the latest news and the week's top stories the hunger strike at guantanamo bay passes the hundred day mark with inmates risking their lives in their protest against indefinite detention without charge. u.s. government seizes the phone records of over one hundred journalists from the associated press sparking media outrage but the white house insists it was not involved in a pro. syrian government forces to take the fight to the rebels in the key town near the lebanese border. seen as an entry point for smuggled weapons and mercenaries. and more spies in disguise russian security exposes a cia chief in moscow as u.s. intelligence is left the red face after getting caught trying to recruit

a russian agent. broadcasting live from our studios in moscow this is r.t.m. sean thomas going to have you with us now it has been one hundred three days since the mass hunger strike at guantanamo bay began and it seems the prisoners aren't going to back down over half of the camp's inmates are involved in the protest against indefinite detention without trial and with no timetable for release some of them are saying they are seeking freedom through death but the u.s. military is force feeding them to make sure things don't go that far there's going to church can reports. after years of the national injustice and indifference and after more than three months of starvation one tunnel detainees have finally got the president's attention i'm going to go back apis they've heard these words

before as president i will close guantanamo reject the military commissions act and if you go to the geneva conventions and now we're dead it needs to be closed now congress and again as many times before the white house if it were sponsibility to congress there's much you can do administrative leave without congress without having a legislative act even under current restrictions the administration has the power to use national security waivers to release many of these men which it hasn't used it's the charge that well the fear that if you release some of these prisoners that have been accused of being terrorist in the past and and they do something else or you find them going into terrorist organizations you pay a heavy political price for that so many of these men have fallen victim not just to their wrongful capture but also to u.s.

politicians assumptions of what they may or may not do in the future but you can or you can or will people want to maybe you know this is a we're not future police here so far the administration's only response to the crises of carnival has been to force feeding troops down detainees nostrils the fact of the matter is that when an individual makes a decision of sound mind makes a decision to refuse food as a political protest then as we said in our joint statement it is not open to the states in a circumstance to force them to do each. and the full speeding here involves the insertion of a tube of some significant down on the diameter through the nasal passages and into the stomach in the most horrible of circumstances the un special rapporteur on human rights also told me that he was encouraged to hear the. once again express commitment to close the infamous prison president of the united states has said kuantan was a problem and yet on the ground for some reason the camp administration continues

to treat these men and humanely and to deny them basic dignity for years the administration has engaged in verbal and legal acrobatics to justify its inaction on guantanamo and still not clear how long before people there start dying but one thing is clear the elephant in the room just got too big to ignore in washington i'm going to shut down. the u.s. military recently requested tens of millions of dollars to renovate the prison saying congress has decided to keep it open indefinitely maintaining the facility is already costing america a considerable sum let's take a look at those numbers nine hundred thousand dollars that's the price of keeping just one detainee there for a year and there's one hundred sixty six inmates and guantanamo many of whom have been held without charge for more than a decade it costs much less some twenty five thousand dollars per year to house a convicted prisoner in the u.s. my colleague bill dodd spoke to guantanamo spokesman navy captain robert duran and

who denied abuse at the facility. they get what we call a full frisk which is a pat down search not unlike you'd experience going through airport security if you are selected for secondary screening in the united states it's quick it's full clothing on and it's noninvasive it's not the detainees job to tell the truth the lawyers just repeat what the detainees say that all of the allegations are false and let me ask you about the allegations about the unsafe and inhumane force feeding all those prisoners who are on hunger strike do you deny that the policy of the united states and its drugs are of life or lawful means we have currently thirty who are doing and terribly sad deaths using a liquid nutrition supplement most of them when they're ordered to do that go compliantly and take it a percentage about a third need to be taken to their cheating it's

a procedure that's done in hospitals and nursing homes every day it's not done to harass them but it's done to sustain life to sustain life while we've been hearing from the medical justice network who is saying that don't deserve accused of colluding in torture that at the camp and that's been agreed on by the world medical association and the u.n. the u.s. and we disagree with them it's a matter of national policy our courts of up held that. sustaining life you lawful means is lawful we have a medical protocol where we evaluate detainees based on their weight loss and co-morbidity we allow them to hunger strikes that if they get below eighty five percent of body weight some damage can be done we will do the involuntary feeding all of those allegations are false they're not they're not being subject to extreme temperatures they're not being denied food and water the conditions are as good as they can possibly be they had satellite television and they had communal living that all kinds of good things were transparent facility. well despite america's

position the united nations has condemned a force feeding at guantanamo calling such measures torture and a violation of international law u.s. federal public defender carlos warner says the american government is resorting to inhumane methods to keep of the prisoners alive instead of resolving the issue by letting those cleared go for leaks arbitrary detention it goes against everything that every international law every human rights organization the u.n. says that's completely wrong force feeding goes against what what everybody says is is correct it's defined by the of those groups as torture so on this issue unfortunately the president is on the wrong side the military is all wrong and they're doing all the things to drive in the wrong direction remember this is the same military that the night of strike was going on for a long time say military they said if your force extracted from your cell

a tube shed that that's not force feeding the president frames it this way we've got two bad choices either they die or if we force feed them well there's a third choice and the third choice is releasing the innocent men which he has the power to do that would end the strike the military has another choice too they could negotiate with the men and with people like myself they did that we could end the strike in a week and we could we could roll this backwards but instead of deescalating they ask only over and over again it makes you wonder whether or not the military wants this to continue because they're certainly doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. well that's how things are going right now over at the guantanamo bay hunger strike could get yourself up to speed on the events of the past one hundred days that are to dot com there you'll find complete and comprehensive coverage with comments and analysis from u.s. officials lawyers and even some former detainees it's all for you there online.

the u.s. justice department got embroiled in another surveillance scandal this week after it seized two months of phone records of editors and journalists from the country's biggest news gathering service the associated press that wall has the details for us. it's being called an unprecedented government intrusion the justice department secretly collected two months of telephone records from the associated press and its reporters. the a.p. believes this story prompted the secret investigation the cia uncovered a plot to bomb a u.s. bound airliner a plot originated in yemen and was carried out by. the arabian peninsula by reporting this al qaeda was put on notice that the cia had an inside look at their activities be a piece as the justice department did not say why they needed the information but says among the nearly two dozen telephone records collected at least five of them

were from reporters working on the story in question this was a very serious. a very serious leak and a very very serious leak. i've been a prosecutor since nine hundred seventy six and i have to say that this is among if not the most serious it is within the top two or three most serious leaks and every see it put the american people at risk and that is not hyperbole eric holder announced he was recusing himself from this a.p. investigation the prominent news agency condemned the government's actions in a letter to holder associated press c.e.o. gary pruitt says quote these records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities undertaken by the a.p. during a two month period provide a roadmap to news gathering operations and disclose information about a.p.'s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know now

the a.p. is asking for an explanation as to why the government pulled reporters' phone records without notifying them the worries the effect the news will have on the media and its sources i think the effect on the media has already been felt i mean you have sources that are being shut down. doors just being shut in people's faces now that was probably the intention the intention was to scare. the turn off the faucet in other words from leaks in the wake of the controversy white house press secretary jay carney reiterated the obama administration's dedication to transparency he believes strongly in the need for the press to be unfettered in its pursuit of investigative journalism he also believes strongly as a citizen and as president in the need to ensure that classified information is not leaked because it can endanger our national security interests there is a balance between transparency and national security has been a delicate one since nine eleven the obama administration has

a history of aggressively going after whistleblowers prosecuting more people for leaking classified information than any other administration combined and washington was wall. well plugging of the flow of illegal weapons later in the program. on the syrian government's offensive in a rebel held a border town seen as a key smuggling route for arms from lebanon. also ahead as activist groups continue to draw attention to human rights violations in bahrain a local activist tells us about the kingdom's new ways of spying on its people her story and more coming right up after a short break. that was built on coal. fuel for its factories. coke for its steel. gold is it more than heat for its people. join me james brown to

meet them and spend their lives underground and work in one of the world's most dangerous professions. would let's you. coal. wealthy british style sign some time to. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser reports.

then live from moscow this is our team glad to have you back with us. in syria government forces have fought their way into the heart of a key rebel stronghold with at least fifty eight people said to have been killed in the ongoing battle the town of qusayr near the lebanese border is allegedly a vital before the smuggling of arms into syria local journalist xeni has the details for us. the rebels on the north an area of the city that is the full control over the east in western. side of the city that was dated the center of center city is that related and in a surprise the syrian army managed to make a full circle around the city fighting position a position fight is the main achievement is to stop that line of supply chain between lebanon and syria most of the fighters from different areas and syria in

order to gather in course so close had become the capital of pollution this operation moved very slow but it was for these studies technically speaking they managed to make first they started from the west front western side of the of the city and veteran areas they control this this phone with some fighters from lebanon some extremist group were preparing to go into syria to fight with that a bull's going to make they were going to make a kind of a bigger front in order to fight and expand. the fighting line between government and opposition by this now we have limited the fighting into one city or one into one part of the city the international arena and then to national fear has started to change with american agreement. it's less acceptable. acceptable for countries to go against the americans by providing more weapons to

that if aleutian. in syria by this it's a kind of a green line for the syrian government forces to go into that it will. say which is of course now by this no more smuggling will go on. weapons coming from cut off from other countries. fresh fears of syria's conflict of breaching its a borders a grew this week when protesters clashed with police in neighboring turkey demonstrators are angry out on car as support for the rebels and save the turkish people are paying the price for the involvement after protests in found volm and the capital tear gas was used on crowds in a turkish border town which was the scene of a deadly double bombing a week ago turkey blamed syria for the attack which it strongly denied and pointed the finger at radical rebels reportedly in the town journalist manual oxon writer who's covered the syrian crisis extensively says turkey's aggravating the conflict

by backing the insurgency. the turkish demonstrators the turkish people is upset because of what was happening on the turkish side it's their full right because it's like to let me say to invite a firestarter into your house because you want to send to me later to your neighbors and then you wander the firestarter starts putting fire on your own house we have to see that turkey has a nine hundred kilometer long border with syria and we have to see that turkey doesn't do anything to prevent terrorists and mercenaries crossing the border from turkey to syria in contradiction turkey even supports those terrorists training camps. in turkey it's giving supply a lot of means and turkey is right now acting like a hostile power towards the moscow's if it's aid the so-called. more moderate

rebels claimed a couple of times in the past that they consider the jihadists from the fraud and. the troops as they're calling raids in the fight against hamas because so if the west helps us now or in turkey says we support the moderate rebels it's not true because nobody can assure a god comes from the hand of a so-called moderate rebel in the hand off a so-called extremist rebel i think we should start to distinguish finally because this is a big lie. you know as always you can get more on our stories over on our website or two dot com online for you now drones and the military robots set their sights on the sporting world a tourist site to learn about the radical security measures being planned for the world cup in brazil. and bureaucrats in brussels may have their hands full trying to cope with an economic crisis but they're still finding time to

impose a bizarre restrictions on restaurants serving all of oil get the full story on our to dot com. humiliated and expelled cia spy ryan fogle has now left russia after being busted offering a million dollars to a russian security agent in return for assistance this week saul read faces at the american embassy in moscow as the identity was also revealed of the cia bureau chief working under the guise of a diplomat. takes up the story for us ryan fogle was caught in the act trying to recruit a russian special service agent to work for the americans now russia's federal security service has released a photo technical equipment and some other items that were found when he was detained and closing a compress a map of moscow a large amount of cash and even two weeks to allegedly use as does the guy says now this is suspected cia agent was offering one million dollars

a year for passing on classified information and that was revealed to him now why a taped telephone conversation between full goal and the security agent he was trying to recruit made public by russia's federal security service. if you're going to the store it's award to the new boss morgan as opposed to talk of the warden you know what the store clerk yes because of the mortgages on the bottom but the words of a million little old you want us to use it so some. ideas. such a fool has been handed over to the american us for eighty s. and now faces deportation the f.s.b. told r.t. that was not the first case and recent years since two thousand and eleven there have been in fact four other similar cases one case involves another american embassy employee who was trying to recruit a russian employee of the national anti terror committee the ass's b. says that there is

a striking resemblance to the focal scase and that the cia has gone too far with this spying operations. we were particularly outraged at the actions of the american spy dillon benjamin he tried to convince an employee of the russian national counterterrorism u.-t. to hand over classified documents of this department to the cia like mr fogle he was deported from russia we hope the cia would learn their lesson and something like that would never happen again so we decided not to release the information about dylan to the public but apparently they didn't learn that lesson in fogel's case the crossed a red line so we have to react according to official instructions. and as average with a juicy spy story at hand the exposure of a cia spy in moscow got the media animated it was a mixture off laugh for and disbelief at their alleged spies quite clumsy recruiting techniques but that's quite a common reaction to the stories like this but still it doesn't make them last her

last three member of the previous spy scandals for instance back in two thousand and six russian t.v. showed a documentary exposing several british and my six agents working in moscow and here is the high concept they used rocks at that time the media laughed at what was considered a conspiracy theory until a high ranking adviser to the prime minister admitted it's true so rocks weeks compresses and maps james bond doesn't exactly have much competition right now. britain is being an taken to task for failing to keep a close watch on how it's spying technology is used about raney rights activist says her rep press of government used u.k. made equipment to keep tabs on her she's now taking the issue to london's high court the manufacturers insist the devices are designed for criminal investigations but privacy campaigners say the system is widely abused let's take

a look at the actual program itself now it's called fin spy and it can perform a wide range of surveillance options it works by infecting your computer and then recording your skype conversations and social media activity can also take screenshots without your knowledge and access information on your hard drive shahabi who filed the court documents told r.t. the digital surveillance has been spreading in bahrain since former high ranking u.k. police officer john yates became a security advisor there. disguised as if they were from journalists and were from other activists and then after we discovered after two months investigation of a technical analysis to try and. investigate what kind of information on what this software actually does we discovered there was a company called gamma international which sells this software to foreign governments so we assumed and we given the circumstances in which i received the

e-mails and the nature of the e-mails this was a suspect this was sold to the bahraini government but we also know that the servers. received this information from the software is actually based in bahrain so the servers are currently in bahrain and they're being updated in bahrain which means that this is further evidence over the past two years particularly since the british advisor john yates joined the bahraini security services we have noticed the increase in the use of surveillance in the use of c.c.t.v. and the use of digital surveillance and there are very targeted arrests and influence infiltration amongst protests activists that are happening using the latest technology technologies and this is all happened since following on from the hiring of the recruitment of john yates and most of these companies that provide all of this technology are british now we know of at least thirty six so be maintained worldwide so now the this is

a global operation gam international has sold this software to at least twenty five governments and the us seems the use of the software seems to have no any type of restriction so this is turning into a global phenomenon and it's run by the private sector so well look increasingly at the commercialisation of digital surveillance which is even scarier because it's very difficult to regulate. now let's take a look at some other international stories making headlines around the world for you this hour. in tunisia a violent clash between police and supporters of hardline islamist groups has left one protester dead and several others injured and with thousands took to the streets of the capital in tunis in defiance of a government ban on the rally riot police moved in and firing tear gas to disperse the demonstrators who fought back by hurling rocks. shari'a movement which openly supports al qaeda is the most radical to emerge in tunisia since the two thousand

and eleven arab spring uprising. north korea has fired a short range projectile off its east coast as part of a so-called routine task and that follows an earlier triple launch that put the neighboring south back on alert for an analyst say the missiles have a range of one hundred twenty kilometers so the u.n. secretary general has appealed to north korea to avoid any further missile tests. well up next r t the men working dangerous jobs in the deep mines of russia. although i was born after the vietnam era i remember t.v. discussions about that buddhist monk who burned himself to death as

a form of protest the commentators on the news said that people there just have a different mindset that westerners could never understand you know which is probably true but they were implying that people in the west are just different and would never use this absolutely extreme form of protest which is also probably true until just recently with the cost of electricity exceeding the income of the average bulgarian and a new government coming to power that looks exactly like the old government that collapsed at least so. garion have used self-immolation as a very desperate and extreme form of protest but why kristen ghodsee a professor at bowdoin college who has extensively talked about getting protests just claims that those who self-immolating are just incredibly desperate and cannot feed their own children and that people are actually becoming a stealth for communism because at least that system at the people's basic needs the current democratic system from the populous us perspective according to her just cycles through a few new crooks every few years although it does get media attention and you may

be feeling desperate suicide is never an answer the more living bulgarians the better ball carriers chances believe me but that's just my opinion. is the. time of massive change. dreams of the most industrial nation and he wants. to do it. coal is the bread industry during the soviet union the miner was held up as a shining example of what a work tireless ready to sacrifice himself for his country and the hardest workers

of all where here is who's boss. taking the coal that would make everything from steel. to. deep inside the bus is estimated to contain more than seven hundred billion tons of coal and the mines employ more than one hundred thousand people i want to meet these men and find out just what it takes to work in russia's coal basin on the first lesson. is how to keep themselves safe. from the sure the six six seven m. life support system is designed to protect the lungs from gases in the event of explosion ok even if you have smoke around you you but.