children kept underground and in isolation for ten years by an islamic sect uncovered in russia city of concern we've got the shocking details ahead this hour . 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 as american efforts to decontaminate parts of vietnam from agent orange get under way we look at the possible hidden agenda behind washington's attempt to make good. on screen international news and comment live from our new center here in moscow

several stories of catechumens beneath the earth where children are being kept for years without day night and contact with the outside world the accidental discovery by police in the russian city has shocked the country and the wider world a sect of seventy people has spent over ten years there following the self-proclaimed prophet. reports. if you 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 minarets 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 the. catechumens

extended basement underground complex whatever you want to call it but most of them had been there for a decade without proper heating or without proper lights 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 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 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 then our correspondent is now in the city of concern to report on this shocking story and get more on it by following his twitter feed. clashes a raging between the syrian army and the opposition for control of the city of aleppo in what's being seen as a key battle in the war rebels have now withdrawn from a strategic district in the in the nation's commercial hub to prepare for a counterattack activists sympathetic to the opposition say the use of heavy

weaponry by government troops has caused many civilian deaths but a 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. and it's perhaps the troubles on the battle ground that appointing some rebels to seek more support from abroad in response form the french president nicolas sarkozy one of the principal architects of the nato campaign in libya has called for a repeat of the scenario in syria more on that on a website don't call. we want to see an aide to president obama has not ruled out a no fly zone over a patch of syria on the apparent rebel control the feature of the conflict generally has been how the support of the u.s. and its allies for the opposition is matched in leading international media and his main opponent has found out it follows a pattern of coverage of recent revolutions in the 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

were supporting. to raise the flag. 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 lot of reference to video which wasn't authenticated and repeatedly using the word regime which is a word character played a strong. connotation regime is something. that starts the reaction. i have to other people still refer to the british government as the camera regime you know. so what are you guys now for i os promised executives i said you know how do you find hundreds of people what you just don't post. 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 syria is all dead if everything that happens there is a result of what assad is doing or or not doing. again that's in the interest 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 democrat. 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 to the jihadi the people were very much involved in trying to undermine the syrian government and they had signers 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 sixteen month deadly crisis that even the international community so far has been unable to

resolve marina port i.r.t. new york. the syrian groups fighting president assad of being armed with u.s. weapons despite washington's claims it's only providing a lethal aid to the opposition says his activist on middle east and un issues phyllis bennis the full interview with her is coming up later this hour in the meantime here's a brief preview. 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. american efforts to decontaminate parts of vietnam from agent orange are on the way more than three decades after the war there ended the toxic chemical used to burn

the country's jungle is blamed for health problems and birth defects or to discuss the last. effects of the harmful toxins on this deformation process i'm not joined by vietnam war veteran chuck but not so from the agent orange action group now you experience the vietnam war firsthand how do you feel now about the use of agent orange by u.s. forces. as a result of you know are you. trying

to. give us a bit more of what you've learned and what you see not even living in vietnam tell us more about the negative effects from the chemicals that you've experienced you've seen both on the people and the environment. namely the people i see the devastation every day. i live in the now has one of the major hotspots of. interrogation here. i see the gaps i see the formating is. attend the funerals of former military as well of the senate that's their words. were well into their generation and going into the fourth generation of the effects of that you know and people are going to get sick and die as a result of the. explosion. and there is no relief in sight

so why has it taken so long for this decontamination process to start and indeed is it now too late. personally i think it's taken so many years to get started. it is because of one of my ability i really don't think the united states government nor the manufacturer. ever really wanted to do. any fall short of guilds and in fact it is today the manufacturers of it are i'm sure refuse to admit any of the really any participation other than they were. united states government in the military. is it's too late. again that generational effect is on on well into the third generation and as i said approaching. and we have no idea how long this is going to continue so. too late you're

saying that you're saying that node legal action has been successful but what do you make of this latest effort by washington. is it to make good or is there something more behind this now despite the fact this happening so many years after the damage has been done. i think there is a certain amount of it. there may be a good. thing there is there is an economic reason behind it there is more and more economic trade going on between the united states and vietnam in that and that economic theory was that the strengthening wants to continue. and you know as of late there's been some ongoing lot of confrontations between vietnam and china over some of the islands off the coast of the. united states military. has come here. the secretary of defense has been here the secretary of state has been here and this is over the past few months so i believe that the united states is trying to

strengthen its relationship with vietnam and one of the ways to do that is to clean up the mess that they created fifty one years ago chuck thank you very much indeed for joining us chop a not so from the agent orange action group vietnam war veteran very good to hear your thoughts thank you for being with us thank you michael here. well there's still plenty more ahead for you in the program this hour including the true cost of budget airlines fears in spain that the rise in cheap flight safety standards slip and putting passengers at risk. more pain to this economy to more european companies have been out there we're reducing their exposure to stay we've got our financial i'm doing in a through security service company tonight is all but the thing is customers won't be able to pay back their bills time in ten minutes time for a run down of the exit market. the controversial u.s.

military contractor formerly known as blackwater is to stump up seven and a half million dollars to avoid criminal prosecution it would face seventeen charges relating to arms smuggling and other crimes but now the department of justice says it will defer prosecution if the firm called academy l c c pays a fine to the government when a company's previously been the source of strained relations between the u.s. and iraq after five of his guards were accused of killing fourteen unarmed civilians in baghdad five years ago let's not talk to anthony shaffer he's a retired u.s. army lieutenant colonel who's now a senior fellow at the center for advanced defense studies. what do you make of this do you. well i think everybody involved wants it to go away very quietly. recognizing the fact that blackwater change its name to z. and then tried to press on is indicative of the fact that these folks i think both sides wanted to kind of subside and go away quietly but the bottom was

a real the real issue obviously is that these are essentially a group of mercenaries who are hired to do things which is actually in a high risk environment things can go wrong. i and others who were uniform have been very critical of the entire concept of bringing in essentially mercenaries to do the work that you know foreign military soldiers should do and to be very clear here if you're wearing the uniform of your country you take an oath of responsibility and to that to that country and to the concepts and precepts of that governance blackwater and other mercenaries do not have any such oath they take and i think by the fact that they are unrestrained by these. the oath of office if you will they are more apt to do acts bad acts as you saw in iraq so this is one of those issues which i think it is not been fully examined to the in the interest of everybody will talk about the interests of the us is reputation of brule to me is that right. well obviously we're still trying to recover from the

bad acts in iraq and again let me be very clear here people like me do swear to become a member of our military force to do the things necessary to maintain the peace whether you agreed with iraq or not once you're there you have certain ideals that you have to put forward as a representative of your country if you're killing it even if you engage in an act which the perception is you're killing civilians that's bad and these these folks went beyond that i think actually it was proven at least in the public in the court of public opinion that they acted without regard to self-restraint and thereby damaging both the reputation united states and frankly the reputation of blackwater to the point where it had to change its name multiple times but he said a bit earlier this is all a bit embarrassing in the way it went to be brushed under the carpet by the fact that these companies being let off just by simply paying a fine which probably doesn't have a big impact on the profits is making do you think that there is some sort of

special relationship going on that this company can simply pay its way out of this embarrassment. i think it's a bad course of action by the u.s. government by the obama administration who came in talking about accountability look people died here and yet you're giving a fine to the company you just talked about airlines in your in your preference to this airlines not doing the right thing to maintain public safety my goodness that you would hold an airline accountable for bad acts why would you not hold accountable a group of mercenaries for equally if not even more spat actually poor people died so it's a bad it's a bad course to set and frankly it is nothing more than a bunch of money from a company that no one is going to be held accountable so i think it's very bad all work around that they're not being seeking accountability again criminal accountability i cannot believe you're actually paying a bill to get out of criminal allegations that's that's a very bad presidents to set can we be sure the future of nations will be and could

. absolutely not that's one of the issues again where i'm critical of the whole process of bringing in contract mercenaries if you will to conduct military operations in a foreign environment you have leste capability of accountability and frankly i've been i work with our congress here all the time and i've been a big proponent of congress interceding in this saying you cannot send mercenaries to do an act for someone who is taking the oath of office should be sent to conduct military action it's bad regarding economics it's bad regarding accountability in many ways. like our central intelligence agency use mercenaries to get around congressional oversight which again is not good for anybody if they do that and i do thank you very much indeed retired u.s. army lieutenant colonel thanks for your thoughts life. suicidal labor unions in spain and describe the government's sturdy measures it's not just on the ground but in the air too as we just touched on briefly in that interview where pilots say passengers are being put at risk to save cash. reports.

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 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 cost turbulence in the cockpit as pilots find themselves less and less motivated. we don't have high salaries anymore 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. 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 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 morton which is the security spanish pilot's working hours are already stretched to extremes yet 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 pull the law says

there must be at least forty five minute breaks between flights but in reality it's barely twenty minutes. with twenty minutes between freight it's almost impossible to conduct a proper check of an aircraft. or force it 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 in spain. remember there's always more for you to r.t. dot com here's a look at what we've got lined up for that right now the perils of online shopping the strange story of how a man in the u.s. capitol use the web to order a t.v. but was sent a high caliber assault rifle instead put in the picture of that full explosive story. or saw a lot more pictures from

a republican northwest russia hit by to ritual rain and widespread floods this just a month after a devastating deluge in the country's south the full details but. now let's have a quick look at some other stories making headlines around the world before we have the business news with katie around fifty police officers have been hurt in fierce clashes with students in the capital of a government education plans buses 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 wide to access to education but reject government initiatives including new scholarships and lower student loans. fresh clashes between egyptian police and government erupted in the town of

it's part of a campaign by the country's security forces to drive islam its militants out of the region on wednesday president mohamed morsy sect his intelligence chief and the governor. of to a militant attack killed sixteen soldiers in the area has drastically escalated in the country since the al sting of hosni mubarak in the last year. and as promised we can now join katy on the business desk now it's even time here in moscow still early morning coffee time over on wall street of course in the u.s. what else are investors having to swallow today both or that they can stomach the murray the positive day to day because it's been a week of of kind. activities going on because we've seen a rally and no one seems to know why the rally was occurring but today we've got some data showing that u.s. jobless claims unexpectedly declined last week's that is positive and also the u.s. trade deficit narrative as well that was sharply and to its lowest level since

december twenty ten all these news releases though that helping to offset concerns with europe we'll see how europe finish up as well telecommunication companies that will really hit the worst but there's also speculation that policymakers will now be forced to do more to stimulate the economy why because there was a report showing that china's inflation called and that's helping to avoid a complete sell off in the sessions today i want country that has not escaped investors' minds is greece why well it's all to do with jobless people the number of jobless people in greece is hit a record and that's according to the later stages help helping twenty percent in may which is now more than twice the average of the eurozone and it's young people that are really being hit the worst with unemployment rates among the now as high as five percent but greece is still holding tight to the year and we can see its performance just now is one twenty three zero seven so it is declining there's as i

say it's a strange week because for the ems alone as well because it's august a lot of people on holiday and this was a bargain hunting going on as well for the stocks that are still available to bought out with the rubles performance there was a mix with moments of right now we see a lot of investors really flocking towards the u.s. dollar the safe haven in these times of us and say i will get on to the russian action markets and really today is going to be stuff they moved sideways for much of the session really failing to impress investors pretty much on the fence as we wait global central bank stimulus is believed to be of the cause of some outlets or even worry that the lack. direction for the globe in general is actually down to a calm before the storm so now let's see the moves the shake is oh my say it was bank the biggest financial let's see what it performs at seven basis points negative territory local was one of the few gainers in the session one tenth of

a percent magni three and a half percent dour clavinova those oil prices that if we may are they didn't manage to impact the russian markets whatsoever they are indeed rising at this hour a lot of the time for actually bill for the business right now back about fifteen minutes more that is more business will find out well thanks very much indeed for the update because you will hear more from you the next now in a few moments from now an interview with a washington based academic an activist who thinks the syrian conflict is being mainly fueled by those who live for far away that in-depth interview after a recap of the headlines stay with us.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are on the day.

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