poisonous politics the u.s. claims the mascot's has used chemical weapons that an intervention is possible but the proof is far from solid. early results in iceland's parliamentary elections suggest that euro skeptic parties are likely to come out on top at the ballot box the nordic state moves further away from the blighted euro zone. and germany views it not enough news a recent study shows us cable channels are suffering a ratings slump as the audience is repelled by opinion dominated reporting.

and broadcasting live from our studios in moscow this is r t i'm sean thomas glad to have you with us news just in an oil tank at the marathon detroit refinery has exploded causing a huge fire there witnesses say the blast was felt ten blocks away firefighters medics and hazardous materials units were dispatched to the scene a mandatory exclusion area has also been established around the facility surrounding areas are being evacuated as well now there have been no reports of casualties so far but we will keep you updated on that as more information becomes . to us. now the u.s. has claimed that there's growing evidence poison gas was used by assad's forces in syria and while washington admits the proof is not strong enough to provoke an immediate response president obama did reiterate the use of chemical weapons would be a game changer. brings us more from iraq u.s. president barack obama was delivering some fears in the after minutes. he indicated

that washington will conduct its own independent investigation into syria's alleged use of chemical weapons and a separate probe will be conducted in conjunction with the united nations america's leaders said the world can't stand by and permit the use of chemical weapons obama has previously stated that the use of chemical weapons by damascus would be a game changer in the u.s. position on military intervention into serious civil war now according to white house press secretary jay carney he has confirmed that military force is one of many options obama is currently considering carney said as a general principle the united states retains the ability to act unilaterally now these revelations of course come just one day after u.s. defense secretary chuck hagel claimed that the u.s. intel that u.s. intelligence officials believe with some degree of varying confidence that the syrian government has used chemical weapons against members of the opposition specifically sarin gas u.s. officials claim the attacks in question took place last month in new york and in

the outskirts of damascus however a letter to the white house has sent to members of congress states that washington cannot confirm the origin of the chemical weapons allegedly used acting in lockstep with the u.s. british prime minister david cameron has come forward insisting that his government has limited but growing evidence of the use of chemical weapons by the syrian military according to reports m i six agents operating in syria smuggled soil out of the country to be analyzed for chemical and biological contaminants however u.k. military scientists reportedly said the soil contained traces of some kind of chemical weapon though it could not positively identify the type of weaponized chemical now in an interview with the b.b.c. cameron said he worries that western leaders might fail to act in syria because if he experienced a foreign intervention into iraq now we all know that britain france france have.

been voicing unconditional support for syrian rebels and reportedly providing the opposition with military and financial aid in the meantime the syrian government is now is blaming the opposition for the march attack on their aleppo which killed several people as a mascot says organised organizations including al qaida have repeatedly threatened to use chemical arms while fighting the opposition so here you have a scenario where in syria the opposition groups and the government are pointing fingers at one another and you have the u.s. and its western allies presenting this harsh rhetoric of the use of chemical weapons by the syrian government but they don't have all the full facts in place or to smyrna point i reported for us there now historian gerald horne says speculation from london and washington about weapons of mass destruction is all too familiar and should people should actually be skeptical it's deja vu all over again we will remember as an adventurous u.s.

and british invasion of iraq in two thousand and three based on allegations of mass destruction but to be faulty therefore we must assume very difficult to be searching questions for example what was the chain of custody with regard to the samples taken from the battlefield of syria to leverage stories of london and in washington was there was there the possibility of contamination or foul play or hanky panky with the samples and how can you show that the regime rather than the rebels actually use these alleged chemical weapons and since we already know next security decisions within the military is driving the conflict in both syria and iraq how do we know that some renegade soldier in the syrian military was actually collaborating with the rebels want these chemical weapons so as to provide a rationale for intervention by london and washington these are difficult questions

that answer. on our website we've asked you for your thoughts on the latest developments concerning syria let's have a look at how your opinions of stacked up so far here's our handy dandy chart and if you can see this big orange of the pie here about sixty seven percent a vast majority believe that this is actually western black ops that bring up for war now if you look the next group down twenty one percent in the pink rebel plot spark western intervention that's what the people believe six percent of you in the green and suggest it's important and it will not change the course of the conflict at all and then also six percent saying that president assad has actually crossed that red line and it means that he has used chemical weapons now of course you can head to our t. dot com to make your voice heard alternatively you can comment on any part of our coverage of the syrian crisis.

news today. these are the images from. canada. in iceland a ballots are being counted in the general election as the voters hope the next government will sustain the country's economic revival following the crisis of two thousand and eight the island state quickly got back. allow the banks to fail in order to safeguard the public from the burden of a bailout ever since iceland has been making an impressive comeback maintaining growth natasha has more on the financial success story. iceland has seen it all its banks crashed its government resigned its currency devaluated and its businesses of all sizes have co-ops and that of all can over up to grounding planes

all over europe making the island even headliner for weeks on end but that was years old while today thanks to china for a slice posse of the help from the international monetary fund it boasts some of the healthiest growth rates in europe one point six percent and it's no small triumph considering that back in two thousand and eight its banks debt was eight times the annual g.d.p. so the people took it into their own hands and go she added major debt write offs at times it does seem like it's the only country in europe that's got it right take a look at this orchard greece and spain continue to spiral deeper into their excruciating financial mess their current deficit to g.d.p. ratio is just under three percent they have no money and plenty of dead but the borel war to serve their bond obligations back in two thousand and eight i slung the deficit to g.d.p. ratio was twice that of the pigs yes iceland allowed its banks to collapse under

their own debt wait technically bankrupt the island nation managed to get an impressive job of turning its economy around its banking sector return to profitability its business was restructured their debt and it kept growing and many of their people were able to keep their homes and five years after the most devastating financial meltdown in that's history in both the little strait and europe less than five percent now the euro zone's strongest economy germany has five point four percent so if some think it's iceland that was humiliated the world over they should definitely think again. well despite the rapid recovery after the economic meltdown people are turning their back on the ruling coalition preliminary results suggest that voser voters have chosen the more euro skeptic opposition during the two thousand and eight banking crisis when iceland's economy was on the

brink of collapse that you seemed like a safe haven the parliament then voted in favor of the e.u. and of the island nation applied for membership since then though the eurozone has been bogged down in a great deal of trouble itself and now icelanders feel that they are better off outside of the bloc that is especially so since they already enjoy free trade agreements and are part of the travel area dr steven mccabe from birmingham city university believes independence from the e.u. is only helping iceland to recover. the fact that it's. on the edge of the world i mean it's in the it's an isolated nation. and indeed is an island so it's effectively as we say in this country it's stuck it's fingers up at the rest of the world and so we're not giving joy your money back home what can you do short of invading iceland which was never on the agenda it has been up to

sort of to look to its own sort of look after itself if you like. other european economies i don't know such as you i mean i heard you mention ireland portugal they're much more interlinked into europe iceland is not and so what he's been able to do is to sort of concentrate on reinventing the sort of things it's good at which it's as i say it's going to join the industries there was talk about joining the e.u. but i think that that's out of the question that they realize that they're sort of their best strachan for recovery is to remain isolated or to sort of to be independent as it were europe does not offer salvation. and later in the program we'll be reporting on the saga of ukraine's a jailed former prime minister is not good for yulia tymoshenko who has just been denied a pardon and on top of that she is now facing life in jail after being charged in connection with a murder case that's after a break. i

made a second. which is a cultural contemporary to logic to the auditorium so joining me tonight i know i made the second as we bring you the clip. the best of the best in the us trying to.

get international in the very heart of moscow. and here with our welcome back cable news networks in the u.s. are seeing their ratings go to a new study by the pew research center which says some of america's biggest ally becoming increasingly opinionated and of the reporting of hard facts with more analysis and commentary is causing viewers to switch off. it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that all media are opinionated to a certain extent we all are a study by the pew research center gauges the excess to which the three speed us

channels are opinionated on am assembly c opinion fills a full eighty five percent of the channel airtime according to this study talks forty five percent and c.n.n. about the same the study says simply thousand and seven they have all cut back sharply on the amount of actual reporting on their airwaves what filled the void was relatively cheap provocative debate the studies suggest that by becoming more and more opinionated the channels have been losing their viewers this annual state of the media report says nearly one third of consumers that they surveyed said they have abandoned a news outlet because it no longer gave them what they had counted on either with fewer or less complete stories professor chris chambers is here to talk about this thank you so much for joining me like you what is your personal opinion and why is the viewership down do you agree with that report i agree i agree totally i mean you have people who are not getting full news right now they're getting fluff and sensationalism of the news packages that they are getting and then the hard news

that they're getting at the time is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. a lot of media outlets including the large ones like c.n.n. are cutting back and laying off reporters researchers producers closing foreign bureaus around and around the world so the supply of hard news is shrinking and it's being replaced with opinion and not just any opinion but opinion about a lot of nonsense and i don't want to ask you about the percentage of actual reporting that they do for weeks for several weeks in a row c.n.n. and other news channels have been covering this story you know with jodi areas there with the girl who killed her boyfriend i mean day out live coverage every day and then there was this rape case the two young men the sixteen year old awful thing right now. again follow ups live coverage day and day out why do they pick these stories to follow up on well with the arias case it's obvious because of

a beautiful young woman a dead boyfriend who had kind of a shady past i mean it's taylor it's almost a hollywood movie script the other one is the steubenville rape it touches a nerve around the country of two teenage boys and young girl raped and this sets off a lot of emotional forces but to cover this day in day out without giving any depth to it i mean it does both stories an injustice and it masquerades as hard news because it really isn't hard news when you're rehashing and turning a lot of a lot of things have opinions basically but that that was a lot of depth in that story i was actually more worried about what was left out but for example what i was wondering about why wouldn't they pick for example the guantanamo hunger strike to follow up on it was it because there the story of the with the sex and rape an act to make on t.v. that spirit of it i mean it it does it doesn't have the word sex in it or something . or a hook that a whole can people emotionally and it's

a very difficult issue politically legally a culturally for the american people to handle went on a most always been that kind of an issue because there is also it has two strikes against it already and the third strike is that there's no breaking news none of the none of the people of the hunger strike have died or maybe rioted in take some guards hostage so the breaking news is strike three so it's out i mean there's no coverage of it in the mainstream media outlets so it's just not anything they want to touch unfortunately thank you thank you to converse thank you very much well it's difficult to conclude what comes first here financial considerations editors personal preferences or the sense among executives of what viewers want but if you believe the study and their statistics whatever they're doing has to. change because they're going to be worse in washington and. for the u.s. blacklisted a group of russians officials in question have spoke spoken publicly for the first time to deny the allegations against them washington accuses the eighteen people on

the list of being was sponsible for the death of lawyers for the magnitsky in police caused to be more than three years ago or twenty one has the story they say vast be obligation on this list was a politically motivated decision and that the u.s. side was not objective in making its decisions as it couldn't be possibly a week fall those documents that surround this case the documents are still in court and never became public and that the magnitsky dropped to the beast on could almost no legal force consequences and the country and only represents an additional political pressure on show now the u.s. magnitsky list was published on the twelfth april and includes eighteen russian officials who are banned from answering the united states assets are frozen now according to the washington's version obviously sixteen of these officials are directly responsible for the death of skeet it's a game of music you worked as an auditor and an accountant at hermitage cattle

management and was the main suspect in a major tax evasion case and he died in a pretrial detention facility back in two thousand join the russian officials opened over his death however in morse two thousand and thirteen russia's investigative committee dropped to the investigation into the data. as it had term and that no crime had taken play. before you asked us magness kill list was published russia warned that the response would be similar and really in accordance with their will suffer piracy and indeed in less than twenty four hours russia responded with the same list with the same number off officials also eighteen american officials there banned from entering the russian federation however the russian list consists of two parts now the first one includes those people who are involved in human rights violations and legalizing torture at guantanamo detention facility and the second part of this list involves those people who are responsible

for numerous human rights violations of those russian citizens abroad however there are we poor sods of these lists are only you're sure it's worsham not the list and that there are extended versions off the list so that both countries presides and reportedly a u.s. extended version of the list even includes some really high level top russian government officials u.s. officials claiming that russia's security services wiretapped one of the boston bombing suspects as early as two thousand and eleven the conversations reportedly involved one of the sort of native brothers talking about jihad with his critics say that this information should have been released earlier however new york university professor steven cohen says it was not a lack of intelligence that prevented the f.b.i. from taking action before a tragedy struck but if you warnings were received from the russian intelligence and not only about. one of the brothers of the older brother who died in boston but

about the mother and there seemed to have been at least three or four messages from the bag or russian intelligence services not only to the f.b.i. as initially reported but to the cia one possibility is of course that it was a bureaucratic failure another possibility is that poor relations. between moscow and washington do you value the russian record and when i say we're relations i mean particularly we are very anti putin any group atmosphere because once that starts at the highest level in the media in the white house during the congress it spreads all american your ages. now let's take a swing around the globe to look at some other news making headlines this hour a new expect has been arrested in the case of the poisoned letters that were sent to president obama and the two other u.s. officials last week martial arts trainer everett dutschke was taken into custody following a search of his home in mississippi earlier this month he pleaded not guilty to

child molestation charges in a separate case this week police released kevin curtis another suspect in the poison letters investigation it has been suggested that curtis was framed by dutch gun due to an ongoing feud between the two men. in the u.k. hundreds of protesters have marched outside a royal air force base after it started operating on manned aerial vehicles in afghanistan activists are demanding an immediate end to graham because of the high civilian death toll linked to u.s. drone attacks the ministry of defense has confirmed reports that the first overseas flight of a drone was recently directed from britain the missions are said to be mostly for surveillance although operators have an option of using vehicles weapons. now it looks like to be incarcerated former ukrainian prime minister will not be leaving prison any time soon that's after yulia timoshenko was midnight hardened by a presidential commission and on top of her current

a seven year term for abuse of power she is facing life in prison earlier to michigan was charged in connection to a murder case dating back to the one nine hundred ninety s. archies alexy o'shaughnessy reports from calf. from being allegedly beaten up by prison guards to seeing her supporters stormed the hospital where she's undergoing treatment ukraine's former prime minister yulia timoshenko has been in a lot of trouble lately she has now served eighteen months of a seven year prison term for abuse of power when she signed gas deals with russia in two thousand and nine but this could wars because of her allegedly to an assassination almost two decades ago in one thousand nine hundred ninety six ukrainian member of parliament you've been was shot dead in eastern ukraine back then a confession want to use killers shocked the country. the man who painted for the job mentioned that shared bones killing was ordered by a man nicknamed it was obvious that under partially he meant by there was

a rank of ukraine's prime minister. was that him could never face charges for those allegations he spent twelve years behind bars in the united states for tax evasion and fraud and is now seeking political asylum across the atlantic but in a typical ukrainian rollercoaster style twist his name has recently surfaced again together with tymoshenko. we have proof that lives are rank opiate the first five hundred thousand dollars to the dying which. then other two point three million dollars for traffic to the assassins by yulia timoshenko. tymoshenko is currently on a second trial for alleged attacks evasion and money laundering in the one nine hundred ninety s. when she led the united energy systems of ukraine company that could seriously increase her prison term but if any connection to sharon's murder is proved she would remain behind bars for life her lawyers were quick to describe the

accusations as nonsense. the. so-called witnesses and nothing concrete they all refer to what they were told by other people who died or were killed ten to fifteen years ago this is all i've seen that they have against this case was made up by the ruling elites when they understood that the gas case against him is falling apart but political analysts say that in the case of ukraine's politicians you just can't rule anything out as most of them do have skeletons in their clothes which. almost every politician in ukraine can go on trial. some were involved in corrupt schemes but as long as they obey the rules of the political game not prosecuted by calling the president and the government illegitimate after the change of power or went beyond the boundaries of tense the rules of the game were changed this third case against the machine go is now in

a preliminary stage it is still unclear what kind of evidence investigators have against but they seem confident there is enough to press charges before summer the filler which is the case has been rock in ukraine for almost two years now and all this time supporters of the former prime minister have been thinking thing screen all the recent developments in this saga are clearly suggesting they will not be leaving anytime soon. reporting from here in ukraine. now a recap of that news that we had at the beginning of the hour developing story in oil tank at the marathon detroit refinery has exploded causing a huge fire witnesses say the blast was felt ten blocks away fighters medics and hazardous materials units were dispatched to the scene surrounding areas are being of there have been no reports of casualties so far we'll keep you updated on that information as you can then now whether you're celebrating your birthday in

chicago or just catching up on news this is our team we're certainly glad to have you with us and coming up we are cutting edge inventions artie's technology. the movie world war. which stars brad pitt as one hundred seventy five million dollar budget has been recalled by paramount executives not because probably yet another stupid violent zombie movie but because the chinese may get offended according to the wrap dot com china was supposed to take the blame for starting the evil zombie apocalypse this time but china becoming the largest foreign market for american movies made artistic integrity fly out the window to protect the bottom dollar as is tradition in hollywood this is not the first time that there has been

pro-choice in hollywood the remake of red dawn which was originally a cold war era a minstrel show against russians was supposed to show a chinese invasion of america this time however they have changed it to north koreans who can't even eat the us military in south korea let alone add in a way to say the thing that is interesting is not the censorship is the fact they will movies for whoever's got a lot of cash markets won't be offended but countries with small markets will this is a complete prostitute mentality show that love to any guy who's got bills in his palm you know i was always pretty sure there were a lot of prostitutes working in hollywood i didn't know they actually started making the movies but that's just my opinion.