children kept underground and in isolation for ten years by an islamic sect uncovered in russia's city of cazan we put the shocking details just. 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 arab revolutions. and u.s. sanctions in iran falls. tech savvy youth in tehran have no trouble getting their hands on the latest american guy. just after five pm here in moscow you're watching on t.v.

live with me rory sushi several stories of catacombs between beneath the earth that's where children have been kept for years without daylight and contact with the outside world the accidental discovery by police in the russian city of cousin has shocked the country and the wider world a sect of seventy people who spend over ten years there following a self-proclaimed prophet. reports. 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 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 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 for as rock monster tire 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. reporting right now clashes are raging between the syrian army and the opposition for control of the city of aleppo and more people are calling what could be a key battle in the conflict there although 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 claim seems 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. that it's perhaps the troubles on the battleground that are

prompting some rebels to seek more support from abroad in response for french president nicolas sarkozy one of the principal aka texts of the nato campaign in libya has called for a repeat of the scenario in syria more on that of dot com. meanwhile a senior aide to president obama has not ruled out a no fly zone over a patch of syria under powered rebel control a feature of the conflict though generally has been how the support of the u.s. and its allies for the opposition is matched in leading international media and as a tease marina portnoy has found out it follows a pattern of coverage of recent revolutions in that region. 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. human rights record.

took them some time to reduce to the fact that a lot of the people i was. 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 place. connotation regime is something. that starts the reaction you need to say oh i have integrity to 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 want to use your policy on things and they actually give you 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 and of course the government you know 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 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 backed 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 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 port i.r.t. new york. now the syrian groups fighting president assad are being armed with the u.s. weapons despite washington's claims it's only providing non lethal aid to the opposition though this is all according to a middle eastern u.n. issues expert phyllis bennis of the full interview with her is coming up in about an hour and twenty minutes there is already intervention underway 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. it's ten minutes past the hour here in the russian capital this is our two american efforts to decontaminate parts of vietnam from agent orange now under way more than

three decades after the war there ended at a toxic chemical used to burn the country's jungle is blamed for health problems on a huge amount of birth defects a 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 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 wonder 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 and still quite able to come for you in this program including of the true cost of budget. fears in spain that the rising cheapflights you're seeing safety standards slip ultimately the end of the day putting passengers lives at risk. for this they said come to me table european companies have a now we really do think that it's place to stay we've got on the down spine out to sea in a lead us to carry this company to announce all the phased kaufman's wife able to pay about that i mean time it's time for a rundown of the x. amount that. now the u.n. has expressed concern over israel's plans a cordon off nearly a fifth of the west bank for training israeli forces want to demolish palestinian homes and to drive people off their land saying that they might try to spy on their military drills his policies live reports from one of these 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 corps is well 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. but i do remember there's always a plenty more for you at r.t. dot com let's have a look and see what's lined up for you there right now for example illegal weapons trading doesn't mean jail for everybody it seems with a notorious private u.s. security contractor hit with a seven million dollars fine instead. pictures from a republican in northwest russia hit by torrential rain and widespread floods just a month after a devastating deluge in the country's south all those details on our website. just a moment on the world update for now though suicidal 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 a bit of cash. reports. fly fly fly at any cost but why be 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 but of course they 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 course turbulence in the cockpit as supply let's 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 we turn to 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. the unemployment rate's already massive 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 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 and more than day every nation which is the security perish 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 pulled the law says there must be at least forty five minute breaks between flights but in reality it's barely twenty minutes. or twenty minutes between flights it's almost impossible to conduct a proper check of an aircraft 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 cut corners and dangerously push those who keep us safe in the sky. looks you are shifty r.t. reporting from madrid in spain and into the world up there we go now starting in the chilean capital where around fifty police officers have been hurt in fierce clashes with students over government education plans buses that were burned while

demonstrators hold rocks at offices there were seventy five arrests in the latest protests which began more than a year ago campaigners want the rich to pay more to give wider access to education but reject government initiatives including new scholarships and lower student loans. fresh clashes between egyptian police and a gunman have erupted in the sinai town of. it's all part of a campaign by the country's security forces to drive islamist militants out of the region on wednesday president mohamed morsi sacked his intelligence chief and the governor of north sinai after a militant attack killed sixteen soldiers in the area violence has drastically escalated in the country since the ousting of hosni mubarak last year. china's most high profile murder trial in decades has ended after just a day of the wife of disgraced former top politician bo xilai didn't contest the

charges that she killed a british businessman last year the death of neil heywood was first reported as a heart attack before a top chinese policeman fled to america where he alleged murder and a massive cover up international media were excluded from the secretive trial it's not at this point known when a verdict will be delivered. now despite u.s. imposed sanctions the iranian capital's apple stores are full and thriving the high tech youth of tehran love ipod's and mike's 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 artie's served as the story. i pads i phones i pods apple's callable popularity has meant that their products familias 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 the year but it seems that tech savvy arraign eons at managing to outsmart this u.s. embargo and products like the ninety popular in toronto they're widely available as well just like any other apple macs store 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 secrets 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 that in forcing the sanctions has prevented chile 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 costa mowers in order to keep getting our shipments bypassing the sanctions and people still want to these gadgets even though they've become more expensive. so you know the sanctions working. sanctions have not. out because if. you were going here new sanctions were being announced by the u.s. congress or. western powers the fact that they're coming up with new sanctions. on the board sanctions when that you're working in fact many critics of the sanctions feel that far from achieving anything banning these products in burgos a punishing the very people who will help in building around future creative

individuals musicians film it is right is to fool mickey parts of apple's kind the world needs. and over here we go for the early business our last hours looking pretty dismal katie any signs of any improvement i'm afraid not warren though i go home with well not very good news and so because the markets they're still struggling it is a shock we don't have trade in days it's really the telecommunications companies that actually that are the main or treaters and they are offsetting the increase speculation the policymakers will do more to stimulate the economy after a poor show that china is inflation called now one of the companies that is out there will have a look at the european markets one chatting away is nestlé it's up around three percent as high prices help to increase revenue so people are still prepared to pay more for their favorite tree and as you can see just have gotten pretty flat just one basis point down at the tank so it's more entrenched in the red charities seven

tenths of a percent in negative and i'm going to talk about grace as well because they have been dealt another blow to one investors' minds and it's because of the number of jobless people in grayson's had a record as according to the latest data and it's now topping it twenty percent in may which is now more than twice the average for the year i'd say and it's young people they are the worst states with the name. right i'm only going to stand now as high as fifty you. see the common car is his reaction to all that is going on as we can see it's demonstrating a weakness at this town not because investors are waiting the way from over some certain say and heading for the us dollar the safe haven as we've seen one twenty three zero two to trade his neighbor's house for the roof was managing to gain in this session against the basket of currencies is not sitting here moscow so while we're in the region at c.b.s. the markets and see that pretty flat performance today as well is all there is so typically historically it is a quiet we don't know yet they're pretty head to the front down of the my sense

around full of abstentions pretty lackluster stuff a lot despite oil climbing out to go into old age so this is the movers and shakers in the meantime as he is suffering and he uses rejoicing as we can see that it's the sea of red indeed with us around the negative territory is the biggest lender in russia who goes over the energy major new coal as well pretty down seven tenths of a percent is set to take part in a bid to develop ukraine into the back state and sales of rings had imagined they jumped almost last month but investors seem impressive today they see it all went down i mentioned oil is now trading net high amounts to speculation that china would take more steps to be economic worries it's already offsetting signs of weakening it demands to the u.s. the biggest consumer of critical all right moving on just likes and so is considered to be russia's window to europe but not davis stock is set to become

another window this time for asia the far east city is finishing the preparations for the asia pacific economic cooperation or apec otherwise known as it is hosting the event for the first time and apparently the forwards more ice time has already run twenty two billion dollars almost twice the official cost of the london olympics to medvedev explains why the apec summit is so important for russia. the fact that russia is spending so much money on the apec summit seems ridiculous a 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 allen 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 shift in priorities from europe to asia would mean development for russia's lagging far east. and that souray will be heading i have to go straight and see how that getting on our many thanks good to see that. just a moment when i'll see all the headlines but then the more importantly just off the bat headlines an exclusive chat with the last american ambassador to the soviet union so you know.

those stories in here before going global and now it's my.

choose your place to take your stuff and. to. make your statements. put the word. coupon through the money. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything. thing you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture .

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