tonight it's wealthy americans who will foot the bill president obama signs the stopgap in order to raise the taxes as part of the deal to avoid plunging off the fiscal cliff. strike kills of just seventy people out of the mask is fuel station with mutual accusations but with the rebels and the syrian regime. this hour we ask why teachers in the u.k. are increasingly losing trust in the government and how plummeting will roll could impact on britain's future generation.

very good even if you just joined us kevin over here at the r.t. new center tonight it's now eleven pm here in moscow and first president of barbarous to sign the law increasing taxes on wealthy americans the deal was passed by congress after months of political bickering to avoid the 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 steep spending cuts then and middle class tax hikes which technically took effect at midnight on january the first the compromise increases taxes on household incomes over four hundred fifty thousand dollars though and delays spending cuts for two months some economists say it is a little help however to revive the american economy. they really leave out to really big crash. have to attack coal in the. one or two

months time the number one priority will be the debt ceiling. the us gov the government already wished desailly of sixteen point three trillion us dollars and they are using the. tricks to get over to govern us government over for two months but in february they have nowhere to go they have to go back to congress a request. that their ceiling. is the longest. solution would be budget deficit the fiscal deficit is running which really dollars a year in. tax increases spending because the problem is only reduce the deficit by something like two hundred billion dollars it's way short the government the us government have to cut the deficit to zero or actually to

a surplus in order to pay off huge debt. one area where america is likely to rake in a few more dollars though is next year is in the finance is most likely to come from pushing weapons in the asia pacific as on the later in the program. to be some serious so that up to seventy people have been killed and dozens injured in an airstrike that had a gas station in the damascus suburbs i would assume so many of the dead are women and children the un report most is at least sixty thousand people have been killed since the civil war began almost two years ago this despite a warning from the top international peace envoy to syria that the country faces held without talks meanwhile reports say the syrian rebels claim they cannot produce chemical weapons and could use them if attacked by the government middle east expert of the telford show mo told me that the lack of dialogue will lead to even more violence. if. peace negotiation and peace initiative presented by brahimi russia is not accepted by the opposition as is at the moment

the situation in syria will be escalating saw the opposition is the party who is. refusing any negotiation with the government one position have chemical weapons this is a very dangerous and will be very serious matter and i think. they don't have. all the legal bounding limits to not to use it the danger now is to be used 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 these to undermine the syrian government and to to get some kind of international attention international support specially from the nato on the powers of the west britain's next generation of scientists doctors of

politicians could be risky as teachers the role continues to drop london correspondent laura smith explains what's going to. the national union of teachers the biggest teachers' union in the u.k. has commissioned a survey which says that morale among teachers has dropped dramatically they talked about the highs and lows of life in the classroom incredibly low morale but also frustrated at continual criticism and interference from the government they said and the figures are quite staggering actually fifty five percent of teachers surveyed said that morale was either very low and that's up from forty two percent just eight months ago so it's really on a declining trend seventy seven percent said that they didn't feel that specific education policies of the government so specialist schools free schools were taking education in the right direction in this country and just five percent felt that this current coalition government impact on the education system was positive and

a few more specific about what the teachers don't like about the government's policies here. well there are specifics that they don't like they don't like this continuing interference they say that every new government that comes in completely revamp its the national curriculum and the education system from what it was before say that constantly on the back foot trying to get used to new systems there's a new test now where children aged just by are tested on phonics some children obviously fail that test and teachers are saying that if you fail a test age five it has a huge impact on your future development makes you feel like a failure from an incredibly young age they're also trying to change the exam system again introducing a thing called the back where just a few core subjects would be examined differently from other subjects and people who are in the arts and sports and all those subjects that you really liked when you were at school say that that you know children aren't going to take those subjects anymore there certainly is you know teachers talk about how cuts in

general have affected families and the students that they teach they say that if families have poorer than they children have less access to technology at home they have parents you can't help them necessarily with their schoolwork and in fact i talked to christine loh who's the general secretary of the national union of teachers and she talked about that the general sense what the government is doing wrong is its whole approach to austerity because one of the things that's obvious to teachers is that great swathes of children and their families are having a very difficult time at the moment and if families lose benefits in london for example that's going to be a huge problem with housing benefit cuts the has to move schools and of course you know family income drops just to clean which it has and lots of places children are coming to school hungry they haven't had first they may not go and get a meal in the evening so in a general sense there are really quite big problems and the upshot of that is that

seventy six percent of teachers surveyed said that austerity measures will have a negative impact on families or british teachers will get nervous about reform they want changes now to improve the situation is what will make the difference at minimal cost to them. well cost is of course the issue they want you and slow reforms they say they want to be consulted mortgage and they say that they don't feel trusted as professionals and that's of course has a huge impact on future generations of children and in fact the national union of teachers is not ruling out striking unions of course never ruled out striking christie did tell me specifically that they don't rule it out. the government is attacking pay and conditions and in fact just before christmas michael gave the education secretary was reported in newspapers having put the department of education on a war footing with teachers which is not going to help going forward. it's not the church of england could do with a facelift it's being funded we should be out of touch with its population with calls to strip it centuries old powers know more about coming up shortly. i just

wish to bahrain again used to get some anti government demonstrators would bring analysis on where the opposition movement could head next as the country approaches two years but the rest. would be soon which brighton if you knew me. from finance to pressure.

me to start on t.v. dot com. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for labor. you think you understand it and then. you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought. was a big issue. in the church of england is to find the u.k. and its laws for centuries but its privileges now appear to far outweigh its place among british society in the past decade the number of people who consider themselves christian has dropped by more than four million. reports on whether it's time for today's 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 significantly growing in. the population but the 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 hogged over the past forty

years the very same report even warns that in the longer term the established religion faces fading away to virtual 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 of all faiths but i think it's a wonderful statement because certainly our society here in britain is very

multi-core. very multi-faith so everybody should be included while other faiths enjoy popularity the church of england 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 and the twenty six bishops that vote 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 oh 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. police in bahrain a violent suppressed and anti-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 asma darwish from the european but radio when a zation for human rights claims that security forces were brought to stoking the violence of firing tear gas into the homes of unarmed civilians. the security forces who are working for the ministry of interior and the hate 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 in a lot of protests and it 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 that by the security forces and behaving who are most to be and not by me and they are working on an end of innocence and the tear and the they were brought from different countries foreign countries like pakistan and jordan and syria and yesterday in the village where i live and sitting on it was tear

gas excessively by security forces and i could see security forces running down the streets by my white house and shooting grand in the inside the houses and the movement was completely peace said but after witnessing in the west that was during and position to or this this issue ation and buying 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 old though they are those radical 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 it 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 who live there even farmers have either leave the land in the buffer zones to grow food on rooftops and stood. on the assault on gaza leave some fearing they may not even 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 a bow her thumbs farm which since the israel gaza war four years ago has laid a barren and deserted. look to you again 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 at my place. 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 grow his crops 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 centimeters 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 are unable to access the land because of the buffer zone that's one of at least a third of gaza's farmland your. today there is no space to have a farm 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 malnutrition 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 roofs so i tried it. farmers grow wheat barley and a variety of fruits and nuts on these rooftops they also raise rabbits 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 they'll tell you it's only a matter of time before the next israel 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 farm is always the first in the line of fire policy r.t. on the israel gaza border. over the west bank meantime dozens of palestinians have been wounded after they rounded on israeli troops who were discarded as vegetable sellers during a botched mission to capture suspected militants get latest on that now website

also at r.t. dot com as well we asked the question has the vatican lost its faith and trusting its star workers a good swipe cards now to track their moves around papal promises in the wake of a string of embarrassingly. top u.s. arms makers are forecasting a significant rise in sales over the next twelve months after a pretty solid twenty twelve washington's been shifting its sights lately towards asia looking to our mates allies to a neighbor of 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 though through geopolitical tensions what we can see is really just a return to a very old imperial strategy of building up bogeymen in order to. create the sales to to combat those bogeyman so it's a very old strategy it was identified by mean 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 is 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 fulfils itself by the economics of the situations aging 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 need sync island dispute between japan and china. and the asia pacific like the take a good share of the limelight and twenty thirty and later data crosstalk experts explain why. the primary problem that the united states sees with china is that its economy is too strong and that it's building up its military so these are two things that the united states prides itself on i.g.n. military and a big economy right what a big economy in china reflects is number one a lot of hundreds of thousands of people being lifted out of poverty in inch inside china but also means help for the united states because trade is obviously mutually beneficial and so trade in international borders being a little more open to trade this is a good thing for the united states and washington wants to paint it as a bad thing they're playing a very sort of great game geo politicking in asia and because china is having success they're moving to try and contain china so that means backing

a lot of unscrupulous people in asia pacific surging military forces there naval forces there this is all very bad it's an interesting way of the united states turning something positive into something very terrible and it makes it easy for people to go chinese our next greatest enemy. i'm going let you know you can watch the full edition of crosstalk just around ten minutes time tonight here on r.t. and we bring it to the world news stories making headlines right now first off the further sectarian tension in iraq with thousands of sunnis protesting against the government of shia problem is to nuri al maliki demonstrations were gathering pace across the country for over a week now calling for an end to discrimination along with the release of political prisoners maliki is partly conceded by releasing hundreds of jailed women but is one of the against further protests the country was dominated by sunnis until america's two thousand and three invasion changed the political landscape in favor

of the shia. but is whether president chavez is in a state of consciousness after undergoing another cancer operation according to the vice president and the. stress the leader's condition remains delicate to reject and rejected earlier rumors that chavez was in a coma and hospital in cuba the president's inauguration showed you for the tenth of january. this is bangladesh's capital tonight where police have fired rubber bullets and tear gas to government protesters there demanding a hold to the trials of islamic party leaders charged with crimes against humanity during the nine hundred seventy one independence war with pakistan there's been a spate of deadly on to government clashes in bangladesh in the past month but it seems there's a price to pay for free love after all american health officials warn there's a silent epidemic stalking the baby boomers of the sixty's of his we did a question of a report from a call in california to get checked for deadly had to try to see.

i. california one the center of the hippie revolution and melting pot of music rock ounce actual freedom we did drugs that we are doing think about there is no process because everybody was doing dean mitchell is a baby boomer born during the pos 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 laughs they say if you remember the sixty's you were entry they're the baby boomers out of the sexual revolution may have lost some of their memories and they had 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 to titus c s n and recognized

health crisis according to their current the one in thirty baby boomers are in fact it 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 with the disease they're paying for the car consequences because they are so. they have to get medication. and it's a disease that i understand can kill you but worst of all it's not just baby boomers who are interests many could have unknowingly contract with the virus through blood transfusions screening was only one program or even aids crisis in the ninety's californians bay area has been the hardest hit with more people dying for it than anywhere else in the country it is also a very costly problem for the bankruptcy state costing billions of dollars.

or to. have. it. more widespread than h i v happy tide is seen kills around twelve thousand people in the us after a year and with the baby boomers in behind's 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 may need more lives but the question remains if the present generation will listen my to the question archie reporting from las angeles california. after the break is probably as people have always guess forecasts which way the world's key players could move in twenty setting cross-talk only every so but.

this is day starts at five am even earlier in the winter tending to his flock of story hundred sheep in the mountains in pains of. thirty five years old it was in the life he jumped of having studied accounting but he dition unfamiliar duty dictated that he would take on the care of these animals after his father. he just made camp there winter farmstead setting up his ute the traditional two fenian round tent made of diskin his beastly back amongst his family as his job is a lonely one and tough going out in all weathers braving extremes of plus to minus forty degrees celcius says that i just don't there are certain difficulties there's not enough time for everything i'm almost alone my sister works with my mother my mother is seventy five she's very old and i miss mountains when i'm in town and i spend a lot of time here with her on most of us simply carrying out the work that his

father did and his father before him nothing has changed over many many centuries and that's half the problem it's hard work and many people don't want to come into the industry now and it's really fit there could die out altogether but it's difficult to manage everything alone i used to have people who helped me but they were no good they didn't take care of the sheep with all their heart they hurt the cats or dogs. with more people leaving than coming to the countryside the region's government is having to act making the life of a herd and more attractive than promising largest subsidies for produce and livestock and organizing cooperatives for the sale of day products to ensure the herd or gets a higher fairer price i asked sympathizes with those youngsters leaving for an easier more profitable life they in their publics capital because ill but he no longer wishes to join them he enjoys his pastoral way of life and looking for a helper who she.