for calls from around two percent to zero this year there is space you know where the toll but the bank of england governor mervyn king said the bank will do all that it can to pull the economy out of recession so that signaling further purchases meaning pumping more money into the system but he did. cut in the key interest rate now i know you mentioned bill just now but i want to talk about standard and poor's. greece another blow really haven't they i mean the credit rating agency they have reduced their outlook on the economy from a stable to negative and that's on the grounds that the greek. will find it hard to make more cuts needed to get the next tranche of money so the troubled economy may need about just seven billion euros this year just that is given that its

economy is shrinking it's been shrinking for five years and unemployment is now at an astronomical twenty percent so let's see the common currency then and the response to all of this just now right now as far as the forest markets are concerned the u.s. dollar is extending its gains and that's really because of all the weak economic data coming out of the euro zone about the fears to do with the potential future of the common cars here that we're looking at just now and not just that but because of all of that investors are really heading into safe havens which of course the u.s. dollar the ruble managed to gain against the basket of cars it's going on to the markets here moscow's see what happened to the russian markets they did indeed closed flat again flat so negative also wanted to mention that inflation rates four point six percent we have a quick look at those over prices and they are indeed rising for a fourth day and that's as a government report showed that u.s. stockpiles dropped more than expected and also helping out the or markets at the

moment is concerned to do with tensions in the middle east as well disrupting global supplies so that is the markets as you say bill relatively flat tomorrow with the latest updates and what about the business team it's cold out here in moscow tomorrow morning and see you tomorrow night thanks very much because you will be back with a quick look at today's headlines in just a few minutes. download

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