breakthrough the digital currency pushing its way into the financial mainstream boasting freedom from government control and safety from trimming but is it really risk free. north korea is expected to launch a ballistic missile test any moment with the u.n. warning 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. and i welcome you watching our with me and. 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 the cyber currencies value has increased ten fold this year surging past two hundred dollars a unit this week its use is seen as a sign of growing skepticism about the existing global financial system peter oliver has the story. the germans are sold on the idea that callings of the 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 you actually decide for supporting the existing financial system with its flaws for yet another day created four years ago by an anonymous computer hacker 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 no 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 were going made one would want to make donations to ricky meeks you can still do that in bitcoin following growing mistrust of established currency after the botched bailout of cyprus people want their money where governments can't touch it and i think the you 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 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 there. you can start to buy them at this bar digital currency exchange

a group b. once a month to treat their electronic cash an 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 turns 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 but i think that's

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. if you would want to give your nephew or a relative a present 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 these sign showing people are open but big business peter all of the r.t. . however big coins anything goes nature has made it a target for hackers who have quickly learned how to steal the money earlier i talked to when you move contracts bitcoin markets he told me though that the actual damage is being exaggerated. 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 backs but at least people with money in these 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 as the people in cyprus 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 the coins are about two point eight billion dollars right now somebody spent one point four billion dollars the cost crash and they lost that money was probably someone who had a lot of money to lose to see if they could produce this back needed how about how about eight billion dollars in circulation for retailers become interested in so we're up ninety days away from that but there are some forward thinking retailers that are looking toward accepting bitcoin about a lot of million bid points of already been found another ten million will be found over the rest of history and most of what we found within the next three years of

big coins into a record price of two hundred sixty six dollars per unit this week until a flash crash or at least half its value but it did go it's way back up within a few hours the valuation roller coaster isn't in there the digital currency more and more attention in the financial headlines sarah firth that have bitcoin developer in london to find out whether it is still a good investment. well now you've heard what bitcoin is why is it proving popular industry insiders are dismissing this as a bubble but 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 a new record so it is proving popular i don't think it will be of want to use for a while yet 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 with because 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 called a called our body in terms of core and we haven't yet got that interface up to that level of of ease of use and understanding until the 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 still a good investment now it is trading around that two hundred dollar mark while 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 lose 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 this at the beginning is the year when big queen was trading around that twenty dollar mark did you really think that it could start trading around the two hundred dollars mark. on that basis things can and do you happen. to start trading around two thousand dollars of the need invested now when it was around two hundred dollars you would get ten times your return so if you lose it is one hundred percent but you win anyway 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 u.s.

citizens will get fired up over guantanamo later on thursday nationwide problem is our plan to get them to support the hunger strike in prison is reaching breaking point as they enter a third month refusing food details just ahead. you were going week zamenhof ghana stands prospering drugs trade continues to be a massive worldwide killer more than a decade after the u.s. led operation the 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 its feed pyongyang will conduct the launch to mark a series of national occasions thursday is the first anniversary of leader kim jong un becoming the first secretary of the workers' party a country would 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 budget pounds deployed patriot missile interceptors in tokyo antiwar activist brian becker says the u.s. is trying to destroy historical 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 in the onus on north korea in imposing economic sanctions of 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 crises could spin the situation on the korean peninsula and have control of the organization so far failing to bring the sides to the negotiating table raising questions i receive who wins or usefulness as an international peace broker kevin and not across he broke down the diplomatic side of the issue. on the one hand we've got a rogue state operating in 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 there fever diplomacy or not well north korea famously enjoys bilateral relations with china and russia and there may indeed be contacts going going through those channels we can say for sure that

china is upset with north korea i think there's a why general recognition that china north korea is a 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 now 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 with his south korean partners that may be seen as an inflammatory meeting by the north koreans it may not. we're going to take a short break now but when we come back the nationwide u.s.

protests its support to get my hunger strike is and how eleven years of nato action in afghanistan has done little to dent the deadly drugs try to stay with us.

the good international airport in the very heart of moscow. but i welcome back thursday is expected to become a day of action against across the u.s. the protests are to support the jail's hunger strike is to push for the facilities permanent shutdown r.t. spoke about r.c. he spent seven years at guantanamo to them in solitary confinement before being released without charge he took part in

a previous mass hunger strike there and shared his experience i was taken. to force and forcing intravenous for fluids into you. do something stupid like put you i don't know how many parties when you only need maybe one or two an inopportune six or something whether there was one guy who was like doing a training medical course i don't know where that was online or when he decided he was joking about which he needed to use whether to use a big one and so forth so they were using music guinea pig for for for the for the training so. the person who was putting the needle into me took a long time and i'm going to i don't know how many stars they took him on but you know they missed in the midst of a and into this you found it so either 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 have them by their right to life in some cases

so this is a loss right of people who don't have rights and protesting against the situation but primarily because their religion is being abused now into its third month the lawyer for one hunger striker has received word that his client 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 camp fire back home which is the worst place and growing 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 as a real problem what they do with some of the person is they force feed them in the most surrender this way you know but that doesn't solve the problem you know you can't take a peaceable true test like a hunger strike which is being done for perfectly valid reasons which i suspect ninety nine percent of the globe groups support that if you are cleared for release you should be released now 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 catching up to the prisoners and some of the lawyers raise cain about that they did allow some of the prisoners to get work to back with stumm of the prisoners reportedly is still being required to drink the 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 do one or two minor minor concessions for them 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. the nato led conflict in libya designed to instill a democratic peace is 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 are now being fed with arms streaming from libya which are fueling warfare in syria mali and garza. and he's been pictured posing with a tiger cub riding a horse bare chested and even flying with endangered birds but now president putin

is showing playing in the snow with his two dogs in moscow you can see the gallery at r.t. dot com. afghanistan's drugs trade is flourishing despite the eleven years that have passed since the u.s. kicked off its operation enduring freedom even with the taliban force from power the illicit industry still killing thousands of people around the world reef and examines the deadly multi-million dollar trend which shows no signs of slowing down . around. 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 destress the us the heroin production in afghanistan

has risen dramatically since our original enduring freedom was conducted in two thousand and one it's forty times higher now any impartial observer would admit that the international community has failed to rectify the situation with drug production and in fact russia's drug control trip has described production in afghanistan as planetary and the figures prove it illegal often farming in afghanistan since two thousand and one has been on a constant rise increasing by twenty times in the last twelve years afghan count in a call to officials say they spring 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 sitting by opium poppies is now ten times larger and 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. easton 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 income students 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 poor 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 the u.s. led enduring freedom operation all those years ago has left the afghan people with more than freedom to endure. our team moscow. well of the world's main news now mass rallies outside congress in washington d.c. is cross party senators race to finish an overdue 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 the reform the bill will also tighten border security and require employers to check their workers immigration status. u.s. prosecutors must prove that soldier bradley manning knew his disclosure of state

secrets would harm america and benefit hostile nations but was the ruling made it a pretrial hearing in mary land manning has been in custody since twenty ten and has pleaded guilty to ten of the twenty charges against him a u.s. navy seal who was reportedly part of the squad that killed osama bin laden is to testify that he found the data in the form of al qaeda leader's compound. in paris human rights activists staged a mass demonstration against homophobia in support 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 the shocking injuries went far on the internet the protesters claim that homophobic is selves have increased as opposition has grown to an intimate law to allow same sex marriage and adoption in france. are 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 aid to the rebels in the fight against president assad r.t. spoke to a syrian presidential advisor who says western powers are only fueling the fire. this serial crisis has a regional and international level and less. these stool 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 there was the inside does not really live up to what it says so even if they say. leave the weapons you know all be on the terrorist attacks that are happening in syria over the killing and the kidnapping or the problems that our children our

women are facing a horrible humiliating conditions and refugee camps in and driven all of 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. and that interview with president assad's advisor is on in full at six forty five pm mt coming up short in my skies and looks at the economic pros and cons of the late margaret thatcher and.

with oil pipes bursting in arkansas people across the usa start to realize that they are moving towards what the atlantic calls the infrastructure cliff in short america's infrastructure starting to get a bit old and according to infrastructure port org the u.s. needs about three point six trillion dollars of infrastructure spending by twenty twenty to turn things around the site sponsored by the american society of civil engineers gave all aspects of american infrastructure like bridges and drinking water and schools cetera some pretty bad grades except for solid waste removal for some reason in their opinion everything in the us is going to crap except for america's ability to throw solid crap away i'm not trying to sit here and scare you there is nothing to fear this is a big challenge but it is a very possible one to accomplish according to cost of war dot org the last ten years of war have cost about three point one trillion dollars just cutting wars in half by fifty percent could put a huge dent in the infrastructure spending and what about all those billions in

bail us that were spent you see the money is there it just gets wasted if the money stops getting thrown away and starts getting spent a well planned infrastructure then the infrastructure will start paying for itself rocket infrastructure creates wealth so don't fear the infrastructure cliff just stop wasting money or allowed politicians to waste money and everything will turn out to be just fine but that's just my opinion.

international airport in the very heart of moscow. i am asked as are welcome to the kaiser reporting down the witch is dead this song is sort to the top of the charts in the u.k. now is this just the odd manner in which the druids that is to say the british people mourn the passing of their former prime minister queen or do they disagree with what david cameron and the media claim that margaret thatcher saved britain not to me i see that margaret thatcher what she did is be quids to the population a dream much more honest than the american one she gave them the british dream a dream that you can all straw i to mature before your debts do i guess by maturity mean die stacey.