tonight it's wealthy americans who will foot the bill president obama signs the stopgap bill or to raise their taxes as part of the deal to avoid plunging off the fiscal cliff. an airstrike kills up to seventy people as a mask is fuel station with mutual accusations between the rebels and the syrian regime. plus why the church of england needs a face lift as it's found increasingly out of touch by britain's population with calls to strip its centuries old powers.

alone a very good evening chief you just joined us money kevin owen it's eight pm now here in moscow this is our teeth our top story the president obama has to sign the law increasing taxes on wealthy americans the deal was passed by congress after months of political bickering to avoid that fiscal cliff and the threat of a destructive recession it was rushed through on tuesday night before the financial markets reopened after the new year holiday less than twenty four hours after getting senate approval the move prevents deep spending cuts and middle class tax hikes which technically took effect at midnight on gender the first the compromise increases taxes on household incomes over four hundred fifty thousand dollars and delay spending cuts for two months but some economists see it as a big little help to revive america should receive really leave to really big crash that they would have to attack caught in the in one or two months time the number one priority would be the debt ceiling. government already reached their silly

sixteen point three trillion us fellows are using these. tricks to get over to government u.s. government over for two months but in february they have nowhere to go they have to go back to congress a request a high ceiling and the other one is the longest. solution would be budget deficit the fiscal deficit is threatening one trillion dollars a year because tax increases spending because the problem is only reduce the deficit by something like two hundred billion dollars if this were a short government the u.s. government have to cut the deficit to zero or actually to a surplus in order to pay off the huge debt. but the one area where america's like

to rake in a few more dollars is next year is arms sales in the bonanzas most likely to come from pushing weapons in the asia pacific we've got analysis on that later in the program. next though activists in syria said that up to seventy people have been killed and dozens injured in an airstrike that hit a gas station in the damascus suburbs i would say many of the dead women and children the violence is despite a stark warning from the top international peace envoy to syria that the country faces hell with talks let's talk now the doctor who's a political analyst specializing the middle east for philadelphia university's on the line from so thanks for being with us much appreciated we heard those dire warnings about the country descending into hell if dialogue didn't happen judging by what's happened today that the dire warnings been ignored isn't it. yes good evening put you on your. view ards. well definitely first of all we. we send our condolences and our hearts with the syrian people at this time

and this moment. i want to confirm that yes if. a peace negotiation and peace initiative presented by a brahimi smash russia which is geneva two is not accepted by the opposition as it is at the moment. situation syria will be escalating and definitely seems like the scene that we have. witnessed today will continue to. to happen in the coming days definitely we in this case in the case with what happened today we are not true definitely become of the syrian government for that although there are some of the. so-called positions saying that it was shelling by play and it's not definite. position and there is no let's say.

nor the other party to confirm the situation. said that yes the rebels claim that i can produce and if necessary use chemical weapons if they are attacked by the government is that an increasingly likely scenario tonight. well this is what the syrian government was afraid of and was hinting since month one. scenario of weapon of mass destruction and the chemical weapons to be used in syria the syrian government was saying that look if this in your view would happen this will happen by the opposition not by the syrian government because we are committed not to use and we are the government and we have our international commitment so we not use such a weapon but in this case one position have a get hold of such a weapon this is a very dangerous and very very serious matter and i think they don't have i think

of the legal bounding. limits to not to use it so the danger or the danger of now is to be used and then as as what happened today if they use it and then blame the government for it to initiate some kind of international response against the syrian government this is a dangerous position and i think that this is what the syrian government should have always been saying that this kind of. message this kind of. using of weapons against civilians was used by the opposition by the rebels to undermine the syrian government and to to get some kind of international attention and international support specially from the nato on the powers of the west. previously claimed that government troops have used chemical weapons on

civilians are stopping confer. we're getting closer to the threat and read law in. well as long i think that after the brahimi initiative russian brahimi initiative geneva initiative i think that any bloodshed that is only going in syria is now on the hands of the position because the syrian government have clearly indicated that he is willing to any kind of political settlement at the moment so the opposition is the party who is. refusing any negotiation with the government refusing any sitting to the table negotiating table negotiating a peace settlement there is some opposition which are rational of positions such as . the man on the hasan abdel aziz and so on but these

people are not the people who are you know have any role of military power who are fighting in syria so i think if this situation continues yes the escalation will go on and tell of sixty thousand that announced by you and today will go on and on and on. i don't we. i think that everybody would be against any more killing in syria because the death toll is too much and it's from all parties it's from the government and from the opposition and now heavily armed opposition because the government is willing to negotiate willing to sit to the negotiating table willing to stop all that and go on for a political settlement but the opposition is refusing that dr thank you for your time here so if a show from philadelphia reversed pleasure thank you thank you for your thank you.

church of england has to find the u.k. and its laws for centuries but its privileges now appear far outweigh its place among british society in the past decade the number of people who consider themselves christians dropped by more than four million polyploid to reports on whether it's time for the religious mix to get more recognition. one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world with one official state religion to some it's a paradox i think any institute any faith institution like the church of england is going to have some potential threats on the horizon and those threats on the horizon are basically around its relevance to communities in general other faiths are significant and growing in their not only population but voice in a social and political level so it's really important to have a plurality of opinion rather than just focus on one institution as being reflective of the nation yet the national church has twenty six on the elected

members in the house of lords the upper house of britain's parliament and it enjoys financial privileges courtesy of the u.k. taxpayer by the church's own admission the number of people coming through the doors of this and every other church in england has hard over the past forty years the very same report even warns that in the longer term the established religion faces fading away to chill embellishments twenty anglican churches just like this one being closed down for worship each year entrepreneurial property developers a snapping them up and converting them to luxury housing or even light clubs while the number of church goers in the u.k. continues to fall some one hundred thousand britons have converted to islam over the past decade three quarters of those white women as you know broaden my knowledge about islam and compared with christianity i must tell you i found

a more logical you know it just resonates with me i like what the prince of wales but he wants to be if ever he becomes king he wants to be the leader of faith you know of all faiths that i think is a wonderful statement because certainly our society here in britain is very multi call. very multi-faith so everybody should be included while other faiths enjoy popularity the church of england's recent rejection of women bishops and disapproval of gay marriage has reignited the age old debate on the separation of church and state people feel alienated if they're not part of that church and so few people are because only two percent go to church on a normal sunday so that's why we must i think make sure that the church is disestablished in the twenty six bishops that votes in the house of lords the only country in the world to have

a parliament where they have the right to do that should be extinguished britain now has one of the lowest rates of church attendance in europe there is a rule. in terms of religious opinions there is and that will grow and that may actually become wider as time goes on and so i guess what we have today is is the church effectively being relevant to certain parts of this country despite centuries of tradition some question what will be left of the church of england in fifty years time though the statistics are very clear very clear almost disappeared with something i think the twenty fifty figures are one hundred thousand people in the pews on an average sunday out of a population of sixty million that's miniscule but the privileges and political influence afforded to it are far from trivial and that's what's fuelling the calls

of those who say that it's fairer to separate the church from the state party boy r t london. place in bahrain refused to sign on to government demonstrators since the gulf nation approaches the two year mark since the start of on rests they will bring analysis on where the opposition. i'll be heading the next it's going to legs for the program. and god says struggling families are turning to rooftop cross the . line of fire of israel so to get creative with all of us to report about the two . worlds of the. science technology innovation hall believes developments from around russia we've got the future covered.

more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day. choose your language. of holy week over the influential send us a still some. choose to use the consensus here to. choose the opinions that immigrate to. choose the stories that impact your life choose me access to to off.

lisa bahrain a violently suppressed ninety government demonstration with the unrest in the kingdom approaching the two year mark now the demonstrators are calling for a transition to a democratically elected government and better rights for the country shia majority asked for dollars from the european bahraini organization for human rights claims that security forces from abroad the stoking the violence by firing tear gas into the homes of an armed civilians. the security forces who are working for the ministry of interior and the train are practicing a lot of buy in ends and a lot of buying nations to human rights when confronting when pro-democracy protests and behave and lot of protests and took place in many different villages and areas around behaving and all of them all of them got a. crack they were a crackdown by the by the security forces and behaving who are most to be and not by me and they are working and an end of innocence anterior and they they were

brought from different countries foreign countries like pakistan and jordan and syria and yesterday in the village where i live and sick enough it was tear gas excessively by security forces and i could see security forces running down the streets by my white house and shooting grandin the inside the houses it movement was completely peace said but after witnessing in the west that was during and position to or this this situation and behaving or there have been emotion in bahrain it is unlike to what is what they are claiming like they are encouraging human rights in different countries arab countries but when it comes to bahrain they use double standards so the protesters here inviting although they are those radical and protestors they are the minority and not the majority but they are using such methods to prevent that violent security forces from entering their

their religious and attacking on our civilians and children like we witnessed and the big you have off of the four year old child being attacked by security forces with tear gas canisters. israel is easing restrictions to allow building materials into gaza but the blockade still severely affects those and live the people farmers have had to leave the land in the buffer zones to grow food on rooftops instead of this policy of the recent assault on gaza leave some fearing they may not see the next august. there's not a lot of greenery in gaza at least not in the places you'd expect to find it like her thumbs farm which since the israel gaza war four years ago has laid a barren and deserted. or had a very nice plantation a lot of visitors came to see it also students from the farming school used to come and study. the go nothing but workers from israel raining down on one of the most

densely populated spots on earth meant i will have needed to find another place where he could go to scraps and so he looked towards his own home and upwards that . i needed no alternative so i made this plantation on the roof and started working again. creates a lot of things if he has time and energy i can make fifty thousand suppling from these seventy meters on the roof. it's an idea that's taken root in farms along the gaza israel border where much of the agriculture has been repeatedly destroyed by the israeli army many farmers i'm able to access the land because of the buffer zone that's one of at least two of gaza's farmland your. today there is no space to have a forum in gaza it is very crowded everybody is building new houses where i stand now used to be a plantation for oranges and lemons and if you look at it now you just see buildings. fall out of five people in gaza are dependent on food aid homegrown food

projects like rooftop gardens can help combat christian and severe poverty by allowing farmers to sell their produce marry anyone can do it i work with my husband and my daughters till midnight is that half a lot of farming should be on the ground but we heard that we can plant in volcanic rock on our roots so i tried it. farmers grow wheat barley and a variety of fruits and nuts on these rooftops they also raise. and chickens showing how a little ingenuity can go a long way ask anyone in israel or gaza whether they think the situation is stable and i'll tell you it's only a matter of time before the next gaza showdown they might be a ceasefire in place between the two sides but no one believes it will hold least of all the gaza farmers who are always the first in the line of fire policy r.t. on the israel gaza border. all over the west bank dozens of palestinians we will do

that after they rounded on israeli troops to the skies of vegetable sellers during a botched mission to capture suspected militants you get more about that on our web site also lied to about the physical last it's face interesting stuff that's the question workers now given swipe cards to track their movements around papal premises in the wake of a string of embarrassing league's. top makers are forecasting a significant rise in sales for the coming year after a pretty solid twenty twelve washington has been shifting its sides towards asia looking to arm its allies with neighboring north korea and china independent journalist james corbett says the u.s. is creating a pretext to make billions from arms sales which could backfire through geopolitical tensions. what we can see is really just a return to a very old imperial strategy building up boogie men in order to. create the sales to to combat those boogey men so it's a very old strategy it was identified by name even by president eisenhower in his

farewell address in one nine hundred sixty when he talked about the military industrial complex and we here we are half a century later with the exact same strategy at play and before it was the communists then there was the terrorist threat and now there's china and that threat so i think it creates a situation where the economics may be what's driving this that we give it towards asia pacific but that in turn creates geopolitical realities so that for example china now sees all of these arms sales going to korea and taiwan and japan and some of the u.s. allies in the region and they respond with a military armaments of their own so it's a kind of self-perpetuating. prophecy that fulfills itself by the economics of the situations asian has its eye on what's happening with taiwan and the effort to retrofit the f. sixteen fleet of taiwan but also the japanese x. ray to expand radar for example that just recently has is being expanded and worked

on i think has to be seen as a threat by china as well so i think definitely we're going to see an increase in tensions and that will probably create more situations like we saw in the past year with the heat sink island dispute between japan and china and. more of the world's news for this hour a motorcycle bombs going off near a crowded park in pakistan the southern city of karachi killing at least four people and wounding dozens of others spring said the explosion happened when a political rally of the city's dominant party passed by knowing she had admitted to carrying out the attack. venezuelan president hugo chavez is in a state of consciousness after undergoing another cancer operation according to the vice president nicolas maduro stress the latest condition remains delicate or rejected earlier rumors that chavez was in a coma hospital in cuba the president's inauguration should you have. for the tenth of january. hundreds of women protest in india have marched in silence in the capital to mourn the twenty three year old female victim of a brutal gang rape on a bus the student later died of injuries igniting

a fierce public response and growing calls for attackers to face the death penalty six men will be formally charged on thursday but one of the suspects can't be executed if convicted because he's on the right thing. it seems there's a price to pay for free love after all american health officials warn is a silent epidemic stalking the baby boomers of the sixty's but in a coach never reports on the call in california to get checked for deadly appetite and see. california was the center of the hippie revolution amount of music drugs and sexual freedom we did drugs but we didn't think about it there was no process because everybody was doing their deen make chill is a baby boomer born during the pasta world war two years nineteen forty six and nine

hundred sixty five his generation now is paying for that lifestyle a life of things drugs and rock'n'roll all fueled by flower power and the summer of love they say few remember the sixty's you were entry there the baby boomers out of the sexual revolution may have lost some of their memories and they have the mists of time but there is one legacy of their past which is anything but harmless the centers for disease control has already named him patatas see as an unrecognized health crisis according to their granny zation current he won and thirty baby boomers are infectious with the virus the silent killer it can lie dormant for decades that's what happened to dean mitchell's friend who died just two months after being diagnosed her with this disease they are paying for the car consequences because they are now sick. they have to get medication. it's a disease that i understand can kill you but worst of all it's not just baby boomers

who are interested many could have unknowingly contract with the virus through blood transfusions screening was only one program the aids crisis in the ninety's california as they area has been the hardest hit with more people dying here than anywhere else in the country it is also a very costly problem for the bankruptcy state costing billions of dollars. in order to. have. it very. sinister. more widespread than h. i.v. happy tide is see kills around twelve thousand people in the u.s. after a year and with the baby boomers in the highest risk group the center for disease control has called for mass screening they say they could identify almost a million people now living with the disease and save many more lives but the

question remains if the present generation will listen might you know question archie reporting from las angeles california. coming your way very shortly so not relive the twenty twelve end of the world controversy with our special report we've got a lot of you call apocalypse now the work of the brain. this sounds like a dragon crashing through the forest but it is in fact technology versus trees and would you believe it this machine can file and stripped hundreds of them each day when building this facility we wanted to use advanced technology that would increase efficiency and allows. not to use manual labor but also this provides for better quality goods as a result we were able to conquer western markets the demand for corrina birchwood

is high since our production line is quite efficient where over to work for higher wages to our employees the trunks end up here where they turned into planks which branch off for all manner of uses coolies would export a large but not all of it goes with gold. here in the museum island of traditional methods they used to build and maintain churches and dwellings dating back hundreds of years in this whole what colin is used to want which is by. complexity these planks are about to become part of something which exemplifies the combination of tradition and technology. but here at the valley and all viking boat makers what is fashioned into their souls new and old they range from small private boats to replicas used in historical t.v. series hornblower are going away with my boat some are all special they're like

children to me we have to design them and build them from scratch it's always sad when we have to part ways every time we sail away while we remain after dark and pavel gets much of his timber from karelia same customers pine for its high quality wood. which brings us to the first six million cubic metres of wood is cut down in careers forests every year that goes to make everything from farm houses to firewood and with growing is proximity to europe and the baltic it's big forests big business.

one afternoon on the shores of the ocean blue. one of those days when it feels good to be alive on the planet earth. carefree humanity. maybe unthinking humanity even. a few kilometers away a man has given us an appointment on a mountain summit. a place in keeping with what anatole calls his work. he's been devoting all his time and energy to it for the last six years now. this former computer expert even quit his job to get ready for it for the end of the world. and the work i do will take me out of body.