and a mental spike in radiation levels fuels fears at the fukushima nuclear plant as readings in a storage tank six and a half thousand times higher in two days. it's bob i spot as the long time chief of america's embezzled a national security agency says he'll step down after spending months struggling with the fallout from the edward snowden leaks. last inside the syrian rebellion the with rival on brigades and civilian. r t gets a unique perspective from within an opposition controlled area just eighty kilometers from the capital damascus but it is like a state within a state rise of maria phenomenal also his firsthand what it's like for syrians to live surrounded by militants. oh.

and as a barrage of blogs the kill at least sixty one people in iraq a new study suggests the number of victims since the american invasion it's gone higher than previously thought. is just long pause to one o'clock here in the russian capital you're live with us on r.t. for international news with me to them with a top story now. there's a worrying spike in a radiation at the fukushima nuclear plant readings from a water storage tank of rocketed six and a half thousand times higher in two days a powerful typhoon swept through japan earlier this week causing toxic water 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. school explaining 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 the past few months have been marked by growing problems at fukushima 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's the issue of leakage this is the reactor inside it is the reactor core the actual nuclear part of the plant this is water which is used to call 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 with the already had 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 they read it water is flowing into the pacific ocean sadly russia has a lot of experience warfare when it comes to wiping up remnants of the nuclear catastrophe it has had its all and the last in a quarter of a century. when other perfect pitch should be treated just like chernobyl has a record that must be retired and put in a sarcophagus the problem with focus is that they can't decide whether they want to close it or to keep it going because. 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 lucky 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 stations. on its hands maybe hoping an international effort would solve both problems this name time. r.t. . for a. bag of course or to the earth quake and tsunami that reverie japan in march of twenty eleven now it took a year for japan's government to admitted that the nuclear disaster was caused by the improper handling of the crisis and other plans operated tepco all they say could have been avoided two years after the crisis hit radiation is recorded a local fish and a league discovered it at a storage tank with contaminated waters and when tap called fly nearly at mit's that the leaking toxic water is leaking toxic water it also revealed that up to the really hundred tons of that a radioactive leak was also found in the water flowing into the ocean. jacobs who's

an associate professor at he russian mob 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 these problems that fukushima are unprecedented so even bringing in outside expertise all that they can do is try to problem solve there's no solution that other countries have that they can come in and. fix the reactors 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. but closely following what's happening at fukushima here and online including the effects of which the powerful typhoon had on the crippled nuclear plant that have

r.t. dot com. the head of the notorious u.s. spying agency behind sweeping credible surveillance is to leave his job keith alexander is the n.s.a. as long as serving director and has vigorously defended the snooping program as lawful and essential for national security is to patia next spring is likely to have been spurred by the snowden leaks as marrying up of my experience 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 data foreign embassies the united nations and even the heads. 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 and 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 when greenwald who initially broke the n.s.a. spy scandal has personally promise that there are many more bombshell exposed to pop reporting from new york marina for nine r.t. . and the spy chief the departure is also under the microscope in artie's of breaking the set you can watch the next hour but here's a quick preview thing. you know after all those tours of duty that combat zone of checking people's facebook likes and their yahoo address books you can understand why he wants some down time it's pretty ridiculous because what they initially told us at first back in march james clapper the director of national intelligence told

congress that they're not collecting any data at all on u.s. citizens clearly a lie perjured himself or congress should be in jail based on our existing laws but of course nothing has happened to him because he's too powerful and so that was back in march not collecting any data at all on u.s. citizens and then we have you know we're collecting data but it's only the met a data don't worry about it guys go back to do whatever you do before car dash in kanye west or together disco focus on that stuff and then it comes out that oh they're actually harvesting hundreds of thousands in a single day hundreds of thousands of people's address book contacts people who have no connection to terrorism or crime and by the way people who are u.s. citizens. reporting events in syria is becoming too dangerous for many with the killing and kidnapping of journalists forcing more and more to stay away from the conflict

a team from sky news arabia went missing on thursday following dozens of abductions at least twenty five journalists have been killed in the conflict difficult as it is to get inside the troubles oh so explain what's happening r.t. is maria for national made it to one of the rebel controlled area but a lawyer brad 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 its symbols of new authorities here everywhere graffiti or three stars that means free syrian army is controlling this area they syrian military cannot enter your route 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 peace and noirs the curio justice we run the town bar so the army can enter and even if they try we are ready to resist and defend our land my god calls these are 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. we 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 armed brigade. they live in abandoned houses sleeping 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 looser 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 al-zawahiri al qaeda leader we have normal relations with them next we are supposed to meet with people from my list but when our armed guys learn of this 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. courted and i told to 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 man were kidnappers from rema village at least nineteen fourteen journalists are held hostage in syria right now and the price of their lives varies. these areas supposedly run by opposition fighters is in fact in the hands. the large number of separate brigades armed groups are just lone rebels with different ideologies and the only to 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 is muslims do also we pay for internal security brigades for relief

aid and courts funding is not the only cost. 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 notion of reports from fragmented syrian rebel held territory. syria rebel group one or two. over in iraq a new study suggests the body count is worse than you may have thought now one of the office of a new study into the human cost of the u.s. led war in iraq talks to r.t. about why previous estimates might be conservative but that's that's still a. plus up from the great expectations change bitter disappointment ireland is

about to end his three year bailout from his european partners will ask if it's strong enough to go it alone after the break. well. science technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future are covered. right the same. first rate. and i think the future.

on our reporters there in. the in the. i. think so stay with us here on our team by calculating the actual number of victims from the u.s. led war in iraq isn't easy but a new study based on speaking to iraqis households suggests that almost half a million people have perished as a result of conflict violence or the country's best of health care now we also one of the surveys authors why many people still believe the level of fatalities is mush no one. clearly the public in both the u.s. and the u.k.

. under estimates the number of people who died in iraq as a result of the 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 is low these were fairly rapidly unpopular decisions to to do this invasion and the less the public was able to track havoc that we were wreaking mongar they could sustain the intervention without public outcry as part of the deadly legacy left by the us invasion sectarian violence has claimed to over a thousand lives through the last month of the latest string of attacks in many shia areas in baghdad and northern iraq communities of left at least sixty one people dead. pm also told us that the analysts of analysis of

victims would be real even more shocking numbers. while 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. the campaign is in germany see it's high time that the political wrap up with a gift giving demanding a clumsy suspiciously eleven nations chewing on america's political party which received seven hundred thousand euros from b.m.w. the full story is on r.t. dot com. also online ad with snowden that says that there's no way russia china got any n.s.a. documents that in that he flew to moscow and had. police

sign vests to getting a break in at the apartment block which houses the russian embassy stuff in the hague the incident is adding to the friction developing between moscow and the netherlands after both russia and diplomats came under attack in recent weeks now more on this from oddities of joining us live lucy you've been looking into these incidents can you explain to our what's actually happening of course hi there to have you well it's hard to say whether this is a case of diplomatic tit for tat or just pure coincidence but here's what we know so far an apartment housing that russian diplomats in the hague was apparently broken into burglarized on thursday night not an official diplomatic residence but it is managed by the russian embassy now the dutch foreign ministry said it regrets the incident there's apparently an investigation underway but very much unclear at this point at least whether it's connected to wednesday's attack against a dutch official right here in moscow now in that case two men posing as

electricians broke into the home of a senior dutch diplomat on the elders bosh they beat him up they reportedly scrawled a hard on the mirror in the stick with the acronym l g b t for lesbian gay bisexual and transgender that incident meanwhile follows the arrest earlier this month of a russian diplomat dmitri borodin on suspicion of mistreating two young children which prompted president of law doomer putin to demand an apology which he did get and then of course there is the intensifying quarrel over the arrest and prosecution of dutch sit. that is now they were as we all know detained after a dutch flag ship belonging to greenpeace was boarded over a protest on a russian oil rig in the arctic so a very strange escalation of diplomatic conflicts here of course the irony is that the air twenty thirteen was officially supposed to be one of cultural exchange to highlight the friendship between russia and the netherlands all these incidents certainly casting a shadow over that you see we'll see how all of those plays that are from both sides are teams you see captain of there with the latest updates on the story.

of the dust covers off and the u.s. government has really opened to following a nerve wrecking shutdown and balancing on the verge of a default for over two weeks but president obama is warning that america has suffered a major blow and that the fiscal battle is far from 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 than the spectacle that we've seen these past several weeks. america has already got a thumbs down from china its day gong agency has slashed the united states' credit rating by a one to a minus that's the same level as brazil and panama bumping up of the

boring limit again for another few months didn't solve the debt problem the agency said i'm in it to washington more than a fortnight of stuff to reach an agreement before the deadline and the long awaited deal they came up with is certainly no happy ending this financial analyst a mix fraud will fix things. what lesson is a big issue we didn't really get a deal we've got to kick the can down the road and revisit this later type of deal their risks are still huge they're still very much there but i do think however that this won't go on forever for two reasons one because i do think that 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 portions of the republican party and there are a bunch of those and 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. checking around the world and some other top stories now police in canada are set forty people protest against shale gas extra extraction turned violent clashes broke out as officers used pepper spray on demonstrators at a three week long sit in which was blocking highway access to a fracking equipment depo the protesters responded with petrol bombs as well as a few years over water pollution locals are furious that the riots over their own lend have been swept aside. isolated clashes have broken out at a rally of tens of thousands of education protesters in chile's capital water cannon were deployed when some demonstrations and demonstrators threw rocks and said barricades on fire the nationwide campaign for free and better quality

education has rumbled on for over two years and mass protests have often use outed in congress is likely to be a key issue in the next month's election. classers protests of a different kind in paris where hundreds of students are blocked access to their schools in protest at the falls a deportation of a roma people fifteen year old girl was seized in front of her fellow pupils and sent back to kosovo because officials that she entered illegally nearly five years ago there is generally wide support for the government on immigration at the teenager's treatment has sparked calls will be to remain istra to quit. the government saudi arabia has said turn down a seat on the u.n. security council accusing it of failing to fulfill its duty to our old global security that's right after the country was granted a place as a nonpermanent member for the first time the gulf monarchies had been pushing for

military intervention in syria with its support of the rebel forces and voice its anger when the strike so we're called off last month after a deal was brokered to dismantle the country's chemical arsenal. arlen's on the way to exiting it's a three year international bailout program the eighty five billion euro emergency a table after its banks collapse in two thousand and ten but it's mad of tax rises near levies and slashes to pensions and of course cutting of the minimum wage but irish finance minister says he's got a twenty five billion euro war chest to pay next year's bills the country still owes much more money than it earns artie's kevin i went earlier talk to one irish politician who told us that the country's great expectation of joining the e.u. were unjustified one of two major reasons why we're in this mess is because people didn't listen to people like anthony cochrane who when we joined the euro said step we're all laughing t.j.

bush is full engine tears and how right she was and it created a situation where or public finances were swears. morny cheap interest rates which could never have been sustained. brought your country how can you see positives in people not having enough to ace 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 us 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 still curfew when we charged 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. up next say i think talks to the american n.s.a. whistleblower novitsky. you know what 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 does that 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 welcome to this is the incredible i'm since the shevardnadze and then i could a government shutdown difficulty rights and debt ceiling is a bobber ad that has made the world question yet again how all the major mechanisms affecting the global climate will turn a sure that is possible just not to the task and then the war has ever been though or has it all been an illusion.