this is r t tonight career on a collision course the u.n. says the crisis has gone too far as the north fires up an old nuclear site while america's military edges closer to the peninsula. spray coated israeli jails followed by street marches and clashes over the death of a palestinian prisoner who is allegedly refused lifesaving cancer treatment. environmentalists and the alarm over america's outdated oil pipeline network on the industry's future project as narcan sought recovers from tons of crude that was spilled onto its streets. and from standing up for free speech to running for office wiki leaks editor julie the sun sets his eyes on joining us trailing as parliament now his campaign director tells r t what the whistleblowers got in mind .

for a good evening kevin zero in here at r t tonight just after ten pm now on our top story this hour the u.n. says north korea's on a collision course with the world community with its recurrent threats against it said the neighbor and the u.s. pyongyang declared a state of war with the south and vowed to restart its main nuclear reactor in response to u.n. sanctions meanwhile the u.s. has moved its military hardware closer to the north coast including a warship in a sea based radar platform south korea says it will retaliate if it's attacked seoul based correspondent joseph kim believes that america's geopolitics in the region is firing up pyongyang is rhetoric. in terms of people in the capital in seoul there's not much reaction and much alarm as these threats and the rhetoric from north korea has been continuous throughout the years we've seen an annual

drills with south korea and the us that north korea has continuously condemned and denounced them but the u.s. and south korea continually do these drills so we can see that a lot of these rhetoric these harsh rhetoric that are coming out of north korea in pyongyang are in response to these these military exercises as we mentioned a warship has come on the korean coast and now north korea has said that it will restart its grant nuclear reactor so we see that a lot of what the threats that are coming out of counting are in reaction to the actions of the u.s. and south korea there is a lot of media hype in terms of western media with what north korea is currently doing right now and we have to actually see this as something that the u.s. perhaps is maybe thinking about in terms of their rebalance and to east asia they are technically trying to get back into east asia to be able to counter china and

its growing powers in terms of the economy and why not use north korea north korea is a threat in what it says is a threat and so they are using this opportunity to be able to rebalance his military as well as his presence here to be able to continuously monitor and gain more influence in the region that they have to buy months a spoke to a t's alexy or jet ski was one of the few foreign journalists have actually been able to report from north korea. to be honest with you i haven't had a chance to talk to many ordinary people six years ago when i was there in north korea but i don't think the situation has changed i talk to the officials there and i didn't hear a single negative word towards south korea i got the feeling that this was more about north korea versus the west and the us rather than being against the neighbors. and i was and i thought back then i still stand by that by this thought that this conflict between the two koreas is more about something inspired from

abroad rather than being an internal issue between the people of the two green of the two koreas i mean they're very close they used to be one country they used to be one empire they are divided politically by the thirtieth barrel they're not divided by any other way so i don't think there actually is so much as hostile as everyone wants them to believe what you know impression on north korea's kim mean he he's come people have said he's coming to change the if they are really going to do things already changing you know we saw google officials in pyongyang unthinkable just five six years ago we saw dennis rodman i mean it's just maybe just a show but still he wants to show that he wants to be more open than his dad and he's pretty says he's grand was also a power he recently said he likes american computers mad computers he likes pop culture he seems pretty in touch with what's going on right now you know what when you when i like is clearly the man in his mid thirty's he's interested in everything happening in the world in particular the technologies he said that the country needs to embrace the technology north korea already has internet north

korea doesn't. confiscate cell phones from foreigners at the port like they used to do before this is a major change to what used to be for the question is whether kim jong un will be the man to reunite careers and not to go to a full hour. let's talk about that a little bit that rhetoric this harsh rhetoric that's been going back and forth between the two koreas how likely is going to come out of that if you ask me i don't believe anything will happen. and anything bad will happen any war there might be some tension there might be some border clashes nothing more than that as long as china plays such important role in the region china is basically dictating what happens there and what doesn't happen there it's quite strange to see that the us doesn't want china to become the sole and the most important to go see it to between the two koreas because china doesn't want this war it would damage its infrastructure china is already involved in many economic projects with the south korea so as long as china is there there will be no war and china's position on

that has been firm and strong there will be no war. roy it's a broken out in several israeli prisons over the death of palestinian inmate. there was no life sentence in the throat comes from a studio official say israel refused to give him vital treatment but it's really. early release but it was already too late. the story he started feeling ill last summer and he has asked the authorities for check ups but they basically have done those check ups but never told him exactly what was happening and even though the man was obviously mousy that he lost more than fifteen kilos in less than two months they still kept him in the dark as well as his family until they told him just in march of this year that he had terminal cancer and literally had to live so the minister for prison affairs of the palestinian authority has already said that israeli actions in this instance are heinous because. the prisoner did not receive

timely medical help and he also called for an international investigation into the death of up to him via now of course this is something that left a lot of palestinians incredibly angry in fact we do know at this point that in several israeli jails palestinian prisoners already staging. actions of protests there are throwing things around and burying on their cell doors because this is not the first time that something like this has happened just in february another palestinian inmate just thirty years old died of an apparent heart attack was in jail since two thousand and two he was in prison on charges of conspiring with hamas terrorists and he was sentenced to ninety nine years in prison and i was really fishel say that they have sent an appeal for the for the early release of due to his ailing health but unfortunately he died before that appeal could be processed by the israeli officials. a correspondent there was a sort of a dearth of over the years also led to street clashes with police in various

palestinian areas from says who runs a palestinian n.g.o.s that supports the prisoners' rights says people are enraged because israeli actions go against international law i think the issue here is the policy that is used against the palestinian political prisoners in systematic way actually and this is the health neglect and i wasn't complaining just in the last two months or three months he was complaining about different symptoms and illness since two thousand and seven actually and the delay in doing analysis and checks and they are going no stick for his second is. his this day and this is what we are claiming that is really prison system actually the whole policy of the health treatment in the prison service is lacking properly the correct treatment it doesn't matter what he was convicted with the fact that he was trailed and imprisoned he deserved to be treated properly according to the international

standards of the treatment of prisoners that any prisoner should get inside any prison actually and is royal is the signature he took these international conventions and international treatments actually should offer these standards in their prison so i think the solidarity is with the fact that the sick prisoner was into getting proper treatment in. environmental damage from the massive oil spill in the arkansas or turn it's becoming clearer tonight there's clear perfect skin to new residential it was swarmed news with thousands of barrels of crude when our pipeline burst last friday dozens of homes of the be evacuated more details now than from janet if you can. exxon mobil is naturally trying to downplay environmental concerns they're not saying exactly how much oil spilled onto the streets of that neighborhood in arkansas but the company says it has

already collected more than twelve thousand barrels of oil mixed with water from the affected area not clear how much of it was water though twenty three homes were evacuated there as they're still cleaning up a pipeline that was carrying canadian heavy crude to the south of the u.s. this is the country's gulf coast refineries this latest spill response from critics of the proposed keystone x.l. pipeline he's known x.l. pipeline would carry eight hundred thousand barrels per day just to compare the pipe that leaked in arkansas can carry around ninety thousand barrels a day so the consequences of a leak could be devastating the keystone pipeline would also carry canadian heavy crudes to u.s. refineries in the south the project doesn't have the final green light from the administration just yet but the oil giant's involved are pushing the administration very hard to go ahead with it saying it will bring down fuel costs in the u.s. trans canada is first keystone line in the deal was spilled the a dozen times just in its first year of operation the company of course says the

new keystone x.l. will be so much better but people know from experience how devastating consequences of an oil spill can be and how hard it is to clean up this is certainly not the first incident of course everyone remembers the disaster in the gulf of mexico in twenty ten when after an explosion and he had been leaking oil on the ocean floor for several months before the well was capped an estimated four point nine million barrels of oil had leaked into the gulf day three years later the call is still not free in july two thousand and ten a pipeline by church speak more than twenty thousand barrels of canadian tar sands crude oil into the michigan waterway so this happens all the time just last week the government suggested exxon. mobil paid a fine of one point seven million dollars over pipeline safety violations and that was for an oil spill two years the coal in the yellowstone river in montana exxon

has a month to contest the violations many believe that the oil giants get away with violations like that all too often in the west and all it takes is a team of really good lawyers to do that which the companies certainly have and that at the end of the day it's the people affected will pick up the slack in washington on teletext. so there seems to be there's no well this accident reignited the debate over the use of decades old pipelines to transport increasingly large amounts of crude oil across north america let's take a look then show at the continents oil transit infrastructure there it is more than half of america's all roads were built in the one nine hundred fifty s. and sixty's according to the u.s. department of transportation some including the pegasus pipeline the one that caused the trouble in arkansas now were actually constructed before that billions of dollars worth of all flows through these pipelines every year and then twenty eleven five of the industry's giants exxon mobil will roll that shell b.p. conoco phillips and chevron had

a combined revenue of nearly two trillion dollars congress is their turnover is equal actually to more than ten percent of u.s. g.d.p. but despite those huge profits the government of corporations appeared to be cutting corners when it comes to repairing and renewing infrastructure environmental consultant richard steiner says the r. console pipeline has been long past is used by date for a while take a listen. there's no excuse whatsoever for oil pipelines to be anything over thirty years old or general design life is maybe twenty to thirty years there's been several spills about six or seven of this heavy deluded bit timid it's called bill bit which is the tar sand oil which is so thick it can't be transported through a pipeline unless it's cut with condensate and benzene exxon has shown time and time again that they are not willing to accept responsibility legitimate financial responsibility for their actions however negligent they are they got out of the

alaska spill with you know about a billion dollars paid to private thirty thousand private litigants and that should have been by many of their estimations much much more than that so they have a history of short changing responses. so the big question out there what should be done in the wake of what's happened in arkansas this latest accident r.t. dot com is the place to tell us what you think the question now then console spill what next ok majority of you here fifty two percent think that the u.s. government should be held accountable for what's gone wrong here slightly fewer two percent from last the second option twenty eight percent think it's going to more popular to this one that you believe the proposed keystone x.l. pipeline should be scrapped altogether fifteen percent think there should be compensation without getting rid of the controversial x.l. pipeline five percent think you should hold the project for now white for a bit and maybe not scrap it altogether though it should remain on the cards ok

thanks very much for that. but you can have your vote. on the way made in america we report on how a u.s. two plans to help the nation fight gun control regulations by crafting weapons at the comfort of their own home plus. the separate finance minister tendered his resignation while the country's busy finding the people responsible for the economic meltdown because of the blame game and just ahead on this channel.

with. technology innovation all the developments from around russia. the future covered.

internationally in the very heart of moscow. hello again the afghan president says the taliban could be given the chance to enter politics and he could test the country's top post according to how because of the taliban leader may run for the presidency in next year's elections but only if the militants renounce terrorism let's get reaction to this man to contribute afshin rattansi joins on the line from london how do you think the taliban is going to react to this offer than get that you beat that story as i could see the reach of your sound no worries i was going to say you know the story may be that the taliban that have been asked to run for governor next

year how the taliban going to react to that. it's not so much now the taliban really haven't because the american public may be thinking what was the point of this debris relatives of all those thousands dead they must be getting a very strange picture of afghanistan if the taliban under mullah omar is going to run afghanistan and janina jolie selling of jewelry for girls schools and the whole of afghanistan is going to go back to how it was the taliban i suppose will be reacting silently and quietly they try to keep a low profile of getting billions of dollars from corrupt u.s. contractor contracts in afghanistan what's the incentive though for them to do this by the book because after the pullout maybe they could do it by force no well is it going to be a pullout of course lots of people are asking there hundred fifty thousand nato troops there now and already people are talking about fifteen thousand remaining on

five different bases and actually even the russian military may have bases there the main angle on the story is that the very idea that after ten since nine eleven the idea that the taliban could one day be in power presumably horrified americans which is probably why our because i said i brazil there was some joke element to it and a very dark joke what about the afghanistan people themselves how they react to it is it what it is it's something they would welcome i don't think they will be very welcome because. from what i know about afghanistan is that certainly in the cities they wouldn't be supportive i suppose the continuous drone attacks and the atrocities committed by u.s. and nato and i said troops of course do catalyze pro taliban support.

but still keep going up but what still keep me going after eleven years of nato occupation the taliban is still going strong indeed there's been a resurgence again lately what's foreign and what's keeping you going it was only in the past week or so that he u.s. commando unit were thrown out of new york province after allegations of complicity in kidnapping torture and summary executing people in the province because i told the americans they better get out and of course those kinds of atrocities around them and support on the flip side of that question why is nato therefore done so badly over the last eleven years to step in the taliban. the fact the guy as i said this is emblematic of the total mess that has been made and we mustn't forget the taliban were in texas in nine hundred ninety seven a few years before nine eleven talking about a cask oil pipeline deal so perhaps the americans are in there too because that would cause a feels some of the greed of american support certainly washington's wink of

annoyed that the taliban have a office in qatar it's all ok afshin things he thought and i should return as they are contributor thank you. but he looks at it julian assange might be holed up in an embassy in london but that's not stopping him from running for election in his home country australia has appointed a high profile political campaigner to spearhead his bid for a seat in the australian senate as such just spent the last nine months confined to the ecuadorian embassy in britain where he's avoiding extradition to sweden for questioning over sex crime allegations if his absentee election bid is successful he would be sworn in a senator in july twenty fourth thing but what after ten to camber of course to do that is campaigns by led by greg barnes a form a barrister and head of the astray and republican movement he told us the surge is working leads party into bring transparency to the government and insists that it has a realistic chance of victory. it certainly stands for in your strength which is effectively the house of review in your strident parliamentary system using that

more effectively to keep government honest about what it's doing and so not simply rubber stamping government policy using the senate as a house review to ensure that jack all of our little documentation in relation to policies tie between the parliament that we should be. appointments for my appointments to the government appointments of my that they scrutinize properly but also ensuring that we start to roll back some of the security measures that have been brought in in a strenuous you know question nine eleven environment where you've seen major inversions by the security services you wish to destroy into the lives of ordinary australians the. six senators who will be elected out of the curia one of the strikes destroyed or he's going to get full and point two nine percent of the version in order to get elected now with the preferential system which is of a party preference in julian a sandwich if he gets six to seven seat rule five he's going to get elected at the moment he's polling around about twenty five to twenty seven percent that is twenty

five to twenty seven percent of australians say they would vote for julian assange actually starting from a very high price which is going to come down a bit in the context of the campaign but it's a very good place to start. and off is enough well it seems to be a way for the cypriot finance minister mcallister as his hand in his notice after securing the ten billion euro bailout that will see savers in two major banks pay the bill the finger point exe far from over though is the island tries to establish who's to blame for the country's economic meltdown reports claim millions of euros have been pulled out of the country in recent weeks adjusting some were tipped off about the approaching crisis over one hundred thirty people in firms are under scrutiny for suspicious financial transactions among them of cold by the president's son in law or from all this subject let's talk live to claim chambers he's a financial journalist also runs a stock market analysis website other claire moodie thinks responsible for the meltdown then first of all. well i mean i think if you look at all the countries in

europe and that for that matter america and even japan they've all been playing the same game especially in europe and america which is you get a property boom the government taxes the property boom they then spend the money they get a huge deficit the credit boom collapses the property boom collapses they go bust so it's the same pattern all over europe and america so you can say this is just generally speaking the political machine that has been driving credit bubbles and property bubbles so that they can touch tax a future and that's come unstuck all over the world and cyprus is just one of a number of a long line of that so you can say that pretty much nobody particular to cyprus is is responsible although you could say that time is the european system that is responsible for the cyprus banking system though isn't it and so brazil's banking services reputation it kind of begs the question who's going to want to go there again in the near future well nobody want to going to go there again not for banking i mean i think that part of their business is dead it's the same stories

iceland iceland had the same thing they wanted to be a financial services strong point a kind of a banking haven almost and they were crushed you know they didn't really have the experience to do it sarkozy has done the same thing their banking in the harbor idea is dead no one's going to put their money in now they're not not for a generation so they're going to have to forget that twenty to thirty percent of g.d.p. that that country relies on that's gone. what about the bigger knock on effect to the wider e.u. do you think from this. well i mean the real trouble with i mean it's been a total farce is that anybody that comes under this sort of pressure going forward the first thing was going to happen is the retail say was going to run and they're going to be bank runs now much more likely than they've ever been before as a precedent has been set and you know the guys that set out say that he is a template and then of course they deny this not template i think we lose that it's

kind of kind of like a template but you know the president has been set up and then unless you've been hiding under a rock through in a country like savina for example or any of the other one of those countries that might get into a crisis you know might repeat a crisis it could be argued again people should be could be could be easily could be spain if a new crisis kicks off in any of those countries they're going to see what happened in cyprus and are going to pull their money and that you could put a percentage on it so i know the likelihood if you put a percentage on it how likely is it you think this is going to happen again soon somewhere in the you one hundred percent definitely hundred percent because the system is not addressing the underlying problem of all this which is deficits state deficits trade deficits the europe and america are bleeding to death and they're not doing anything about it they're not cutting back that they're not cutting back their deficits they're not cutting back their trade deficits so they

must go bust so unless they turn that around there's no sign they're going to then the dominoes must fall and at some point is going to be france of course france is kept out of the sights of this but at some point in the next two or three years france is going to come under this death ray and of course all hell is going to break loose course pro belo proponents are going to say these financial measures were essential to keep inside from bankruptcy and to stay in the eurozone when the country's recovered maybe ten twenty years hence as you say would history say it was all worth the hardship in the long term guess you're going to say not. well i mean. it's very hard to look out the long term without seeing the fact that the core problem of the whole euro crisis and the in due course the dollar crisis our huge state deficits sovereign deficits are growing out of control and balance of payment deficits we should again not been addressed even germany if you look at germany's sovereign debt to g.d.p.

it's at a level that used to make us south american countries bankrupt only four or five years ago so even germany which is held up as a power again it is almost a brink which is not necessarily going to get much better but you know germany holland the northern countries are in a better shape than the sock than the south and until they really get their arms around how they're going to get these sovereign deficits hundred control this problem is going to roll on roll on roll one day or beside prison another day it will be another day it will be france and to the actually get their finances in in order it can only slowly but surely get worse final twenty seconds for those poor cypriots lovely island the finance minister says it's not clear when the capital controls are going to be lifted a lot do you predict. well these things take a long time normally they say it's going to be next week next month but if you look at iceland they're still there so i wouldn't really imagine that all those capital

controls are going to go for maybe even years into the completely gone very good term view of the problems and i clench over financial journalist most dangerous thank you. now with a new set with a new set of a spending cuts force in order to stretch their perms as far as they can we take a look at the u.k.'s pretty pinching leadership ritualised labor we ask if the posh politicians really were in touch with the people they. tough business know to do them if you know it is no euro loss and we're talking you against annoyed and d.d.'s just dominate and just listen to n.z. just now and say and interestingly enough the markets are rising and one investor put it maybe the easter eggs sugar rush may not last until the end of the week so i will have analysis after the break haven't or i could see that.