devastation rains and colonel gadhafi is former stronghold and libyan pro-government forces keep up their assault but hundreds displaced and children among the dead. paints romney as a novice not ready to become america's commander in chief but he finds outright victory elusive in the final presidential t.v. showdown. in this debate seen by maybe a supporter calling this election governor romney and president obama were on the same page on pretty much every thing i'll be back in just a few moments with more. for spanish regions are pounded by ratings dry and

movies as thousands prepare to march in madrid against more than cots. hello and welcome to r t where we are on screen and online twenty four hours a day seven days a week on charon terror. hungry thirsty and forced to flee their homes the people of bani walid in libya are seeing their hometown ripped apart by pro-government shelling women and children are among the dead as loyalists militias trying to take the last stronghold of moammar gadhafi supporters a year after his violent for more on the sui can now talk to our middle east correspondent sleazier paula how dire is the situation in the opposition stronghold well the situation so key is dire indeed almost by the minute we receive new reports of atrocities being committed by me why did the.

oh and it looks like we've just lost paula do you stay here with our tears we will get her back on the line now he came out fighting in an approach that's paid off in most polls but still president obama failed to deal his republican rival a decisive blow during their final pre-election faceoff obama took romney to task over his inexperience in global matters while stressing his own foreign policy achievements but as you can reports the way the candidates actually view america's role on the world stage isn't all that different. this debate showed that the candidates agree on a lot of things on some issues they were almost in sync with one another even using the same words it seemed the occasional big ring that happened between them was more for the sake of the debate rather than about real differences in the policies that they propose on iran for example they couldn't agree more with each other they

were absolutely on the same page with regards to putting sanctions on iran with regards to backing israel they were saying exactly the same things but president obama did say something interesting he said he's against the premature military action against iran governor romney's a vase of response to the same question suggested that he doesn't want to go there either and he said i don't want to get into a hypothetical so then on of get is that governor romney showed himself as an added we could do of the president's policy is there he said that he thinks the surge was successful that as the president of the united states he too would bring the troops home in twenty fourteen something that president obama says he's going to do on syria though they both agree that the u.s. should get rid of outside and make sure that the next government in syria is friendly to the united states they both agreed although they did disagree on whether or not the u.s. should give heavy weapons to the rebels in syria that's what governor romney suggested whereas president obama at least seems to recognize the complexity of the

situation on the ground take a listen for us to get more entanglement militarily in syria is a serious stuff and we have to do so making absolutely certain that we know who we are helping the we're not putting arms in the hands of folks who eventually could turn them against us or our allies in the region to a more general point governor romney kept using the word opportunity when talking about the revolutions in the middle east and north africa when talking about syria and it's very telling of the foreign policy that he's suggesting is very opportunistic with regards to syria he basically said that the u.s. should take advantage of the. crisis in syria to deliver a defeat to iran syria is an opportunity for us because syria plays an important role the middle east particular right now syria is iran's only ally in the arab world it's their route to the sea it's the route for them to arm hezbollah in lebanon which threatens of course our ally israel and so seeing syria remove assad

is a very high priority for us the candidates did mention russia on a few occasions although there was no specific question about russia of course that hot mike moment came up the one between president obama versus vet of this spring when the u.s. president suggested that he would be more flexible to discuss america's missile defense plans in europe after the election and for that remark the president has come under an avalanche of criticism in washington criticism that came down to this basically how dare you be flexible with the russians i want to talk to them about security issues and governor romney during this debate has made a similar point of clear eyes on this i'm not going to wear rose colored glasses when it comes to russia or mr putin and i'm certainly not going to say to him i'll give you more flexibility you have to election after election you'll get more backbone the missile defense shield in europe is a longstanding sore point in the relations between the two countries moscow suggested many times resolving the issue by building the shill together but to no avail the only response russia has been getting from this administration was don't

worry it's not against you but then they listen to candidate romney who calls russia an enemy and virtually every statement on russia that candidate romney has made so far has actually played into the concerns that moscow has with regards to this schildt because russia then says ok president obama we believe you but what if maybe not this year but four years from now so along with the mindset of governor romney is elected president how is he or she going to use those military bases so close to the washroom borders because that chilled is not a four year project it's a long running thing and despite. this administration's more forthcoming official latitude the issue still stands. but not all of the foreign policy debate was as serious as it sounds take barack obama's sarcastic retort to mitt romney discover on r.t. dot com his remarks about horses and bayonets are galloping across the web. and

the debates between the two main contenders for the white house may be over but there's still plenty of fight left in this election they so-called third party candidates outside the two main political forces were excluded from official televised debates but have staged their own party dot com in our t. america helping them air their views big picture host tom hartman explains the significance of the debate. but democrats or republicans have been debating in a fairly narrow channel they you know they don't get into topics that they don't agree on and there's a variety of those topics that really the american people are very concerned about whether it's global climate change which has been largely absent from these debates and yet is staring us down and throws a significant problem whether it's ending nixon's drug war here in the united states whether it's our foreign policy whether it's it's you know pieces of our foreign policy like you know the use of drones whether it's the israeli palestinian situation i think that there are a lot of areas and particularly economic areas and what is the role of

a government in an economy those are the things that really need to be discussed in the national debates and generally aren't and that i believe will be in the third party the mainstream media by and large ignores the third party candidate debates because there's not any money and because these third parties don't have huge constituencies they wouldn't have the huge audience that would make it profitable to see them even if they have really important issues that the american people need to know about. all right back to our top story on the ongoing seizure of bani walid in libya loyalist militias are mounting their offensive on the last stronghold of moammar gadhafi supporters a year after his violent for more on this we're joined by our middle east correspondent paula slayer paula now you were telling us about how dire the

situation is in the opposition stronghold. well yes the siege of bani one that has been on the go now for almost three weeks and almost by the day we are hearing and receiving reports of new atrocities being committed we are hearing from the photos and from the of witnesses reports of people being killed of the bodies being just. membered of children being murdered at the same time we know that there is constant shelling this constant attacks and also reports of the use of chemical weapons by these pro-government forces now according to eyewitnesses on the ground as well as doctors at the scene and many of the people there are suffering from toxic gas poisoning and this does tie in with unconfirmed reports that we have been receiving that gas for shells are being used on the local population now earlier r.t. spoke with a man in italy who has family in bunnie why did he outlined for us the consequences

and the circumstances in which they were surviving but we have not identified him because he's afraid of the safety of his family have innocent. i spoke with my family on the last few days and they are telling me that the situations that early on the last few days they went to a mosque here because there were there weren't any safety on the city right there so they went to the most care with the other families from the women's and the little kids and there were women have the. pregnant women have a baby there and she's dead because the situation was really about. five knots. and today it was really really strong bombing from outside the normally with all the kind of heavy guns the government didn't do anything to start the government was that the what happened in between been awarded the messiah star but after that a few days i'm going to have came out and he said that it's a war it's

a good war against the wall and he. must go inside and burn your leading clean but from who i really don't know this is millions are fallen down every day but all the good all the current of weapons the looting. aircraft machines a bullet on the head. i know what happened els but the few of the people of says that norman are right there and it's such a such a mess and from the other side from the road of tripoli that is in the family as a human shelled right there. paul this happens as the country marks a year since the so-called liberation from the gadhafi era how have the lives of libyans changed in those twelve months. when i think of would be fair to say that not much has changed in libya over the past year if anything for many people the situation has stabilized for the criticism leveled against the former libyan leader

moammar gadhafi the one thing that he did bring to the country was stability and many questions are being asked if indeed iteration today is better than it was a year ago you have in power our national transitional council that is largely quiet about all the atrocities that are going on inside the country we have heard from the human rights watch exposé of atrocities and crimes that have been committed in the city of misrata and in addition to this you have a nato armed militia that acts almost as if it is above the law so certainly a lot of questions being asked and a lot of doubts being cast over whether or not the country is better off after independence i think it's also worth mentioning that before the iraqi leader saddam hussein was killed because of this was initially executed an attack because of his use of care chemical weaponry against the kurds in iraq there are parallels been made and a lot of questions being asked about the double standards that the western world is

seemingly employing you have a lot of criticism today against the syrian president bashar assad there was a lot of criticism leveled against gadhafi and yet there was a lot of silence in the international news at the moment of what was happening in bani walid and i can tell you here from beirut talking to some people here that is the question why these double standards why is so much made of one aspect and some leaders so much is being kept quiet about another. our middle east correspondent paula slayer talking to us from beirut thank you paula. well spain's government is finding itself cornered from all saw its bread its giant movies slashes the score for of its region's looming cuts easing boil over also. to wind. up in the ignition next international space station crew blasts off what the team of first timers we report from the launch site after the

break. which is slow often enough and knows that to ride a horse you've got to catch it first. for him it's a daily routine that just softens a force on the island of horn and the heart of by call his life on an isolated farm is about blue sky green grass and his horses work there sometimes it gets lonely here but horses have become part of me no i've fallen off so many times sometimes. it's part of my every day life. i home

suburban home to a new brats like me just laugh for centuries most still live off the land the cattle and fish. if you might call it is often called the pearl of siberia a horn is said to be the pearl of by. it's all end of think forests. and vast stops. virtually undiscovered by tourists until some twenty years ago i was cornish quickly becoming a magnet for nature lovers and if you will sic others. you're quite some way from civilization here accommodation on the island is very basic so you can forget about a t.v. or even run in water for most people a tent is the on the eruption but for those who come here it's exactly what they're looking for. and journeyed to by call can be unique trip of

a lifetime and the locals say once you've seen it they'll be coming back again and again. welcome back to r t a lot from moscow and karen tara. another financial blow for spain as ratings giant moody's slashed the score of four of its regions including catalonia by one to two notches that's us spain central bank says the country's economy keeps shrinking but speculation that i've asked you for a lifeline the government is desperately searching for ways to keep spain afloat with more cuts debated in the parliament for next year's budget thousands are expected to come out in protest against the plans in madrid with people angry over every mounting austerity political communications professor viktor sampedro says

spain's political crisis means there is no real challenge to the policy of cuts. are not going to be discussed in the parliament given the absolute majority of the popular part of the doable which is a government. in the main opposition party the sorries for. so many minority parties we have enough more used to go out there to support a few people in the street and of course of the city will be the very. but they're expensive. depending on how many people there are there are two dudes. in the wheel is that know why you're news news three the unions would have been maybe. the authorities she was proving that when you to stay surely police when this first went dark different to. turkey promotes itself as

a regional leader and freedom in fact it's imprisoned more journalists than china or iran and american media watchdog exposes turkey as the world's leading jailer of reporters who criticize the government for covering that story online. and exactly ten years on from the moscow theater scenes that left one hundred thirteen dead r.t. brings us firsthand accounts from survivors and fears from victims' relatives you'll find it all at r.t. dot com. the u.k. is doubling its drone fleet in afghanistan to ten multimillion dollar unmanned and armed aircraft that's even though london says it's preparing to leave the war zone ahead of the two thousand and fourteen nato withdrawal deadline middle east expert terry callie says drone warfare is a hypocritical crop. i think it's an emergency measure that they want to have the capability to blast people they don't like whenever they want to without

loosing lives of their own so this is always been bare priority they can always find money for weapons for wars but the insist on austerity measures reducing salaries of all workers and the less well off and guiding down so should be expended trip innocent lives are lost women and children die and they create more havoc then before so or the result is really very come to productive and they build up a trade in these regions you know on the one hand you have western countries saying terrorism is a threat and on the other hand they launch drone terror on innocents in different parts of the world in in africa and now as we're seeing in south asia and tomorrow who knows way so what it does is keep the wall feet were going and then people want to react in india between groups of terrorists want to do it but countries that are

doing this so they can pretend that they don't know this is going to be the result it's well attested. time for more of the sars world news now a powerful blast has rocked the headquarters of the syrian army in a suburb of damascus there's been no immediate reports of casualties or any claim of responsibility this comes just after peace envoy lakhdar brahimi appealed to both sides of conflict to observe a ceasefire for the muslim holiday of. the series of deadly attacks have hit shiite areas of the iraqi capital four parked cars exploded northwest of baghdad killing seven people and leaving sixteen injured another attack struck a northern district where two mortar rounds are reported to have landed killing two and wounding several others it's not known who is behind the attacks but the iraqi capital shiite areas have previously been targeted by al qaeda linked sunni militants. a blaze at a hospital in southern taiwan has left twelve people dead and seventy others

injured patients died of smoke inhalation as the fire swept through a nursing home located on the second floor of the building most of the victims were bedridden and couldn't escape the fire emergency services quickly brought the blaze under control though the cause of the fire is still unknown. a new three man crew is speeding its way to the international space station right now for the two russian cosmonauts it's the first ever space flight and their american counterpart is making his debut on board i say use rocket parties lucy coffin of witness the launch at the baikonur cosmodrome in kazakhstan let's take a look at the needs site there you go exploring it up. and laughing all. the time they should be. bending the next six months but they're alive but they're really incredible preparation for this mission we got to watch the

rocket rolled out of its range in the early hours of the morning really incredible to see this piece of machinery up close and personal to really understand what decades of hard work and scientific research has been able to accomplish in finding a human. baby something that i don't certainly think is so wonderful to watch from afar but i would certainly be a bit terrified of being inside that missing in court these men are not they've been training for years for that moment now it's impossible to tell what he meant or what thinking but it is absolutely certain the moment that neither of these men ever forget the ignition lift off blasting off into the heavens for mission control it's now a routine trip but for these men it's their first mission to the international space station and their debut journey aboard a soyuz rocket. a day before liftoff russian cosmonauts one of levinsky is going to

to real ken and u.s. astronaut kevin ford met the press. each of us has piloted an airplane we've only sent rockets down now will have to fly up into space inside i'm not feeling i think is one we simply won't forget to be at the top of this joint missile construction and beneath you is so much power that even thinking about it is a bit terrifying. it's a fear their families know all too well that this is not. of course it's worrying we're nervous after all this is their first flight to space. there's no question i think that every man must have a purpose for we should strive and when he achieves this goal he finds happy. but in reality i think amounts to happen as they explain when he chooses goal and has close ones waiting for him at home. but for now in space three colleagues already on the i assess await their arrival now says decommissioning of its space shuttles leave russia soviet designed so use craft as the only means for international

astronauts to reach the space station and for the countries involved it's a world away from the bitter space rivalry of old we work together we're starting to learn the best of both ways so again by cooperation were achieving something that's better than any one of us could do individually it will take about two days for the soyuz rocket to reach the station where the team will live and work for the next six months their first week will be a busy one i don't think of. every week. we will last long tasks include a space walk to repair station equipment as well as returning the world's first commercial cargo space ship back to earth but intense training has prepared them for the tasks ahead getting that rocket off into space may be an act of precise science but here and baikonur tradition and faith play a role to a tree planting ceremony is one of the many soyuz crew traditions each crew member also signs a wall here in baikonur space museum meanwhile in accordance with local custom

a russian orthodox priest has blessed the rocket and the media. you're both up in the heavens and here on earth the space program is one of the few things that brings countries together at a time of global unrest for backup crew astronaut chris cassidy that's exactly how it should be when you're up on the space station you look down on the plane and you see the beautiful browning clouds but no borders there and i think that's the most indicative of the space program as. lucy catherine of our baikonur. era business is next with. iran has threatened to stop all exports of pressure from the west gets any tougher absolutely the statement the latest the statement in a series of threats from tehran but it doesn't seem to work crude is actually lower the sour trade is focused on the fragility of the economy and its impact on the global oil demand rather than on iran when it comes to equities wall street is

having a pretty rough day as you can see there mainly on earnings concerned dupont imported ninety percent drop in profits here in russia the markets ended the day with heavy losses of two and we quote as a percent as you can see for the r.t.s. one of the day's biggest losers was t. and p. down more than seventeen percent after its shareholders learned that they will be getting any dividends once the company is acquired by ross snapped the ruble closed a little work to the currency basket and the year at the moment it's trading week or two of us dollar over in europe equities dipped to a one week low on tuesday same old problems in the euro zone. and that's all the latest from the business desk here see you back here in fifteen minutes all right thank you. there is a financial fallout ahead in the cause a report that's after a short break stay with us. russia

would be so much brighter if you knew more about sumo from funds to freshen. stunts on t.v. don't comb. new

people from the side. radioactive fallout of government betrayal the government of law and claude and claude and claude how can the truth be revealed if there's no official evidence there was indeed a very great danger to the servicemen concerned who will give them no problem protection and to the people of this country generally because of radio like the fall of.

the secrets of the u.k.'s nuclear tests expose. backstairs or welcome to the kaiser report emotion other black day for the banking industry oh wait did i say day i meant decade banks or so have been very busy crashing global markets defrauding investors minister and taxpayers ripping off the elderly wrecking global interest rates overthrowing governments and sponging off the taxpayer if you ever get the sense that soft love for bank stars just isn't working stacy herbert. the next kaiser from that list is sounds like it's not but you know who the tough love is for cameron it's time to monday oh goody.