an immense spike radiation levels fuels fears of the fukushima nuclear plant as readings in a storage tank rise six and a half thousand times higher in two days. inspired by spot as a long time chief of america's embattled national security agency says he'll step down after spending months struggling with the fallout from the edward snowden leaks. was inside a syrian rebellion was rival armed brigades and civilians feeling besieged 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. or even optional so here is firsthand what it's like for syrians to live

surrounded by militants. and as a barrage of blasts kill at least sixty one people in iraq a new study suggests the number of victims since the american invasion is far higher than previously thought. this is he coming to live from the russian capital a marina josh welcome to the program. and there is a worrying spike in radiation at the fukushima nuclear plant readings from a water storage tank have rocket at six and a half thousand times higher in two days a partial typhoon swept through japan earlier this week causing talks like 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 explains two and a half years to admit the painful truth japan 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 is 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 would be ready that water is located on the

very sea shore this is the ocean and the problem with the fukushima is that there is a leak supposedly right here so from there you 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. should be treated just like chernobyl as 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 its 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 station. on its hands maybe hoping an international effort would solve both problems at the same time in a godless go. after which he was trouble stand back of course to the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged a pan of march two thousand and eleven it took a year or for japan's government to admit the nuclear disaster was caused by the improper handling of the crisis and the plans operator tepco says it could have been avoided well two years after the crisis hit radiation is recorded in local fish and discovered at a storage tank with contaminated waters and when tepco finally admits the reactors are leaking toxic water it is revealed that up to three hundred tons of radioactive water are flowing into the ocean every day robert jacobs who is an associate

professor at hiroshima peace university says there is no immediate solution for the crisis. nobody really knows how to solve the problems if 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 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 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. were closely following what's happening in fukushima here and online including the effects which that powerful typhoon had on the crippled nuclear power plant that's

at r t v dot com. they have the torrijos u.s. spying agency behind sweeping global surveillance is to leave his job keith alexander is a. says' longest serving director and has vigorously defended the snooping programs as lawful and essential for national security is a part next spring is likely to have been spurred by the snowden leaks as more important than a explains 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 heads of state 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 facelift 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 i has been nicknamed alexander the

great at 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 like. 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 promised that there are many more bombshell exposes to come reporting from new york marina for night r.t. . and the spying chief departures also under the microscope in our breaking the set in just over twenty minutes time. 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 live perjured himself before congress should be in jail based on our existing laws but of course nothing is 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 metadata 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 advance in syria is becoming too dangerous for manny was the killing and kidnapping of journalist forcing more and more to stay away from the conflict a team from sky news and arabian r.v.o.

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 trouble zones to explain what's happening. made it to one rebel controlled area but then all you have proved 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 seize symbols of new authorities here everywhere graffiti or three stars that means free syrian army is controlling these area the syrian military. cannot enter your brut is the center of a large mountainous area in western syria known as moon in two thousand and eleven local residents were among the first to support the n.t. as solid campaign it seems been cut off from damascus and run by the rebels. i cover my head as all women he 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 virus so 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 two years traveling the middle east and the gulf this is his parents native town budget that arrived only years ago and months before series protests began. we resist to the end we have a plan and we have forces to make it happen sure this is who he's talking about the self-styled free syrian army but these fighters don't work with other militants function instead as an autonomy as armed brigades. they leave 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 shape he's taking part in the hellish pilgrimage to mecca and started the qur'an in saudi arabia all that is on the street every monday and thursday we discuss the revolution the latest military developments as well as our daily routine we discuss what's holland what's her rom what's prescribed or forbidden by islam i ask them whether the jets had the looser and then qaida affiliated radical islamic groups openly operating in syria like no no no no no we have no relation with the nusra we say but the news or a is linked to the outside they follow al qaida and for decisions they revert to their army or even our here 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 the. 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 to and i told the film from the car but it one point wrist topped 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 billing police nineteen forty journeys 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 to we as christians have to pay so-called duty this is our input into society we go to church and pay if 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 factions and goals increasingly diverging parties morea for national reports from fragmented syrian rebel held territories. syria on the rebel group. too. over in iraq and new study suggests the body count is worse than you may have thought one of the authors of a new study into the human cost of the u.s. led war in iraq talks about why bring his ass to miss my big conservative at best well that's ahead here in the program.

crisis averted at least for now washington's dangerous and even the responsible political circus has taken a time out was broke obama still standing however neither the president nor congress have much to be proud of none of the core issues at the heart of this deadlock have been dealt with washington gridlock issues like it can't be kicked down the road. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule today.

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 iraqi households suggests that almost half a million people have perished as a result of conflict violence or the country's battered health care we asked one of the service authors whine many people still believe the level of talent is as much lower. clearly the public and both the u.s. and u.k. . under estimates 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 parts 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 deadly legacy left by the us invasion sectarian violence has claimed over a sounds inclines during the last month the latest string of attacks in mainly shia areas in baghdad in northern iraq in communities have left at least sixty one people dead amy hagopian also told us that deeper analysis of victims would reveal even more shocking numbers. one major flaw 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. campaigners in germany say it's high time to wrap up political gift giving and they're demanding a clampdown on suspiciously lavish donations to angola merkel political party which received seven hundred thousand euros from b.m.w. story is in our website r t v dot com also online edward snowden said there's no way russia or china got any n.s.a. documents adding that he flew to moscow am to be handed. dutch police are investigating a break in at the apartment block which houses russian embassy staff in the hague the incident is adding to the fortunes developing between moscow and the netherlands after both russian and dutch diplomats came under attack in recent weeks or more and this from the comfort of. well you see you've been looking into

these incidents can you tell us a bit more perhaps explain to us what's happening there sure marina well it's hard to say whether this is a case of diplomatic tit for tat or just pure coincidence but an apartment housing russian diplomats in the hague was apparently broken into late thursday we do have more details from the russian foreign ministry spokesman let's take a quick listen. employees from the russian embassy in the netherlands came back from work on the seventeenth of october to their apartments located in the housing block outside or embassies territory they discovered traces of unlawful entry into one of the flats the employee who lives there from the embassies administrative technical stuff is currently on holiday. now the big question of course is whether there's any connection between that break and when days assaultive a senior dutch official here in moscow in that case two men posing as electricians

broke into the diplomats home they beat him up and then reportedly drew a heart in lipstick on a mirror with the acronym l it g b t for a lesbian gay bisexual and trans gender this follows of course the arrest earlier this month of a russian diplomat on suspicion of mistreating two young children also claims he was beaten in custody the dutch officials have apologized for that's the detention as well now all this of course coinciding with rising tension over russia's jailing of greenpeace activists including two dutch citizens who are on board a dutch flagged ship campaign against drilling in the arctic so a very strange escalation of diplomatic conflicts here marina back to you or i was a thanks very much for bringing us the sub data and explaining the situation to us and the lists government. and the dust cover is are off and the u.s. government has reopened following a nerve wracking shutdown of balancing on the verge of a default for over two weeks but 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 gotten some down from china as to gone 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 more than a fortnight of stubborn talks to reach agreement hours before the deadline the long awaited deal they came up with is certainly no happy ending as financial analyst max frog explains who learned what lesson is a big issue we didn't really get

a deal we've got to kick the can down the road rules and revisit this leader type of deal the 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 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 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 investors have pulled forty three billion dollars out of u.s.

based money market funds this week because of the default fears earlier and it's the largest one we decline in over two years an indication of the high costs of the budget bickering and the federal stall larry king has been grilling the man who was in the house of representatives hot seat last time there was a shutdown so hear what newt gingrich has to say in politicking later on our team. your wife calista wonderful lady has a new book out go a 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 close and i talk about it because in her book alice the elephant introduces forty year olds to american history and we were we were literally talking of 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 the kind of politics we have today. and taking around the world at some other top stories now police in canada have arrested forty people very close to afghan shale gas extraction turned violent clashes broke out as officers used pepper spray on demonstrators a three week long said which was blocking highway access to a fracking equipment depo the protesters respond it's with petrol bombs as well as fear is over water pollution locals are you worry is that the riots over their own land have been swept aside. isolated clashes have broken out of the rally

of tens of thousands of education protesters in chile's capital water cannon were deployed when some demonstrators threw rocks and set barricades on fire the nationwide campaign for free and better quality education has rumbled on for over two years and mass protests have often result and it's likely to be a key issue next month's elections. classroom protests. so a different kind in paris where hundreds of students blocked access to their schools in protest at the forced to partition of a roma pupil the fifteen year old girl was seasoned front of her fellow students and sent back to cozumel because officials said she and heard illegally nearly five years ago and there's generally wide support for the government on immigration but the teenager's treatment has sparked calls for the interior minister to quit. saudi arabia astir down a seat on the u.n. security council accusing it of failing to fulfill its duty to uphold global

security that's right after the country was granted a place as a non-problem member for the first time the gulf monarchy have been pushing for military intervention in syria where it supports the rebel forces and voiced its anger when the strikes were called off last month after a deal was brokered to dismantle the country's chemical arsenal. coming up as promised as breaking the sat with abby martin here on r.t. . deliberate torch is on its epic journey to such and one hundred and twenty three days. through two thousand and nine hundred ton two cities of russia. relayed by

fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand kilometers. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. a limp dick torch relay. on archie's dodgy dot com. as it splits divides the syrian opposition r t takes a close look at life on rebel ground is just a few kilometers from the capital damascus but it is like a state within a state free syrian army could fall in these areas they are still in military cannot enter parties morea for notion of reports from fragmenting syrian rebel held territories. syria on the rebel group on arts. commission free accreditation free transfer judges free. range

mentioned free risk free. to tide free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects and a free media dog r t v dot com. hello i'm abby martin and this is breaking news that while guys it looks like we've survived the storm the shutdown is a but usually over let's take a look at some of the top highlights. i do not like that sam i am. do you like green eggs and ham. i do not like them sam-i am shut out of the government will have a negligible effect this is a slice of a slice of the government only involves the nonessentials it will have practically

zero effect if you look at all the shutdowns in the past the cast of deadliest catch and other alaska crab can't open their season as planned on tuesday because the government hasn't set crab quotas to put the qur'an down to get above his knees and to figure acutely come up with his hands out. everything from ted cruz's rendition of dr seuss to a tea party loyalists demanding that obama put down his caronna yes it's been a long sixteen days but now people can rejoice government workers are due for a load and were even greeted by uncle biden with donuts how adorable so what did the sham of the government shutdown actually accomplish await nothing and guess what we're going to go through the whole damn charade all over again in just three months not to mention how this circus cost taxpayers a whopping twenty four billion dollars according the as they and the wives of four miners.