and him and spike in radiation levels of heels fears at the fukushima nuclear plant readings in a storage tank rise six and a half thousand times in two days. it's bye bye spawn as the longtime chief of americas and battled national security agency says he'll step down after spending months struggling with the fallout from the edward snowden leaks. inside the syrian rebellion with rival armed brigades and civilians feeding besieged party gets a unique perspective from within an opposition controlled area. just a few kilometers from the capital damascus but it is like a state within a state. where if a national also yes a firsthand what it's like for syrians to live sarong driven by militants.

and as a barrage of blasts like kill at least sixty one people in iraq a new study shows the number of victims that has of the american invasion it's one higher than previously thought. it's eleven am here in the russian capital you're watching r t with me to say let's take a look at our top story this hour. there's a worrying spike in radiation at the fukushima nuclear plant readings of from water storage tank of rockets at six and a half thousand times higher in two days a powerful typhoon swept through japan earlier this week causing toxic waters to be released into a drainage ditch leading to the pacific ocean it's compounded what's been

a worsening situation at the plant in recent months as a really explains two and a half years to admit the painful truth needs help. we are wide open to receive the most advanced knowledge from overseas to contain the problem my country needs are knowledge and expertise of the past few months have been marked by growing problems of. several workers have been exposed to radiation the levels of which are reportedly at their highest since the accident in two thousand and eleven and on top of that there is the issue of leakage this is the reactor inside it is the reactor core the actual nuclear parts of the plant this is water which is used to cool the nuclear course or doesn't burst in flames that water obviously has to go somewhere so it goes into a special container which is slightly below the reactor itself where eradicated water is stored and then filtered unfortunately at the fukushima plant the

situation is such that this container would be ready that water is located on the very seashore this is the ocean and the problem with the fukushima is that there is a leak supposedly right here so from there you've read it water is flowing into the pacific ocean sadly russia has a lot of experience well for when it comes to wiping up remnants of a nuclear catastrophe it has had its own the less than a quarter of a century. should be treated just like chernobyl as a record that must be retired and put into sarcophagus the problem with focus is that they can't decide whether they want to close it or to keep it going. closing the plant doesn't seem to be an option for tepco the company operating the facility which many in japan blame for the failure to handle the fukushima crisis in fact tepco is pushing towards reopening it because she was our facility the world's largest nuclear power station it was shut down in two thousand and seven following

reports of radioactive leaks after a powerful earthquake but the power giant seems undeterred by the prospect of having two malfunctioning nuclear power station on its hands maybe hoping an international effort would solve both problems at the same time if you niggas go partying. because she has troubles us turned back of course or to the quake and tsunami that ravaged japan in march of two thousand and eleven it took a year for japan's government to even admit that the nuclear disaster was caused by the improper handling of a crisis and the plant operator of course tepco they said that it could have been avoided two years after that the crisis had a radiation is recorded in local fish and the league discovered in a storage tank with contaminated water and when caught tepco was a fly nearly admitted that the reactors are toxic water it is revealed that up to

three hundred tons of radioactive water are flowing into the ocean every day now robert j. cup who's an associate professor at the hiroshima peace university says there's no immediate solution for the crisis. nobody really knows how to solve the problem there is no nobody who has solutions to the problems of fukushima are unprecedented so even bringing in outside expertise all that they can do is try to problem solve there is no solution that other countries have that they can come in and. fix the reactor or rather shut down the contamination shut down the leak so even other countries coming in and bringing their expertise will hopefully bring more professionalism in tepco has shown in the last two and a half years but even those experts will be at a loss if so how to solve the immense problems that will be facing for decades.

following what's happening at fukushima here and online including the effects wish that powerful typhoon had on the crippled nuclear power plant that are to dot com. the head of the north korea's u.s. spying agency behind sweeping global surveillance is to leave his job keith alexander is of the n.s.a. his longest serving director and has vigorously defended the snooping program as lawful and essential for national security has to touch on next spring is likely to have been spurred by the snowden leaks as i explained. the man who has made indiscriminate global surveillance and data gathering part of the fabric of america is leaving his position general keith alexander director of the national security agency is reportedly stepping down from his reign within the next six months it would be hard to deny that this unexpected exodus would be happening if not for whistleblower edward snowden general alexander's eight year tenure at the

n.s.a. came under a worldwide criticism earlier this year after snowden a former n.s.a. contractor revealed details about the n.s.a.'s global gathering of telephone e-mail and social media at foreign embassies the united nations and even heads of. states were allegedly targeted by america's dragnet surveillance political activist and author eugene puryear says general alexander's resignation is more like a fall from grace i think that the revelations from snowden are playing a big role here i mean i think for them to say that this is just sort of a random thing is is sort of absurd i mean it seemed like just a few months ago that keith alexander was being fed it is this great important general who had done all these big things that i think after everything that's been released by mr snowden very heroically that they're looking for a face lift initially general alexander defended the n.s.a.'s domestic spying practices saying the phone surveillance program he spearheaded has thwarted fifty four terrorist plots or events as it turns out that number was

a gross exaggeration last week the n.s.a. director admitted he lied now america's top spy has been nicknamed alexander the great a reference to all the influence and power he has amassed during his tenure but many say that changing the face of the n.s.a. will likely prevent journalists from continuing to report about america's questionable surveillance practices glenn greenwald's who initially broke the n.s.a. spy scandal has personally promised that there are many more bombshell exposes to come reporting from new york marina for not r.t. . reporting events in syria is becoming too dangerous for many with the killing and kidnapping of journalists are forcing more and more to stay away from the conflict team from sky news arabia went missing on thursday following dozens of abductions of these twenty five journalists have been killed in the conflict a difficult as it is to get inside the troubles there is to explain what's

happening artie's maria made it to one of the rebel controlled areas. but take all your brother next to the syrian lebanese border is just eighty kilometers from the capital damascus but it is like a state within a state that has its own security forces police and even the army can see it symbols all new authorities here everywhere graffiti or three stars that means free syrian army is controlling this area a syrian military cannot enter you have root is the center of a large mountainous area in western syria known as. in two thousand and eleven local residents were among the first to support the n.t. assad campaign it seems been cut off from damascus and run by the rebels. i cover my head as all women here do because we are told this is an area under islamic law . we have civil and local councils we have shariah law tribunals and normal courts we have more teeth and lawyers the kerio justice we run the town by ourselves the

army can enter and even if they try we are ready to resist and defend our land my judge calls these his land but in fact he only came here relatively recently born in kuwait and having spent years traveling the middle east and the gulf this is his parents' native town manager that arrived four years ago months before serious protests began. to resist to the end we have a plan and we have forces to make it happen. this is who he's talking about the self-styled free syrian army but these fighters don't work with other militants functioning instead as an autonomy as armed brigade. they leave an abandoned houses sleep and pray together and claim fighting bashar al assad is their only goal twice a week they hear an islamic lecture from a young man who everybody calls the shaikh he's taken part in the hellish pilgrimage to mecca and started the qur'an in saudi arabia. every monday and

thursday we discuss the revolution the latest military developments as well as our daily routine we discuss what's hollow and what's her what's prescribed or forbidden by islam i ask them whether the judge had the law and then qaeda affiliated radical islamic groups openly operating in syria like no no no no no we have no relation with the nusra we first say. the newser is linked to the outside they follow al qaida and for decisions they revert to their army or even our here e al-qaeda leader we have normal relations with them next we are supposed to meet with people from a list but when our armed guys learn of the. yes they do all they can to stop us the groups controlling the area are not only fighting assad they compete with each other even for media attention being among journalists is seen as something prestigious. school did and i told the film from the car but it one point twist top

by a group of gunmen apparently from a hostile brigade and they ask about who we are later our guards told us the men were kidnappers from rema village at least nineteen for journalists to held hostage in syria right now and the price and then lives varies. these areas supposedly run by opposition fighters is in fact in the hands of a large number of separate brigades armed groups or just lone rebels with different ideologies and the only food and weaponry and these are locals who pay the bills. we as christians have to pay so-called duty this is our input into society we go to church and pay it muslims do also we pay for internal security brigades for relief aid and courts funding is not the only cost for the situation in your brood is critical a shortage of food in everything we are besieged. trapped in their own

country where more than two years of deadly conflict has only seen fractions and goals increasingly diverged. artie's morea for national reports from fragmented syrian rebel held territories. syria on the rebel group in arkansas. over in the wrong new studies suggest the body count is worse than you may have thought not one of those of a new study into the human cost of the u.s. led war in iraq about why previous estimates might be conservative at best that's ahead. from great expectations to bitter disappointment to ireland's about to end its three year bailout from its european partners last if it's strong enough to go off to the.

technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future covered. right simply. first strike. and i would think that you're. on our reporters would.

be in the. interview. calculating the actual number of victims from the u.s. led war in iraq it isn't easy but

a new study based on speaking to iraqi households suggests that almost half a million people have perished as a result of comfort and violence all the countries back to health kate now we are one of the surveys authors why many people still believe the level of fatalities is much lower. clearly the public and both the u.s. and the u.k. . underestimates the number of people who died in iraq as a result of that war and that's been true for a long time and i think it's the result of a very specific deliberate. strategy on the part coalition forces to keep the public thinking that the death toll was low these were fairly rapidly unpopular decisions to to do this invasion and the last the public was able to attract havoc that we were wreaking mongar they could

sustain the end of the intervention without a public outcry. over deadly legacy left by the u.s. invasion sectarian violence has claimed and lives through the last month now the latest string of attacks in mainly shia areas in baghdad in northern iraq e communities have left at least sixty one people did amy her goal also told us that a deeper analysis of victims would reveal it even more shocking numbers. one major fly of the study is that households who experienced a great deal of violence were very likely to leave the country and we are pretty sure we missed a lot of people who might have told us about deaths because those people have left so we think our count is actually low. campaign as in germany say it's high time to wrap up political gift giving their demanding a club down on suspiciously lavish nations to angola merkel's political party which

received seven hundred thousand euros from b m w the full story is on r t. o's online edward snowden says that was no way russia or china will go to any n.s.a. documents adding that to he flew to moscow empty handed. the dust covers are off and the u.s. government has reopened following a nerve wrecking shutdown and balancing on the verge of a default for over two weeks president obama is warning that america has suffered a major blow and the fiscal battle is far from over the last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our economy we don't know yet the full scope of the damage but every analyst out there believes it's slowed our growth probably nothing is done more damage to america's credibility in the world are standing with other countries. then the spectacle that we've seen these past

several weeks america has already got a thumbs down from china its dugong agency has slashed the united states' credit rating by one notch to a minus that's the same level as brazil and panama bumping up the borrowing limit again for another few months didn't solve the debt problem the agency said it took washington well then a fortnight of stuff and talks to reach an agreement before the deadline a long way to deal they came up with certainly no happy ending financial analyst max up front wolf explains who learned what lesson is a big issue we didn't really get a deal we got to kick the can down the road rules and revisit this later type of deal the risks are still huge they're still very much there but i do think however that this will go on forever for two reasons one because i do think that there we have reached or are reaching the limit of public and corporate patience and the other one is you can only do this much damage to yourself publicly for so long before you're so damaged that the world doesn't care and your economy isn't strong

enough to lose that much money i do think there's a possibility here that the more reasonable portion of the republican party and there are a bunch of those the more moderate forces the democratic party can work together to cleave off the influence of some of the more destructive forces that we've seen come to the fore here in the last couple weeks if that's true that we suffered to get somewhere if that's not true that we just suffered to suffer more in the future and i certainly hope the second one is not how it works out. larry king has been grilling the man who is in the white house of representatives the hot seat last time there was a shutdown hear what newt gingrich has to say in political later on r.t. . your wife calista wonderful lady has a new book out called yankee doodle baby and i'm going to relate this to the current situation that my book deals with the american revolution the founding fathers how do you think they would react to what's going on in two thousand and thirteen in washington we are closer now to talk about it because in her book ellis

the elephant introduces forty year olds to american history and we were we were literally trying with the fact that when the founding fathers needed to write the constitution they want to philadelphia they locked themselves in for fifty five days no press conferences no public attacks no leaks fifty five days of hard work i think if the president and the congressional leadership would spend fifty five days together we wouldn't be in the mess we're in they'd have found some common solutions and i think it's shared that we have degenerated from serious people doing serious business to kind of politics we have today. checking around the world at some other top stories now in canada police have arrested forty people after protests against sale gas extraction turned violent clashes broke out as officers used pepper spray on demonstrators and a three week long sit in which was blocking highway access to

a wrecking equipment the protesters responded with petrol bombs as well as fears over water pollution locals are furious that the riots over their own land have been swept aside. so later clashes have broken out at a rally of tens of thousands of education protesters in chile's capital or to canada where deployed when some demonstrators threw rocks and set barricades on fire a nationwide campaign for free and better quality education has rumbled on for over two years and mass protests have often resulted in unrest that's likely to be the key issue in next month's elections. now classrooms protests of a different kind in paris where hundreds of students blocked access to their schools in protest at the forced her deportation of a roma people the fifteen year old girl was seized from a school bus and sent back to cross a ball because officials said the she entered illegally nearly five years ago is generally support for the government on immigration but the teenager's treatment

has sparked calls for the interior minister to quit. the sky above sydney has been plunged into darkness by mess of pubes of smoke go from inferno as a raging on at the city's outskirts there are major bushfires blazing across australia's most populated state dozens of which are burning out of control hundreds of homes have been lost to the flames in the worst hit areas of new south wales while thousands of people have been evacuated to safety this is wildfire season is already being called the worst in a decade. arland is on a path to to exiting its three year international bailout program another eighty five billion euro emergency aid was a lifeline after its banks collapse in two thousand and ten but it meant circle feiss had to be paid and had to be made such as tax rises the introduction of new levels of slashes of pensions and that the cut of the minimum wage irish finance

minister says the economy is revive is reviving although hard times lie ahead in the country's twenty five billion euro dead argues kevin owen earlier talked to one irish politician who told us the country's great expectation of joining the e.u. were unjustified it. one of today's major reasons why we're in this mess is because people didn't listen to people like antony cotton who when we joined the euro sage that we're all laughing today bush's phalange in tears and how right he was and it created a situation where our public finances were swears a money a cheap interest rates which could never have been sustained are there any positives of the three years of austerity has brought your country how can you see positives in people not having enough to waste how can you see positives in a situation where they were caught the disabled and you see a situation where you have people coming into my office on a zimmer frame looking for help and then you discover that they are the ones who are caring for someone even more sick at home we were told that when we joined up

to this european monster that it would make us richer we are certainly not richer when we joined the european union we were not a stock for food when we started the european union we had our independence we unfortunately seem to want to give away everything fortunately there are people in this country who don't want to give away everything and actually believe we should move away from the eurozone and also move out of the european union altogether and try and try a few like const countries like switzerland and norway who manage to do quite well without europe interfering in their affairs and also piling massive bank dash on our shoulders. coming up of the intricacies of the u.s. government shutdown and reopening and how much it's cost america and cost.

you know as i look more and more into it i find that there were a lot of myths and exaggerations about what happened in russia during the soviet era however one really bad rumor seems to be true if you were an outspoken advocate against the soviet status quo then you could be considered insane and be locked away until the psychiatrist convinced you that khrushchev was brilliant scary stuff but sadly famous grammy award winning singer lauryn hill might be living the life of a soviet dissident right now she was convicted of failing to pay five hundred thousand dollars in taxes but strangely according to the international business times she was ordered to undergo psychiatric counseling because she believes in conspiracy theories related to the music industry who wrote in her own tumblr account that the music industry is manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex this is

a strong accusation from hill but is actually irrelevant if it is true or not you see punishments are supposed to fit the crime and the crime of tax evasion should not have a punishment of mandatory counseling or is more paranoid types like me like to call it reprogramming oh they are usually trivial this celebrity case actually sets a dangerous legal precedent but that's just my opinion.

hello and welcome to crossfire all things considered i'm peter lavelle crisis averted at least for now washington's dangerous and even the responsible political circus has taken a time out with barack obama still standing however neither the president nor congress have much to be proud of none of the port issues at the heart of this deadlock have been dealt with washington gridlock issues like it can be kicked down the road. to cross out the american fiscal crisis i'm joined by philip wallach in washington he's a fellow in governance studies at the brookings institution in new york we have less leopold he is the director of the labor institute and author of how to make a million dollars an hour how hedge funds get away with siphoning off america's wealth and in dallas we cross to he is the founder of chop wood finance dot com and an internationally recognized expert in wealth management right gentlemen crosstalk

rules in fact that means you can jump in anytime you want philip if i go to you first in washington after this drawn out crisis a circus in washington it's come to an end what's changed not much if you fell asleep two and a half weeks ago when i woke up today you wouldn't have missed much. ok ok but i mean i'm laughing about that i should i be laughing about that because after everything that's been said and done is that a laughing matter. well listen you know at the end of a we really believe the old saw about democracy is the worst system of government that's ever been tried except for all the others it's not pretty it's very messy but at the end of the day it did not lead us into a catastrophe ok less if i go to new york why should and why did it have to go to that point of a catastrophe in the first place then well actually i think it is moving towards a catastrophe and that catastrophe is the evisceration of the social scene.