currency pushing its way into financial mainstream boasting freedom from government control and safety from trimming is it really risk free. north korea is expected to launch a ballistic missile test any moment the un mourning that one wrong step could send the crisis spiraling out of control even though the world body is failing to resolve the deadlock. and sixty five days without food behind bars the guantanamo hunger strike is desperately push on with their protests as activists across the u.s. prepare to rally in support. of a good morning good to have you company watching r.t. coming to you live from moscow with me. now imagine having money that's free from

government control say from haircuts and decentralize there is such a thing and it's called big coin and despite being a target for hackers and criticized as a online bubble the site become a value has increased ten fold this year is seen as a sign of growing skepticism about the existing global financial system peter all of his being to a bar in berlin to spend some coins. these germans are sold on the idea bitcoins of the new gold and if you're not involved you'll be left behind every day you decide not to use a free and decentralized currency like bitcoin to actually decide for supporting the existing financial system with its flaws for yet another day created four years ago by an anonymous computer these lines of letters and numbers can be traded to allow instantaneous global purchases without being tied to the rules of existing

and discredited financial institutions there is no organization no institution who is able to control or manipulate the whole financial system of bitcoin you know banks no central banks. no credit card corporation that means that nobody is charging you any fees nobody can stop you sending money from a to b. like if you would donate one would want to make donations to wiki leaks you can still do that in bitcoin following growing mistrust of a stop after the botched bailout of cyprus people want their money where governments can't touch it but i think the big huge did a really good job to raise awareness when they seized the bank accounts in cyprus since then i mean there's been a. craze going on but coins are secure nobody can seize it nobody can freeze an account to get involved you have to download an application called a wallet that you can start to buy them at this bar digital currency exchange

a group once a month to trade their electronic cash on the establishment is happy to take coins as legal tender for any purchase but once you get all set up with the big calling software it becomes as simple as point click and your electronic. cash to it into something very real indeed. now more than ever people want to make sure they cash is cared for using an online wallet is still a very new concept how safe is it some of them have been hacked some of them have turned out to be fraudulent but i think over time the operators who survive providing these kind of services are going to be very diligent about about their security and they're going to have to be very diligent also about maintaining their reputation and if you're a little apprehensive about a currency you can't hold in your hand there's physical coins with an individual

code on the back that can be punched into your online account or if you thought that it's a good door for a good starter for people for people to know what bitcoin is if you present them with one of those because people like to talk to you. if you would want to give your nephew or a relative a present for for the next ten years one big card with probably the best in a physical form however you buy them with increased skepticism over established currencies we can expect to see more of the sign showing people are open for business peter older r.t. . or big coins into a record price of two hundred sixty six dollars per unit this week until a flash crash saw it lose half its value but it did go its way back up within a few hours at the valuation is ending the digital currency more and more attention in the financial headlines sarah firth met queen's develop in london to find out whether it's still a good investment. well now you've heard what bitcoin is why is it proving

a popular industry insiders that dismissing this as a bubble that right now they're having to dismiss bitcoin is even more of a bubble and that's because this week for the first time the controversial electronic currency passed the two hundred dollar mark setting new records so it is proving popular i don't think it will be of widely used for a while in europe because until the interface becomes user friendly it's a bit like people think they have to understand it to be able to use it but i say to people look do you understand how your body works and how money works you can use your body and use money. you don't have to understand how to use it but you do need into the interface and in order to understand money we have a nice interface to use money to use your body we have a nice interface call a called of body in terms of core and we haven't yet got that interface up to that level of of ease of use the understanding until that day comes it won't be so widely available or easily used by people it's

a big queens well and truly burst on to the mainstream now trading up around the two hundred dollar mark up under just twenty dollars at the beginning of the year but is it calling still a good investment now it is trading around that two hundred dollar mark well many people think yes it is and here's why let's take a look at the possible outcomes if you invested in but quinn right now the bubble could burst gavan trading around two hundred dollars to zero in which case you please one hundred percent of your money not good but you do only one hundred percent when it comes to bit coy but what if bitcoin raise to around two thousand dollars to start trading around that inconceivable maybe all the skeptics all the critics right now will tell you the bubble will burst that won't happen but also to sell this at the beginning is the year when bitcoin was trading around that twenty dollar mark did you really think that it could start trading around the two hundred

dollars mark so. on that basis things can and do you happen. to start trading around two thousand dollars and invested now when it was around two hundred dollars you would get ten times your return so if you lose it if one hundred percent you win and you went to thousand percent now to anyone you can clearly see that that's quite a good bet and it's why right now along with all the global uncertainty with the big financial institutions many people consider that you could do worse than bet on that calling so r.t. london so lots of pros and cons then to be calling so it is a fad or is it part of our financial future let's try and clear this up shall we with will you move an entrepreneur an inventor who's been tracking markets william thanks very much for your time now we have said there it has become mainstream but myself included and i'm sure many many others are still trying to get our head around this can you explain in a nutshell how this currency works sure there are special number of.

precious metals and. precious numbers to points those there's not as you can do various troops going. through. this right so that's in the coach i won't press you anymore because i'm still a bit confused but anyway we've talked about it being safer than a normal currency is that really the case look at the prices just over the last week it's an industry it's a coin is not regulated how is this safer. because it's regulated by the nature of the numbers that we just discussed numerical properties control just like gravity is not require a parliament force of it so to the rules of numbers and this was the sort of genius of the ocean not the mother's paper that said hey what it we have digital representations of pictures we have digital representations of sounds not

a digital representation of goal look like and surprisingly came up with a set of numbers that had those features and then people for the last three years or so worked on those. we are where. where the internet was before the web browser so people are absolutely right the wallet is is the tests system and there are lots of them hundreds of programmers i know working on improved wallets and within the next thirty to sixty days you'll see all sorts of interesting services come out there are there are never there's money involved there are crooks that the that will test the system and what doesn't break this point will make it stronger so in your opinion how long would it be before we do get a safe calling currency because i mean we still hear stories about hackers don't we just last week mt gox exchange which deals with the majority of bitcoin trades came under an attack so i mean so it doesn't sound very safe they lost no money and there was

a loss of twelve thousand five hundred dollars just after christmas from on individual but in the united states court of the f.b.i. there are three bank robberies a day and it was seventy five hundred dollars each each time three times a day three hundred sixty five days a year but people still use those bags but at least people with money in those banks do have a guarantee from that bank guarantees my thick killings. the article process guarantees your bit coins and it can't be altered by politics is. ok you touched on cyprus there and a lot of the arguments for big coin suggest that this is good because it's an industry that isn't regulated but the whole point about the financial crisis is that this was caused by unregulated banks. actually it was planned the i.m.f. put out a white paper and november of last year by sherry mark karr that said that because of the bad bets that the banks made that they were too. how everyone take

a haircut and lose about forty percent of their deposits so that's been that's been out there so it's been planned it's not it's not your own review but a regulation is the regulatory capture by europe out the banks and just quickly william where do you see the big killing in five years ten years when will it be on my computer in my virtual wallet i'm a skeptic when when i have it. you will have the qualms about two point eight billion dollars right now somebody spent one point four billion dollars the cost last crash and they lost that money was probably someone who had a lot of money to solicit see if they could produce this effect and that money doesn't buy opportunities for those believe in bitcoin and so that money flowed into their pockets i made i made a few dollars on this and so did others the were up you need to have had about eight billion dollars in circulation before or retailers become interested in this so we're up ninety days away from that but there are some forward thinking

retailers that are looking toward accepting that point and once once merchants can as the person in germany was able to find out the bar is as you can trade your bitcoins for products then people will start to use the more i can just quickly give me a timeline when will it be mainstream big killing ninety days ninety days i thank you very much when you make it's a big point and entrepreneur from new zealand. u.s. citizens will get fired up over guantanamo later on thursday nationwide protests are planned to get the jail closed and to support the hunger strike and prisoners who are reaching breaking point as they enter a third month of refusing food the details just ahead. and the city of don't we examine have how afghanistan's prospering drug trade continues to be a massive worldwide killer more than a decade after the u.s. led operation stupid taliban. north

korea could launch a ballistic missile test at any moment so says south korea's foreign minister japan's echoed that we're adding that at least one ballistic missile is ready for blastoff from north korea's east coast pyongyang will conduct the launch to mark a series of national occasions thursday is the first anniversary of leader kim jong un becoming first secretary of the workers' party the country will also be celebrating the birth of its founder kim il sung next monday a day which usually features a showcase of military strength south korea and u.s. forces have been on increased military alert while japan's deployed patriot missile interceptors in tokyo antiwar activist brian becker says the u.s. is trying to destroy historic political ties between pyongyang and china by creating a military confrontation. i personally believe it was very regrettable that the united nations security council adopted a resolution putting all of the blame and the onus on north korea in imposing

economic sanctions and i believe the united nations has to be independent of the united states if it's going to be really a force for peace if it serves just as a fig leaf for the united states then the united states will use the u.n. as it did in one thousand fifty to launch its own aggression against korea the obama administration is taking the bush administration policy of provocation escalation increased tension to a whole new level they want to create pressure on china to break china away from its historic relationship with north korea by creating a military confrontation or a near confrontation the united states is saying to the chinese look the stakes are very high time for you to change time for you to abandon your your ally in north korea and i think they think that they have that could be the the prescription the precursor to regime change in north korea if they could break china away china doesn't want to do that although you can see the debate going on right now within the chinese establishment the u.n.

is worried that any wrong steps in the crisis could spin the situation on the korean peninsula to control but the organization has done little to try and bring the sides to the negotiating table raising questions i would say influence all usefulness as an international peace broker. and i've across he brought down the diplomatic side of the issue. on the one hand we've got a rogue state operating a defacto nuclear state operating with a bomb and on the other we've got a un which is either fails to reach out to north korea appropriately and bring it into the international community. and is conspicuous by its absence perhaps in a situation like. just the other day warning of it spiraling out of control the danger of that but what is practically being done what we do know is that the international institutions the diplomatic institutions that would be normally be responsible for bringing north korea back into the fold have failed to do so north korea walked out of the. six plus one talks in two thousand and nine and the u.n.

other than sanctioning north korea has failed to come up with any concrete diplomatic solution to reach in to the mysterious state and to bring it back into the fold so what is going on behind the scenes is their favorite diplomacy or not well north korea famously. with china and russia there may indeed be contacts going going through the channels we can say for sure that china is upset with north korea i think there's a general recognition that china north korea is close relationship is starting to disintegrate particularly because this saber rattling that we're seeing from north korea has brought very aggressive united states into china's front garden now it should also be mentioned there whether this is coincidence or not. live up to others to judge but nato secretary general rasmussen is also in seoul at the moment

. conducting meetings with his south korean partners that may be seen as an inflammatory meeting by the north koreans it may not. the nato led conflict in libya designed to instill a democratic pace has still left the post gadhafi country in turbulence even beyond its borders online we details of a new u.n. report that says the middle east and africa and now being fed with streaming from libya which are fueling warfare in syria mali and garza. and he's been posing with a tiger cub riding a horse back chested and even flying with endangered cranes now president putin's shown plane playing in the snow with his team in moscow the gallery is it.

thursday is expected to become a day of action against guantanamo across across the u.s. in protest to to support the jail's hunger strike is in the tourist detention center and to push for the facilities permanent shutdown. who spent seven years at guantanamo two of them in solitary confinement before being released without charge he took part in the previous mass hunger strike there and shared his experience. i was taken in and did force and forcing intravenous for fluids into you. and do something silly like put you don't know how many pouches when you only need maybe one or two an inopportune six or something other there was one guy who was like doing a trainee medical course i don't know where those online or when he decided he was he was joking about which he needed to use whether to use a big one and so forth so they were using me the guinea pig for for for the for the training so. the person who was putting the needle into me took

a long time i mean i don't know how many stops they took a moment but you know they missed in the midst of a in and two they actually found it so that you know the medical press to these people. you know is limited you know they're protesting and this is the last right in terms of all the rights have been taken away from them they don't have the right to remain silent in interrogations or other invited right to life in some cases so this is the last rights of people who don't have rights and the protesting against the situation but primarily because their religion is being abused. it's the month a lawyer for one hunger strike has received word that one of his clients tried to take his own life the military denies there have been any recent suicide attempts but clive stafford smith is not convinced. we talked to him directly but also we talked throughout the prisoners he the united states said today in something that is typical unfortunately of the full suits that come out of that place that he

didn't try to commit suicide but why did they taken to hospital for nine days which they did and then they took him back to campfire back home which is the place and grown time of day and they took him there you know what do you do with someone who suicidal you put him in the very worst cell an entire prisoner i'm afraid that illustrates the really terrible lassitude that carol said he knows how to deal with my clients because he's got children a time where we'll check around and one of my clients said is we need to send the social services round to check on his house because if he's treating his children the way that these prisoners are being treated is a real problem what they do with some of the prisoners is they force feed them in a most surrender this way you know but that doesn't solve the problem you know you can't take a piece of the true test like a hunger strike which is being done for perfectly valid reasons which i suspect ninety nine percent of the globe group supports that if you are cleared for release

you should be released you can't take that force feed people by stuffing tubes up their nose and putting them through even greater agony and think that that's going to solve the problem of they were cutting off would suffer the prisoners and some of the lawyers raise cain about that they did allow some of the prisoners to get work to back with some of the prisoners reportedly is still being required to drink water out of the tap and i got a photograph just yesterday of something i have seen many times myself down in guantanamo which is the sign the taps which says this is not drinking water and it's foul stuff the yellow orange color so they wanted to mine and mine it concessions but i'm afraid that's not the attitude that taking mistaking a very very harsh attitude which is doomed to cause greater problems i want to say that this is bad for america it's not just bad for these prisoners is bad for america because we are losing our moral standing in the world when we behave this way. afghanistan's drug trade is flourishing despite the

eleven years that have passed since the u.s. kicked off its operation enduring freedom even with the with the taliban force from power the illicit industry still killing thousands of people around the world. examines the deadly multi-million dollar trend which shows no signs of slowing down . around the world due to. and that's in just over a decade from when the us led its enduring freedom campaign to rid the country of the tyranny of the taliban while the regime came crashing down it was quite the opposite for the drugs trade and with russia now ranked the highest consumer that's got the authorities worried distributors the heroin production in afghanistan has risen dramatically since our region enduring freedom was conducted in two thousand

and one it's forty times higher now any impersonal observer would admit that the international community to this field to rectify the situation with drug production and in fact russia's drug control trip has described production of ganesan as planetary and the figures prove it illegal operating farming in afghanistan since two thousand and one has been on a constant rise increasing by twenty times in the last twelve years have gone count in a call to officials say they spray an estimated one hundred fifty seven thousand hectares of land have been illegally used to grow opium poppies that's the size of a major european city like london in each of the nine growing seasons there has been more open poppy cultivation than during any single year of the taliban's rule the fields have expanded everywhere throughout afghanistan in the south of the country the rise was not dramatic but that's only because these regions have remained the biggest drug growing areas so there is simply less room to expand and

the country's east bordering pakistan the land suited by opium poppies is now ten times larger this is just one of the country's many gates from where afghan drags pass through on their way to every part of the globe to pakistan iran middle east turkey central asia russia europe central. eastern western europe africa and both americas interestedly in two thousand and eleven officially the country exported three hundred seventy six million dollars worth of trash and dried fruits spices carpets for that same year the u.n. estimates the country's opium mean comes to that one point four billion dollars the lion's share of these mining obviously goes to district officials insurgents warlords and drug traffickers while the afghan people get instability and poorer teens to add a third of the country's thirty five million strong population is jobless and more

than twelve million people live below poverty line it seems that you ask lead enduring freedom operation all those years ago has left the afghan people with more than freedom to endure. r.t. moscow so western nations are terms that controlling the nationwide drug industry through prohibition and destroying poppy fields has proved largely ineffective to little mary is a peace campaigner for afghanistan he things nato has failed to create alternatives to drug cultivation for the country's farms americans are not there or needed was not. just a road to do. just the reason. opium cultivation has risen up to to its maximum level in the past few days a few few months is because there's no intention of there's no process akbar or program to eradicate that notion and that's why i

was one of the reasons that because they're formers are not willing to go for anything else when there's supply and demand isn't as high it's there's no other way to to make them to do anything else there's not a viable option for them to come and come and show them the right way of what else is there so they can make money and they can put bread and butter on the tables and feed their families majority of people or farmers in what's going to happen if you say ok no to drugs and all these farmers are going to bear arms what are they going to do they're going to fight the opposition they're going to join the telephones and that way you're going to have more of insurgency. a quick look at other world news nine mass rallies and side congress in washington d.c. is cross party senators race to finish and i would you immigration deal is expected

to fast track eleven million illegal immigrants on the path to gain citizenship and is due to be adopted in the coming days tens of thousands protested over the sluggish pace of reform the bill will also tighten border security and require employers to check their workers immigration status. u.s. prosecutors must prove this soldier bradley manning knew his disclosure of state secrets would harm america and benefit hostile nations that was the ruling made a pretrial hearing in mary land manning has been in custody since twenty ten and has pleaded guilty to ten of the twenty two charges against him a u.s. navy seal who was reportedly part of the squad that killed osama bin laden says manning's actions try to spur public debate the enemy. in paris human rights activists staged a mass demonstration against homophobia and in support of its victims it follows sunday's brutal attack of a gay man in the french capital after which

a picture of his shocking injuries went viral on the internet the protesters claim that homophobic assaults have increased as opposition has grown to an imminent rule to allow same sex marriage and adoption in france. the rights groups warning that syria's air force is carrying out both civilian and indiscriminate attacks as a serious violation of international law both the government and the armed opposition have long been accused of violations during the two year conflict the u.s. though is considering widening the rebels in the fight against president assad r.t. spoke to a syrian presidential advisor who says western powers only fueling the fire. the syrian crisis has a regional and international level and that unless these store levels are sorted out and the less there is a real intention to stop the crisis it's very difficult to stop it inside syria because it's not a crisis that is only in syria but it is

a crisis that's being threatened are financed by both regional and international forces that was the inside does not really live up to what it says so even if they say. leave the weapons you know all the other letters that that that are happening in syria over the killing of the kidnapping or the problem that our children our women are facing a horrible humiliating conditions and refugee camps in dirty and driven all this they consider it you know non-lethal they say we support geneva agreement geneva communique the first item in geneva communique is to stop violence by all sides and yet they feed violence in syria this. and that interview with president assad's advisor is on in full six forty five pm g m.