backtracking on promises human rights groups condemn america's new defense act which allows suspects to be detained indefinitely and keeps open the guantanamo bay prison camp. gathers hundreds of thousands of supporters in gaza after rival group hamas gives them the green light. and the u.k. government's foreign aid program is a waste aimed at simply feeding the reputation of politicians after a study claims taxpayers' cash doesn't end up helping communities abroad our top stories this hour.

around the world online and satellite this is r.t. with you twenty four hours a day live from moscow the us 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 the measure allows the indefinite detention of suspects and backtracks on the closure of guantanamo prison camp the lower 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 pushing forward with a law suit against the measure which they insist is constitutional. and told

her the new law feels like a major threat. so maybe my government. supporting wiki leaks joanna science and also bradley manning and as you probably are you know many people and our government have declared them a terrorist group. that are. extremely scary and certainly could be used against their people like me and my international team the trim congressman dennis kucinich is also disappointed with a new national defense claiming it's part of a tendency to. 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 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 and 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. in another recent movie by critics is anti democratic a bomber extended an act that allows for the watch tapping of americans without a warrant us national security agency will blow william binney says nobody's safe from being spied on f.b.i. has access to the data collected which is basically the e-mails of virtually everybody in the country. and they have at the f.b.i. has access to it all the congressional members are on on this surveillance too it's not no one's excluded they're all included so yes this can happen to to anyone if they become a target for whatever reason. if they were targeted by the government the government can go in with the f.b.i. or other agencies of the government can go into their database pull all that data collected over them on them over the years and reanalyze it also retroactively analyze everything they've done over the last ten years at least. one part and i'm

sure i i i believe i've been on it for quite a few years yeah so i keep telling them everything i think of them in my e-mail so that they when they read it they'll understand what i think of them. and william binney is full interview is coming up for you later this hour. hundreds of thousands of supporters have been celebrating the anniversary of the federal party in gaza a rival faction of mass which governs the terror tree gave its permission to hold the event for the first time since it else did five to five years ago it was about us address the run on the big screen from his west bank headquarters in ramallah and lastly death khaled mashal urged reconciliation and national unity joining his gaza last month political analyst and he says it's time for the two parties to last side their differences while israel should stop seeking to rock the boat. i know

how much we'll have to listen to to fight the hand they are in fact i would have to look into the hamas in the eye and both sides have to agree on only one thing we don't need more the consolation talks we don't need more the consolation agreements because there were so many agreement signed between the two parties but not one of them has been honored or implemented but hamas 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 for the political negotiations with the with the palestinians and he is 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 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 in the u.k. the prime minister david cameron's foreign aid target has been condemned as a corner job with no evidence it helps the poor around the world a recent study by center right think tank says the billions of british taxpayers' money being spent really being used to promote the conservative party's generosity and create a good image of the coalition government when i discuss the issue with r.t. laura smith. well let me give you three quite stark examples the first is the example of british eight 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. 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 to 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 seventy 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 they awarded the project in nigeria their 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. vall 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 stinginess and only wanting to help the rich and it does go a long way towards getting rid of an image like that it shows that the politicians and mark not the most sort of make them seem very generous and this information does suggest that the government doesn't really care where the money goes or how it's administered or how effective it is it only has that it seems to be giving this city the study is really quite critical isn't it does it suggest you can should stop helping communities abroad altogether i know it's not suggesting that it's just suggesting that the money is allocated and administered much more

efficiently of course this is all happening against a backdrop of austerity at home and many people are saying you know forget forget giving money abroad let's keep it here at home where it's really needed at the moment so here we're seeing reduction in benefits even for very poor people we're seeing tax hikes we're seeing raids on particularly public sector pensions so a lot of people say keep this money at home don't give it give it abroad and the budget is continually increasing it's now going to be no point seven percent of gross national income and that equates to five hundred pounds a year for every household in a lot of people say you know we could do something here at home with that five hundred pounds. the tourist russian businessman is once again in trouble this time in cambodia so he gave his t.v. show. to years ago swept into custody for threatening local sale is that.

a nuisance to the compass and putin has made it to the top of the list of the world's most powerful people but still only took second place will be spending why later in the program. so how much does it take to get into russian politics how many hours of hard work and how many patriotic deeds does it take to become one of the people who make the decisions and the world's largest country well i'll tell you how much it takes exactly seven point five million euros russia's federal investigative committee has a stablish that allegedly hey of and constantine should show of from fair russia and the commies prospectively promised for a fee to get a businessman on to their party's electoral lists getting him a spot in the lower house of the duma the investigators have forwarded the state duma an official request to strip the two m.p.'s of their parliamentary immunity

and you're darn right they better street have their parliamentary immunity stripped i mean what's worse than government corruption some people in the government being so corrupt they can actually sell the government itself to someone for a fee so positions in parliament corruption on this high of a level needs to be punished severely breaking rocks in siberia or worse sounds pretty good to me tolerating flagrant corruption does not a great civilization make but that's just my opinion. news crew and several international journalists have come on the rebel sniper fire in syria while covering the conflict there they are team news team are accompanying the military on a counterinsurgency sweep and one of my colleagues come asika was injured while running for cover is 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 eye on the situation and helped us to escape the gunfire the rebels were firing on us my colleagues and i were wearing bulletproof bass 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 . meanwhile a car bomb blast has ripped through a crowded petrol station in the syrian capital damascus conflicting reports say the

number of killed was up to eleven with children among the dead dozens more civilians were wounded u.s. will correspondent russ baker says such attacks a typical of the western backed rebel fighters trying to bring down president assad. i've covered a few dangerous situations myself over the years and the reality is there is no way to be saved or time with these the basic thing that we're doing there is we're providing the kind of a gritty tax for the average person so they can kind of be that sort of experience that from the far there's going to be a lot of in the way of covert operations as fostered by outside parties that have a stake in haste to name some sort of a new resolution of a situation there's no question and we this is pretty obvious on the surface that the western countries are to 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 mout entirely and i think he is not going to do that until the last possible moment . just have a seven months ago the french placed their trust in socialist leader. giving him a mandate for change but his promises ranging from economic prosperity to allowing gay marriage a pretty hard to achieve them perhaps he filled in his aunties and found out people already losing trust in the 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 oman 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 but we are. very happy that flow has been introduced by the government to open marriage to same sex couples and adoption and supposedly. 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 reverted including francois labelle the mayor of central paris. 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. so it seems in this scenario no side is completely happy with 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 alone splurge 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 to solve france's financial problems everybody's going to have to pay. a national. 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 popularity 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. reporting from paris. and europe at spanish locksmiths who say they now hold the key. that they refused to cooperate with the authorities. on the website. the french. russian citizenship. chill follow the example. oversell for tax reasons but to come to the rescue of.

wealthy british. capital. markets. to the global economy.

if you. choose your language. of holy week over though in a federal court today still some other. treatments that the consensus can. choose to opinions that immigrate to. choose the stories that imply good luck. choose the access to off to.

life here in moscow with you twenty four hours a day vladimir putin has been named the most powerful person on earth the us foreign policy magazine as the russian president at the head of his annual list of the world's most influential people however he didn't make it into first place which was left blank is all he's going to churn explains. it was the international political think tank eurasia group that came up with a list of the world's most powerful individuals with a 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 and to the foreign policy magazine that published the list authors explained 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 of the russian president followed by u.s. federal reserve chairman ben bernanke or 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 and then you have the head of the european central bank the chinese communist party leader and others. the new touristy eccentric russian businessmen surrogate polonsky has been released by cambodian authorities to agreeing not to leave the country he was arrested along with two other russians after allegedly threatening local. but his company denies the claims gonski rose to fame of the video of a brawl on russian t.v. went viral on the internet in two thousand and eleven heated debate with for the

billionaire alexander limited finished with limited punchy prolonged ski to the floor of the bizarre episode caught on camera saw him eat a piece of a tiny drink. and promise to digest the net when if the price of his company's real estate didn't grow we're gone. well i've heard of swallowing your pride but time now some other stories making headlines around the world in a world update at this stage of the day prosecutors in egypt investigating allegations the country's muslim brotherhood illegally received as much as one point five million dollars billion dollars i should say from the. two lawyers of the complaint against organization mentioning the ex presidential candidate mitt romney made similar during his election campaign with the group of using armed militias 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 has. complications following a lung infection caught during his cancer treatment in cuba vice president nicolas maduro insisted chavez is not in a coma. the preferred successor should anything happen under the constitution as president is due to be sworn in for a third term next week. in the capital santiago they have been violent clashes between protesters and police up to twelve . demonstrators threw molotov cocktails and started fires following a march in the two thousand and eight killing by police of a young indian the indigenous inhabitants of central and southern chile it clashed with the government for years demanding better rights and an end from what they claim is their land. the u.s.

says its military is arriving in turkey to deploy along the country's border with syria or the thousand nato soldiers from the netherlands germany are expected to operate six such units by the end of january nato promised to fulfill a request to install the system. which it claims will only be used for defensive purposes. many believe it is a step towards creating a no fly zone in the area. the walls around israel are being extended with the country now building a security barrier on its border with syria israel says it wants to safeguard its citizens from the ongoing conflict the latest construction comes right after a fence on the border with egypt the most visible wall however separates israel from the palestinians in gaza supporters say it reduces the risk of suicide attacks on the jewish state one opponents claim it's an attempt to annex palestinian land. that israel's barrier meant to help dominate the middle east. israel has to really

to recalculate what they are doing in the middle east israel dealing with the middle east as a dominating power and they try all the time to build war walls around then themselves claiming that the people is hating them and they are targeting them as well has been harmed the whole real region and the area around around israel they are building the wall around the palestinian areas the clean that is for security but at the end that look people are seen as in forty percent of their land they build world around guys and they turn goes into a jail the biggest prison in the world and you know we know how the river stayed the situation in gaza they are still occupying syria and they are building a wall on the occupied land so they want to keep this land and to keep themselves as a companion it's not a solution that you keep building roads you need to do peace with the region you have treated better right to the people israel can't build its a future on the expense of the people of the region and that then building wars to

protect the to protect themselves wolf is not going to protect the israelis people's rights and they will keep claiming that their rights what is believing it and pushing it for the explosion we witness in the settlers attacking the palestinians every day and many villages there north of the jordan valley is evacuated night by now where there's very little they did severe attack on the people on the south of hebron settlers is attacking the people in the middle area and so they are launching war on the palestinian people and they want the walls at the end to to bring peace to them stealing the people's land looking them in jail reversed it in their life is not going to bring peace in any way must realize that their years changing and they must they must understand the change that needs for them to conciliate with the people deal with the people i too i don't we don't consider yourself as part of europe or do you want to isolate yourself and look yourself within the walls from the region you can do that. nearly one hundred

people into bed to set themselves on far in the last nine months in protest over the chinese rule of the territory beijing has been increasingly criticized by human rights organizations for its handling of protests in the restive region and now china is turning to economic losers to try and integrate the area by pouring in tens of billions of dollars. examines whether or not china can expect a return on those investments. look at 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 traditional communism and religion. six his son is a buddhist monk but ten years ago this joined the communist. party is breathing new life into our nation and emerges your time this is quite

a normal scene for us every day. in the city center to pray right outside. our a 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 it 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 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 five to basically stop protests we've documented two cases where the chinese state lethal force against tibetans in one town fifteen people were shot legal authorities deny.