the humanitarian circumstances in syria right now and how they continue to exacerbate according to u.n. officials at least two hundred twenty nine thousand syrians have fled the country in the past eighteen months spilling over to neighboring countries turkey has the security council to consider setting up refugee camps inside of syria outside countries would safeguard this is a suggestion that the syrian government say they are very much against russia and china also opposed it saying that it could only create more conflict and violence but we did hear all western countries address the security council their representatives calling once again for syrian president bashar al assad to step down britain and france the foreign ministers of those countries today made a new call encouraging for more defections within the syrian government and the syrian military the russian ambassador to the nations vitaly churkin did address

the security council and raised the issue of the fact that the unilateral sanctions that western countries including the u.s. britain france those sanctions that they've placed on syria are only hurting the syrians that there was opposed to all this incudes imposed by passing the u.n. security council have nothing to do with actual efforts to settle the syrian crisis they complicate the lives of average citizens and do not allow them to meet their elementary needs or fully enjoy basic human rights this is not only our conclusion but also that of an independent commission in syria we call upon nations who impose sanctions against syria to immediately lift them you see the efforts of certain states to use humanitarian reasons to justify financial technical and logistical support to illegally armed groups as on acceptable. but the u.s. and its western allies have underscored as late as this eat this meeting taking place the security council that they will continue supporting. the syrian

opposition and continue providing them with a quip meant professor paul sheldon foote from california state university has been monitoring turkey's no fly zone bed he says that underneath the rhetoric and professed humanitarian concerns it's all about politics it's a pretext it's still another way to divide and take over the country using the united nations as your vehicle is unfortunately a repetition of what happened in libya or the united nations being used to promote war instead of promote case that playbook worked in libya they would try the same playbook and do all of those work anymore but there is no desire. of the west nato to have been negotiated settlement so the the old with the purpose of this exercise is to make sure that there is no competition in the middle east for playboy and such is by way of syria iran and other places all these other things are excuses there to claim that they care one bit about humanitarian concerns as it is

a gross war but also weighing in on the syria situation is wiki leaks but join us on promising to publish millions of e-mails to cast new light on the crisis they're supposed to show just how comfortable the west used to be with president assad and how the media is currently being manipulated to vilify him it was made his comments during a rare interview with a south american t.v. network while he's holed up at the ecuadorian embassy in london criticized washington's harassment of wiki leaks saying speaking the truth should never be considered a crime he also mentioned how the west is turning into a surveillance mega state which he believes makes a mockery of human rights as predicted he would stay for up to a year at the embassy surrounded by british police until either a diplomatic solution is found or the case against him is dropped. well we've been following join us on his legal battle and now you can track it back to the very

beginning right on our web site r.t.e. dot com here's a taste of what else might catch your eye why are there. plans for a new app which gives the latest updates on u.s. military drone attacks including a body count to find out why the app hasn't been approved but. also online a vision of the future a woman who had lost her sight has got it back again surgeons have implanted our with the first ever successful biopic i. would be soon which brightened if you knew about some from sun stuporous.

news for instance on t.v. dot com. wealthy british soil. but on the right let's go to. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines in two counties a report. here with r.t.m. karen taraji now mitt romney has been outlining more of his policy plans as he accepted his nomination as the republican candidate for the u.s. presidency he wants more stressed his aggressive views towards some nations including russia but with a reputation for changing his stance it can be hard to tell how trustworthy his

heart is going to count explains. well mitt romney is now officially barack obama's opponent for the white house and he's talking tough throwing rocks small verbal rocks not only the president but also of nations at the republican convention where he accepted his nomination mr romney did not fail to once again highlight his animosity towards russia he criticized the president for not being hard enough in his view on russia when it comes to missile defense mitt romney says under his administration quote mr putin will see less flexibility and more backbone end of quote and of course that adds up to his earlier statements that russia is america's number one geopolitical enemy that they need to reset the reset that's actually what he says on his website as part of mitt romney's foreign policy agenda so yes a lot of tough talk i heard experts say that's how mitt romney makes up for lack of charisma what's interesting about the backbone comment is that mitt romney himself

is often characterized as lacking the backbone as he has flip flopped on so many issues like abortion he was for abortion before he was against it or immigration when he was for giving them legal status then he was for deporting them mitt romney's flip flops have been widely discussed it's been an endless source of inspiration for comedians and this is from the tonight show for example with jay leno actually mitt romney and hurricane isaac have something in common they can both change directions at any moment there goes another comedian he says. he goes like obama was like you can be whatever you want to be while romney was like i can be whatever you want me to be there are tons of jokes about mitt romney and his backbone issues apparently and one way of showing some backbone for him is this kind of tough talk you know full of threats and we'll see how far it will take him

in this november election. the idea of america's greatness and special position in the world is a staple of both candidates campaigns but is it fair to say the u.s. has a unique role to play in global affairs that's the question in today's crosstalk and it's coming up in about fifteen minutes. let's take a look at a very well known clip from h.b.o.'s program newsroom. just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day there's some things you should know and one of them is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world we lead the world in only three categories number of incarcerated citizens per capita number of adults who believe angels are real and depends upon who is america's number one there's a there's a gradual decline john quincy adams said when he was secretary of state in eight hundred twenty one before was president that we could be dictators of the world what our policy would then shift from a policy of liberty and freedom to

a policy of domination and control and now we are a country that's lost its way and it's not because we may not be number one in the amount of arms we sell you know we felt about three quarters of all the arms abroad or have the greatest military power but because we lost our moral stature and values of who we are as a people. i. german chancellor angela merkel is on a visit to china hoping to tap into the country's monetary muscle to help pull europe out of the downward spiral she's seeking to boost the flow of investment from beijing into the european stability fund a firewall against financial trouble that the chancellor works very hard to create however home school nami from the european council on foreign relations says that the chinese are not in a hurry to lend a hand to berlin. the big hope in europe is that the chinese would invest in some of the new vehicles that have been crazy like the european stability

mechanism. the chinese. offering lots of words of support today and yesterday but not much in the way of concrete promises to buy bonds in any case the chinese don't tend to make their bond purchases public so we don't know for example how much the chinese invested in european bones in the last two years since the euro crisis began anyway and we probably won't know so there's a lot of there's a lot of uncertainty about in the case of their boss but we see this is a european company and so it will benefit not just germany but also france and other countries in europe but lots of the deals that have been signed. for german companies are open for european companies and so to do in that sense there is a competition going on between germany and other european countries germany seems to be winning that competition while germany as striving to make sure the euro

stays afloat its old currency the dutch market is showing no signs of being discarded peter all of our has the details of berlin's all school savings per day. here in germany the don't try are still very much alive and kicking in fact in a store in central berlin the good old they market is still accepted as legal tender when it comes to purchases with an exchange rate of around two dogs marks to the euro the store's manager says that there's still enough of the old currency around to warrant them taking it on the name have the reason we accept which marks is there are still plenty of people with the old currency we get quite a few people wanting to spend them in our store for it's not just in shops that they're accepted if you find a few d. mark coins down the back of the sofa germany's public telephones will happily take them off your hands germany they surely dropped the old money for the euro over ten

years ago in two thousand and eleven alone though over eight million marks were brought to the bundesbank to be changed into crisp new currency but where is that cash coming from. he had that is not any one of my ugly relatives gave me before and as a gift so i decided to turn them into something it could spend on television. we've had them lying around the house for ages we've only just got around to getting democrats changed or there are those though who say they won't part with their deutsche marks as a minister yeah i've got some i keep them as a souvenir i'm not going to change them into europe and according to the blunders bank there's still more than thirteen billion dollars each marks in circulation they say they get returns from as far away as brazil and new zealand so unlike some euro zone members the bank won't place a time limit on accepting old money. so we will continue to take them as long

as people keep bringing them it's something of a tradition here that currency from years and years ago will always be exchanged for legal tender there are conspiracy theory. though who say that in the banks vaults are trillions of marks being stockpiled should the euro crisis deepen only room so if the cash that's returned isn't being kept for a rainy day what happens to it and once the exchanges completes those deutsche marks the shredded ending their days as very expensive confetti peter all of a r.t. . all right let's now have a look at some other international news in brief for you this hour almost three hundred south african miners have been charged with the murder of their thirty four coworkers earlier this month despite the fact that the victims were shot dead by police prosecutors claim security officers were provoked and opened fire only after

armed protesters attacked them but there is huge public outrage with many believing the government is trying to shift the blame the incident was the bloodiest in the country's history since it became a democracy in one thousand nine hundred four. iran has rejected a political move the latest report by the u.n. nuclear watchdog which claims the country's doubled the number of your bringing in richmond centrifuges the findings sparked a wave of concern for some western nations and especially israel by the fact only about a third of centrifuges are operational iran believes the i.a.e.a. report is aimed at overshadowing the online movement summit in turkey iran where the country's again stressed that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. more than one hundred fifty flights have been canceled in germany's busiest airport in frankfurt after thousands of fans a cabin crew went on strike staff are demanding

a pay raise improved working conditions and guarantees jobs will be outsourced the eight hour strike is expected to affect air traffic throughout the entire day. dimitris here with the business news so it seems gas problem is in the spotlight this week and the question is will there be a stockman dimitry well you know with every day it's solid to actually answer the question because it seems gazprom and its bought those involved in the development of this huge gas field are not sure it seems they're actually not coordinated the different approaches well right now french toto. denying reports that the project has been suspended indefinitely the firm says that its partners and stockmen that in addition to gas problem clude stats or oil are pursuing technical studies to come up with an economically viable solution now on thursday gas from said the project was put on hold as the development costs of stockmen are too high considering that gas prices are fully. let's move over to the stock markets and

we start with europe where it's all looking pretty rosy and positive a few sessions of losses this is in anticipation of fed chairman ben bernanke the speech is due to talk in around one half hours in jackson hole wyoming at a summit of central bankers and we're all actually expecting any kind of hint as to economic stimulus because two years ago at exactly the same meeting. ben bernanke he gave a hint that there will be a new wave of quantitative easing and developed on that bit later for out the year . now one of european union's a few growth stories poland is feeling the squeeze of the downturn the country's second quarter growth eased to two point four percent the lowest in three years and significantly below the forecast poland's g.d.p. kept expanding over the last few years well much of the e.u.

showed negative growth but a series of gloomy economic indicators show that the so-called economic miracle is coming to an end. or let's go further down to the russian markets now where it's the old looking kind of undecided today with my six going down point six percent but the r.t.s. is a bit higher on a stronger ruble and russian markets are not having a good week indeed it seems that the previous weeks of growth have all come up to this kind of mean much needed correction that's exactly what's happening and one of the biggest losers and drags is. lukoil afterwards said that it's been buying up around two and a half billion dollars worth of shares but apparently stopped doing that now among other stories after valid shares are started assembling a new read over logan model like ship carrier air float is down the cell it's announced that in the first seven months of the year passenger traffic has gone up

by a quarter of it seems that is i'm not impressed and no most bank is showing a huge growth this second or even third to your stock is up thirty percent this out was up around twenty percent earlier in the day that's when reports that financial cooperative corp had to give each year was consolidating the bank's shares. right let's move over to commodities and it's all of what bling yoyo style with light sweet and brands now gaining this is all as american isaak is coming and going and basically providing fears or maybe even playing down fears as to the damage that it may wreak in the future. let's now move over to currencies and the euro is gaining massively versus the dollar on these hopes that the chairman ben bernanke you will and will announce easing and that would mean that the dollar becomes cheaper and the russian ruble is gaining massively to the dollar in line with with this draft.

all right the privatization of russia's state assets could go soon online the state has agreed to terms of selling its property for electronic auctions analysts say this would make the privatisation easier and more transparent however online sales do not exclude privatizing state assets through more traditional means. staying with a high tax russia's largest free email service mailed or you has bought out its ukrainian namesake mail dot the usa companies didn't disclose the financial details of the deal but the system made to to be around half a billion dollars. the move should boost mail to use positions in ukraine where it's already pretty popular. finally beijing is aiming to push the uighur and into international trade further on right now it's using the yuan in trade with hong kong and singapore but now is focusing on latin america and the middle east

meanwhile russia has long been in favor of moving away from the dollar and trading in national currencies to hong kong's financial secretary john saying toggled see that the two countries can help each other out. what is happening now is a great deal of trace element in the national currency so in terms of for example between russia and china they would be doing a lot of settlement in un or in ruble this way you can weigh reduce the currency risk that may incur and that is already happening i think we should expect to see a lot more of that and as this two currencies become at some stage of currency for for the rest of the world. all right i'll be coming out for out the day i mean with more bulletins of course join us with that because ben bernanke is due to have a speech as i was saying in the one and a half hour that's right we look forward to it thank you for that update dimitri

and i will be back with our top stories in just a couple of minutes to try and stay with our team. well. it's technology innovation all the moves developments from

around russia we've got the future covered. wealthy british soil it's a spot on the. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy cars report on.

the. hello and welcome to our d.m. karen with your top stories well the winner takes it all the loser standing small a russian. bodies but is his left empty handed after a london court dismisses his had a lawsuit against a billionaire from on. turkey's pitch for a syrian intervention hits a dead end at the u.n. leaving nato countries warning they might simply bought a house the security council. plus republican mitt romney accepts his nomination as a presidential candidate with a promise to show russia more backbone critics night that's not his greatest asset . next america's role as the top world power goes up for debate in peter lavelle's

crosstalk. live. in. the lonely and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle is the u.s. still number one in the world opinions differ sharply though there can be no doubt american supremacy is being challenged by a number of international players however if indeed the u.s. is in decline aren't all americans to blame. live. and.

live. to cross whether america is still number one i'm joined by bruce fein in washington senior policy adviser to ron paul two thousand and twelve presidential campaign and the founder of the link field group and american freedom agenda also in washington we have michael hughes he's a journalist and foreign policy analyst and in harrisburg we cross to jeffrey lord he is a former reagan white house political director and author all right gentlemen cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want but before we start our discussion here let's take a look at a very well known clip from h.b.o.'s program newsroom let's have a look. just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day there's some things you should know and one of them is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world we're seventeen literacy twenty seventh in math twenty second in science forty ninth in life expectancy one hundred seventy eight and infant mortality third in median household income number four in labor force and number four in exports we lead the world in only three categories number of incarcerated

citizens per capita number of adults who believe angels are real and depends upon where we spend more than the next twenty. six countries combined twenty five of whom are allies none of this is the fault of a twenty year old college student but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world i don't know what the fuck you're talking about somebody. sure used to be. we stood up for what was right. we fought for moral reasons we passed laws struck down laws for moral reasons we waged war zone poverty not poor people. we sacrificed we cared about our neighbors we put our money where a mouths were and we never beat our chests we built great big things made on godly

technological advances explored the universe cure disease and we cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. we reached for the stars. acted like men we aspired to intelligence we didn't belittle it it didn't make us feel inferior. but in identify ourselves by we voted for in the last election and we didn't scare so easy. we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. by great man men who were revered. first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. america is not the greatest country in the world any more.

enough ok michael very powerful acting extremely powerful words how do you react to that i mean because a lot of the facts mentioned there are correct ok they're easy to find and been known for a long time now is america still number one. and maybe but it there's a there's a gradual decline and it has to do with a lot of what he said there's. a lot of it is political gridlock because a special interest groups you know we have a sixteen or fifteen dollar outstanding public debt and seven hundred billion dollars defense budget and for some reason we need to be projected worldwide we have this global footprint that does not match up to the actual threats ok it's very uncertain bruce if i can go to you i mean ok go ahead jump in. no i just say i think the the diagnosis is correct but i think the reasons are wrong ok one or the

really shouldn't be a country it's the reasons are that we have lost our way from what we were in visioned as a country from the founding we shouldn't be going abroad in search of monsters to destroy what would make a country number one is complying with the rule of law on during the liberty over big government making sure you have a level playing field so everyone has the opportunity to develop their endowments and faculties and achieve what their ambition and industry will achieve it's not having government favor one side or the other side and say honoring respect for international law and not invading anyone sovereignty because we say that in our viewpoint you're harboring someone that some time someplace could be a danger to the united states global projection of military power going back to what john quincy adams said when he was secretary of state in eight hundred twenty one before as president that we could be dictators of the world what our policy would then shift from a policy of liberty and freedom to a policy of domination and control.