ten children are reported killed as a nato missile slams into an afghan village with the war in the country dragging into a high stakes stalemate. israel's cyber attack a retaliation several of palestinian activists are reportedly arrested in response to a massive hacker assault on israeli websites launched in protest against the continuing occupation. a south korean official says pyongyang may be getting ready to carry out a fourth underground nuclear test as the korean peninsula balances on the edge of war. and deadly sectarian violence in egypt with religious minorities saying the embattled islamic government is unable to protect them.

from our studios in moscow this is. certainly glad to have you with us. at least ten children are reported to have been among eighteen people killed in the latest air strike by u.s. led forces in afghanistan the raid was allegedly called in by troops on the ground after bitter fighting nearby all part of that massive operations intended to temper a local taliban insurgency. is following the story for. ten children's are said to be among the eighteen killed in the natl strikes in afghanistan's konar prevents according to officials there reports say it all happened actually when and that two airstrike hits the home of a suspected taliban insurgents in a small village at the same time his family was inside taking shelter from the ingoing strikes after the house was hit

a local rushed to help and the were seen carrying. the bodies of children to spend other lives from the rubble the u.s. led coalition has gone beyond that it carried out the airstrikes on that area and in a statement about the spokes man for the forces acknowledge that they were aware of the reports that civilians had been killed also but as yet he could not come from the total dead duraid was apparently called in by an international troops in the vicinity a heavy fighting with the taliban insurgents me the pakistani border at the local government's officials confront another women and a civilian also died in that airstrike the u.s. led forces say they were carrying out

a major operations aimed against the senior taliban commander in that area operations began on friday after a tip of dozens of taliban fighters were concentrated in that area according to eyewitness nat'l strikes began in the early hours of the morning and then continued till late evening and number of fuel is true too. and the civilians visor working for them are also said to have been killed in the same operation. and history of such high casualties strikes have strongly polarized the afghan public leading to mass protests and a growth in support for the taliban artie's going to japan reports on how it has soured relations between the west and afghanistan these airstrikes come amid repeated pleas from the afghan government of president karzai to stop killing

civilians because in chorus eyes words they fuel insecurity and instability they further alienate afghans from their government which many afghans see as a puppet government so president karzai although he does owe his power to allied forces to washington specifically but he clearly understands that those civilian casualties steer more violence in afghanistan and undermine his government even further these are the types of attacks that infuriate the local population like the one in september last year nato killed eight women or in may a nato airstrike killed an afghan family including six children and two women earlier this year president karzai banned afghan forces from calling in airstrikes although his order appears to have been ignored by international forces now these attacks also undermines u.s. efforts to negotiate an agreement to stay in afghanistan past twenty four team although president karzai appears to be prepared to strike a deal he knows what kind of backlash it may have enough against them in order for

u.s. troops to stay they need immunity from prosecution under the afghan law and that's what they are good negotiating now the deadly strikes killing civilians certainly make it hard for the afghans to accept such a deal and allow foreign forces to further operate there with impunity david swanson peace activist and author of what war is a lie says the u.s. media unfortunately doesn't draw enough attention to similar attacks. even though the news articles about this strike which killed a greater number of people are dominated by paragraphs talking about another strike they killed americans and in particular one woman who was a state department employee who had met john kerry and the u.s. deficit of course are always smaller numbers but they dominate the coverage of americans are not aware of the extent to which this war is essentially a one sided slaughter of helpless people who meant us no ill and has been for over a decade the debate going on is how many u.s.

troops will stay beyond two thousand and fourteen but the idea that they should be staying until the end of two thousand and fourteen and that we should just accept that is sort of built into all the news coverage in the united states and it's actually rather outrageous because there's been no evidence put forward that there's any sort of progress or any sort of good being done on it sticking with the story you have been voting on our web site on what you think the consequences of the latest deadly strike will be let's take a look at what your reaction is at this point in time looking at the border right now almost half of you think that it will spark attacks from groups looking to hit back at coalition soldiers close behind at just forty two percent believe that the afghan president well will have to make forceful statements but little else will be done from his end about seven percent think of me because i was had will be forced and he will have to ban at nato air strikes he's already made some similar comments

but not actually full out banning them and then a small sliver there about five percent of you believe the date for nato troops will be brought forward for them to leave and that they'll be returning the united states much sooner than expected and of course you can head to our to dot com have your say and tell us what you think. reports are emerging of israeli and jordanian and police arresting activists in response to the massive cyber offensive by the hacker group anonymous the computer attackers have said their aim is to disrupt and erase israel from cyberspace in protest over its policies towards the palestinians artie's even a clue as more. the information is coming from a palestinian twitter account from the palestinian authority presidential advisor on the technology and communication who said that israel has retaliated to the day long how king attack on israel by arresting several palestinians and several of the west bank towns they have the attack on israel is going on for the entire day.

twenty eight meijer israeli sites have been down including the knesset's site out of the israeli parliament which we are hearing is still also the activists are saying that tens of thousands of israeli facebook and twitter accounts have been brought down as well as they tried to target the banking system as well as other major sites all of this of course is being done. by the had his group anonymous or or groups associated there with who are saying that this is their way of getting back at israel or buying limbs in the west bank and mistreatment of palestinians where there is an attack there's seems to be a response now at least their husband response from the israeli hackers who have issued a statement saying that whoever whoever is participating in the so-called all israel is weak and feeble minded and for every attack that they do is really have retail ever tell you doesn't fold but at the same time you have to understand that israel

is a rather powerful country and of course the officials long before the attack has actually taken place and it was well it was well advertised you may say they have said that they're fully prepared for this attack and they have their best specialists working on preventing it and yet we're looking at twenty major sites down we're still looking at thousands of israeli accounts which are being housed which kind of brings the question exactly what exactly is happening with the israeli specialist and just how powerful the the anonymous hackers really are. tracking this story are three managed to ask a middle east hacker about the aims of the cyber attack on israel's online presence this is what he had to say. i said. we are the sons of palestinian people and we feel the pressure of the israeli occupation not only in gaza but also in all the arab and muslim world and as the first retaliation we committed a fast and full scale attack on israeli web sites to warn israel and all its

supporters about the threat that hangs over them they have weapons and we have our own lives as a result of this attack we receive the names of those who cooperate with israel the aim of the attack was to show the world the true face of israel and its armed forces and we coped with our task we failed to fulfill by using force to resist but we succeeded through the cooperation of palestinians in the whole arab and muslim world and so now we make a clear warning to israel in the future be ready for a new larger surprise that. pyongyang is allegedly preparing to carry out a test a launch of a nuclear weapon according to a south korean government source at the same time a south korean national security official said its northern neighbor may be setting the stage for a missile test or another provocative act this comes after the united states delayed its own missile test to do two soaring tensions on the peninsula michel chossudovsky and director of the center for research on globalization says north

korea is just another country that has been pulled into u.s. war games. every single year the united states and south korea hold these walking aids and the wall gave this yet is a nuclear attack against against north korea i've been reviewing the nonobvious of walking and i could tell you that the pentagon identified the so-called axis of evil as the target them both korea loss of the percent of its population during the korean war and how on earth under those circumstances can this country be heralded as a threat to global security i see a way out of the stalemate america's allies and the american public and people across the land in western countries come to realize the united states and nato are frantic noble security and they wish to wage a preemptive nuclear wall on any country in the well that is a friend you know it's to go to war fare specialist on

a security and nuclear weapons dr jim walsh offered us his take on the risks and of the payoffs of america's engagement in korea the us is for sending a signal to the south koreans it's treaty ally saying we've got you back it's also intended to send a message to the north koreans hey we can reach out and touch you you know be careful what you wish for i do worry though that you know when all these moving pieces and plus all this new leadership a new leader in south korea new leader in north korea all this stuff going on someone could make a mistake and that could light a match that would lead to a conflict that no one actually wants to have the north koreans are crazy. they're not going to deliberately start a war but they are they try to stay just below that level of provocation will they react the way we want them to react i just don't know we don't know what's inside the minds of north koreans it's the most closed country in the world but when we brandish arms and do that we we are taking a risk that they will misunderstand that and respond in the wrong way. calls for

justice from prisoners that america's war on terror are being ignored as the. third month later in the program we. are still talking down the scale of the protests. also. flee their homes as a major pipeline. of oil. president vladimir putin addressed of the largest industrial fair in hanover germany as he arrived in the country on sunday for an official visit the russian leader will also be meeting with the german chancellor angela merkel with the role of the country's funds in debt hits as well as economic troubles up for debate peter oliver has the details for us. of lot of me of putin used the opening ceremony here at the hanover messy trade fair to really highlight why people should be doing business in russia

one of the main point i see he made was well rush's three point four percent growth rate in the g.d.p. in twenty twelve also the low levels of unemployment the secure amounts of currency and gold reserves that they have he did however point out some of the problems he was aware that russia had particularly when it comes to inflation inflation at six percent last year and russia worth pointing out that is the lowest it's been in twenty years lot of me and saying that the u.s. committed to getting inflation down as that was key in order to get businesses to invest in russia now. angela merkel the german chancellor also taking to the stage here she praised the cooperation that had gone on in the past between germany and russia or in terms of not just trade but also political cooperation on monday what we're going to see is the to me of putin in angola merkel visits

a memorial here in hanover to those who lost their lives in the fight against naziism during world war two they'll be laying a wreath there and then the two will be taking to the floor of the trade show and the message from putin was for mr putin was very clear he said russia is open for business and open for investment and he's peter all of our reporting for us there now on to egypt where the country is once again being gripped by protests and fighting one person has been killed and around sixty injured as violence erupted outside cairo's main cathedral that is following the funeral of four coptic christians killed in a sectarian standoff outside the capital on saturday following the unrest in cairo for us is journalist tom de. i spoke to one witness who said that events began when bottles were thrown from a nearby building down on to the funeral march and march as responded by attacking cars but what is clear is that fighting quickly escalated between the funeral

marches and locals the marchers retreated within the i would say a cathedral compound and after that security forces were involved in standing by whilst locals fired weapons into the cathedral there were five people killed in the source which is a town outside of cairo and sectarian writing four of those were christians and it was their funeral which was being held at the st mark's cathedral sectarian violence in egypt is nothing new it goes back decades so we have a combination of hardline religious activism and security forces by the standing by we're actually getting involved themselves many mourners and many others feel that the muslim brotherhood and freedom and justice party government is encouraging an exclusive religious identity the basis of what it means to be an egyptian so this is the second consecutive night and we've seen violence in cairo on saturday the

clashes resulted from a protest by the april sixth youth movement which was calling for a new more inclusive government and an opportunity to rewrite the constitution again on a more inclusive basis on saturday countries broke out when police attacked that demonstration sporting take us and rocks once again in downtown cairo. in the us a toxic swamp of oil has down the streets in a small arkansas town this week forcing dozens of residents to flee after an aging pipeline burst there are currently staying in hotels and it may not be able to return to their homes for any time soon and the locals have started to feel like victims as they say the company responsible for maintaining the pipeline did little to address their concerns one hundred forty residents in the town have filed lawsuits against exxon mobil worried the value of their homes has plunged local resident chris r.l. says the spill came as

a complete surprise. i got off work early and was headed back to my home and a police officer at the entrance to the neighborhood not allowing anybody in and i asked why he said the issue was there was no oil spill in the area and i told him my family and my wife and children at the home so he let me in were a little town to pack them up and get them on the road in and the kind of survey the damage and there was a little just flowing down the street behind our house we're not taking a wait and see approach what happens next how are we going to be compensated and along with for us some of our neighbors can get back in their homes so far as the cleanup process they've done a good job there but they've not done a really good job of communicating to some of the residents that would be much of course we've got more news for you just a click away including venezuela's acting president nicolas maduro he claims that there is someone badly wanting to prevent him from taking the country's head office in next week's election for more details head to our website. plus is it tourism

the best strategy for claiming disputed lands that is certainly what china thinks as it plans to open the contested carousel islands to travelers the full story on r.t. dot com. authorities at the guantanamo bay prison acknowledged this week that the hunger strike among the camps inmates is growing number of those refusing food now stands at forty one inmates lawyers however say that the figure is several times higher with three of the prisoners hospitalized and around a dozen currently being force fed the strike began two months ago in protest over treatment and conditions jonathan hey fitz who is represented a number of the guantanamo inmates believes it will be some time before the extreme action achieves any results. i think the more pressure may force the us to respond it may not come right away but i think that the pressure that's triggered from the hunger strikes and the international attention of the statement by the u.n.

i think amino may have a defect over time i think that it's going to force the united states to realize that it just can't simply ignore what's act want on a mo and that at some point it's going to have to come to grips with the fact that you know these these men are being imprisoned year after year without charges and you know more and more and more are in fact eyeing him in jail and i think it's very difficult to. you know to be able to to justify this and you have to really kind of tie yourself in knots to do so heavy handed police have clamped down on an unannounced rally in montréal arresting nearly three hundred protesters new laws say a demonstration has to be registered with the authorities in order for it to go ahead legally if in cox's the québec correspondent for the canadian affairs website rabble dot ca and says the law is a clear violation of citizen's rights. municipal bylaws sixty's and acted at the height of the straight last year of your provincial law. law as well which was

announced by everyone united nations high commissioner on the rights to back bar association representing old problems lawyers and prosecutors and it was a serious violation of civil liberties which was then you'll by the i mean the interim government nobody really knows what to make of these leaders in a country where we've always taken for granted the right to protest the right to express their opinion and so a lot of people right now are very very fearful and so there's an attitude that will want to go out they want to challenge this by law they know what's happening is not right but at the same time they're afraid you're with r t still to come russia demands a more balanced approach to chemical attacks in syria. moscow has accused of un of trying to undermine the investigation and has drawn parallels with the weapons of mass destruction in the us used as a pretext to to invade iraq. a new type of

bird flu has been discovered in china this week prompting the government to call it tens of thousands of birds so far the virus has killed six people out of the twenty one in fact and it's not the first time a new strain of flu has hit china let's have a look at how the infection has spread not only across the population but in the media as well first of all many of the articles written read like actual horror stories sparking panic way out of proportion with the facts you'll remember passed a bird flu and swine flu outbreaks and the attention they ground across the media parties kitty pilbeam has more on how the hype took hold. panic is already spreading across the globe over fears of a bird flu epidemic in china twenty thousand birds were slaughtered at one local market japan has but health warnings on people coming into the country from china hong kong says slumped in chinese airline stocks in an attempt to restrict travel vietnam pounds poultry imports from china and taiwan it raises quarantine level

alerts while the u.s. and china are already looking into creating a vaccine for this specific type of bird flu drug produces already poised to jump in produce a cure out of price of course now let's look at the example of the swine flu epidemic which cost the british taxpayer one point two billion dollars off of the government panicked and splashed out billions on vaccinations pharmacy school giant glass a smith kline secured a billion dollar contract from it making a billion dollars from vaccines alone last year i reality four hundred fifty seven people died from swine flu a third of which die regular flu every year so while china battles with the flu drug companies are no doubt preparing for a multi billion dollar order. kitty pilbeam reporting for us there now to some other news in brief around the globe for you this hour the portuguese government

has announced deeper spending cuts two days after the country's constitutional court overruled of several tax hikes as part of this year's budget cuts will be made to social security health and public enterprises the government is struggling to stick to the terms of the seventy eight billion euro international bailout granted in two thousand and eleven the opposition has criticised the prime minister for using the court ruling to push forward cuts to public services and urged the government to step down. thousands have marched in madrid in protest against the country's rampant unemployment smaller rallies were held in. lona and other cities across the country the nation's youth unemployment rate has hit fifty five percent forcing many young spaniards to move abroad in search of better work opportunities spain is struggling through a double dip recession and as one of the worst hit countries in the eurozone crisis . indian police have arrested nine people on suspicion of colluding to illegally

construct a high rise building in a suburb of mumbai the arrested include two builders police officers and a municipal minister the pallet officials who may face life sentences if convicted the eight story apartment building came crashing down on thursday claiming seventy four lives building collapses are common in india with weak construction standards being blamed. moscow has accused the un of trying to undermine the investigation into the use of chemical weapons in syria damascus claims rebels used illegal agents near the city of aleppo last month killing around two dozen political historian gerald horne explains why he believes the u.n. investigation will bear no fruit. this quiet from the north atlantic countries about this chemical attack speaks volumes that speaks loudly because we all know that if this chemical attack could be pinned on the damascus regime of president all saw that they would have been shelling from the rooftops about it but fact that

they're not quiet about it i think says all that we need to know we all saw what happened at the arab league meeting where they were able to maneuver the rebels to take the heat of the all assad regime we all know about the recent entente between turkey and israel which does not bode well for a peaceful resolution of the syrian crisis therefore it seems to me that an attack of this chemical and investigation of this chemical attack but moscow and beijing in particular managers who worked. hard on the heels of cypresses downfall yet another tax haven and maybe saying it's time running out millions of leaked e-mails have exposed the client list of the british virgin islands with politicians superstars and top businessmen worldwide all implicated cyber security expert andy hall sol who is a campaign manager of the u.k. pirate party points out that the irony that some of these people with offshore accounts actively promote austerity. some of these people appear to be in positions

where they wouldn't necessarily want to be associated with sticking a lot of money onto an office into an offshore tax was clearly a disconnect between what people are saying in terms of taxes and austerity especially what they're actually doing in terms of their personal finances and clearly there is some regulation needed this may well change that having this kind of information out and may well cause this to be a much bigger political issue than a has been for a long time it's something that you obviously have to deal with when it becomes public and so most people everybody's known that offshore tax havens exist but haven't really understood the amounts of money involved in this case i think somebody suggested up to thirty two trillion pounds worth of cash stocks in those well isha is sent off shore in ways that aren't necessarily being tracked and monitored or available to governments that maybe should pay and coming up after the break we report on the lives of palestinian families brushing shoulders with an israeli way stuff that's coming up on r.t. .

is trash. but it's also a treasure. worth fighting for. and the trap was no way out.