backtracking on promises human rights groups condemn america's new defense act which allows suspects to be detained indefinitely and keeps open a prison camp. syrian rebels foreign international journalists including the arabic news crew who are covering the conflict in the country. government's foreign aid program is. aimed at simply feeding the reputation of politicians after a study claims taxpayers' cash doesn't end up helping communities abroad we go live to london shortly on this.

around the world on satellite this is a twenty four hours a day live from. the u.s. defense act for twenty thirteen has been greeted by harsh criticism from human rights groups after president obama signed the bill into law despite earlier veto threats and measure the indefinite detention of suspects and backtracks on the closure of guantanamo prison camp the law extends the restrictions on transferring detainees out of guantanamo for another year despite obama's promise to close it when he first came to power activists say he's failed the first test of his second term allowing the military to indefinitely detain american citizens over terrorism allegations without charge or trial civil liberties groups are pushing forward with a lawsuit against the measure which they insist is constitutional activist bono and has told r.t. that the new law feels like a major threat. i think it's an accident he's my government.

and one of the supporting wiki leaks you know in a science and also bradley manning as you probably are you know many people and our government have declared them a terrorist group. by the language that is extremely scary and certainly could be used against their people like me and my international team and veteran congressman dennis kucinich is also disappointed with the new national defense claiming it's part of a tendency to on the month democracy there are great human rights concerns here. that people could be held indefinitely violates a constitutional privilege that people have. we have a constitutional challenge here where not only the national. defense authorization act but the patriot act and other legislation have gradually

moved america away from a robust. freedom to a more limited freedom that is based on proscriptions by the government. this is more than problematic because what has always made made america america is the fact that we follow our constitution and we protect our constitution and we protect people against unreasonable search and seizure we protect people against being seized without right to. know the charges against them or a right to an attorney or a right to a trial we have in the past condemned government being involved in spawn now we have a much broader. spy network this is something that is profoundly anti-democratic i have repeatedly taken exception to it as a member of congress. an ati arabic news crew and several international journalists

have come under rebel sniper fire in syria while covering the conflict their news team were accompanying the military on a counter insurgency sweep and one of our colleagues. was injured while running for cover and his his account. we arrived at the damascus suburb early in the morning to report on the syrian army operation we were moving from street to street and when we reached the dock my colleagues and i got caught in crossfire we tried to escape running one after another fearing that armed rebels would notice us a syrian army soldier accompanied us the entire time he constantly kept his on the situation and helped us to escape the gunfire the rebels were firing on us my colleagues and i were wearing bulletproof vests with the word press on them the firing was very intense and it was difficult to find shelter i ran and fell down i hurt my arms but the syrian army doctors gave me first date on the scene so i could continue to do my job there were many other correspondents there with me including

iranians and syrians one of the syrian cameramen was also slightly wounded like me . i mean monaco bomb blasts ripped through a crowded petrol station in the syrian capital damascus conflicting reports say the number of killed was up to eleven people with children among the dead dozens more civilians were wounded u.s. war correspondent russ bacon says that such attacks a typical of the western backed rebel fighters trying to bring down president sent i've covered a few dangerous situations myself over the years and the reality is there is no way to be safe in wartime though these the basic thing that we are doing there is we're providing a kind of a gritty tax to the average person so they can kind of in sort of experience it from the far there's going to be a lot of in the way of covert operations as fonts are by outside parties that have a stake in haste innings some sort of a you know resolution of the situation there's no question and we this is pretty

obvious on the surface that western countries are including my own have stepped up their involvement and want to get assad out as fast as possible and these are the sorts of things that we've seen historically going all the way back to the coup in guatemala in the one nine hundred fifty s. in iran and so forth these sorts of provocations are very very common i think we're going to see them increase until something or other is wrong that pretty clearly i think the western countries don't want any kind of halfway measures they want assad him out entirely and i think he is not going to do that until the last possible moment. in the u.k. the prime minister david cameron's foreign aid target has been condemned as a colon job with no evidence that helps the poor around the world a recent study by a center right think tank says that begins a british taxpayers' money being spent already being used to promote the conservative party's generosity and create a good image of the coalition government when it's not talked to nor smith she is

in london so nor just where all those billions ending up. well let me give you three quite stark examples the first is the example of british aid to ethiopia which totals three hundred million pounds evidence studies b.b.c. investigation shows that in fact it wasn't used to help poor people it was used by the ethiopian government to cement a corrupt hold on power the u.k. government refutes that saying that the money doesn't even go through the government but according to human rights watch they say it does and this investigation showed that in fact supporters of the opposition weren't allowed to receive food or seeds or fertilizer which is what the aid was destined for a second example is in india a three hundred eighty eight million pound project aimed at improving indian schools the government here hailed as a huge success they said more children are going to school as a result of it but the indian government says that around seventeen million pounds

of it was either stolen or lost much of it was allocated to schools that didn't even exist and that some of it went to by cause for dignitaries officials in india again the u.k. government refutes that and nigeria thirdly one hundred million pound project improve again the quality of education in nigeria an independent report showed that actually the results of it had been not to improve the quality of education at all and they awarded the project to nigeria the second lowest rating again the government here refutes that same report sources that only visited a handful of schools so it's a pretty damning indictment of what's happening to all this money so vast sum of money how does it exactly help the image or british politicians. well of course the conservative party here in this country has an image of sort of stingy only wanting to help the rich and it does go a long way towards getting rid of an image like that it shows that politicians are

magnanimous sort of make them seem very generous and of course the government line is that more money abroad equals more stability abroad which equals more stability at home these this information does suggest that the government doesn't really care where the money goes or how it's ministers or how effective it is it only has that it seems to be giving and in fact there's a constant drive to increase the amount of international aid so that no point seven percent of the u.k.'s gross national income will now be given over to international development and the government is heralding the fact that it's the first country in the group of eight countries to achieve that target so this isn't going anywhere but this city this study is really quite critical isn't it does it suggest the u.k. should stop helping communities abroad all together. i know it's not suggesting that it's just suggesting that the money is allocated and administered much more

efficiently and in fact there is good news on this front because india is one of the countries that currently benefits from u.k. aid but there's been a lot of controversy about that at home with taxpayers saying why are we giving money to help a country which has its own space program and so in response to that the government's now stopping aids to india will stop that from twenty fifteen but also a lot of these countries by default have problems with corruption and they have problems with administering the sort of distribution of wealth nigeria is one of those for example also in britain's aid program nigeria is the second richest country in africa seventy billion dollars of oil revenues every year and yet two thirds of its population are living on less than a dollar a day so that money is going somewhere together with the aid money probably and also a lot of the aid money goes to the e.u. one of britain's aid budget is allocated to maybe you are old friends famously inefficient they've had a project in the past including promoting tourist. believe and also

subsidizing a turkish television station here projects that the british probably wouldn't consider particularly meretricious of of the u.k. if they were given the choice. live in london thanks very much indeed so. in the middle east holds its biggest rally since hamas came to power in gaza hundreds of thousands of photos of all the small groups on the boats free but only off the rubble hamas gave them the go ahead more on the ground to vote in a few minutes for you here and i'll tell you plus. president putin made it to the top of the list of the world's most powerful people but still only took second place explaining why later in the program. wealthy british. time.

markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's culture the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kaiser report on r g. he survived war atrocities. to make of cycles a solution. he has changed his life and the world around him. by giving. hope. and love to so many children. nikolai the american worker on.

up to thirty minutes past the hour in the russian capital hundreds of thousands of supporters have been celebrating the anniversary of the fattah party in gaza rival faction a mass which governs the territory gave its permission to hold the event for the first time since it ousted fatah five years ago president bass addressed the rally on the big screen from his west bank headquarters in ramallah the hamas leader khaled mashal urged reconciliation and national unity during his own running gaza last month and ethical analyst a loss isn't really any i spoke to madeleine he says it's time for the two parties to lay aside their differences how much will have to look in to too far behind the iron fact that we'll have to look into the hamas in the eye and both sides have to agree on only one thing we don't need more to be gone solution talks were don't need more he continues in agreements because there were so many agreement signed between the two parties but. not one of them has been honored or implemented but hundreds cannot take over palestine the concerns of netanyahu are baseless and

groundless he's the only israeli leader who has been giving support to hamas or not only to hamas but out to every extremist group on the palestinian side simply because he's dumping the palestinian moderates is dumping the leadership of theirs in a bus he's dumping the political negotiations with the with the palestinians and he's carrying on his own agenda of increasing the number of do with settlements in the west bank even though they are illegally they are illegal under international law he carries on his policy is that the set up every chance of meeting a two state solution between the palestinians and the israelis is the israeli withdrawal from gaza was based on an agreement with the palestinian authority we have we would have seen a totally different middle east today just over seven months ago the french placed their trust in socialist leader forceful and giving him a mandate for change but his promises ranging from economic prosperity to allowing gay marriage uprooting hard to achieve and perhaps he thought hands on he selects

the shift key found out people are already losing trust in their new leader. the debate on whether gay marriage should be allowed has split french society for years with protests about the issue often ending in violence with francois hollande coming to power the gay community breathed a sigh of relief but it may have been too soon activists say the new law which is going through parliament in january is not exactly what they've been dreaming of we are. very happy that he's been introduced by the government to open marriage to same sex couples and option and. medically assisted procreation but we're still very concerned because. people against same sex marriage same sex equality are getting very strong including in the parliament. in the initial mayor's were obliged to officially register gay couples marital status

and that's where many revolted including francois labelle the mayor of central paris. many police are allowing same sex marriages in france and moreover permitting them to adopt children will destroy the foundations of our family institution if we allow this now the next step will be allowing paedophilia and incest. you so it seems in this scenario no side is completely happy which puts the french president and his electoral promise under serious pressure from bringing the french troops back from afghanistan to creating more jobs in france and preventing the country from going into austerity during his campaign to become a normal president francois hollande had made many promises some of which now experts say may backfire against the french leader and if the gay marriage law wasn't divisive enough all and splurged to impose a seventy five percent tax on the wealthy may become another sticking point several

million years have already decided to take their businesses out of france that's called a lot of problems and it does divide the country because a lot of people realize that the rich aren't going so far as financial problems everybody's going to have to pay. including socialist voters which of course frost all along when he was being elected gave the impression that. this wouldn't happen the latest polls suggest. he has dropped by twenty percent winning the election may prove to be the far easier challenge than what awaits the french president now with the economic producers for twenty thirteen in france looking far from optimistic he could face an uphill jordan and. r.t. reporting from paris. and you're a pit spanish locksmiths who say they now hold the key to a sturdy as after they refuse to cooperate any longer with the authorities who've been representing holmes and demanding

a change of more on our website at the moment and. another french movie star seeking russian citizenship brigitte bardot said she'll follow the example of however it's not for tax reasons to come to the rescue of two sick i love. being named the most powerful person on earth the u.s. foreign policy magazine as the russian president and the head of its annual list of the world's most influential people when he didn't make it into first place which was left blank as artie's got it explains. it was the international political think tank you racial group that came up with a list of the world's most powerful individuals with the russian president at the top of that list then they decided no they couldn't leave him there so they put mr nobody at the top of their list so why they would put in a second to mr or mrs nobody you know according to this think tank into the foreign

policy magazine that published the list authors explain that they left the top position empty because the modern world has no clear leader they said they also said that they based their choice of names on that list on the individual's ability to single handedly quote bring about change that significantly affect the lives and fortunes of large numbers of people that the russian president followed by u.s. federal reserve chairman ben bernanke gave for the influence the organization has on the u.s. economy and by extension on the global economy german chancellor angela merkel for policies that are quote the glue that binds a europe and us president barack obama he ranks the fifth on the list then you have the head of the european central bank the chinese communist party leader and others . in the tourist li eccentric russian businessmen so to give polanski has been released by cambodian authorities after agreeing not to leave the country he was arrested along with two of the russians after allegedly threatening local sailors

on a boat but his company denies the claims put on skid row's to dubious phoneme after video of a brawl on russian t.v. it went viral on the internet in two thousand and eleven the debate with a billionaire and examine the evidence finished with members of the machine problems due to the floor and the bizarre episode caught on camera so in each piece of a time during an online talk show promise to digest the net when the price of these companies really stood up to the group. well i've heard of swan in your pride but that's ridiculous now some other stories making headlines at the moment in our world update this hour prosecutors in egypt are investigating allegations the country's muslim brotherhood illegally received a much as one point five billion dollars from the obama administration two lawyers have filed a complaint against the organization mentioning that presidential candidate mitt romney made similar claims during his election campaign and also accused the group of using militias to stop violence both during and after the revolution in the

country two years ago the muslim brotherhood which backs the egyptian president mohamed morsi has not commented on the accusations. but as well as president hugo chavez is very spiritual complications following a lung infection caught during his cancer treatment in cuba with vice president nicolas maduro insisted chavez is not in a coma we do know has been named preferred successes should anything happen to chavez under the constitution the socialist president is due to be sworn in for a third term next week. in the chilean capital santiago they have been violent clashes between protesters and police up to twelve arrests were made demonstrators through molotov cocktails and started fires march commemorating the two thousand and eight killing by police of a young indian the indigenous inhabitants of central and southern chile have clashed with the government for years demanding better rights and actions from what

they claim is their land. the us says its military is arriving in turkey to deploy patriot missiles along the country's border with syria or the thousand nato soldiers from the netherlands germany and america are expected to operate six such units by the end of january promised to fulfill the increased request to install the system early last month which it claims will only be used for defensive purposes the move has drawn plenty of criticism with many believing the deployment is a step towards creating a new no fly zone in the area. nearly one hundred people in tibet have set themselves on fire in the last nine months in protest over the chinese rule of their territory beijing has been increasingly criticized by human rights organizations for its handling of protests in the rest of region and now china is turning to economic losers to try and integrate the area by pouring in tens of billions of dollars or do you get a position of examines whether or not china can expect a return on those investments. basham we love to look at the meanest quality of

china a slogan so widespread in tibet it's even displayed on taxis here everything is an ambiguous mix of modern technology and tradition communism and religion. double is eighty six his son is a buddhist monk but ten years ago this elderly man joined the communist. do i knew the party is breathing new life into our nation you did your time this is quite a normal scene for us every day believers gather in the city center to pray right outside what is traditions are very strong here but at the same time chinese national red flags are hanging almost on every poor in every building as a constant reminder which country is a part of. for decades china has been accused of occupying tibet and destroying its culture human rights organizations

report numerous abuses there on a daily basis well some are even willing to go to the most extreme measures in protest in almost all instances protests are put down through violence so chinese security personnel will come in and more use violence to to basically stop those protests we've documented cases where the chinese state lethal force against tibetans and one ten fifteen people were shot legal authorities denial of geishas of human rights violations claiming the so often malaysians are organized from abroad accusing the worst of a full scale media assault on china the united states has been using to bat for. six decades now since the truman administration co-opted to fight communism and they will continue this because their modus operandi these days seems to be human rights violations. over the years china spent over sixty billion u.s.

dollars to build schools roads and water supplies as well as developing industries from beer factories to courtroom workshops. outside the capital in one of tibet's most ancient temples when we ask the monk what he thinks of the acts of their spiritual leader the dalai lama he surprisingly said he didn't hear. the government supplies clothes food and other necessities not to the dalai lama i couldn't care less where he was assessing tibet is not easy even on the ground it's hard to see what's true and what's being deliberately shown to foreigners but what's crucial for the next generation of tibetans is that the mix of ancient traditions and beijing's billions can pay off. this one off tibet twenty six minutes past the hour nearly one russian couple time now for business with katie good to see you katie have

a media frenzy go on about the story that he's heading to russia and also bridget barber we're reporting today that will follow him there is a popular place. but what about the business world how is that reacting. local it's today saying it's actually rather crude move actually because of the tax because financially they are going to benefit we know i'm going to be talking about the russian tax here we're also going to be saying how it differs with other countries doing comparisons in the business person or coming up after the break is a funny one is good ok thanks a lot. well . it's technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future covered. you're

something. life has been made. thousands of meters of ice. that is a year for many. but dangerous even to keep it to a distance. that welcome to the business bullets and this hour we're going to start with the markets

the global equity markets and see how the u.s. stocks go on actually now extending that biggest weekly gain in the eighteen months that's off the news that the jobs market created over one hundred fifty thousand jobs in december and added to that the unemployment rate was unchanged at seven point eight percent all of this suggests that the fiscal cliff battle in washington as it did a great deal ready to damage the economy of course for the time being will be modest in the situation and see how europe got on that as well and really is those news events over in washington and wall street really dictate saying the session as you can see but we do indeed have gains it's around a third of that for the say on the dax as you can see just the european markets ready as i say getting the tone from america right now so that is indeed how the markets are looking for. and talk about

well i could find out who prices means that came as a complete shock for many people so financial planning is and now far more of a priority really as family starts to prepare for their retirements investing in the future is now seen as an absolute must number full that we have a dental hygienist with an income of almost seventy thousand dollars this year on average these days few people are taking pride in that or health which means.