twelve hundred people we've got first hand accounts in our special report coming up in just a few seconds here on r.t. . tit for tat currency clashes and the euro zone's plight occupy the hearts and minds of financial decision makers meeting here in moscow. and to president obama's candidate for defense secretary is stalled by republican senators who say they don't know enough about the man heading for the pentagon our top stories this hour.

from the new center here in moscow this is the on line on screen twenty four hours a day so picture this it's eight fifty one in the morning in a mid-sized city east of the urals when the sky is lit up by the fiery part of the me to write about to smash into its final resting place here on earth in this case in the middle of russia one eyewitness was the canadian hockey player michael garnett a volunteer first hand account of the dramatic arrival. speak bright like shiny across the sky you know blinding brighter than the sun and then it was followed by a huge. explosion a minute or so later that broke last and everything on the lake fixtures were swaying back and forth i don't point to when looking out the window when i saw this

giant street 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. 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 and on t.v. you got a position of reports poll this was right about the time when most people were already at work the children were in schools and in kindergartens and all 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. so the sounds of broken glass and all these alarms going off can be clearly heard in all this it's really like a scene from a movie but it's real and many were shocked and emphatic in especially in the first few hours calling each other to find out what's happening and so many rumors from a jet which went 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 was happening here's how they described it. the feeling was like fear of shattering thoughts of military jets may have crashed or that it was some disaster it was a relief to find various it was a natural phenomenon. i was told that it pulling crashed right into our building then we were told that a wall has been partly dislodged and metal structures inside were burned 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 all this glass flying around caused by these explosions. initial speculation as to the causes of the flashes in the sky went as far as suggesting a nuclear disaster may be to blame when i discuss with lindsey francois 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 day care 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. you're should be targeting 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 a 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 the most famous ever to hit one thousand eight the famous. meteor that they hit out in the very far east it cleared two thousand square kilometers of forest land it's shockingly huge and. and less than twenty years later another another meteor one nine hundred forty seven another and then another ten years ago in siberia these were huge events. one of the chances of actually being killed by a meteor or they're very very slim in fact it's extremely rare to hear of anything but 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 it's all right through the roof hit her on the arm broken weeden who's the technical adviser for the secure world foundation explained to me earlier one of the potential danger posed shouldn't be underestimated. for an object that's that size it is estimated i think it eight to ten times 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 happened had in his truck in the middle of a city or any kind of populated area 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 responders the 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. one and asteroid is just made a record close approach to earth at a about twenty eight thousand kilometers above the surface now the event was watched by the scientists all over the world with many fearing the one hundred twenty thousand tunneled jet wouldn't miss planet well for more let's cross live now to talk money he's managing editor of space dot com he is in new york where we're happy to say that all this the that one did mrs tarik otherwise we wouldn't be here talking to each other now but it is there a bit of a coincidence i know experts say there's nothing related between that asteroid and what's happened here in russia but if it is a bit strange that it should happen on the same day isn't it it's a really strange coincidence you know nasa has to be looked at as we are in russia

and it looks like it's completely different than yasser that light today but just the fact that you would start out with that meteor hit and then end with this asteroid it's a very strange i think it highlights you know how much stuff is actually out. there we don't know about in our solar system is a busy place with these these rocks floating around and of course we predicted the asteroid but nobody predicted the meteorite today why not yet you know there was a really a complete surprise there oh yeah it was discovered by amateurs last year and ever since then and when they realized it was going to swing close to the planet nasa and other scientists get very close watch on it so they were looking for this asked they were looking for this other one and it apparently just no one found it on you know last year or whenever it was on a a close to approach and and it slipped through the cracks you know the smaller asteroid. space rocks. you know do come near earth in

every area every now and then back the smaller ones. and we're juma unseen but what would you do about every if you didn't know that was coming up in that you sort of draw but what would you do if you knew that this meter out for example today if it was detected what would you do about that. you know it is you know the big question it would depend on how early you found out you know the further away it is a longer time we would have to do with something maybe send a rocket out there to push on it or or even to do kind of. you know break it apart somehow just so it wouldn't have the effect that we saw in in russia today. you know now for the size of the one that you would you know when you're me not you know i'm a region i don't know what anything is the worrying thing is that it's less than a thousand miles from moscow where it landed now obviously it didn't hit a populated area where it wasn't chelyabinsk in central russia but even that meets right what would have that done if it did hit

a capital city such as new york or london where you can imagine i mean more than a thousand people injured already just thousands of buildings you know severely damaged or collapsed from a shockwave didn't even hit the ground. a much more. populated city like moscow like new york city you can imagine that that same kind of damage on a much bigger scale would have substantially wider impact on the people that live there so you know it's not it's not great for the people who are affected here but it could have been much worse. and there was some worried that this could be the sign of another one coming but these are very rare occurrences and it does just because what's happened today in russia doesn't mean it's a sign of more to come exactly because that was the worst one and the first big one like you know it and. then also in in a remote part of russia so you know that more than one hundred years you would you

would hope it would be longer than that they have time in between. but it is a rare and tiring to witness on such a scale that one you're talking about back in one thousand calls a huge amount of environmental damage this one we don't know but is there anything to worry about once this material has come out of space and landed on planet earth could there be any contamination or further environmental or health concerns in the future. well the russian emergency ministry is looking into that so far we haven't seen anything to be worried about all the radiation level and everything or all of the normal i mean really you know with me right when they find them these fragments of. iraq. you know they're they're relatively harmless unless you know there was something else in it mark. it will depend on what they find in the media writes their big can know what kind of rock it was what it was made out of if it did have any other kind of material that would be unexpected right now it's

a bit too early it's great to talk about this terry thanks so much for joining us live here on r.t. terrence malick there from space dot com joining us live in new york thank you one on r.t. dot com our website we have live updates for you on the meteor strike including how some enterprising locals are already cashing in some are trying to sell parts of the crashed 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'll buying a piece of just a rusty old stone but jokes aside scientists say that meteor was the largest recorded object the one that landed today in russia to strike the earth in about a century is something just been discussing there with tonic clonic it's estimated that the weight was about forty tons when it approached our planet before breaking up into smaller pieces and experts also say that when it did explode the media released a huge amount of energy making the blast even more powerful than the nuclear weapon tested by north korea just a few days ago and specialists are currently examining

a crater with the width of six meters or piece of the supposedly crashed and another piece supposedly fell into a lake creating this hole in the ice. a potential currency war in the european debt crisis is dominating a meeting of finance chiefs from some of the world's biggest economies in moscow from russia the gathering is seen as a launch pad for the g twenty summit later this year on his lucy coming off has been following the 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 silvio on those 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 a 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 currency so 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 you 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 essentially 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 stimulate as quanah me 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 . friends 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 this currency manipulation issue because they don't want to mess around with their economies essentially so that is really the props up the issue still to come here this hour

here now to libya prepares to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled colonel gadhafi preparations includes setting up roadblocks across the country and nato forces gathering in the capital as a number of those protesting against the new government increases. plus we're reporting how a new biometric scans system developed for the u.s. military could put an end to previously that i'm all for you after a short break. little

. is going to. news continues now here in r.t. in the u.s. senate republicans have stalled in the tent by the white house to make chuck hagel the secretary of defense he felt to vote short sentences decided to win some time

to find out more about him what he's going to check on explains. those who blocked the vote on chuck hagel nomination 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 remarks at the confirmation hearing disappointed even his supporters during the hearing which to many seemed like an inclusive 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 and exhausting hearing mr haygood 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 views are in the senator's case 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 and it demonstrated the state of u.s. foreign policy of policy basically intolerant of an ill turn to do 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 stress store depressed online we've got the story of why politicians will soon be getting free mental health treatment without even having to leave westminster. plus a top secret documents surfaces revealing al qaeda has plans for military involvement in mali. called we lift the lid on the intentions 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 foreign as a leaving all mess the first protests against the current government are expected in benghazi the birthplace of the revolution political analyst ibrahim aleutian outlines where libya stands two years after the uprising. 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 criminals 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. to some other international news now in brief in south africa athletic superstar 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 and model reeva steenkamp was shot dead at the paralympians house on thursday in the suburbs in particular and. thousands of anti-government protesters have 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 market the second anniversary of the country's uprising two years ago protests in the country began to demand more freedoms and rights for the shia majority in a nation run by sunny's. activists and serious 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 it taks began on wednesday as rebels hit the city's civilian airport and a nearby 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 u.s. is falling money into tracking systems that are threatening to make the very concept of privacy a thing of the past could mean that people's every move being used against them to keep them under surveillance what is more important looks at the future of being watched. the information age was an era nearly everybody in braced by today's surveillance age experts say is a reality almost 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 time 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 will 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 do think terrorism you do have to focus on the individual and biometrics is 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 logging 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 biometrics surveillance and domestic drones was limited to science fiction movies like minority report marina point i am. so that's all for me build on my colleague who until most he'll be in the chair and extent as the news continues with the team

taking you through them we have crossed all with pieces of those stay with us as ulti in those going to. 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 as a possible you say well supreme commander of the swedish armed forces general sphere 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 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 of 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 so. didn't 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.

please. chloe and welcome to crossfire we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle five tiny pacific islands one big problem for japan china and the region what is fueling this dispute domestic nationalism geopolitics and natural resource grab all of the above then there's the question of what is called the pacific pivot is washington's pivot focused on challenging china's great power ambitions.