towering inferno almost all the floors of the tallest building in chechnya's capital grozny turned into ashes by a massive blaze. the heaviest exchange of rocket attacks following the ongoing palestinian prison riots and street clashes over the death of a former hamas member in israeli custody. the war of words soars on the korean peninsula with many south koreans fearing conflict as pyongyang suspends access to a crucial industrial zone jointly run with seoul. with the presidential race now underway in venezuela we take a look at whether any of the main candidates could fill the shoes of the late. top stories this hour.

live from the new center here in moscow this is r.t. with you twenty four hours a day a fire is raging in the tallest skyscraper in the chechen capital grozny more details now from our correspondent lindsey france. around six pm local time reports came in that a large fire has started around the thirtieth floor of the one hundred forty five meter tall olympus building now that is a part of the cross in the center complex that was just completed in two thousand and eleven the luxury hotel and apartment building now this building contains the largest clock to sit on top of the building and the entire world helicopter from neighboring areas is being flown in to battle the flames for the top of the building because local fire brigades are unable to reach those floors now according

to local police everyone had been evacuated from the building before any injuries could occur and so at this point no injuries are reported in this incident whatsoever and the cause of the fire is still under investigation i had a criminal investigation has actually been opened to see whether or not fire safety rules have been violated now this entire complex cost around two hundred fifty million dollars to build and it actually contains the apartment that a french actor gerard depardieu received as a gift for a chechen leader runs on cut off just a short time ago so at this point we do not know the cause of the fire no reported injuries at this point there are more than three hundred people on the ground there fighting the fire and keeping an eye on the situation we will also be keeping an eye on it to bring you any details as the situation unfolds. reporting that tensions are once again flared up on the border between israel and gaza as well as

in the west bank palestinian militants rocket attacks on tuesday and early this morning with israel returning to the susan street clashes with the death of a former hamas member in israeli custody. the details over the past forty eight hours there has been increasing auscultation in in the mood all over the all over the western and of course in gaza of course we should start with that that's where fire took place between the palestinians and israeli armed forces. reportedly shot several mortars into the israeli territory israel retaliated with an air raid the first the first such raid since november since november so this cease fire and then and then palestinians from the gaza strip. have sent several more rockets into israel we don't know about any we haven't heard about any damages or injuries or deaths because of the fire teams but. remain so that the tension is

running stream lehi the clashes continue they were specially raging today in hebron which is the hometown of. the. palestinian prisoner who died in this really wasn't appropriately treated according to his family he wasn't treated by medical by medical professionals until february of this year when he was finally told that he has terminal cancer and that he literally has days to live not leave a lot of people happy obviously they're going to continue with their struggle and we will see more protests in nearest future just february is thirty year old prisoner dying from a heart attack that caused a flurry of protests among palestinians palestinian prisoners themselves went on strike they went on a hunger strike in fact they have done so in this case two you have to understand there is. almost five thousand palestinians in israeli jails right now and palestinians during their protest continuously ask israeli officials to either

release those prisoners or at least treat them appropriately however it doesn't seem to be the case at least according to the palestinian authorities because as you as you see the palestinian prisoners keep dying like in this particular case it looks like there was no like no medical aid was given at an appropriate moment and this of course leaves palestinians incredibly frustrating and then of course there is the issue of these really occupation of several palestinian lands as well as the issue of settled settlements so obviously all of these issues just piled on top of one another and the mood obviously grows with every day. and palestinian journalist khaled who's in hebron which has seen some of the worst clashes over the past two days explains why the people on the streets are refusing to calm down. a state of widespread anger and diggnation over the. what many people here.

pretty mediated by israelis palestinians think. that there. was a direct result will be really criminal negligence as well as moral powerlessness this is the second thing. to die in israeli jails less than sixty days so it is rarely is cannot be given the benefit of the doubt at all potential for. all out confrontation with israel. it's always there but i don't think. hamas in particular is eager to escalate the situation. this time at least everyone expects both sides to maintain. self-restraint and we hope that the situation will not.

all out confrontation in gaza. north korea has bolted workers from the self from entering a jointly operated factory zone it's pyongyang's latest move in the conflict between the neighboring states which has been simmering in recent weeks the key song industrial park has been one of the few successful efforts of reconciliation between the two koreas from which the economies of both countries benefit south korea based journalist joseph kim has more. south korean president is newly elected north korea doesn't want to test her limits and perhaps she's willing to change her policies towards north korea and the game's main objective is actually to start a dialogue with the u.s. with north korea's recent. what the u.s. calls provocations it's actually been easier for the united states to convince its military back into the studio something that the pentagon has said that it was wanting to do to rebalance back into east asia so because of this we've seen

a larger increased presence of military expansion by the u.s. into east asia during these early one drills something that we haven't seen before we're seeing a lot of money spent despite the eighty five billion dollars budget cut that the u.s. is currently going through these threats from north korea or what people say are perceived threats have actually become common and lending to many people in south korea but this time around the rhetoric has actually gotten a lot harsher so many south koreans are actually getting more of an eerie feeling on what this might turn out to be i don't feel a direct threat but i'm getting a little anxious sense can't even the south korean government is taking a coup worse this time so it feels like it is getting closer when the u.s. is more forceful it has a less positive effect from the perspective of a south korean citizen i feel anxious and it doesn't feel like protection. of an

enemy first of all it's not the first time north korea has issued threats so to us we don't feel the threats we don't perceive them to be dangerous but it seems there are a lot of things happening inside kim regime it seems that the u.s. is doing those things to make correct evaluation on king john so that the nuclear problem doesn't see it and i'm putting stress with south korea with the joint military drills but i don't think it is really helping in terms of into korean peace to the. well let's just recap the events that have been developing on the korean peninsula of late young yang announced plans to revive a nuclear reactor has been shut down for six years it previously said that all of its missile systems have been mobilized and on high alert and the north also declared itself to be in a state of war with its southern neighbor washington has been taking more sonot steps by upping its military presence in the area its navy sent a second guided missile destroyer to the korean peninsula monday that's off the

u.s. stealth will planes arrived in the region following the deployment of nuclear capable b. fifty two long range moments well gregory and it she's on the advisory board of the korea policy institute he believes there are hidden motives behind washington's moves united states hundreds bases throughout the middle of it throughout the world . if north korea collapses united states stablished military bases right on the border with china and then circle mind of that nation. also consider middle deposits and north korea which would be used for exploitation by u.s. corporations and united states. has never tolerated a country that won't criticize economy of the service of a foreign corporation they want to know that about north korea knows that if they are of course diplomatically going to go this year but if they're threatened or only respond with firmness so you were kind of a feedback loop where your bottom instructions come and cut off on

a door stations were never at work and nothing since since the last several years obama is following a policy of what he called strategic patience which is enough to act a slow strangulation of north korea through sanctions and economic measures in the hope that all collapse at some point in time. coming up in the program this hour here on r t with open all means the u.n. adopts a treaty aimed to control the exports of conventional weapons hoping to advance humanitarian concerns but critics say it's phrasing leaves too much room for interpretation. plus a daring taliban attack claims dozens of lives in afghanistan just a day after president karzai offered the militants a chance to enter politics that and plenty more for you after this break stay with us.

for about international airport in the very heart of moscow. continue. here in r.t. the race for the top job is kicked off in venezuela as the country's acting president nicolas maduro prepares to take on his main opposition rival and he kept pretty low is both are going to replace the country's late charismatic president hugo chavez who died last month following a long battle with cancer with the former confident and visit needed to chavez is looking to continue in the footsteps of his predecessor the central state governor has failed to deliver a free market economy and strengthen ties with the west including. dr francisco he's head of latin american studies at middlesex university and he says

despite the good intentions the chances of completely securing the top jobs as. nicolas maduro has demonstrated to be a formidable communicate so easy person the several to use in body language he used the masses very well he conveys a good message this is very good very astute politically and i think he's doing very well that's why he's leading in the polls is gaining if you like from the spontaneous outpouring of grief or for chavez is he capitalizing for want of a better word on the grief. oh i'm sure there is a lot of sentiment about it i mean now that chavez was a figure of haters in the international media now the population in venezuela realize how much he was loved was two million actually that came out in the streets to be a bit him fair world i think possibly was the biggest demonstration in the history

of the country and any candidate whoever they are would be foolish not to use it however the key point is that i think is the message people are saying you know the mother is saying to them do you want the continuation of what you had with him for forty years improving it perfect a need or do you want to go back to the bottle days of the public which the british represent and the message in that sense is very clear last model isis is reading between ten to forty percent in the polls. when police are unfit to protect women from abuse in india technology comes to the rest you can find out on our website at the moment engineers have come up with their answer to sex crimes and that is a great this is sapping police alerting brar. almost seven decades after the end of world war two its legacy still towards berlin and you can learn about the latest alert at the german capitals central railway station at r.t. dot com. the united nations has adopted its first ever treaty designed to

control the global trade in conventional weapons the act was already dubbed historic although the document has no inforced meant mechanism so let's take a closer look at what is a means to achieve the treaty bans countries from exporting arms to embargoed states or weapons to those who could use them to carry out war crimes or acts of terrorism the document also requires states to prevent conventional arms reaching the black market the un chief said that the document will become a powerful new tool to help prevent human rights abuses in some states point out that the deal is ambiguous and lacking clarity or he's got a church can report what it means for the world's major arms exporters. the us accounts for thirty percent of global arms sales russia twenty six percent germany friends china seven six five percent respectively the figures are provided by the stockholm international peace research institute they cover the last four years of

arm sales by the way this global. is worth around seventy billion dollars and four out of five of the world's largest stakeholders in this business happen to be permanent members of the un security council two out of which abstained from the vote that is russia and china they cite a lack of clarity in the language of the treaty in the part where it says arms transfers should be subjected to risk and human rights assessments first so it's a. arms sales to the buyers record on human rights which sounds like a very good idea but then this raises all kinds of questions like do brain or saudi arabia have a perfect human rights record so the treaty leaves lots of room for all kinds of interpretations russia being actually supportive of the effort to regulate arms sales says it abstained from voting for the treaty also because it has not been arms sales to non-state actors. despite the calls of

a number of states it was not reflected using the ban of the supply of weapons to north ryde state and this is a significant shortcoming. in that because of the effectiveness of the international arms trade treaty. even though the united states supported the treaty at the way congress has made it clear that they will not let anyone tell the us who to sell arms to so it would be like the kyoto protocol the one that's obligations on industrialized countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases the u.s. also signed it and yet never ratified it gun manufacturers like lockheed martin or a northrop grumman have an origami of lobbyists on capitol hill to make sure that their ability to sell weapons and profit is not constrained in any way but then thomas countryman the assistant secretary of state at the american delegation to the talks defended the treaty saying it will actually give american weapons manufacturers a better competitive competitive position in the world so maybe the u.s.

government is actually trying to help its gun producers by supporting the treaty anyway the international community seems united on one thing and that is something has to be done about the unabated flow of arms in the world but as they say the devil is in the details in washington i'm going to check out. the taliban has claimed responsibility for attacking government offices in western afghanistan at least forty four people have reportedly been killed a more than ninety wounded you. in the time of its the deadliest attack in the country for more than a year the latest violence comes despite attempts by kabul to appease the militants the afghan president has said the taliban could be given the chance to enter politics and even contest the country's top post according to the taliban leader may run for the presidency in next year's elections but only if the militants renounce terrorism and to two parties you see coming over who's reported from afghanistan believes the cause is just playing politics while he's closeness to the

west makes him a lame duck president. he's made this point numerous times before calling for the taliban to participate in elections is that stand is so open and democratic that even will omar working to disarm essentially going to run for office of course the reality is that this is a complete political nonstarter because the taliban have been very clear in their position they do not see the karzai government as being legitimate they have openly called it as a puppet of the united states they refused to hold any sort of negotiations much less the constitution as legitimate or offer any sort of candidate so again this is just sort of wishful thinking perhaps or rather a rhetorical remark by president hamid karzai than any sort of reality on the ground because the taliban has refused to negotiate with him there really isn't very much that cars i can do in the situation for the taliban the number one position is this actively to remove all foreign troops from the ground in afghanistan in order to do that why negotiate with the so-called puppet government

when we can talk to the occupiers themselves but there's divisions within the taliban as well do they actually hold negotiations or do they fight until the occupiers if the u.s. forces leave the country there's also divisions within the obama administration about this because while this war has been encouraged probably costly to the united states and the taliban has long been an enemy for the u.s. many factions in the administration see the political solution as the only possible sort of way forward i mean it's. it's been more than clear that military might isn't enough to eradicate the taliban so somehow talks have to take place but at the end of the day i don't think anyone actually relisted expects peace with the taliban anytime in the next few years for sure when i was in afghanistan most of the afghans that i've spoken to have seen this deadline with the looming trepidation in fact they think that once the americans draw down and there's no indication the americans will fully withdraw from the country but of course that will leave a massive power vacuum there is the potential for the country to descend into civil

war and it also really remains to be seen what happens with the elections in two thousand and fourteen because again if the country doesn't isn't seen as sort of having a legitimate. nonna corrupt elections it really could spark much much much further unrest than we've seen so far as the british government champions for further sturdy schools of families across the nation is struggling to put food on the table meanwhile supermarkets and restaurants are throwing perfectly edible products away already pretty boy has more plums so that's again going to be good going into the deserts. down here we've got. lots of. speed. again. goods and absolutely free daniel volunteers at the people's kitchen it's an eco conscious collective in east london and their aim to save food that would have been thrown away by shops and markets at the end of

a day's trading today daniel and chef tom are preparing to wow two hundred dinah's with a feast made from discarded food as a chef of simply being wise to every restaurant in. the supermarket even larger scale at these big markets so the food that we're taking is not good enough to so to get to throw away it's kind of agree there's a forgotten nobody's really doing anything about it in the western world and it's just sad really that nobody has respect for the food it's just kind of ok to get someone to run those people starving not just in the other countries where this food came from. in this country one in five of the u.k. population lives below the poverty line but there's a dramatic discrepancy the rest of the population spends an average of just eleven percent of its budget on food to the institute of mechanical engineers says that that's fueling a tragic throwaway culture with four point four million tonnes of food. avoidably

each year in this fridge. it's ridiculous you know loads of reasons you can see. these are just perfectly good maybe one or two bad ones really a matter of sorting them having someone to sort them so this is a huge scale the fact that someone managed to salvage for their kitchen is likely to end up here phil in fact over ten billion pounds worth of food is thrown away in the u.k. each year that's a colossal amount of waste to such a tiny island and before fruit and vege even hits the shelves up to three quarters of it is discarded by farmers just not looking good enough. at the moment we pay supermarkets and other food businesses to trash the planet to grow food and waste a third of it we need to make a demand as consumers they change their behavior as well when we go to a supermarkets and see that all the carrots straight and all the apples look the

same we need to say. why do all those fruits and vegetables look the same what did the supermarket do with all the demand actually they stock fruit and vegetables as they grow in a huge variety of uniformity the competitive supermarkets don't help by tempting customers to. consumers alert into buying excessive quantities of food up to half of which ends up in the bin or spent many years visiting the skips of supermarkets and literally you open up a skip and what you see is a ray of perfectly fresh good vegetables and fruit and other foods that have been thrown away and most people think gosh how disgusting to get food. it's true it is disgusting but what's disgusting is that with throwing away the consumption food and every link in the supply chain continues to a perfect project. dan can keep proving that finale there really is such

a thing as a free lunch. he east london. without charge and starving for just. being engaged in a desperate act of defiance for nearly two months and risk to their health is growing rapidly but u.s. officials continue to downplay the scale of the crisis. clash on this issue later on. so these individuals that thomas keeps wanting described as innocent based upon the obama administration's review have had the opportunity to go in front of a federal judge and get an order requiring their release and failed to do so so suggesting that the court has concluded there is a legal basis to hold them so i think thomas overstates his case and then with respect to what charles is saying you know if you're trying that so now because i tried not to engage in a little spanish i don't want to engage in or if you are a lawyer or you a lawyer a little level i think that i think let me finish please i don't want to get in this question as

a political matter but i think it's going to be very difficult for any president whether it's obama or bush or republicans or democrats in congress to want to expend political capital on a politically unfavorable call it is that i have to do it justice what does that have to do is just what does that have to do with justice is half what does it have to do it just exactly thomas go ahead yes it's tough but you do it it's tough but you do it you do the right thing by the way i don't know whether you know it but i'm the guy who won the right behavior as corpus for those people and if you really know what it's a very thin review of the most any evidence that the government has could you could justify their holding it under hey b.s. that's why the administration did a thorough detailed review for each individual to see whether they really posed a threat and it concluded they don't and they should be released. and you can see the crosstalk debate in full in the next year on. what you've seen

the footage on this very channel another going online the newest member of the r.t. family the video agency ruptly is now working at full speed and you can find that brand new web site at roughly dots t.v. it's designed to give the world's media access to stories and perspectives mainstream news providers ignore the project kicked off less than a year ago but it's already creating waves in the news making world. providing real time and archive footage from a world wide net for the string its police headquarters in operating twenty four seven with state of the art technology so do go online and get involved with the new generation of video news content raptly to be. well now time for business with katie and his she is in studio with this she said the situation in cyprus is helping the popularity all of us saw coin just as a bit bizarre it's called the bit coy and it's because investors want some west

side to talk their money but we're going to be questioning is it safe what is it that's what we're going to be coming up after the break in business well great thanks a lot. credit free. free. free. free. free. old free blog video for your media project free media. technology innovation all the developments from around russia we. covered.