border with algeria locals in the liberated cities claim the campaign high cost to civilians. barack obama's diplomatic team gets ready to run. a new report suggests that many of america's foreign service workers are paying to get the best jobs. israel considers building a buffer zone reaching far inside syria but it claims that the troops will only be there for security purposes.

it's a pleasure to have you with us here on r.t. today i'm. with your news from around the world now french military forces have stepped up their offensive on rebel bases in northern mali with troops moving in now to the city of could dow the last bastion of islamist insurgents now around eighteen hundred soldiers from chad have also joined the operation meanwhile to senior islamic leaders have been captured fleeing airstrikes on the border with algeria we now have an exclusive report right from the front line the embattled country. euless knew that if their money dollars they know what i wanted i got today in this town in mali everyone is celebrating the capture of two important islamist leaders one of them is mohammed the head of the demon a group which retitle contin book two for months particularly violating the rights

of women he was captured along with bob leader of the movement for unity and jihad in west africa say he was taken north of keep close to the border with algeria the capture of these two leaders demonstrates what everyone knows the city of go and timbuktu by havens of security in a dangerous wilderness we were ourselves detained by the mali an army when trying to get to the city of any movement towards the north has been strictly forbidden since last weekend when six million soldiers were killed by explosives planted by rebels on the roads leading there was this risk affects the stability of the country distances in mali are so big that it is next to impossible to travel safely on the roads so now the region lacks food medicine and fuel specifically in this part of the region in there are about seven thousand refugees children suffer the most unless medication is brought into the centers treating malnutrition like the one we saw in mopti would face tragedy i mean. please treating malnutrition

is a necessity in today's critical situation negligence was the cause of malnutrition before but now and then this crisis most children are suffering tizen as it happens in every home where children don't get enough care and could die. as that alternative syrians are being tried to deliver supplies to to book to the in the share and spread them to the north from there we also saw many people come to donate blood so desperately needed in hospitals a christian community in the central region of mali has been collecting supplies that as. the war has taken on a religious meaning and when that happens the first. they're hunting us those who are directly linked with religion. despite the fact the war is moving away the situation remains critical in a country filled with refugees and. the health and food crisis is putting eighteen

million people at risk of malnutrition is there pressure on us but what is going to monitor here gonzalo launcher. for r t. and in the meantime the european union is now set to host a third meeting of the support and follow up group on the latest developments in mali and our joined live by your often a man's a who's in brussels a member of the belgian of lamas belying a political party coming on the program with us now a pleasure to see you today thanks for coming on so quickly anything any expectations to come out of this e.u. meeting or perhaps is it all talk and no action well we never talked and probably. using we seriously criticize. the operation and we doubt were about to say to our soldiers there whether or not we should not spend means that means that our spend their spend here when we for instance see that our security forces are asked for it means for translators to scrutinize arab radio.

we think that we better spend the money that we spend a week or so so you're not expecting any major development to come out of the e.u. meeting right now with mali being the focus but what about the issue that the french military forces have now advanced from the cities towards the border with algeria is that possibly a positive sign there that they could actually approaching be approaching the end of the intervention in effect. well we can only hope so. meantime we conservatives fear can seriously. conflict but spread into of period there is not a stable country anymore so the problems could have. even so now we understand that the vast majority of france's power comes from nuclear power nuclear plants ultimately they were the uranium mines they control and own and the industries there in africa are crucial to the economic interests of france can it be argued that france is acting within its right to protect its economic interests when it

comes to the operation in the region in mali. well if that is the case. we can seriously seriously expect the. commercial interests the motivation of its operation and not the so-called human to carry it. so that service it is going for its business like and you're in him interest in the matter is not humanitarian and that. we should not spend those in soldiers bridge interests when it's what it is interest when you talk about belgian soldiers we know that in england our prime minister david cameron there has or has also committed over three hundred boots on the ground to help with the operation in mali america is giving logistical support as well but has had to turn from what was a unilateral course of action to now a multinational force being led by the french and certainly brings a penalty with what happened in libya in the recent past where libya is another

file but also there were very criticizing very much criticizing what was what went on and we went there too fast too without knowing what was happening on the terror in libya is a. serious note again this operation was useful service for this operation. perhaps even now of course we are discussing a former french colonies in the region there are already some critics around the world who are discussing the imperialist accomplishments and ideologies did you see any sense of that or is it just a bunch of hot air no of course not that we did we seriously criticize a diode where the build forces should just like that follow the fridge without seriously think about it whether or not it. could be we don't think so what you

think is the endgame here what what's the long term picture is going to be a long drawn out conflict of could it be put to rest in the near future nobody knows nobody can say that's what it's a part of our critic criticism is the fact that we are logic ourselves in something that which we don't know what do you know. all right i drove on a man's a member of the belgium political party thank you very much for joining us on our t.v. today a pleasure your. now as a new diplomatic team begins in washington john kerry at the helm it's been revealed that many employees of the u.s. state department were major donors to barack obama's presidential campaign and one recently published report it says competition among big money backers to land the top foreign service jobs was especially tight this year the story now to watch is correspondent guy nature can. as you can imagine the competition for diplomatic post is tough especially in safe and wealthy country somewhere in western europe

and asia a recent study by two professors of international relations at pennsylvania state university looked at available information on president obama's donors direct political contributions and the positions that they received and they concluded that those whose political connections to president obama were measured in dollars for the administration service had an increased chance of representing the united states and western europe and a smaller chance of serving in say central asia or sub-saharan africa donors and advisers involved in the diplomatic selection process say the competition this year has been so tight that those who have raised less than a million dollars are for the most part unlikely to be considered so what is the quote unquote price tag for the highly sought diplomatic posts according to this study friends and monaco topped the list with a level of personal contributions at six point two million dollars quote unquote the price for a position in the u.k. the authors find appears to live between six hundred fifty thousand dollars and two

point three million dollars a posting in luxembourg is valued as three point one million dollars and appointment to portugal was predicted to have a value of around six hundred thousand dollars like all modern presidents before him president obama has appointed friends and donors to about thirty percent of diplomatic posts while seventy percent of the posts go to career diplomats so judging by this research career diplomats go to places like yemen while big donors go to monaco nobody of course calls it bribery here these are just respectable donors who get what they want when they pay the price. this is odd see now israel is reportedly intending to create a buffer zone stretching up to seventeen kilometers inside syria but the country's military sources insist the area will belong to syria and they are not invading a sovereign state israel also wants to place an infantry brigade and a number of tanks in the and you see right there on the screen where the stated aim

of the zone is to prevent mortar and rocket attacks coming from inside the embattled country and it's hoped the this would also stop radical groups moving close to israeli territory if indeed assad's government is toppled a security fence is now being a record along the frontier with syria that will be right alongside the southern part of the golan heights but international relations expert dr jamal wakim of things so all of this really has very little to do with the issue of security. imposing a buffer zone will make israel and the future should. negotiate over withdrawing from this buffer zone rather than withdrawing from the golan heights this is very similar to the attempt of israel in one thousand seven hundred eight to zero by and impose a buffer zone in south lebanon when it was the same claim that it wanted to defend its northern border to the agreed objective is to annex more territories and at the same time an attempt to threaten the mosque itself so

if israel extends its domain by another seventeen kilometers this will make it reach close very close to damascus and this is very dangerous to the stability of the regime and with it will give the insurgents like free zone and free base a secure base to launch attacks against the syrian regime so this is a direct and thank them and of israel and setting up pads. for a still to come just a bit later in the program here on out the issue of the battle of negative press i think u.k. considers deflecting a potential wave of eastern european immigrants without highlighting just why they're be much better off staying at home.

technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future covered. these are the.

story here amounting reports now from cities in mali that have been liberated suggesting that the freedom at a very high cost. of reportedly resulted in a number of civilian casualties. now. from amnesty international thank you very much for coming on today you. can you describe the situation. while we were in mali we stayed around ten days in the snow in some of the northern towns and what we were able to to register was that he used to night solutions including a traditional killings we collected testimonies from a large variety of people who told us how. some people are arrested in the

town of severity and then brought in short of where they were recruited and then froning to the well later we had also stories about people who had been arrested and some of them disappeared and these were human as violations that were treated by the mullion forces we did also receive to human is. a violation carried by the armed groups and we had testimonies about children who were recruited by the economist armed groups. violations and potential atrocities say are you seeing them on both sides of the conflict yes this is what i'm saying because we in some of the towns we had testimonies about. islamists being responsible for the recruitment of child soldiers and one kid dollars how he was

being prepared be full dividing so you know he had injections he had to go into why power mix with rise in ours we ask him how yours feeding after these injections and the conception of the life he told us that he was kind of like a motivator and that he's a was kind of to capture the and me and to bring them to the marshes woman the material we've been hearing from a reporter all people are suffering from malnutrition many people being displaced as the conflict goes on and on but then again i suppose there are some critics out there that say well regrettable civilian deaths are inevitable aren't they i mean but ultimately that in this case the french forces as we have been here are trying to do some good by the eradication of the islamists can can you can you buy into that but it should be done at any cost because. because lives of citizens i mean we

should try to preserve them and what we are asking it for in a press release. before the fighting was dark there should be kind of warnings given to the civilian population so that they could they could leave the war zones to to seek shelter elsewhere and this is what we are asking now regarding the care of these of the civilians who were killed in the town of qana what we are asking both the french and the million armies is not they should or should be a commission of inquiry just to to know the circumstances of the death of the five people who were killed including the children because these people need to a potion but what i mean certainly getting an investigation of this point in time could be considered very. as the conflict does seem to wind up the military campaign though has received broader international support when you talk about

issues of violations and that's that of atrocities that does it mean that amnesty is concerns when it comes to human rights abuses could simply just be swept under the carpet no i mean this is the work of human rights organizations including i'm listing to including our national of course. of the security council i mean asking for an intervention and france he's taking the lead on that with that article and also the. twelve bit about the alliance of this you can use i mean these kind of to protect the lives of civilians is the duty of all government not only human rights organizations i mean it's an strine in the you know. to go ration in all constitutions and international instruments ratified by all governments including france and molly this is why we are asking that it will

get about human rights we mean human. conflict time of course the issue of human rights it's critical during a time of conflict however in many places around the world that overcome war zones that have seen outside intervention creating conflicts or certainly perhaps exacerbating conflicts one of the issues is that of sectarian violence that often springs up and often drags on beyond the call for do you have any concerns of increased possibly issues of sectarian violence. could be increased because some of the. some of the towns in mali and they need refuge you have a place i mean we have been dark about the hostage taking of our kind of some thirty trees big taken into a stage and. we are. there need to recruit.

civilians who may be accused of. us so we are. all right argyl time moved to west africa researcher based in paris of the international thank you very much indeed for coming on r.t. today thank you. it's a twenty minutes past the hour moscow time this is artsy and the u.k. is looking at ways to curb the wave of eastern european immigrants expected at its doors when romania and bulgaria give an unrestricted access to the e.u. in twenty fourteen and the government's not considering a negative advertisement campaign about the country to make it less appealing to potential movers from london with the story artie's polyploid. we show many things going for our country the english language testing times brilliant history very creative people some of the best universities in the world a great place to do business we need to stand up and shout about how great britain is and get people to come and invest and visit but that's not the message for

everyone the u.k. government is reportedly brainstorming ways to dissuade eastern european immigrants from coming to britain come january twenty fourth team twenty nine million romanians and bulgarians will be able to live and work anywhere in europe including the u.k. one idea being considered a negative advertising campaign about broken britain while the government considers that some creative brits have been all too happy to expose their nation's flaws for all to see as you can imagine not all the romanians living in the u.k. are cleaning the toilets some of them are highly qualified they've done their studies there so they find this very aggressive and under society campaigning as one minister put it a negative ad campaign would help to correct the impression that these streets are paved with gold but even considering how to put off would be migrants the british government has managed to offend not one but two whole countries and now one

rumania newspaper has decided that rather than getting mad it's going to get even instead. the romanian spoof campaign says that since it's so tough in the u.k. brits should come to remain the danes by the british people to come to romania arguing their humor half of our women look like kate and the other half like her sister so this is a funny campaign what if you can see behind it there's actually a serious message which is that romania has still valuable resources intelligence and humor and britain should take advantage of this next wave. immigrants instead of marking there but the debate over immigration in the u.k. is growing more hostile some ministers have suggested limiting remaining in symbolic ariens access to health services and housing when they arrive so that it will look good or must as

a country to do something like about but i can see where where the snow is coming from of having a lot of people coming over here and looking for work and benefits and housing but i just think with me really to do something right now immigration is always something you want to be careful in talking about offing is a bit silly to be honest because we're living in the union europe which is open for every every. which is you know in the union with the financial crisis getting worse britain isn't as attractive as it was to migrants a decade ago. that everybody in the world wants to come to england because in the new jobs of the most finest greatest country for english people it is that they seem to forget that in the case of remaining friends and remain as a beautiful country loving warm exciting country to live in today when they produce these statistics about thirty million remain. everybody's going to leave

and then the last one is to light isn't going to be a single person left and then it really is nonsensical whether or not the anti britain campaign will ever make it to a billboard near proof the rest is now beside the point the british government has already made take these new best members feel that little bit less welcome here. artsy london. and straight into the world update we go starting with the iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad he's in cairo on his first visit to egypt in more than thirty years. is attending a muslim summit and discussing security issues with the country's leader mohamed morsi and the visit is seen as an attempt to improve relations between the two regional heavyweights which have no fully fledged diplomatic ties and there are currently signs of a thawing since egyptian islamists replaced the ousted hosni mubarak two years ago iran also wants to get to cairo on board with such issues as syria and to iran's

nuclear program. a suicide bombers detonated a car packed with explosives near an iraqi military checkpoint in the town of tired killing three is the eighth terrorist attack in iraq this month alone and comes only a day after a blast in the same town killed at least twenty two at this point no one has claimed responsibility for either attack. the u.s. and south korea are flexing their military muscles in the east china sea that's after north korea's recent threat to conduct a nuclear test seoul said the drills were part of regular military training or pyongyang claims it's a plot to attack it now human rights lawyer and co-founder of the national campaign to end the korean war eric can he says washington's only pouring fuel on the fire. it's the worst thing you can do under these circumstances is to inflame volatile situation to conduct these military exercises that always inflame that use live

ammunition up and down the border with the with north korea this is inflammatory on a lot of levels and we need to step back with these naval exercises it's like a race to the bottom if you will when are we going to get more creative in the way that we resolve conflict in this world this conflict gives us such an opportunity with a new secretary of state new leader in south korea we should be pushing for peace suspend these naval exercises and go from there yes there should be non proliferation of nuclear weapons on the korean peninsula but we don't even recognize north korea as a nation have a peace treaty or formal relations to deal with these matters what do we expect. i don't know how often i was told my colleague bill dog is here in just a second abby martin takes on the mainstream media in breaking the sound.

wealthy british sign a sign it's time to rise. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to the report.

you live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how bad the left side. i mean. i know that i've seen the same thing really messed up. in the original personally apologize and. worse you're going to find out six of a day radio guy and call the tail a minute from a quick profit i want you to watch closely or about to do because you've never seen anything. i'm told.

how it potter is i'm abby martin today i want to introduce you to some meadows saw we a palestinian activists who was detained by the israeli army in two thousand and two during israel's offensive operation dubbed operation defense shield samaras says sentenced to thirty years in prison but under a deal brokered with egypt he was released in october two thousand and eleven along with four hundred seventy six other palestinian prisoners tragically once again samara was detained last year and for the last one hundred and ninety five days he's been on a hunger strike in protest at his detention without charge or trial without help and pressure from the outside he will surely die and prison without a continued outcry from activists and urgent action from world leaders who are not afraid to stand up to the israeli government they will continue to cross every red line so this sort of injustice bothers you too and if you feel freedom and dignity are things worth fighting for and you come to the right place so let's break this.