children kept underground and in isolation for ten years by an islamic sect uncovered in russia's city of ca's we've got the shocking details ahead. as the battle intensifies for the strategic syrian city of aleppo between government and opposition forces we look at the repeating pattern adopted by foreign media in covering the arab revolution. and a un report condemns israel after it demolished palestinian homes and forced people from their land so military exercises could we have.

a very warm welcome to you from all of us here at r.t. moscow rule received several stories of catacombs beneath the earth where children have been kept for years without daylight and contact with the outside world and the accidental discovery by police in the russian city of cousin has shocked the country and the wider world a sector of seventy people who spent over ten years there following a self-proclaimed prophet this report is tom bot. if you were walked past this building on the outskirts of the city of cazan in central russia you wouldn't notice anything that would have been going on beneath it was a three story building with a small minaret and a tin present on top was a bit run down but was otherwise rather unremarkable 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 children adults taken out from these catechumens

extended basement underground complex whatever you want to call it most of them had been there for a decade without proper heating or 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 year eighteen month old child and a seventeen year old girl who was later found to be pregnant the 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 fires rock mines or tar 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 their dog 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. our correspondent reporting right there in our classes are raging between the syrian army and the opposition for control of the city of aleppo and what many of people are saying is going to be a key battle in the conflict but there are conflicting reports as to who has the upper hand in the fighting for the nation's commercial hub activists sympathetic to the opposition say the use of heavy weaponry by government troops has caused many

civilian deaths but one u.s. war veteran says the claims seem rather unrealistic. 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. and it is up to the troubles on the battleground that have prompting some rebels to seek more support from abroad in response right in the form of french president nicolas sarkozy one of the principal architect of the nato campaign in libya has called for a repeat of this scenario in syria more on that dot com. well meanwhile a senior aide to president obama has ruled out a no fly zone over a patch of syria and apparent rebel control support for the opposition from the u.s. and its allies is often reflected in leading foreign media and as it has more important has found out it follows a pattern adopted by outlets to covering recent revolutions in the region. in the arab world millions have been seen uprising. in the western world one international news channel is standing accused of falling short on providing a full picture of the revolutions it was

a great deal to. give us his human rights were supporting. them some time to reduce the fact that a lot of the people on the site were also. 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 words carries a pretty strong. connotation regime is something i think you know that starts the reaction. i had to the b.b.c. refer to the british government as the camera regime you know. so what are you guys now for i asked one of the executives i said you know how do you find hundreds of people what is your policy options and they actually give me different audiences 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 of course the government you know of syria is all dead if 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 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 aren't there now overwhelming humanitarian grounds for 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 backed opposition he did 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 and 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 porton i.r.t. new york. well the syrian groups fighting president assad are being armed with u.s. weapons despite washington's claims it's only providing non lethal aid to the opposition this all according to activists on the middle east and un issues phyllis bennis said the and if you with her is coming up in about twenty two minutes 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. is weapons of the west the danger of that escalating is very serious. now four ten pm here in moscow and the un has expressed concern over israel's plan

to cordon 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 try to spied on the military drills. reports from one of those villages. 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 gym for 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 reporter cause israel and 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. and still plenty more to come for you in this program including of the true cost of budget lines for years in spain with the rise in cheap flights is seeing safety standards putting passengers at risk. by the sea the u.s. imposed sanctions can't stop apple mania in iran find out how tech savvy iranians are getting around the embargo and getting their hands on the latest gadgets. american efforts to decontaminate parts of vietnam from agent orange are under way more than three decades after the war there and did the toxic chemical used to burn

the country's jungle is blamed for health problems on many birth defects vietnam war veteran bill how quil believes washington has a hidden agenda in its attempt to make good. it isn't like one of those things that you just stop stop the sprain 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 it what the u.s. is proposing 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 certainly a lot more on that u.s. legacy it out si dot com as well as many other stories including

a blackwater black market legal weapons trading doesn't mean jail for everyone it seems in the privacy u.s. security contractor escaping prison instead with a seven million dollars fine visit our website to find out all the details. of the one law and more pictures from a republican northwest of russia hit by torrential rain and widespread floods is just a month off to a devastating deluge in the country's. just a moment on the world update here on r.t. if and suicidal that's how labor unions in spain have described the government's austerity measures it's not just on the ground but in the air as well where pilots say passengers are being put at risk just to save cash. reports.

fly fly fly at any cost. 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 companies have gone bankrupt. of course and choose low cost flights it's cheaper the seats are less comfortable but it's not such a big problem in a trip after all 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 scheme is simple lower expenses all round but while passengers are happy it's cause turbulence in the cockpit as pilots find themselves less and less motivated. we don't have high salaries and there's no prestige about our work as it had always

been the bus drivers were only doing it in the skies nowadays we even have to pay for our insurance and buy uniforms for ourselves 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. employment rates already. and 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 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. if we go over the limits here

then the problem of stressed and fatigue personnel arises prison pool the law says there must be at least forty five minute breaks between flights but in reality it's barely twenty minutes he should be embodied the ones with twenty minutes between twenty eight it's almost impossible to conduct a proper. you know in terms of force 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 got corners and dangerously push those who keep us safe in the sky. r.t. reporting from madrid in spain are straight to the chilean capital to kick off the r.t. world update now it's where around fifty police officers of the hotel in fear for clashes with students their education cuts and buses will be burned while demonstrators hold rocks and missiles at officers there were seventy five arrests

in the latest of ongoing protests which began more than a year ago challender students won tax changes to make the rich pay more to provide fair access to education and reject government plans for new scholarships and lower student loans secondary student. fresh clashes between egyptian police and gunmen have erupted in the sinai town of. it's part of a campaign by the country's security forces to force is the most militants away from the region on wednesday egypt's president mohamed morsi sacked his intelligence chief and the governor of north sinai after a militant attack which left sixteen soldiers dead. china's most high profile murder trial in decades has ended after just a day but the wife of a disgraced former top politician a bow he loves didn't contest the charge that she killed a british businessman last year for the death of neil heywood was first reported as

a heart attack before a top chinese policeman fled to the us where he alleged murder and a massive cover up the international media were excluded from the secretive trial it's not known when a verdict will be delivered yet. despite u.s. imposed sanctions the iranian capital's apple stores are full and thriving the high tech youth of tehran love i pods and macs just about as much as anybody else but creative businesses and letting a little thing like an international blockade get in the way of feeding that appetite to serve further explained. i pads i phones i pods apple's global popularity has meant that their products familiars like everywhere from our workplaces to our homes and on our high street there's one place you might not expect to find products like this on 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

for the iranians are managing to outsmart these u.s. embargo and products like the ninety popular in toronto they're widely available as well just like any other apple macs still this one in tiran is bustling and busy. i have no difficulty in importing electronics from the us nor do we feel any impact on imports from sanctions what 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. the circus 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 iranian tradesmen have meant that 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 while bypassing the sanctions and people still want to these gadgets even though they've become more expensive some of the sanctions working. the sanctions have not had the outcome because if they have if you were going here in new sanctions being announced by the u.s. congress or. of recent powers the fact that they're coming up with new sanctions. isn't the case in the door thanks so very much you're working in fact many critics of the sanctions feel that far from the achieving anything banning these products in buggies a punishing the very people who will help in building around future creative individuals musicians film editing is right is the film a key part of apple's kind tell the world eva.

that's right you know tucker we go with the aussie business up to. tell us how are the markets doing at this hour. well let's start of course with europe post where the situation has turned from bad to worse europe is officially in the red for a second hour and a row london's footsie is shouting around water for sap the sour germany's dax is really feeling the pinch it's losing almost one percent and the main news of the day comes from china it's july inflation is only lower for a fourth month and a row and the industrial output and sales came out a lower than expected all of that of course signals a slowdown and of them are of jobless in greece hit a record according to the latest data it's topping twenty three percent in they got some from just a seventeen percent a year ago and that's well done twice the average for the eurozone young people are

the worst hit unemployment rates among the youth are as high as fifty five percent . and the indices here and russia also down in the dumps they are following in europe's footsteps after a pretty upbeat start of the trading session most of the blue chips are shedding value this hour russia's biggest lender is burbank let's see those numbers there and as you can see these very bank this hour is shedding more than half a percent russia's biggest private oil company a loop oil is getting to develop the ukrainian shelf in the blotch see that's good news but it's not helping the stock as you can see it's down almost one percent and sales revenues of the retailer month meat jumped almost by a third last month pretty impressive results but the stock is shedding two and a half percent now moving on to the currency market the euro at the mo. ment is

a losing to the u.s. dollar after it showed some weakness on wednesday on some pretty disappointing statistics the russian ruble is gaining to the euro but is shedding value to the u.s. dollar and pretty choppy trade for crude all day today it's showing strength for the for the past couple of hours with brant trading at around one hundred twelve and a quarter dollars a barrel this hour traders are obviously convinced the latest sounds from china would lead to some monetary easing in asia is a large just economy and that speaking of asia st petersburg might be russia's window to europe which is said to become its one due to age of the far eastern cities finishing up its preparations for a big event asia pacific economic cooperation forum known as apec it's hosting the about for the first time and reportedly the price tag has already top

twenty two billion dollars that's almost twice the amount spent on the london olympics dmitri medvedev coke's point is why this event is so for rush. 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 liberalization 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 alimony and 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. and there you have it your all up to date my colleague katie will bring you all the latest at about fifty minutes on a talk show many thanks indeed. back in a moment with the headlines are you are watching. the little.

one in a hundred of them all of them live in your. own forty acres and nineteen ninety three and the side it would be a great place to find my bel the home and retire. there she is. we call it our new neighbor neighbor nine o seven. we have seventy acres here and i can't convince them that they

need to drill somewhere besides two hundred feet from our house. meeting the needs of our growing economy also means expanding our domestic production of oil and natural gas which are vital fuel for transportation electricity and manufacturing. for any problems with the full weight of the rifle and then change. your flows are not. toxic and we did a lot of mis understanding of what that is in the fluids. you cannot hear in the lab you come out here and live in my house for a week. i have no rights.