the media crush is to work in central russia over twelve hundred people with first hand accounts in our special report coming up in a few seconds. tit for tat currency clashes in the euro zone's plight occupy the hearts and minds of financial decision makers meeting in moscow. president obama's candidate for defense secretary republican senators who say they don't know enough about the man at the pentagon. from the new center here in moscow this is with the screen twenty four hours a day. picture this is eight fifty one in the morning in a mid-sized city east of the urals when the sky is lit up by the fiery path of

a meteorite about to smash into its final resting place here on earth in the middle of russia one eyewitness was the canadian hockey player michael garnett who gave r.t. a firsthand account of the dramatic arrival. big bright like shining across the sky you know blinding brighter than sun and then it was followed by a huge. explosion you know what a minute or so later that broke last mary's and the late fixtures were swaying back and forth i don't point i went looking out the window and i saw this giant streak going across the sky like a tail cloud what what had just happened. at that point i knew it was something that came from the sky immediately called one of my teammates who lives in my building and i you know i couldn't get through to him by phone in work so i was a little bit scared at the point the meteor exploded in the earth's atmosphere

resulting in multiple fragments falling near populated areas and surprisingly the incident triggered huge panic among people in the affected region as it. now reports well this was right about the time when most people were already at work the children were in schools and in kindergartens and all of the sudden this extremely bright flash of light one man told me that it actually hurts even looking at it many people managed to actually film what was going on many of these videos are now online here's the one actually picturing the moment of one of the explosions. you saw the sounds of broken glass and all these alarms going off can be clearly heard and all this is really like a scene from a movie but it's real and many were shocked and. specially in the first few hours calling each other to find out what's happening and so many rumors from a jet down to

a satellite and even to the start of the end of the world and actually artie's documentary team happened to be in the affected area writes what all this is happening here is how they described it. the feeling was like there are three shattering we thought a military jets may have crashed or that it was some manmade disaster it was a relief to find out it was a natural phenomenon. i was told that a plane crashed right into our building then we were told that a wall has been partly dislodged and metal structures inside were banned by the blast wave it was very scary over twelve hundred people were injured including over two hundred children but thankfully these are minor injuries related mostly due to all this glass flying around caused by these explosions. initial speculation as to the causes of the flashes in the sky what as far as suggesting a nuclear disaster may be to blame well earlier i discussed with r.t. lindsey france why exactly people did fear the worst. if you look at the area and

its history you begin to understand why people are actually expressing relief at the fact that this was a rock falling from the sky and not a nuclear disaster there are seven nuclear fuel plants in that area in fact during soviet times it was sort of a nuclear playground for scientists where a lot of things were tested and nuclear experiments were done and there were actually two manmade nuclear disasters there one in the fifty's and one in the sixty's so when you're driving to work or picking up your daycare and you see a huge bright flash and you hear an impact like this imagine what you think if you live there not exactly the place you think. your should be total getting but of course interesting enough this region has experienced this sort of thing before yes it seems to be a magnet it's such a mystery to the layman like us who have no idea why something like the media would be so very attracted to eastern russia to siberia and even to southern russia one of the most famous meteorites ever to hit in one thousand eight the famous tom goes

to meteor that they hit out in the very far east it cleared two thousand square kilometers of forest land it's shockingly huge and less than twenty years later another another meteor one nine hundred forty seven another and then another ten years ago in siberia at these were huge events it would only on one of the children says i'm actually been killed by a meteorite they're very very slim in fact it's extremely rare to hear of anything there has been one case of a woman being injured by a meteorite falling through her house this happened in the u.s. state of alabama in the one nine hundred fifty s. she was napping if the right through the roof hit her on the arm. and wieden who's you to liberalism for the secure world foundation explain to me only one of the potential danger posed shouldn't be underestimated. for an object that's that size and it's estimated i think it eight to ten tons and moving on the order of

somewhere near twenty kilometers or thirty kilometers per second that's a lot of energy and so when that thing strikes the ground you're talking about a force not unlike a significant explosion so all of the kind of damage as you can think of from a huge explosion is the precise of the kind of damage that could have out and hadn't hit struck in the middle of a city or any kind of populated area but there are telescopes and networks operated by nasa in the u.s. and what's cosmos and russia and the european space agency others that are out there trying to detect and track asteroids but honestly there's a lot of there's hundreds of thousands and their biggest focus is on the really large ones ones that are hundreds of meters in diameter or kilometers in diameter that could potentially you know due to the os what happened to the dinosaurs. an asteroid has just made a record close approach to earth passing over the pacific ocean that's the event sun system people all over the world watch with extreme interest many fearing it

wouldn't miss our planet following the meteor strike here in russia will cross from the school of earth and space exploration explain to me what links the two. meter is an asteroids are common many of them come from the outer part of our solar system perturbations from the planet jupiter and other planets there's a huge. store of comets asteroids out outside the orbits of jupiter and outside in fact the outer solar system some of them periodically get disturbed by the gravity of the inner planets and get sent in word some of them are big balls of ice and become comets others are big balls of rock and the impact on mars and the earth and the moon and. what's fascinating is actually you could if you can collect some of this material some of it is primordial if we actually detect it and we can we can get it right after it falls we can actually measure material that hasn't been processed since a solar system formed four to have billion years ago so for scientists it's

a fascinating event and i'm happy that people weren't killed by it but if some of that material can be recovered it will be incredibly interesting and important for scientists you know if he took on we have live updates on the media strike including how some enterprising locals are already cashing in some are trying to sell parts of the crash meter online the most expensive being offered for ten thousand dollars but of course even if someone is willing to dip into their pocket for this there's no way to verify whether you're buying a piece of mitterrand or just a rusty old stone but jokes aside scientists say that it was the largest recorded object to strike the earth in about a century its estimated weight was forty tons when it approached the planet before breaking up into smaller pieces and experts also say that when it exploded the media released a huge amount of energy making the blast even more powerful than the nuclear weapon tested by north korea just days ago and specialise occur in examining a crater with a width of six meters with a piece of the meteor supposedly crashed and another piece of posed fell into

a lake creating this hole in the ice as you can see now. for. other news now a potential currency war in the european debt crisis is dominating a meeting of finance chiefs from some of the world's biggest economies here in moscow for russia the gathering is seen as a launch pad for the g twenty summit later this year but he has been following discussions in the kremlin. a lot of conflicting statements have been said about this talk of the impending looming currency war which has led some folks some market watchers to be quite confused as to what we'll actually see coming out of this g. twenty talks here in moscow now at the center of the whole controversy of crisis is

japan due to its aggressive monetary and fiscal policies it has seen a weakening of the and so what this has resulted in is essentially a clash between the countries very little consensus we did hear from a russian finance minister. who has said that this is certainly an important issue that of currencies that is very much on the table but at the very same time we've seen other world leaders come up and say that you know what currency wars aren't really a threat they're trying to calm down the market to some have even questioned whether japan's actions constitute as a manipulation of the currency basically when a country is in the dire fiscal situation such as of course as we all know many countries are today like japan for instance is one option that a country house is to devalue its currencies and making something like this a twenty dollar bill worth less you can do that by a variety of means for example printing cash because why would you want to do that when your currency is worth less if your manufactured goods are cheaper on the market and that gives you a temporary boost in the economy which could be pretty critical in tough times like

this now what we've actually seen the fear here is that when a country does that your trading partner strike back they say hey we're going to lower the value of our currency and that sets off a currency war such as the one that we saw in the one nine hundred thirty s. which has led to the great depression now japan insists that it is simply trying to stimulative kwame it's not doing anything to prompt a full scale currency war of course no country here wants to see that but the reason that we're seeing so much disagreement and so little consensus among the countries is that you know what for example the united states policy isn't all that . since the fed in the u.s. has been printing money like crazy so these developed countries don't really see any incentive in isolating japan in trying to really squeeze down in this currency manipulation issue because they don't want to mess around with their economies essentially said that is really the crux of the issue and auntie's business desk

has also been closely watching the meeting of the g twenty finance heads here mosco stay with altie for the extensive coverage a little later this hour and still to come for you this libya prepares to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled gadhafi preparations includes setting up roadblocks across the country and nato forces gathering in the capital as the number of those protesting against the new government increases. still to come we report on how a new biometric scan system developed for the u.s. military could put an end to prove that more official break.

to me speak told language. programs in documentaries in arabic it's all here on. reporting from the world talks about six of the r.p. interviews intriguing story to tell you. it's been trying. to find out more because it are a big. dog called. faces based on. you know care read good. play.

music. concert the show how to sing we just got a studio on craigslist i'm on just about to do some debate which is basically devoted to you know just saying i was told would take mass shootings for me to repeat it to sandy hook school and want someone to tell them it stop the bloodshed on this one tom stupid thing coming coming is there a nonsense of the steam past. we are facing a lot of problems. because no one no good schools. what's not enough wealth is a law in the local needs you might want to. give

down for. i was fired i must fight. i'll fight for. the right. the for. news continues here in r.t. in the u.s. senate republicans have stalled an attempt by the white house to make chuck hagel the secretary of defense he felt two votes short as senators decided to win some time to find out more about him and he's going to check on explains those.

domination this thursday know very well that he will eventually be confirmed as defense secretary there are enough votes in the senate to confirm him but the stalling of the vote together with the humiliating treatment that the senators gave chuck hagel two weeks ago at his confirmation hearing this whole process is seen as a message all by itself those lawmakers showed that they could crush anyone who would allow themselves to dissent from washington's core foreign policy beliefs chuck hagel two remarks at the confirmation hearing disappointed even his supporters during the hearing which to many seemed like an inclination mr haygood had to backtrack on many of the statements he had made before including that war with iran should not be an option including his criticism of israel's actions and some other foreign policy views that he had expressed as a senator so throughout that long an exhausting hearing mr hague kept apologizing for much of the previous statements he had taken from previous positions he had

taken and he bent backwards to show how quote unquote mainstream his use are in the senator's kept accusing him of not being again quote unquote mainstream enough to get the job chuck hagel swore to defend basically all of washington's foreign policy orthodoxies his confirmation process has been humiliating in many ways than it demonstrated the state of u.s. foreign policy basically intolerant of an ill targeted vision alternative claude having said all that the president's decision to nominate chuck hagel of course knowing the position chuck hagel had taken before was also seen as a message president obama had said previously that there is too much of your talk going on and maybe by nominating chuck hagel he wanted to play down because too many people here in washington are too eager to talk war just during the confirmation hearing the word war was mentioned one hundred twenty times the word iran one hundred eight times by comparison of ghana's than the war that the u.s. is fighting right now just twenty six mentions of course those are just words but

they may very well show how eager many many in washington are to discuss new wars without even having finished the old ones. help is at hand for british m.p.'s who are stressed or depressed tone line we got the story of why politicians will soon be getting free mental health treatment without even having to leave westminster. top secret documents surfaces revealing his plans for military involvement in mali called lift the lid on the plans of the world's most feared terror network. libya is braced for fresh unrest the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled gadhafi is being held under the threat of violence security is tight and foreigners are leaving all mess the first protests against the current government are expected in benghazi the birthplace of the revolution that civil analyst about him told me a little earlier where libya stands two years after the uprising far to what we

have seen over the last two years in libya is that this integration of a new form of central control paving the way for the fragmentation of the country into three states at the same time the lawlessness in the country there is an outgrowth of fundamentalism of the chrome on the side that has over and somali as we have seen over the last couple of months a little bit more than two months and at the same time we have this but. strife breaking out between the front militias and the country so yes a lot has changed but not for the better. time now for some other international news in our world update this hour in south africa has got it super star oscar pistorius has been formally charged with the murder of his girlfriend the man known as the blade runner will be held in custody until court hearings begin on tuesday.

starting combo's shot dead at the paralympians house on thursday in the suburbs of pretoria. thousands of antigovernment protesters are packed a major highway in the bahraini capital manama that's a day after a sixteen year old protester and a police officer died during demonstrations marking the second anniversary of the country's uprising two years ago protests in the country began to demand more freedoms and rights of the shia majority in a nation run by sunni. and also. activists in syria say at least one hundred fifty rebels and government soldiers have been killed in the last two days of heavy fighting in the northern city of aleppo text began on wednesday as rebels hit the city's civilian airport and in the air by military airfield control over the international airport will provide a strategic advantage against president assad's forces the conflict in syria has lasted for almost two years now with the death toll already over sixty thousand.

the british government's program of cuts has resulted in a drastic drop in the number of police officers to the lowest level in over a decade the radical reform package is already sparked many security questions on the sarah ferguson a chance to ask m.p.'s on both sides of the argument if the fears are reasonable. in the number of police officers up to the lowest levels for eleven years as the impact of a twenty percent cut and whitehall funding to police budgets takes effect but just think more about these. joined by conservative m.p. and britain and labor and. thank you very much to both of you for joining us jim i'm going to start with the a lot of the piece that we were speaking with we've got is a bit of. it at the same time. the number of police and police. i mean it's quite confusing time i think the police are being expected. i

understand that there may be slight consolation but given the battering the reputation of the place is hard over recent months the government had to take steps to shore up the reputation and terms of morale. the police service quite dramatically in my part of east london we've seen over one hundred fifty uniform stuff go in the past two years productions in crime which we've seen year on year for six years and reverse and for the past two years have been an increase in crime last year of nine percent so as certain parts of the country the cuts are being imposed are effect saying the safety of people on the streets what do you say to. the lowest level of police now for eleven years. so they not know the police are having to take their share of the of the spending reductions along with the rest of the public sector to get the deficit under control and what we're actually seeing is it's not about police numbers it's what you do with the police or innovative ways of maintaining

a police presence on the streets and jim a home for to have a an increase in crime in his constituency but the fact of the across the country on average last year crime fell by eight percent and in fact it fell in my force in leicestershire by eight percent as well so we are seeing a overall reduction in crime across the country at the same time we're cutting police numbers but they're doing innovative things like sharing back office services because the forces. to save money and keep those police out on the streets where people want to be sort of in offices filling in paperwork and that with red tape is not just the police integrity it's the public perception of the police integrity and the reforms will help to improve the public perception of prison clarity as you write thank you very very much for joining us you can join in our debate online dot com we've also been on twitter a lot of the public have been getting involved in this debate as well as members of the police force police reform to join in the debate about the latest police reforms the u.s. is funneling money into tracking systems that are threatening to make the very concept to privacy a thing of the past it could mean people's every move being used against them to

keep them under surveillance and he's going to look at the future being watched. the information age was an era nearly everybody in braced by today's surveillance age experts say is a reality oh most no one can escape we are five years away in new york from zero privacy from every new yorker being tracked and catalogued and watched and that information being saved for pretty much an indeterminate period of private investigator steve rom bomb believes america is being landscaped into an eis wide open society through the advancing market of biometrics technology that uses physiological and behavioral recognition to identify people. a system touted as a national security necessity is being used to build a database where the biometric identity of millions of americans be gathered and stored when you look at crying when you look at terrorism what we're really

focusing on is the individual and so if you are interested in reducing crime or reducing terrorism you do have to focus on the individual and i am in a way. of connecting the person with a measurement recognition of unwanted visitors face recognition and iris scanning are the current tools of the trade however scientists are reportedly developing new technology aimed at identifying anyone from much greater distances if researchers are successful the defense department may eventually be able to detect individuals by your shape heartbeat walking patterns and possibly even older long range fingerprint and iris scanning are reportedly also being explored for the u.s. tool box of tracking are there reasons to have such security devices sure. do i think it's american do i think it's appropriate that somebody can press

a button and determine everywhere i've been everything i've done everyone. no it's role and i think that we're entitled to privacy. author and journalist a.j. jacobs recently spent three months documenting every second of his life with a small camera and like a bluetooth it's remarkable it holds ten hours of video esquire magazine editor at large subscribed to self surveillance for an article about life log yet he believes the market of high tech cameras and consumer biometric applications will soon make little brother and equally big concern and i think that we are. we're not going to have a private moment in the future and i always tell people listen if you want to have an extramarital affair you better have it right now because you're going to be able to have it in five years because everything will be tracked your husband or wife will be able to know exactly where you are at all times as companies like apple

moved her words fingerprint readers and facial recognition insiders say that consumer electronics will generate an entirely new source of revenue for the biometric industry and industry estimated to bank more than nine billion dollars globally this year however the top cash cow is expected to remain government spending on security the bit in the past five years the department of defense has shelled out an estimated three billion dollars on biometric programs. hard to believe that just ten years ago the concept of facial recognition biometric surveillance and domestic drones was limited to science fiction movies like minority report. marina point aren't to. be met with a news team with morphine about half an hour from now in the meantime we have the business with katie and he she is in the studio with us we've been reporting of course about the g twenty has only to hear moscow today so a big day for the city and country but obviously other things happening in the

world of business indeed there is and i think it's over the russian stock market has issued an i.p.o. initial public offering and it's been a bit of a disappointment to them explain why i give you all the market reaction as well that's all coming up in the business but isn't off of the broncos with me thanks larry. some countries want oil but that's kid stuff who needs oil when you could secure the world's largest supply of trucker darrow so-to located exclusively in sweden and meeting sweden for absolutely no logical reason is a possible you say well supreme commander of the swedish armed forces general severe guru and son must have watched red dawn too many times because he thinks the russians are a common general durance and declared that if invaded by russia sweden wouldn't be

able to last a week against the onslaught therefore sweden must immediately join nato he said that currently it is not quite possible to invade sweden but due to the two thousand and eight war with georgia it is possible for russia to somehow push through established european borders bring their forces up to sweden's gates putting the generals country in danger but guess what according to your own council of the european union georgia started the war so by that logic if the two thousand and one with georgia is the example of the future then don't kill russian peacekeeping troops and you'll have nothing to worry about but general goran so also made the point that president putin is rearming the russian army hinting at a threat well being heavily armed to defend yourself is a bad scary thing then joining up with nato seems to be pretty hypocritical if the people of sweden want to join nato well that is their choice but they shouldn't be tricked into having their taxpayers pay for their sons to die in afghanistan based on totally bogus arguments that make no sense but that's just my opinion.

listen. i've. lived.

lives . the lucky. lives. hello there welcome to business the group of twenty nations the g twenty met today here in moscow as we've been reporting on aside from an exploding mishear crossing it through the skies there were plenty of other elements to condemn while the planet was dealing with quite literally and earth shattering rural the twenty most powerful influential leaders doubtless golf how to save the world economy. in

that scare wraps up the day's events for us president putin called on the g. twenty nations to liberate what he called economic imbalances to put the global economy back on its growth track she also reminded the g twenty finance ministers of something that russia and other developing nations have been insisting on for quite some time the need to redistribute the voting rights within the international monetary fund russia's yearlong presidency in the g. twenty normally means that it will hold the summit here in the country later on in september but also that it has a unique opportunity to put the issues that it considers a good job that somebody agenda and that's quite important mission considering that the g twenty members accounted for about ninety percent of the will to vote rules domestic product and about truth goods of its population as the group of twenty finance ministers gathered here in moscow for their meeting this week many of them

want to focus of primarily on chub issues fiscal health and monetary policy and that's not surprising considering that the world cup the g. twenty nations are really struggling with mounting debt and budget deficits as their biggest perhaps but not for sure with below as debt ratio of any g twenty member of russia has its old set of gold. it's a whole set of priorities one of the issues that it has already put on the table is the investment incentives and creating jobs primarily in the high tech sector as the main driving force of teacher growth in fact is precisely that we're setting the right policy target that will speak to the idea behind the g twenty some of these policies already bearing fruit like stabilizing economic growth certainly in the euro zone that's according to the european central bank had mario drugget as usual he was scarce on the details but here's what he said during

a press conference in the central bank headquarters here in moscow you see uniformly signs of stability zation of increasing confidence we see spreads going down we see fulla to lead to going down we've seen by and large stock markets going up early on friday i had an opportunity to speak with our kid cudi he's the head of the organization for economic cooperation and development he was enthusiastically sharing the o.e.c.d. these latest work called going for growth and sensually it's a very detailed country by country a room out for how to get the global economy out of its current stagnation mode and what we're seeing as a lot of the sides of the old the moment topics that really dominate the agenda that's exactly what's happening right now with the so-called currency wars a number of central banks from china to japan and the us federal service while our

massaging don't turn sea fleet to give you a part of these a competitive edge i asked the o.e.c.d. if he thinks that these currency interventions are actually a threat to the global economy there are no currency wars today we are far far further away today from the currency war than we were two or three years ago when these french phrase was coined ok what we have today is a number of countries. exploring ways in which they can improve the growth prospects and improve the job creation ok not necessarily manipulating the currency to gain compared to miss at the expense of the next person you can watch that entire interview we're on our cheat i think you should keep in mind that regardless of what agenda the finance minister has said it cannot really be expected to be the

main agenda for the summit which is in six months from now and you know what can happen between now and then. moving on then it wasn't just the russian skies that suffered a blow today but russia's main stock market the moscow exchange offered its initial public offering this friday but ended up at the bottom of the suggested range fifty five roubles a pauper now the total value of the balls now stands at four point two billion dollars that wasn't a disaster those five hundred million dollars in toto was raised from the i.p.o. but not nearly as much as hopes russia is keen to make the stock markets here in russia more desirable to companies who prefer to live. in say london or new york now with that in mind it's check out how the russian markets performed this friday that we'll be able to see that they did actually finish up in negative territory as you can see the r.t.s.

down the ice it's seven tenths of a percent down no one stole the kick of particular fashion stay from the boss was that she brings zinc is losing company and there was a rumor that its roof had come off and that's why we saw a big decline in that particular stock will have some financial implications of the dissolved stuff on monday let's check out the cars and see how the ruble got on and i've actually lost out as you can see both the u.s. and the common currency in the session today i will move on to the international markets now u.k. stocks spent much of the day languishing in the red but have gradually managed to cruel their way to finish just modestly above the line that just one basis points no thanks to do small u.k. resells figures which were larger actually put down to the weather meanwhile mainland european stocks they didn't get above the line of descent down for the dax in germany u.s. stocks are still losing ready for

a lot to waiting and that's despite encouraging us data including better than four com states ok. confidence and new york area manufacturing that was upbeat to want to mention the fact that industrial production nationwide she posted a contraction in january but that's where it is patches took a breather off the biggest back to back in three decades had a bit of a correction got me all. right let's move on and gas problem is no object when it comes to ukraine and gas contracts kiev wants to renegotiate its deal with the russian gas major because they don't want to buy seven billion dollars of unused gas but as far as gas bomb is concerned the deal is a deal use gas all not in accordance with the take opaque cools and its two thousand and nine supply called drops now last month ukraine signed a deal with shell to exploit its extensive shell gas reserves which has been widely

in tubby to it as an attempt by ukraine to reduce its heavy dependence on russian gas in polls. all right so that's the business for now but up next as the world's movers and save his are indeed in moscow for talks on the world's ailing finances altie interviews one of the main players in the discussions he's angle gurrey out the secretary general of the old guys nation for economic cooperation and development that's coming up right after the break good bye for now. based on. i can read. you. can try. to secure the studio.

which b.t.w. did you know. it seems from the. looks of someone stop the bloodshed on this one. is there a concept of the scheme past. the. money and technology innovation haldol news developments from around russia we've. covered. the official. language stream quality and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from. your mobile devices you can watch r.t.

anytime anywhere from. more news today. again fled if these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. today. well. it's technology innovation all the rest of elements from around russia we've. covered.

six. reviving global economic growth is one of the priorities for the g twenty summit that will take place here in russia later here but the key to achieving that is setting the right policies to discuss what these policy should be i'm joined by on him. the head of the organization for economic cooperation and development thank you so much for joining me sir during this visit to moscow you had a chance to meet with russia's president vladimir putin was russia's bid to join the always discussed was almost the only topic because we did not have time to discuss too many more we discuss the g twenty also the accession of russia into the

o.e.c.d. is for us of a game changer and it's going to be very important russia is very large economy it's a very important presence in the world of energy it's a very important presence in all these international fora accent and so we really are very interested very excited about the bus ability of having. as a member and i think russia can benefit also from being in an institution that is not about lending money is not about giving grants it's not about the fixing economies that are not broken it's about policy discussions about what are the best possible policies and therefore what can be the best practices. that russia can adopt we're not going to tell russia what to do with russia we're going to tell the russians what other countries in the world are doing about the same problem of health care the same broad.