almost thirty children are pulled from beneath the central russia after years living in dark underground cells as part of a radical muslim sect. the syrian army says in advancing into the country's key combat zone the rebels deny that the mainstream media does little to provide the real picture. a un report slams israel for kicking palestinians off almost a fifth of the west bank territory turning it into a military training ground. worldwide news live from the heart of moscow this is r t with me wrong. almost thirty

children forced to live in a multi-story series of catechumens beneath the earth have now been rescued by police in central russia they have spent years crammed without daylight at the mercy of their religious fanatic parents and a self-proclaimed prophet. says rather disturbing details. if you were walked past this building on the outskirts of the city of in central russia you wouldn't notice anything that would have been going on beneath it was a three story building with a small minarets and a tin presents on top was a bit run down but was otherwise rather on remarkable but a passer by would not have noticed the eight story secret complex that had been built underneath and there it was indeed a dark and an isolated world twenty seven to thirty eight adults among those taken out from. catechumens extended basement underground complex whatever you want to

call it most of them had been there for a decade without proper heating without proper light or sanitation and crucially without any access to the outside world a few were allowed to go and work at the local market the rest were kept down there among them the youngest an eighteen month old child and a seventeen year old girl who was later found to be pregnant your children are currently undergoing medical examinations and all of those involved will also undergo psychological tests to see how they may have been affected by such a long period in isolation pfizer after months of was the self declared leader of this cult eighty three years old bedridden and delirious he'd declared himself a second islamic prophet and had declared his complex

a muslim caliphate essentially independent muslim state and then got his followers to live inside it and refused to let them leave a similar kind of cult in the central russian city of pens or in two thousand and seven a group of followers there dark an underground complex and waited there they said for the coming apocalypse they were eventually talked out of that and they emerged bleary eyed into the sunshine as these people are in. talk about reporting right there well it's good to have you with us here on the program still to come a helping hand for a block any chip u.s. starts cleaning up the chemical weapons had dropped in vietnam almost forty years ago stay with us to find out why critics think it's all about stopping the influence of china. but it's in spain find themselves in a steep economic dive as financial collapse forces airlines to introduce measures

which could potentially put passenger lives on the line. now the battle for control of a serious northwestern city of aleppo has resumed with each side giving conflicting accounts about who has the upper hand broke out there last month offer a major flow of militants into the area opposition friendly activists accuse government troops of using heavy weaponry and causing civilian deaths although a decorated u.s. will better and doubts some of the rebels claims well it's been some years since i saw the syrian army up close but what i did see convince me that of the arab armies in the region the syrians were by far the most competent and capable and they maintained good discipline so we have to assume that the syrians have moved very deliberately in aleppo and that suggests that they have probably moved to seal off the rebels in the enclaves or in the areas that they currently hold to do that they have concentrated armor and artillery for direct fire not for indirect fire and

they will move very very carefully with infantry and engineers in support with the object of doing as little damage to the infrastructure as possible because the more damage you do to the buildings the more likely they are to create defensive positions for the people you're trying to eliminate so i would say based on my again limited experience of the syrian military that the rebels in aleppo are now in serious trouble. now with the way mainstream media's over reliance on amateur footage and dubious reports from syria it's becoming harder to tell what's true or false in the conflict and some explosive just that is a pattern familiar to any revolution in the region certainly over the last few years and taking a closer look is artie's marina puerto. in the arab world millions have been seen uprising. in the western world and one international news channel is standing accused of falling short on providing a full picture of the revolutions it was

a great g.p.s. . device and this human rights record is approaching but i think it took them some time to reduce the fire that a lot of the people on the site were all sort of killing and torturing edward mortimer conducted an independent review of the b.b.c.'s coverage of the arab spring the public news channel was criticised for many things including a lack of reference to video which wasn't authenticated and repeatedly using the word regime its use of word carries a place. connotation. is something i think you know that starts the reaction you need to say oh i have two hundred to refer to the british government as the camera regime you know. say what are you guys now for i asked bluntly if you say i said you know how do you find out if people want to use your policy and they actually give a different concepts to ousted leaders and one military intervention later the

b.b.c. now claims it will address its mistakes meanwhile across the atlantic america's corporate owned news networks still pioneer subjective rhetoric that the syrian regime of bashar al assad regime is now also facing another dynamic critics say more than one year of flawed reporting on syria may already have hard wired public perception to see only one side of the story the focus is on action coverage that reinforces a preconceived notion of what's going on and of course the government you know of of syria is all dead and everything that happens there is a result of what assad is doing or we're not doing. again that's in the interests of people who want to intervene and want to help overthrow this government washington has made no secret of its desire to force syrian president bashar al assad out of office getting serious in syria with questionable

impartiality many mainstream media outlets in the us have been seen portraying the syrian opposition as a single entity at the forefront of a democratic uprising on the now overwhelming humanitarian grounds intervening in syria critics say the very same news outlets have not been so eager to report on the less appealing options of syria's washington babbitts opposition to the jihadi the cato people were very much involved in trying to undermine the syrian government and they had fighters there just as they had in libya this isn't just a question of western democracy good syria bad it's a much more complicated mosaic of forces involved here media doesn't seem to be keeping up with them as syria approaches its most delicate tipping point many experts say the western media machine should avoid oversimplifying a sixteen month deadly crisis that even the international community so far has been

unable to resolve marina port i.r.t. new york. despite u.s. claims its providing only non-lethal assistance for the syrian opposition american weapons are still flowing into the hands of rebels this according to an activist on middle east and un issues phyllis bennis other for that of you with her coming up in about twenty one minutes from now. there is already intervention under way the western countries have provided the military of saudi arabia the military of cutter that's where they buy their weapons from they buy american weapons so it is already western weapons that are going in it's not coming directly from the u.s. but it is weapons of the west the danger of that escalating is very serious. just turning ten minutes past the hour moscow time a u.n.

report warns israel they may be in violation of international law after cordoned off nearly a fifth of the west bank for army training israeli forces are demolishing palestinian homes and driving people off their land saying they might spot i on a military drills that is paul a slew of reports from one of these villagers. i'm standing in susi a palestinian area that has been earmarked by the israeli government for demolition there are many similar situations just this week in the palestinian village of jim the israeli soldiers went from house to house searching for weapons and ammunition now they found nothing but that was not before they literally turned people's kitchens in particular upside down these soldiers searched through bags of sugar and rice and salt and bottles of olive oil now this comes as the united nations issues a new report outlining that the israeli government has declared some eighteen percent

of the west bank closed military zone for training for so-called firing zones this is roughly the same amount of the west bank that is in full palestinian control the report highlights the humanitarian effect that this will have on the roughly five thousand people who live in and around these areas and it also says that they are now in direct access of danger at the same time we're talking here about people most of whom are herders who need fields for their cattle to graze on and many of these fields are being taken away from them so this will affect their livelihood at the same time many of them are routinely arrested or detained for defying military orders we're talking here about people who have very little access to electricity and to water they essentially don't even have an infrastructure when it comes to housing and to any kind of normal facilities that people in the western world take for granted the report of course israel an occupying power and reminds the israeli

government that international law condemns any kind of confiscation of private or public property unless it is for military necessity now the israelis are going to have a hard time claiming that the establishment of firing zones or areas for training these soldiers is of military necessity policy r.t. susa in the south hebron hills. certainly an awful lot more to come your way later this hour including an appetite for apple i phone side perhaps or on the prizes maybe hire a businesswoman an author letting us sanctions stop high tech terror on staying plugged in. now with a thirty seven year delay the u.s. has launched a program to help clean up the aftermath of the vietnam war it will help poach the soil and water of traces of agent orange toxic defoliant used during the conflict are the thoughts but the substance is still causing illnesses and deformities among

the local population but many believe washington's moves on to purely humanitarian it isn't like one of those things that you just stop start spraying and it goes away this is a half life for centuries and it is definitely seeped in i'm not a scientist but it's definitely seeped into the water table and everything and what the what the u.s. has proposed is really rather paltry. to come up with forty three million dollars to clean up to now which was a large military air air base you know this is just really the tip of the iceberg of the problem but i mean you cannot you have to question the timing of it and it can only be viewed as you know a concern to try to like. vietnam closer to them because of the growing influence that china has as a as an emerging superpower around the world. i know there's much more on the us legacy it onto you dot com as well as many other stories including specs appeal

ultra-orthodox jews thoughts on god and their eyes off scantily clad women thanks to the help of some rather unusual colossus. plus those very same glasses could be useful for drivers in some petersburg motorcyclists there are facing fines for taking their girlfriends on the back of their bikes in the middle of distracting many tours. so i could have you with us here on r.t. today so we're sidle about how the two biggest labor unions in spain of describe the government's anti crisis measures and the austerity is particularly life threatening when even the highest of flyers are affected as. he reports spanish

pilots say their passengers are now being put at risk in order to save cash. fly fly fly at any. more when you can get just about the same thing for less money since low cost airlines took more than half of spain's aviation market many regular air companies have gone bankrupt. of course they choose low cost flights it's cheaper the seats unless it's not such a big problem. and this discount model is supported by the state over the past three years the larger part of the government's two hundred fifty million a year investment into aviation was allocated to low cost airlines this is simple lower expenses all round while the passengers are happy it's course turbulence in the cool. bit as pilots find themselves less and less motivated. we don't have high

salaries anymore there's no prestige about it always we turn to the bus drivers were only doing it. now it is even have to pay for our insurance and uniforms for us the industry has become a mess since two thousand and eight the number of recruits in spanish flight schools has been dropping rapidly and the general economic situation has also been affecting the quality of graduates. the employment rates already. and i mean that's why many of our graduates have to take several jobs just to survive. it is not difficult to see that degrading pilot quality may have serious consequences not only has the job been suffering in spain over the past several years with less and less people actually willing to become pilots but also experts say the policy of the local airlines is harming the most important thing in. which is the security spanish pilots working hours are already stretched to extremes new legislation to increase them to sixteen hours

a day is now being considered by the european union there is we go over the limits here then the problem of stress duty personnel arises and i presume the law says there must be a minute breaks between flying in reality is barely twenty minutes. or twenty minutes between flights it's almost impossible to conduct a proper check. without any security check. it's clear that cheaper flying is essential to keep europe moving during the financial crisis but pilots and aviation specialists shudder to think what could happen if low cost airlines increasingly cut corners and dangerously push those who keep us safe in the sky. r.t. reporting from madrid spain. well today's financial guru has spoken to the former head of risk at. back of scotland who actually turned into a whistle blower and is now exposing financial fraud. next hour for the kaiser

reporter you'll get all the details on that here's a preview. what percentage of those working in regulatory oversight in compliance in the industry are clean that is the thing they're not corrupt when i was working on wall street for example at paine webber and oppenheimer and shearson every every year at christmas time i would bribe our compliance officer as did every broker at these firms there was no that compline up there was crooked you give a big enough christmas bonus any over overlooks margin requirement deficiencies the overlooked fraud he overlooks all the tricks of the trade there's two points the first is you have to have no professional qualifications to be a chief risk officer a chief compliance officer or a chief internal audit and so that's one thing the second thing is if you report to the executive what's going on the second you stick your head above the parapet and the messenger gets well and truly shot so i don't know the answer the question but

i would get all surprised if it's quite a lot of people who are going to be prepared to oversee or miss things that they should cover so all system doesn't work. now at twenty past the hour and despite u.s. u.s. imposed sanctions the iranian capital's apple stores are full and thriving of the high tech youth of tehran they love the i pods and macs just about as much as anybody else and creative businesses are letting a little thing like an international blockade get in the way of feeding that appetite to surf earth reports. i pads i phones i pods apple's cool overall popularity has meant that their product familiar sight everywhere from our workplaces and on our high street there's one place you might not expect to find products like this on the sale and that the iranian capital of tehran where apple along with many of the u.s. products abandon the functions that had been in place years but it seems that tech

savvy arraign ians that managing to outsmart this u.s. embargo and products like the not only popular in toronto they're widely available as well just like any other apple store this one in tehran is bustling and busy. and i have no difficulty in importing electronics from the us nor do we feel any impact on imports from sanctions doesn't come so easy indeed is getting technical support and updates for the products but we still manage to get them all the time or just the secrecy of u.s. sanctions has been mainly on iran's banks and oil industry in a bid to curb the country's nuclear ambitions but when it comes to the bans on consumer products alternative trade routes and enterprising a rainy and tradesmen have meant this in forcing the sanctions has proved virtually impossible in fact it's estimated there are now hundreds of traders in the capital

selling these kids. the only impact of these sanctions that we see is higher prices which alter the real sinking against the dollar we're also forced to charge more from costumers in order to keep getting our shipments well bypassing the sanctions and people still want to these gadgets even though they've become more expensive you point out of some of the sanctions working. the sanctions have not had the desired outcome because if they have if you were going here new sanctions are being announced by the u.s. congress or. the western powers the fact that they're coming over. isn't the case on the board thanks so it's been a good working in fact many critics of the sanctions feel that far from the achieving anything banning these products bug is a punishing the very people who help them building around future creative individuals these issues film editing is right is she possibly. the world

on one hand the united states talks about internet freedom and the importance of iranians being able to communicate freely access the internet discuss you know whatever they want to be cellphones and i other hand they are saying sions make it so that cellphones are basically illegal in iran u.s. sanctions against iran are increasingly being very very ineffective and outdated and certainly see no match for the young iranian generation and able to stay connected. or in just a moment will join the lovely natasha with the business for now the world update will start in egypt where violence has once again flared up where police clashed with armed men near a police station in northern sinai and security officers were fired on from a moving vehicle though at this point no injuries were reported it comes just a day off the airstrikes against militants in response to

a border attack which claimed the lives of sixteen egyptian security officers the region is seen as fertile ground for is the most militants and some estimates putting the number at least two thousand. libya's transitional council has handed power to the country's general congress the first elected legislator since last year's nor do the two hundred seat assembly dominated by a moderate islamists aims to form a new government within thirty days however the authorities are facing daunting challenges to powerful militias in different provinces continue to fight for political influence. at least thirty nine people have died and almost a million have been forced to leave damaged homes in the philippine capital and surrounding provinces after a powerful typhoon struck thousands are staying in emergency shelters waiting for better weather that is forecast for the end of the week and this tell us is the worst since two thousand and nine when hundreds died in massive floods and

landslides. and as promised often to tashi we go i'm sure as you were just hearing while some are suffering in dire weather conditions natasha others are feeling the pinch economically aren't they absolutely and no one knows that better than the greek the country might be averting bankruptcy well at least for now but its jobless rates are absolutely skyrocketing more on this in just a minute but first let's see what's going on in the european equities and a europe is exacting this hour london's for the see is back in the block less than a tenth of the sand germany's dax is still in the red though the main news for the day comes from china is do i inflation and. lower for a fourth month in a row and the industrial output and sales came out lower than expected all of that of course signals the slowdown which in turn raises the hopes that there mean more stimulating measures are on the way the number of jobless in greece hit a record according to the latest data it's topping twenty three percent in me up

from just under seventeen percent a year ago and that's more than twice the average for the eurozone young people of the worst hit unemployment rates among the views are as high as fifty five percent and coming back to russia the indices here have showed the bulk of their earlier gains but they're still managing to stay in the positive territory just a notch for the r.t.s. though the blue chips are mixed russia's biggest lender is a bear bank at this point is gaining less than a quarter percent lukoil is losing value russia's biggest private oil companies bidding to develop the ukrainian shells in the black sea and sales revenues of the retailer among the meat jumped almost by a third last month and the company's managing to stay in the block this hour now we want to currencies the euro is losing gets that all of the sour after chilled some

weakness on the previous trading session disappointing data from the euro zone the russian ruble is gaining to the major currencies and quite a turnaround for crude is showing strength this hour with brand trading up more than one hundred twelve and a half dollars a barrel traders obviously convinced the latest stats from china would lead to some monetary easing at asia's largest economy and speaking of asia's st petersburg might be a window to europe but it looks like will give us the focus set to become a window to asia the far eastern city is finishing up the preparations for a big event. the asia pacific economic cooperation forum known as a pac it's hosting the event for the first time and reportedly the price tag for the preparations is topping twenty two billion dollars that's almost twice the amount spent on the london olympics dmitri medvedev coke's planes while this event

is so important for russia. the fact that russia is spending so much money on the apec summit seems ridiculous of first glance but let's face the facts russia's stance in the region is not as strong as it could be now it has become a member of the world trade organisation promoting trade liberalisation is easier than ever before especially for the host of the event next there are obvious perks in trade let's take a look at this for example russia is an energy and metals champion though it's producing seventy percent of the world's out of many of copper and nickel asia on the other hand is the main consumer of energy in metals and it accounts for fifty percent of the world's consumption of aluminum forty percent of copper and nickel this is a multi-billion dollar market now let's take a look at china at its main port of shanghai the country imports resources from around the world but it takes more than a month to ship from brazil twenty days from south africa and two weeks from australia now would be so much quicker and this means cheaper to import from

russia's than in a port just four days finally growth in asia projected at eight point four percent developed countries two point six percent max plus shifting priorities from europe to asia would mean development for russia's lagging far east. well obviously now it looks like those twenty two billion dollars were not spent on nothing and the rain expected results that's the latest from here at the business pascal back of fifteen minutes natasha thank you see you. just a moment on the headlines and then we have a special interview with a washington based academic and activist who is convinced that the syrian conflict is mainly being fueled by people who live far far away more in just a second.