for syrian president bashar al assad to step down britain and france the foreign ministers of those countries today made i knew call encouraging for more i did factions within the syrian government and the syrian military the russian ambassador to deny nations vitaly churkin i did address the security council and raised the issue of the fact that the unilateral sanctions that western countries including the us britain france those sanctions that they've placed on syria are only hurting the syrians. the sanctions 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 security council that they will continue supporting the syrian opposition and continue providing them with a quick meant. professor paul children for california state universities be monitoring turkey's no fly zone but 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 years seeing the united nations as your vehicle it is unfortunately a repetition of what happened in. the united nations being used to promote war. playbook worked in libya they want to try to save playbook and know it doesn't work anymore but there is no desire. the west nato with

a negotiated settlement the old with the purpose of this exercise is to make sure that there is no competition in the middle east for oil and such as syria iran and other places all these other things are excuses to claim that they care one bit about humanitarian concerns as it is a gross. also weighing in on the syrian situation as we can weeks with in this promising to publish millions of e-mails to cost new night on the crisis as opposed 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 when i made these comments during an interview with the south american t.v. network while he's holed up at the ecuadorian embassy in london he could decide washington's harassment of wiki leaks saying speaking the truth should never be considered a crime he will send mention how the west is turning into a surveillance mega-state which he believes makes a mockery of human rights and so as predicted he would stay for up to a year at the embassy surrounded by british police and some of the diplomatic

solution is found the case against him is dropped pull with him from the u.k. independence party says the issues we. extremely relevant. we here in britain suffer even more from the surveillance society in the united states and london is the capital of surveillance everywhere you look there's a c.c.t.v. camera we are constantly mounted moment to twenty four hours a day now we we in the u.k. independence party trying to fight face in the same way that we keenly has been trying to do but it's very difficult thing. because you are made out to be against the rule of law or if you don't want to be surveyed you know every moment of your your waking life but the fact of the matter is that there's been no attempt to say that any of the stuff that they reveal is fraudulent it's misleading. the whole. seems to be to take them out because the actual documents speak for themselves and

are clearly for the most part you know extremely damning and very relevant you know . stay with us here in our tease to have few this politically motivated the body of a grown although you un report claimed to have evidence of the country has doubled its past. and over germany where the old dutch mark is more than just sentimental value in uncertain times the story to become. the first mitt romney has been outlining more of his policy plans except 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 he is going to check on explains. mitt romney is now officially barack obama's opponent for the white house and he's talking tough throwing rocks well verbal rocks not

only the president but also 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 and of quote and of course that adds up to his earlier statements that russia is america's number one geopolitical anime 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 illegal

immigration he was for giving them legal status that he was for deporting them mitt romney's flip flops have been widely discussed they've become an endless source of inspiration for comedians this is this is from the tonight show with jay leno it says actually mitt romney and hurricane isaac have something in common they can both change directions at any moment and another comedian goes obama is like you can be whatever you want to be while romney is like i can be whatever you want me to be there are tons of jokes about mitt romney and his backbone issues apparently one way of showing some backbone for him is this kind of tough talk full of threats 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. the u.s. has a unique role to play in global affairs but that's the question in today's cross talk

that's coming your way at nineteen thirty g.m.t. . but 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 defense spending is america still number one there's a there's a gradual decline john quincy adams said when he was secretary of state an eight hundred twenty one before was president that we could be dictator rest 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 sell about three quarters of all 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. talk come your way a little later on iran is rejected as a political move the latest report by the u.n. nuclear watchdog which claims the country has doubled the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges to run believes that the findings are aimed overshadowing the nonaligned movement summit taking place there side mohammad marandi a professor at the university of toronto think that the release of the report at this time is highly suspicious. the iranians are saying that this report came at a sensitive time to sort of distract attention away from this iranian success the nonaligned movement. conference in tehran has been highly successful instead of iran being isolated the united states has become isolated scented opposed senior figures going to tehran and many major world leaders have come to the country in

addition the president of egypt came to iran which is a political earthquake the iranians are producing uranium. enriched uranium at twenty percent for facilities in tehran which then produce medical isotopes the fact that the united states and the europeans tried to prevent iran from obtaining this fuel in the past met that meant that they were taking the iranian cancer patients hostage the irony here is that the iranians at the beginning had no intention whatsoever to produce a name at twenty percent and then produce nuclear fuel but the americans and the europeans by taking iranian citizens and people hostage for sea iranians to take that step the politicians senior politicians really know that an attack on iran would be devastating for the united states and not only for its economy but for its global position and its credibility. don't forget to log onto our website

harty dot com for the latest news comment and videos online all the time and while you're there here's a taste of what else might catch your eye plans for a new app which gives the latest updates on the west treat drone attacks including a podcast on why he hasn't been a proven. false online vision of the future a woman who'd lost scientists got it back again surgeons have implanted her the first ever successful bio on a car. 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 its downward spiral she's seeking to boost the flow of investment from beijing into the european stability fund a farm financial trouble that you chancellor worked hard to create

a hands can the money from the european council on foreign relations says the chinese are in no hurry to lend a hand to burning. 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 that in the case of a bus obviously 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. off of the german companies are all european companies and so in that sense there is a competition going on between germany and other european countries germany seems to be winning that competition. well germany is trying to make sure the euro stays afloat its old currency that going to market showing no signs of being discarded. has the details of burdens old school savings for a rainy 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 dollars each marks to the euro the store's manager says that there's still enough of the old currency around to warrant them taking it was on the name of three 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 demarche coins down the back of the sofa germany's public telephones will happily take them off your hands germany officially dropped the old money for the euro over ten years ago in two thousand and eleven alone though over eight million mark were brought to the bundesbank to be changed into crisp new currency but where is that cash coming from. that he had that is not only one of my ugly relatives gave me the school 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 marks as a minister. 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 eurozone 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 bank vaults are trillions of marks being stockpiled should the crisis deepen only rumors so if the cash that's returned isn't being kept for a rainy day what happens to it and once the exchange is complete those deutsche marks the shredded ending their days as very expensive conflict peter all of a r.t. . well before we have the business news with dmitri let's check out some other international news in brief now at this stage of the day at least twelve people

been killed and up to twenty injured after a powerful explosion rocked a market in north western pakistan there's been no claim of responsibility so far in the region a scene frequent attacks in recent times which mostly being blamed on the taliban around five thousand people have died in violence there over the past five years. south africa's justice minister has demanded an explanation over the decision to charge almost three hundred miners with the murder of the thirty four coworkers despite the fact the victims were killed by police prosecutors claim police were provoked during the incident two weeks ago and opened fire only after armed protesters attacked this huge public outrage with many believe the government is trying to shift the blame incident was the bloodiest in the country's history since it became a democracy in one thousand nine hundred ninety four. also in a world update this massive wildfire in southern spain has forced around four thousand people to flee their homes with some losing everything in the flames and

firefighters believe the blaze was started deliberately and they hope to get it under control by the end of the day spain's countryside has been very dry this summer because of a prolonged heat wave. but as promised which is next with the business news and how the markets reacting dimitry to ben bernanke is key speech in wyoming any sensation that well the market reaction is quite moderate because the answer is kind of yes and no because chairman ben bernanke he was talking a lot about quantitative easing what everyone was expecting basically from him but when it comes to factual data as to when volumes there was no basically no indication of that but chairman ben bernanke he made clear that the federal reserve will do more to boost the economy because of high u.s. unemployment and an economic recovery that remains quote far from satisfactory you also basically talked about the high unemployment rate that this is the result of

cyclical problems in the economy but again when it comes to quantity easing he hinted that it could be done but no factual no factual data here so let's take a look at the numbers then the dow jones now is up point six percent last hour we looked at it was up more than one percent so it's kind of the hype is calming down and indeed we could just say that the markets are not deep rest by this speech so it was not a disappointment as was the case with several that you see driving the speech. over in europe we are also seeing a positive picture on the dax at the close it's up more than one percent on hopes that the e.c.b. would go ahead and buy up more. bonds in spain and italy but the footsie slipped into the red at the end of the session now when it comes to poland one of the year

being unions few grove stories and it's feeling the squeeze of the downturns in the country's second quarter growth east a two point four percent the lowest in three years and significantly below forecasts both g.d.p. kept expanding over the last few years while much of the e.u. showed negative growth but a series of gloomy economic indicators have shown that the so-called economic miracle is basically coming to an end. now russia this is the closing picture it's mixed and pretty flat basically it's out of sync with the rest of the world today with the rest of global markets and the my six has been driven down mainly by lukoil shares which should take a huge part in the index is weight is pretty pretty solid and that's on the back of the company on baling that has been buying up the two and a half billion dollars worth of its own shares from the market so investors can chose to secure their own profits as there probably will not be and buy back in the

future at least in the coming days. and loudest take a look at what's happening in the commodities market light sweet and branch of both gaining one and a half dollars per barrel now on these expectations that there will be stimulus soon that we will soon get some information as to when how and where and therefore this could stimulate the economy could stimulate demand for energy so we're seeing prices rise pretty much now on the currencies market the year is new zing it's steam against the dollar it's now twenty five and a half as you can see was up over one point twenty six at one point and the russian ruble was gaining against both currencies but that's gains out several days of going down against both the euro and the dollar. now china is trying to promote its you warn and make it a currency in international trade not only with hong kong and singapore but now

it's eyeing the latin american markets and the middle east so russia has been pretty much calling to do the same thing and hong kong's financial secretary john tsang has told r.t. that the two countries could help each other it. what is happening now is a great deal. in the national currency so. for example between russia and china they would be doing a lot of settlement in. 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 to currencies become a. currency for for the rest of the world. so that's the way the markets look thanks a lot. well i'll be back with top stories in just a couple of minutes stay with.

i think going down of the sun and good morning we will remember that we will. see that.

this is not. top stories now the winner takes it all the loser standing small the russian. tycoon. is left empty handed down from london called dismisses his hefty little suit against the man which. took his pitch for a syrian intervention it's a dead end of the un the nato countries warning they might simply bypass the security council. republican mitt romney except seize nomination as presidential candidate with a promise to show russia more backbone but critics say that does. not mean that with another summary for in about fifteen minutes from now but in the meantime with the two presidential run is now officially named. talks to scholar

and research ivan eland about the race for the white house that's next in our in-depth interview. what do you read into the g.o.p. convention. well conventions in the u.s. now are sort of a beauty contest they're not they used to be in the history they used to have a lot more effect than nominees actually chosen at the conventions but now we have a party primary and caucus system which does that so it's just sort of a coronation of the nominee of the particular party and they script them pretty heavily romney has complete control over the conference convention there of a sort of you ron paul supporters that kicked up a little bit but largely even ron paul is playing the game inside the party so you don't see hardly any disputes or anything like that over the platform or anything

else and no surprises all the romney started at the very beginning of his campaign was very rough there was a lot of competition a lot of other candidates who basically discredit him and yet now at the convention it seems as the g.o.p. just wants from the need to be the president yes well they've all that's the tradition in american politics usually is they have about a battle during the primaries call each other all sorts of names criticize each other's policy and then all of a sudden you see people who are criticizing him before when he gets enough electoral i mean convention delegates he flip and then start supporting him so as it ran this time they think now for the u.s. well usually they're on the republican side they they nominate the person who lost last time the next in line the democrats are a little bit more if he but but i think basically comes down to these conventions and surf surface phenomena don't really mean much people who actually study

elections in the u.s. say it's not really between two candidates it's a referendum on the current administration so you know they could have almost anybody running and the economy is bad and it's going to be very close but i think some of the models predict obama still leaking it out of a. close victory but it's going to be close so those models could be off as well but i think obama has an intrinsic. advantage in the electoral college because in the united states you know we don't. as we saw in two thousand election we don't elect the president on the popular vote it can sometimes be different than the electoral college so we really don't have a national election we have a state by state election and so. the candidates have to win so many states which add up to two hundred seventy electoral votes and so that can sometimes differ from the national popular vote totals so this could be another election where that happens we'll see obama as

a slight edge in the electoral map and they kind of means that romney's policies are too far to the right and he seems as if he's moving even further to the right choosing paul ryan for instance a lot of people like his and accuse him of wanting to assert to the right wing of the republican party do you think the u.s. is moving in that direction or is it just politics that brought him here well the republicans seem to think that they can energize their base more than the democratic base because the democratic base is kind of disappointed with obama in certain respects and if they can energize their base they can win that way but i don't know that's a bit iffy i think they may have made a bad choice and paul ryan and i think that. choosing him said ok we're going to mobilize our base instead of going for independent voters because he would have picked romney would pick somebody that was like chris christie or somebody that was more moderate to go out to the center and there may have been

a mistake because most of the conservatives are going to vote against obama. and so they really didn't need paul ryan they needed somebody to get people in the middle particularly. suburban women and you see these comments by the republican candidate. one of the senate candidates on abortion and rape. you know that really. disaffect women so the republicans led that's what happened leading up to the convention so they don't really want to talk about that the republicans want to talk about the economy and they want all those social issues which are very divisive and might turn key voting blocks like suburban women against them so in a close election they really need everybody on their side do you think he's able to move to appeal to the middle well not as much i guess somewhat it's hard to say where he stands on many issues he's kind of moved around enough that's believable

but after you do that and now if people you know stick you with the flip flopper type thing flipping back and forth between you know like john kerry was labeled with that. a while back for the demo on the democratic side you know if you're inconsistent on your and and mitt romney has been inconsistent on abortion assault weapons ban and even on health care yes in fact obama and mitt romney have switched positions because used to be obama was against his own what became his own healthcare plan because hillary originally proposed it during the primaries and of course mitt romney was the guy who dreamed up the whole thing is governor of massachusetts and now he's against that sort of thing so you never know what's going to happen or what position they're going to take but that changing of positions don't you think it's going to weaken his campaign running this campaign especially now when you're talking health care economy. jobs well i think it's.