at midnight moscow time chuck hagel is officially sworn in as the new u.s. secretary of defense after winning narrow senate approval but his policies have drawn fire from capitol hill his own fellow republicans among his most vocal critics. it's amazing chaos after the parliamentary election this failed to produce a clear winner as european leaders now fear the country's political turmoil could have a strong negative effect on the entire. comment coming up. for a minor quite literally traffic offense this shocking video posted by a russian couple of the eight year old daughter driving on a public highway at dangerous speeds.

well over a good morning so if you just joined us just a tad after midnight here now in moscow kevin owen here at r.t. h.q. and our top stories you just heard chuck hagel is now officially the u.s. defense secretary but only after being narrowly approved by the senate he's been under fire from fellow republicans for his past criticism of the iraq war and the israeli lobby with some believing you could also be too soft on iran it's also just two days as well before billions of dollars in budget cuts and shit will hit the military can now the number clash on capitol hill. chuck hagel was confirmed by the senate fifty eight votes for forty one vote against a narrow vote as you can see but he can find in louisville all that apologizing and repenting behind and he had to do a lot of that to get the job has been working very hard to tailor his views so as to please congress as a senator chuck hagel allowed himself to oppose the surge in iraq or to criticize israel's policies to oppose seeing war with iran is an option but as the

president's nominee for the defense secretary position he backtracked on much of what he had said before and did it as as even his supporters noted in a rather clumsy way but in a way that showed how much he wanted the job and the whole confirmation process including the attack campaign against him including the filibuster ten days ago showed how intolerant the u.s. congress is of alternative thought on one policy ten days ago the senators knew quite well that chuck hagel would eventually be confirmed but they chose to block the vote as many say just to make a point president obama certainly knew that chuck hagel confirmation process would not go as smoothly as say john kerry's but he nominated him anyway it looks like president obama too wanted to make a point this is his last term he doesn't have to think about getting reelected and it is a good time for him to make a point by the end of his first term the degree of war mongering in washington has escalated and we should the point where even the president said there's too much

war talking going on now mandating chuck hagel could be goes way over bringing it down a notch the president is also quite aware of the general war fatigue in the country but the u.s. congress doesn't seem to have that same war fatigue as chuck hagel confirmation hearing showed quite to the contrary never too tired for war it seems one more thing it's saying important to point out here chuck hagel as defense secretary will not be in a position to generate policy is there to fulfill the president's policies probably his main job will be managing the budget the biggest military budget in the world and figuring out where to make cuts but most of the questions senators asked during his confirmation hearing were about policies which is really not going to be in his field of work anyway. simonson i will another new face in american politics make a difference in syria that's the question we asked secretary of state john kerry washington is ready to wade syrian rebels fight his way from support from the west and back as we got a report on that was a bit later. next italy is looking for

a way out of its election limbo it's currently in after a huge hung parliament put europe on tenterhooks and raised fears of fresh financial turmoil well stock markets mostly rose on wednesday offsetting with it is they initially suffered a start with no parties won a parliamentary majority there the center left group secured a narrow victory in the lower house but failed to win the senate former prime minister silvio berlusconi's center right bloc meantime became the second biggest in the upper chamber those results show italian voters strongly rejected the austerity policies of mario monti's government at the final rival parties can't find a way out of the deadlock they'll have to have another election investment advisor patrick young told his italian certainty could prove fatal for the eurozone. your crisis is that elephant in the room that nobody was talking about so far this year is back and it's back big time because ultimately fifty seven percent of attire just don't like the idea of a sturdy and they don't really want to do the sorts of things that the european

union wants and posed upon them that's causing us a huge problem because ultimately you've got incredible new parties like betty greeley or surf ice storm movement you've got an incredible wave of support that came back from mr berlusconi a former prime minister and so billy missions and of course not i it plays in the worst possible political limbo there's no clear ike right win or there's no clear government it's going to take weeks on end and ultimately markets despite the idea of uncertainty and what they're looking out at the moment is an awful uncertainty because they simply don't know whether it really is going to be a reliable member of the euro zone and if it really is not going to be able to reliable member of the euro zone then there probably is not going to be a euro zone the european union is affectively trying to support its banking industry which has never recovered from the creative mortgage lending excesses of two thousand and seven two thousand and eight and that leaves us with a very delicate position but ultimately should investors lose money because of bad investment decisions well as an investor and advisor i have to say that's what we

call capitalism that's what's happened it shouldn't just be a case of the poor people innocent people are forced to suffer incredible austerity a propos of billing night investors and bankers if they stalemates on the media agenda to across europe parties peter all of his been leafing through some german newspapers for us and listening to their concerns about how the key players might affect the wider european economy. the ongoing political turmoil in italy is making headlines not just in the country put around the world here in germany all of the major newspapers just about a carrying the talian election story on their front pages with many saying this well stalemate in italy means concern for the rest of europe the reason for that concern is that well if they can't be any agreement made on how that country should be run and it could be that if it's really sneezes politically then europe gets

a severe cold economically and that's the big fear so no i'm going for a more jokey look at it but some of the tabloids are trading the perhaps for front runners and cartoon form on the front saying neither left nor right nobody knows what they want. the true though that they're getting most of the focus are the former comedian ben law and the former prime minister silvio berlusconi now the discussion between those two is repeated again in some of the more conservative newspapers here in germany those newspapers though also not giving much pity to the italian people they go on to say that it's really cannot remain on governable that it must get back on track and let's get back to austerity it does seem though that as far as the german newspapers the concerned and most of the rest of the german media the italian people find themselves with a clown to the left of them

a joke to the right and they're stuck in the middle with very little idea of what they want politically. there's been little sign of progress from the nuclear talks between iran and six world powers to run over hailed a turning point in the negotiations over being offered some relief from sanctions in return for limiting your radio enrichment so it's great to be together in april global strategy list hillary told me the spot the small move forward in recognizing around big changes are needed to breaking out the critical issue for the iranians and i think this is where they perceived slights and i stress slight movement on the u.s. side is in the recognition of their rights their sovereign and their treaty base rights to enrich uranium what that does is not solve the problem but it allows a process to go forward of negotiations and suddenly go she ations over how much the united states and other key parties are going to allow iran to exercise its

rights as iran continues. to go forward and speak to a program in the rest of its in the west of its ways that it's amassing missing real power in the middle east the united states and particularly its allies israel and saudi arabia will be increasingly uncomfortable with that and i don't know for how long they will be constrained both those allies and their friends here in washington constrained by this these these negotiations because these negotiations are not really intended to resolve the problem it may be something that is delayed for another year but i think we are if we don't change our policy in some fundamentally ways we're on a trajectory toward toward war with iran and the world poses for a new round of talks that in kazakhstan for another return to a diplomatic solution to the longstanding nuclear deadlock with to run the radio people who are selves already feeling the repercussions of the existing sanctions facing medicine and food shortages the details about the motives were an important . in an effort to stop tehran's nuclear program western countries have used an

arsenal of crippling economic sanctions over the years in the interim america and its allies may have started a widespread medical crisis for the iranian people hundreds of thousands of iranians with serious illnesses such as cancer diabetes and all three of us can't reportedly receive lifesaving medicines because of international sanctions due to banking restrictions imposed by u.s. and european governments companies and hospitals in iran say they are on able to purchase pharmaceuticals from abroad now according to reports an estimated twenty three thousand iranians with hiv or aids have had their life saving medication restricted and medicine shortages for splits since specific blood disorders have allegedly resulted in many deaths already i spoke with an iranian american who recently visited iran bringing his grandmother meds for her diabetes and all through this alex shams told me that the stock of pain relievers he packed was for

a hospital the people who are the most vulnerable the people with the most special kind of cancer or. illnesses they're the ones who right now are feeling the pinch the hospital that i brought medicine back there was a cancer hospital and they're right now it is admitting that they won't have tylenol in a short in a very short period of time that they're asking people to hoard tylenol and bring it back. unfortunately that's how they're doing with tylenol i can't even begin to imagine what how their stockpiles of cancer medicine are looking right now the latest round of u.s. and european sanctions have caused iran's currency to plummet and oil revenue to slash which in turn has pushed up inflation critics say western countries have unleashed catastrophic economic warfare against ordinary iranian citizens so far producing all harm and no good they. must destruction. that very

very blunt instrument of fuse against nations sanctions the way that they are being propagated by the usa by the euro and indeed to a certain degree by the un against iran really very harmful they don't achieve their objectives that penalizing the ordinary person and i think it is totally unethical and immoral that we have to be very very care about what happens which is why i think a retooling and readjustment of the sanctions in this medical area is is critical within a very short time because as this begins to spiral so too then does the black or the cheering many experts warn that if the u.s. continues leaving a path of sanction destruction against iran this circumstance can manifest into a repeat of iraq in the ninety's marina port ny r.t. new york. still to come in the program exits in the vatican pope benedict delivers

his final public address before we take a look at what the catholic church then needs to do next. also ahead how you see this trip talk about wrote a jihad this eight year old girl really is driving at one hundred kilometers an hour to a video that's gone viral parents were the russian police not happy we got the story after the break. wealthy british style. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy stronger the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser report.

pope benedict's final public address before leaving the vatican strong tens of thousands of peter's square the pontiff will become the first pope to step down in

six centuries on friday evening but a secular campaigner keith porter has would tell me that catholic leaders are going to have to make some big changes to deal with the fallout of worldwide child abuse and other scandals i'm certainly aware of two major issues over child abuse that are going to come up and are going to be very very hard for the vatican to swallow because it's not just that there are the child abuse bad though that is issues it's actually that the finger of blame is going to be pointing at the vatican for having obstructed justice in all the secret files where it released so that's going to look very bad and i think people are going to get less and less tolerance about that in the vatican has shown no real sign of actually coming to terms with this and putting its hands up and really atoning for its past sins and being much more open and and dealing more properly with victims and actually getting the people who perpetrated these crimes. turned over to the police and the

outgoing pope has packed the college of cardinals with people who are as if not more conservative than he has so it's going to be pretty hard but if they've got any sense they're actually look and see that the vast majority of catholics don't actually agree with all their positions on on these sensitive social issues and i think they need to actually look at their own congregation and start taking some signs from that and be much more sensible over issues like contraception homosexuality abortion all those kind of things and actually be open to. secular justice on matters like child abuse and money laundering. complete change of subject now reaching sixteen year old rushes a big moment for most youngsters that's of course when they can start to get on the road on the way to get in the driver's license but they can actually drive to late teens however some get a significant head start on the wheel if you can bear it take

a look at this. go to at least one hundred your mother is filming here. and here all drive in a car my friend asked what have fainted and she saw this. will posted on social networks. i don't know what's more shocking than eight year olds driving or the parents dragging or on years it correctly this girl taking the top end german car one hundred kilometers an hour at the ripe old age of eight years old and in some shockingly bad parental guidance you're a father encouraging her to put the pedal on the metal in this country road is covered in snow no the girl's mom and dad posted the video online as well for the whole world to see but the soon deleted the social network accounts from the police go in contact just to make it clear you have to be eighteen years old to drive in russia however more bad driving depends what you think about it this is maybe a bus not to get this is for the moscow region you're seeing what web cam me over those dash to the front of a bus you can see it hit that large of the bus driver was going around doing

a lot of this he didn't have a problem with some fender bending if it meant teaching he thought anyway bad drivers a lesson or two alexi is the bus driver's name is about to do it again it doesn't work that car here we go car comes out bus driver. can you imagine being a passenger there well it's got to move volved in nearly one hundred minor road accidents the bus driver but he's never been considered to be at fault by the police alexy says his excuse is a common misconception that a person who rear ends another car is automatically considered to be the guilty party in his defense that it could cause a more serious accident he could lose his license if you are forced to swerve into the other lane and cause an accident is about to get a mouthful there is no from the driver. when the screen is the middle class bearing the brunt of the country struggles to revive the economy it's a study just showing tax hikes are leaving them two hundred eighty pounds a year worse off and more than half of them have no savings at all to fall back on

it's a worrying picture it means there have to be has to be a lot of belt tightening this is what this if source mori poll has come out with just a few of the highlights there as you can see almost half the respondents in this poll said that they would like to have a week's holiday here it's not much to ask is it but they can't afford it forty. and the people having to make do and mend with old tatty furniture because there's no money to replace it almost thirty percent of working brits can't get the reelect recalled goods repaired missing some electrical stores in britain go to war people can't afford to buy a twenty two percent said they can no longer invite friends around for parties because intertainment is just too costly get alcohols just going up in britain again it's a sad state of affairs for a lot of people r.t. sarah firth went to find out how britain's middle class feels about reining in budget yet again. for a large part of her life liz hoggard has been tapping away at building a life for herself as a freelance journalist she's been part of britain's middle class seeing credit

cards pay their mortgages on time and they thrived during being but then came the bust and with the decline of opportunities there were for so long a middle class perk i didn't get a contract we knew because budgets were being cut and so all those little things you have in place you always live slightly on credit you know you go into interest in anticipation it will get paid quite soon that got much to low incomes coupled with high living costs staking fears of a shrinking little in britain is backed up in a report by the resolution foundation think tank it looked into what the future holds the ten million adults in the low to middle income households forecast another decade of hardship well unfortunately it's a bit of a grim prospect prices have risen faster than earnings for quite some time now and what that means is that people. simmer about perhaps

a little more but they can't buy as much with it a stark example of this is housing a couple of decades ago you've had to save for a couple of years maybe three or four years to get a deposit on a house if you're a low to middle income first time buyer at the moment you're looking at about twenty two years so middle class trimmings like foreign holidays meals out and home improvements are on hold for the time being as lives has found out she's having to sell off possessions to pay for essential is like dental treatment there's a few packing up the required. is quite emotional at times and you have a rush of memory and then you think for ten years and probably if there's something really important i can find online that has revolutionized it but i also think. these books are. my investment in a way it's really inching exhibition catalogues that i bought back in for not very much money just just

a normal price and then of course they become rare as the years go by so in some ways my stocks and shares been sitting on my shelves which i hadn't known about you see when you look online and i'm something that was confronted so there is a sense of well at least i can pay for my newspaper also treating that. you know you have to not be a snob in something you cannot make times it can be hard to keep up with parents is is why seems like the one run by this store here in the that's proving so popular you bring along a designer clothes and you can make stings at the credit which could be in the store. but it was a bit of a further structurally i think where the first person to actually combine the dress exchange element with the charity element. and introducing the exchange about your system rather than buying stock in. that kind of give and take on them as more and more families look for ways to make their money go further the government's being warned that without shared growth britain risks becoming

a country of two halves the rich getting richer and the middle classes increasingly losing out. meanwhile lives in a generation like facing up to the reality that britain's middle class is the next chapter is looking pretty bleak. r.t. . the us could be considered a shift on syria secretary state john kerry who is on his first european to washington's readiness to support the syrian rebels some u.s. officials say washington is now thinking of giving direct assistance to opposition fighters and possibly even training of the syrian national coalition initially rejected attend the international so-called friends of syria meeting in rome for a day in protest over what it sees is negligible help from western nations but the s.n.c. will now return to see what's on offer the opposition accuses the u.s. and its allies of not intervening militarily and not arming the rebels dr ali mohamed from the syria tribune online magazine told us there's so much kerry can

have already coming. they are giving them a home in the country and they are giving them free passes to live from neighboring countries they're giving them even though i'm up you know what the u.s. but approximately one proxy is they are giving them arms weapons phone kinds of explosives and political protection from security just trying to prepare for the of the coalition for the next step which should be they all now if he thinks that by by giving them more even more political defeat mission and promising them moral support on the ground he would push them for the better but i mean this for they have accused definitely is fake and they have been putting a lot of pressure for this stream of change and the violence on the ground did not change based on that they have tried every possible way including mr obama calling for. more than a year ago and this did not work mr kerry things that he has magic solutions that we can do things that other them push him to leave power which is not known to us

we don't know what he means by that but i assure you it would also much work what mr kerry needs to do is to give a clear and loud statement that it's only fair hope that is the way out is actually the coalition that his president mr clinton created should understand this and this is the only message that syrian it's going to give. on t.v. and online r.t. stories cover the world for you we've got details there tonight of america's web weapon a computer virus called stocks net aimed at disrupting brands nuclear research but we reveal its people waiting in the wings long before to round was accused of anything you want to read up more about the up speed on its com and these are pictures you don't see very often coming up now peeping through the iron curtain to north korea really getting the chance to tag live pictures and send tweets from that of clips of country really interesting read that some our web site you get a glimpse at our table problems. world news headlines at midnight twenty six moscow

time first a deadly violence in afghanistan again there now rove focuses drugged and shot seventeen of his colleagues with the help of local taliban militants that attack happened at a remote police checkpoint about three hundred kilometers south of kabul seven of the dead were new recruits who were still in training and then hours later a taliban suicide bomber detonated his device after it got underneath a bus that was carrying army personnel in kabul were injured. bad fire here an illegal market in the city in india it's claimed at least eighteen lives officials say it's left dozens of others wounded most of the victims were porters working in the sixth or rebuilding from where chemicals and plastics were sold and you can guess the problem the toxic gases the hump of the rescue efforts by the hundreds of firefighters attended the early morning blaze an electrical fault is thought to be to blame.

renowned american classical pianist violin cleburne who helped bridge cold war tensions as died at the age of seventy eight is victory in the first overture koskie international competition to a moscow back in one hundred fifty eight saw the musician feted in both the soviet union and the united states in a rare show of agreement and are known at the time as seven zero performance catapulted him worldwide fame and clyburn who have bone cancer was also watered the national medal of arts by president obama in twenty. real time be sadly missed time the latest business use no with natasha natasha good evening to you nice to see you know i hear the world bank is found reading this has found that women tend to be more fair or less corrupt than men as company heads we

knew that already didn't attain here in need to read that you knew that absolutely and they also tend to not see red tape as a big issue what can i say what i will tell you why in the business bulletin after just a couple of ok. wealthy

british style stock. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines two kinds a report on our. it's twenty nine minutes past the hour here in moscow you're watching business on r.t. with me now to showing it's come the number of unemployed in france rose again in january hitting a fifteen year high more than three million people are out of work in europe's

second largest economy and that means president francois hollande is failing to keep his promise of reducing unemployment to single digits figures layoffs in france chaos in italy following the parliamentary elections and the ongoing problems in spain and greece all about once again raises a lot of questions about the future of the union i asked angus campbell from london capital group what he thinks of all this. we know perfectly well that the union is not working as had previously been visit when it first came about but that doesn't mean that the political resolve is not we have seen in the last. eighteen months to two years that political resolve is very much keeping the union together not only that you have. got a central bank the european central bank that is standing

behind and backing the euro as well so as long as those two forces remain in. place the euro has very much going chance of surviving the challenges ahead of course are. the major economies of the euro zone are still heavily indebted to house rein in those debts it's not easy they want ever said it would be to be very hard but as long as you have the political resolve to do so and you have the e.c. be backing the single currency as well there's every chance that it can be achieved going back to france for just a second just recently one of us business tycoons provoked a wave of outrage in france when he said that the french are working just three hours a day and that his company would be stupid to take over an ailing plant in france there is there some truth to what he's saying i mean i know it's pretty harsh but

what are we seeing the productivity rate declining in the eurozone if you look over the situation you going to get to see. so you. can perhaps a little bit that's not so far as the. u.s. is. working. and strongs which yes probably are a little bit too hard. and let's see how the european markets are reacting to all this economic data actually they don't seem to be fazed chairs in london a rebounded more than three quarters of a percent the dax in germany did have been better than that more than one percent pretty impressive gains on wall street where the trade is active the sound the stocks are on the rise a couple of positive stat support the markets the housing data and the durable

goods came in better than expected the euro rose against the u.s. dollar in the currency markets for the first time in three sessions on wednesday here in moscow the ruble as you can see right there ended up gaining to both the dollar and the single currency and speaking of moscow the indices here ended the day mix the my sex was a just a notch the r.t.s. closed flat to negative no major corp corporate results came out on tuesday so the blue chips really struggled for direction gazprom looked better than the market having jumped about one percent thanks to the news of gas supplies to china full of golden era flaw or among the biggest losers for what the day. now the feminine touch is what the world needs to tackle corruption as it turns out that's according to the latest report from the world bank. it found that russian companies that have women as their heads pay fewer bribes and kick start kick backs not to

perceive red tape as a major problem so for a matter joined by a woman in power katie. hello there so before we get to the issue of a women in power let's talk about the findings of the world bank in general what do they say about they focused corruption it's always a big topic here in russia as you know with the economy this report was done from two thousand to twenty eleven of course thirty seven russian regions and it was good and bad really exit manages here in russia actually have to do with more payments bigger costs but less of them have to pay ok so it is a confusing one really and also as well in terms of corruption in two thousand and eight it was the third most serious problem in twenty eleven the second biggest

problem and according to the wall backing they say that this isn't necessarily mean that corruption is getting worse so i mean i think we can conclude from that that it's still an issue here in russia very much right well let's now talk about women are they truly less corrupt than apparently so apparently so there was an abundance of surveys that took place and it was household one survey ones as well as experiments in lamps as well would you believe and their findings were that women were indeed less corrupt now they do have their own problems to do with actually wear and it's the fact that they have to wait longer. for licenses to come through the post really admin barriers this time is two percent which equates to ten days so let's have to wait longer things that we've always known that patience is a virtue exactly and i think graft issues also. of a woman to when they get to the top that's after that they want to stay there

there's no complacency involved so they tend to keep those spots and maybe that's why no bribes take place well you know what but i don't really buy that idea that women are somehow immune to greed in fact just this week we saw the. there's a mexican union leader a woman who is an accused of embezzling millions of dollars to pay for her expensive real estate her plastic surgery her private planes and even. marcus cars. where there's always a bad seat well women are maintenance corrino that much come on i certainly am but you know i'm not going to stand here and say that women appear than men because that's just crazy but in terms of business and corruption you know the proof in the post in as far as the world bank are concerned they are confessing that women seem to be easy environment that they're working in because if a woman gets to the top it means that the environment is fair to begin with because that's how she managed to do it so there tends to be less wrongdoings going on less

abuse of power less siphoning of money as well so i think as i say a fair environment that women are working in but speaking of women in russia a few of them at the tops of big companies in fact about twenty percent is it just but the where we are less corrupt with the men of the yeah i suppose you could say that i mean as far as the world is concerned though it's not just in russia this corruption. is taking place because we know we were in davos last month the world economic forum and christine lagarde i.m.f. chief she was saying that women really need to get to the top in order to get fairness in the human resources department i wanted to mention the fact the twenty years ago in one nine hundred ninety three in india a new law was brought into play thirty seats in local. allocated to women now the world bank themselves account that to the the environment has got

a lot better i'm talking about simple things like clean water for people at public services the schools that kind of thing giving the seven in such as we say also want to mention the fact this week it's been all about in the elections it's been dominating the proceedings of course and the fact there isn't a story one in terms of women because thirty two percent of the senate the highest percentage will be taken up with women well very interesting but i still tend to think that it's not that women are somehow more morally sound but they are that they tend to rise to the top in societies that are more open and more democratic let's just leave it up out of thank you very much katie pilbeam. the quality of russia's roads has been the subject of a lot of jokes but the latest stats are actually supporting what many russians have long suspected that the roads are among the worst in the world according to the

global competitiveness index they rank one hundred thirty six out of one hundred and forty four countries it follows that wouldn't have been surprising if it hadn't been for the fact that russia's twice as much for on its roads as it does in its entire space program four hundred fifty billion rubles is here that's about fifteen billion dollars in two thousand and thirteen but actually if you think about it that's four times less than what the united states spends on its roads and that's all the latest from the business team up next on our t.v. we get the insight from within the british government about what's bothering its members what's on their minds that's after a very short break if you're an r.t. . plain. old. science

technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered. led mission and free liquid intake should free the funds for charges free coming from inside the free risk free studio time priests download free broadcast quality video for your media projects a free media don carty dot com. loeffler golden globe live. her mother. could speak pity for. her her

currently her wish her. luck to her mum if so good for her fists. and. her. little mouth run of a better little. sleep . more news today violence is once again fled up the film these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada after the first chinese operation today please oh please.

there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people with hiv aids lives within a year. this is a problem that frankly is substantially preventable it was like the big elephant in the room and nobody wanted to talk about it they were really good public health campaigns people really focused on this problem you certainly should be able to. see a lot less human suffering. today

i'm talking to keith vaz who is frequently named among the most influential asians in britain he's chairman of the home affairs select committee which is a powerful group which investigates issues to do with the home office such as prisons immigration terrorism and recently the phone hacking scandal thank you very much for talking to us today now one of the departments that falls under your remit is the u.k. borders agency which has been widely criticized recently in fact you have called it unfit for purpose following revelations that basically not just around one hundred twenty thousand asylum seekers in migrants what can be done about it well the needs to be a fundamental shift in the culture of the u.k.b.a. we have many citizens from all over the world some who want to come as students some who want to come and settle here some who want to come and invest in our country and the inefficiency of this organization is i'm afraid

a bit of an embarrassment to the government to the people of this country and they really got to get it right. take for example someone living in russia who wishes to come here and to study in our universities and i believe we have the finest universities in the world they take so long to process the cases that frankly people wonder whether or not they should study in the u.k. so this is doing us real damage it's damage to our economy damage to our reputation and frankly it causes a lot of frustration to local people and there's another side to that question though even on the one side we have people that we want to come that essentially can't come and on the other side those people that we don't want to come the basically wandering around and nobody knows where they are and they're possibly quite understandable well the mayor of london puts this figure at half a million people working in the so-called black economy not paying their taxes or their national insurance but basically continuing and surviving to do the work that

they're doing and it's just not acceptable and i hope very much that we. can take effective action to try and give people the opportunity to be able to remain in this country in a way that is. productive people who come here and therefore they're able to to deal with matters in the way in which. can be seen to be fair the moment it's not fair you have people waiting in queues at the moment the backlog is the size of iceland three hundred thousand people and yesterday we heard that there were fifty thousand cases that had not even been put on the computer that will have an effect on national security they went if we got lots of people wandering around potentially illegal immigrants and the u.k. ports agency doesn't know where they are of course and that's a real concern we need to know who enters our country and screen them properly and

then make decisions as to what they should be doing among those genuine asylum seekers are afghan translators who worked for the u.k. and the u.s. army's and now find themselves under threat at home that bringing legal action we've heard recently to get the deal that a rocky translators got which was legal assistance and financial assistance to stay in this country why didn't the afghan translators get that automatically that's the question i put to the defense secretary i have a particular constituent mohamed hotel back who's taken years to get asylum has now got his leave to remain but is now waiting to be joined by his wife and two children and there are many others in exactly the same situation what i have said is the afghani interpreters ought to be given the same deal as the iraqi interpreters because they both helped our government and helped those in their fight against the taliban is there an appetite do you think for giving afghan translators the same deal i think the government will have to give way but all this

time though they're living under threat. they certainly are what message do you think it sends to the afghans and indeed other nationals that we might want to help us in the future i think it's a bad message and we need to improve the way in which we deal with those from outside. and i hope that we can do it in a way that is acceptable to those who help and serve our country and it's a bad message and we need to make sure that it's improved i think at the end of the day the british government will do it but it's just taken such a long time increasing numbers of people in this country are concerned about mass immigration what methods do you think the mess inside the u.k. boards agency sense to them what it doesn't have an effect on the illegals because they're here does have an effect on public opinion and i think people don't want people going to this country to create jobs and create wealth they resent people coming here just for example to go on benefits and that sometimes use against those

who are genuinely here as members of the immigrant community but it's not possible at the moment right to distinguish between those two groups that's right it isn't possible to signal and that is exactly what we need to do we need to distinguish and we need to make sure that this is done in a positive and constructive way in a borders agency move it seemed like a good idea at the time universities were recently denied the right to issue visas to foreign students you object to that why one university had its sponsor license suspended and in my view that was wrong. to rick respectively stop people here genuinely if the university has done something wrong then they want to be published not genuine students i think the government's got the message on this and will make sure that in future that they don't just suspend and put people in this limbo situation so basically your objection is that it was done retrospectively but it is done respectfully because anyone who studies there. they

couldn't study that they were going judicially reviewed and they now recognise that people need to be able to find somewhere else to study. that the period the time that it was announced was the wrong time it was the start of term and no other universities were able to cope at the start of term as one can imagine so they could have chosen a better time so this is really the same issue that we're talking about with the u.k. borders agency as a whole it's a general issue with the u.k. border agency which really does need to be resolved is something being done to resolve this well we heard from the minister and he seemed to be very keen sort of like a very hands on minister he wants to make things change and let's see whether he's able to do so what's your ideal scenario well ideally anyone who wants to come and study here genuinely and attend university here at the university wants them and they qualify to come here they ought to be allowed to come there are currently they

want their smaller universities and language schools they do have the right to issue visas and they're the ones that are taking in these students who turn up to lectures on the first day of term and then are never seen again well those people of course need to be reported it's wrong that they should not be reported my hope it will be this is quite far reaching for universities there isn't it because if they can't get money from foreign students and as we've heard recently applications from u.k. students are down this year whereas the funding going to come from and that's the problem if you take away overseas students and you cut government grants to universities then frankly. the institutions will be under severe threat and they may not be able to continue this will presumably have an effect on what you were talking about earlier british universities being some of the best in the world absolutely are we looking then at a brain drain well we're looking at britain no longer retaining its preeminence as

the education capital of the world and i want to make sure the happens and the universities want to make sure that happens unfortunately visa regime works against us terror suspect abu qatada is still here in the u.k. despite the home office's attempts to get rid of him the case now looks like it could carry on for years what went wrong will there is two ways in which this could have been done quicker first of all of fast track system through the european court for those who are suspected of terrorism therefore you don't wait years and years secondly the jordanian criminal code beads to be changed not just assurances good mode jordanian government but the criminal code needs to be changed and if the criminal code is changed then there will be a difference and the courts will allow him to go but neither of these things right is under the control of the government of this country no but king abdullah was here and as i said to the home secretary we need to make sure that he does that

make make those changes are we right to let the european court make those kinds of decisions for us who signed up the european convention of human rights were a country that abides by the rule of law and therefore we need to follow what the european court has said that doesn't mean that the court can't be modernized to make more maybe more efficient is it time now in the light of the abu qatada case and others to examine that again it certainly is and i hope that we can persuade the ministers to do that it's now emerged that taxpayers have paid half a million pounds towards i will qatar has legal aid fees can you comment on that. but it's a huge amount of money after million pounds is a huge amount of money for the taxpayer but also they have he had assets of two hundred seventeen thousand which they've seized so in a real sense they should use those assets against the money that has been paid by the taxpayer but then costs are mounting all the time. we were told the cost of

surveillance but it must be pretty high let's move on the home affairs select committee led an investigation into phone hacking what's your take on the results of the leveson inquiry into press regulation i support it i think it's a great inquiry i support every single word of the levels of inquiry should be implemented in full i heard that you recommended that the report should be swallowed whole but what does statutory underpinning actually mean nobody knows i think we just have to go through the process. well what lord justice levinson means is we need to have a statute that forms the basis of the rate self-regulation that the newspapers are going to do to themselves and. it needs a bill and that's. the bill and that building to come out of the government then we can comment on it and then we get amended some of said like nick clegg the deputy

prime minister we should have a role for the press as we have for the b.b.c. but we need to see what what's going to happen i think the board calls media a very good at keeping within the law thank you very much.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. is power was the envy of ambrose. he had good reason to trust no one. his body was found on the floor of this huge empty house. but did he die of natural causes. the mystery of stalin still want to see. both. her

mother lived up to. the speed. of her. wish. him luck good. luck. just see. in him a. little known problem and a little. wealthy british science some time back.

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