last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on the u.s. government shutdown comes to an end as america are scapes to fold by a whisker with the debt ceiling raised the catastrophe is delayed. and protesters in italy take on the police as thousands hit the streets to vent their anger at the government's new austerity loaded but. also this week. a huge spike in radiation levels at fukushima as readings in a story. by thousands of times in just a day. unique

access right inside a notorious prison. but really this is a place that people forget about they don't ever think about it and. to find out why they took on the job in the first place. the top stories over the weekend of today it is the weekly with me wrong thanks for joining us it was. default for america this week just as the nation was about to run out of cash congress sealed a last minute deal to reopen the government and push the debt ceiling even higher

and the whole world was watching the deadline drama worried that it could cause another global recession and the ending they got though wasn't entirely all good news. the story. global market eyes were wide open while washington was shut waiting and bracing for impact. because i sucked in households who did come in more nuts and up she did a little bit ago. but at the so-called eleventh hour congress struck a deal to deal with it later. that's what it is the agreement reopen the government and funds it until january fifteenth allowing the u.s. to continue borrowing in till february seventh america barely avoided defaulting on their almost seventeen trillion dollars in debt brand america took a beating here sixteen days of a government shutdown halted the capital to a standstill put hundreds of thousands of workers out of jobs and the world economy

on the verge of recession then surely the markets going we don't want to play this . we're not usually you money at any price the scare sparked global reevaluation given the time and time again these political crisis appear in the u.s. i think there would be more calls for sort of trying to reduce dependence in america in the same way as america has been trying to reduce dependency on the middle east for its oil ironically the shutdown didn't save money it cost the u.s. some twenty four billion dollars and credibility worldwide whether it's coming from the world bank whether the i.m.f. whether the leading bankers of the world or from china with now which is the americanized asian this was really a spectacle following a series of spectacles that has downgraded america's image worldwide to levels

i've never seen solo the gentleman from say the scare was just a way to come in and save the day at the last minute up on the table. this is the creation of a crisis atmosphere wall street and you know the one percent or corporate sponsors all of them they're not going to allow the meltdown of the international economy well they sure fooled me and millions of others congress now has some more time to come up with a long term budget solution before a new deadline comes rolling on the hill they will also have to deal with damage control both at home and abroad all while trying to solve a debt problem in just three months something they couldn't do in the years leading up to this shutdown reporting from washington and he's now a party. and over two weeks of budget brinkmanship cost the u.s. leadership an awful lot of trust from voters before the long awaited bill was passed so we gauge reaction from some of those on the other side of capitol hill

it's really frustrating for the american people and for myself to see you know our government be so inefficient it's pretty bad. have the show. for a little bit. don't even want to go into the patheticness of. our government i think it's very sad we are the people this is for the people people are going to remember all this idiocy and food business during the shutdown i believe president obama had a plan that he was going to take and punish the american people but he went a little too far well as for president obama himself he actually put the whole blame for the lockdown squarely on the republicans he said squabbles in congress dealt an immense blow to the u.s. 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 obama said the full scope of the damage is still unknown condemning

what he called a self inflicted crisis. in the meantime though the u.s. debt continues to skyrocket it rose a record three hundred twenty eight billion dollars as soon as the deal to raise the ceiling was in place and there are just a few months left before the congress will have to face the same problems again james medway from the new economics foundation he says america's political system appears on able to do exactly what needs to be done. it does look like a seriously dysfunctional political system and certainly for sort of the americans already view it it's quite seriously dysfunctional they tend judging by the opinion polls to blame the republicans in particular for this dysfunctionality but it's very obvious that you can't run the world's largest economy on the basis of lurching from crisis to crisis i mean this is this period we're going through now is itself the result of a temporary resolution to reaching a debt ceiling earlier this year back in may so yes it's in deeply deeply flawed

political system and that will be registered in these being registered around the world you'd be find people less and less to treat u.s. treasury bills and the dollar itself as a safe haven somewhere that's guaranteed to be where you can put your money put your savings put your wealth and it will hold its value over time and here's one of the more dramatic moments of the crucial nighttime vote in congress the house transcriber unleashing a rant about god right before stunned lawmakers a you can see right there she was forcibly removed from the chamber later explaining she was simply doing the will of the holy spirit. are still to come on our t. other two week government stand still damage to america's economic prestige at a time that some allies are already looking elsewhere coming up on the program we take a closer look on how the u.k. is battering its eyelids at china. for now though italy's economy ministry has been attacked by a furious protesters i'm good by the government's cost cutting drive thousands took

to the streets denouncing the ongoing austerity measures for failing to dig the country out of recession you go to reports. at some point during this mass protest rally which has been taking place throughout the last two days really in central role a group of young radical protestors started throwing eggs at the finance ministry and also throwing bottles sticks and these so-called thunder flashes or paper bombs as they're called here at the police who are providing security at the protest rally as a result several policemen were injured and we understand that arrests have also been made these rallies they've been going on for the past two days now and they are aims to protest against austerity measures and these have economic problems which italy is only going through according to different figures from fifty thousand to seventy thousand people took part in this event they are protesting

against high taxes high youth unemployment and also one of the other sort of points of this protest was against plans to build a high speed train line between italy and france since they say that it's going to be its construction is going to be harmful both to the environment and is going to be a threat to the health of the locals living in that area italy's going through the worst recession since the second world war youth unemployment is standing at just over forty percent and really these latest protests have been caused by the release . delayed a state budget which critics say. and what we're seeing here now really reminds us that italy is still in well in the same line with other southern e.u. states like greece and portugal and actually for instance in portugal thousands have also taken to the streets also earlier on saturday also protesting against

austerity measures. that now record high radiation levels detected around japan's fukushima nuclear plant on friday and water samples showed radioactive elements shooting up thousands of times in just a day reaching the highest level since the meltdown of twenty eleven and this is just the latest in a long line of troubles the power plant has struggled with. now reports 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 where ratty and water is stored and then filtered this is the ocean and the problem with the fukushima is that there is a leak so from there it is ready and water is flowing into the pacific ocean sadly russia has a lot of experience warfare when it comes to wiping up remnants of a nuclear catastrophe it has had its own deadly less than a quarter of a century. of. 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 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 to malfunctioning nuclear power station on its hands maybe hoping an international effort would solve both problems at the same time it in august go our team. now focus she has problems go back two and a half years and a powerful earthquake and tsunami hit japan disabling the plans cooling systems and of course causing a meltdown it took the government a year to admit the mistakes by the operating company tepco did lead to the disaster rather than the natural calamity itself several months later the company also admitted the crisis could have been avoided if it had done his job a bit better this summer though a leak was discovered at a storage tank for contaminated water and when tepco finally admitted to the spill

it revealed that up to three hundred tons of radioactive water was making its way into the ocean every single day and a nuclear power expert on all the gunderson he told us why those numbers and those issues are so deeply disturbing. you know that this leech had something called strontium ninety in it ninety is a bone seeker and it causes leukemia in huge quantities so now when he gets to the pacific ocean admitted leo it gets diluted in an even bigger pond of water but it's truly frightening that we're releasing strontium ninety into the pacific ocean. we also got a sense about the possible risks from natural disasters that off frequent in that part of the world he said now that even a slight quake could cause yet another catastrophe they have a thousand tanks and they're all held together with plastic almost like you put on

the swimming pool so if there's a moderate earthquake the plastic pipes will sail and all that material will run across the ground surface into the ocean and the facilities themselves the four reactors that are most damaged are you know they had serious explosions internally so you wouldn't take an earthquake as big as the one they had i don't two and a half years ago potentially really do a lot of serious damage there you can always i just had over the web site the latest updates there are much more analysis on the fukushima crisis we've been closely following the event since the disaster struck how extensive reports opinions and eyewitness accounts all available for you right now online it ought to be taught. at a quarter past the hour here in moscow many more stories for you ahead on the weekly on oxy including while calculating the actual death toll of the war in iraq has certainly proved less than simple a new study suggesting the real body count is worse than anybody has to admit here

dots here we talked to one of the surveys authors that's just ahead. putting to the. numbers we have more than two thousand political prisoners and behind. now of course if you look at the system what the bahamian government is trying to do is they're trying to label many of these prisoners as terrorists. right to see. her street. and i think that you're.

on a reporter's. instrument. the in the. car thanks for joining us for the weekly here on r t today now a new report on the real death toll of the u.s. led war in iraq it came out this week suggesting that almost half a million people died as a result of the violence and the country's poor infrastructure the study is based on speaking to randomly chosen iraqi households and is seen as the most rigorous to date we asked one of the surveys authors why many still under play the real human cost of the war. clearly. like in both the u.s. and 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 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 end of the intervention without public outcry. iraqis are striving to survive through daily violence and a bitter sectarian divide course part of the deadly legacy of the entire invasion and occupation. the worst day this week with scattered attacks in baghdad and

across the country claiming at least seventy seven lives amy hagopian also told us here on r.t. that deeper analysis of the iraq war could only reveal even more shocking revelations. while major flood 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. or on screen and on line you can just get clicking and check out what we have for you right now would dot com for example an immigration lawyer in the u.k. left bemused after receiving a get out of the u.k. a message from the british border agency tens of thousands of texts were mistakenly sent out as part of a campaign telling illegal immigrants to go home. and from deep space to deep water right here hoffa chunk of meteoroids has been recovered from

a russian lake bed but the video of the celestial sailors rescue with the arts columns in motion section. just twenty twenty minutes past the hour here in the russian capital allegations of abuse force feeding and a two hundred day hunger strike guantanamo bay prison is rarely out of the news but now auti has been granted special access deep inside the infamous u.s. jail is out he's an associate with a first hand look across the fence. but after a few months of people work to get cleared to visit the base the trip to get mobile hop and escape from the big apple to fort lauderdale in florida and from there are short hour and a half flight one largely kept under wraps with no indications of it on departure boards. the minute we land were greeted by escorts who stay with us every step of our trip the special guantanamo joint task force media team. one of them sergeant

rebecca wood far from the stereotypical face you might imagine working at a place like this controversial military base as we soon learned the first of many surprises this is a really big break for me in my career from my military resume the people i work with every day day they share the same idea like they're all very proud to be here she joined the u.s. military a decade ago with no money for college and twenty eight one time the most her second deployment you've heard about it like several movies but. we don't really get and this is a place that people forget about only they don't ever think about it getting to the main part of the base is a slow pace trip we have to wait for a ferry to take us across the bay and are taken to visit a beach first one of a handful of scenic locations you wouldn't really expect here we're going to see the logic area now it's about a ninety minute area right one side of the area where your morning. several of the residents are but the main part of the evil and the detention camp are over there

were given a circulation guantanamo isn't quite what we anticipated as we approach the meeting area it's interesting to note that to be unsuspecting this place looks just like another tropical island with an american flag you would never think that this is a place housing one of the native states towards the lodging area were taken to is like any typical hotel with palm trees and a marina right out the window first impression this can't be the place that has been casting a long shadow in america's human rights image for over a decade where torture allegations hunger strikes and force feeding have been making headlines i remember when i moved here i thought i would just see like people in orange jumpsuits and fences everywhere but i mean the families all stay on one side and the rest kind of happens on another the other side as where total of seven hundred seventy nine detainees of america's war on terror have been kept since two thousand and two a total of one hundred sixty four now remaining at

a whopping eight hundred thousand taxpayer dollars for detainee per year even though more than half of them have been cleared for release but we are in a remote location that factors into the cost it cost what it cost to do it right we're doing it right means to those running america's most infamous detention facility and what lays beyond the picture perfect scenery all the realities of guantanamo in our reports to follow and going to r.t. guantanamo bay cuba. camp. there are worse. world's attention than some. of our time. i was. out of paris we go where hundreds of students rallied in support of a deported schoolgirl others despite an announcement by the french president she

could return to france but without her family at least one protester was arrested i . and that's less support for minority groups in the czech republic the city of austin showed three hundred protesters demonstrating against the country's roma community tempted to march towards a district heavily populated by the group but they were stopped with tear gas. and a commuter train slammed into a platform injuring at least eighty so far we don't understand why the train failed to stop at the same station last year fifty one were killed in a similar crash. now there may have been a huge global sigh of relief when america avoided default its reputation as the main economic powerhouse was badly damaged its closest ally britain for example china which has been calling for the world to quote d. americanize reports. this week

a cheer leading british chancellor took to beijing on a bridge building trade mission one of my tasks this week is to explain to the british people just how far china has come how sophisticated your businesses are how advanced you are in the fields of high tech and science and one of my principal goals this week is not just to increase british investment in china but to increase chinese investment in britain westminster's criticism of china's human rights record has up until recently blighted relations it could be hitting the treasury as well according to some estimates the british economy has been missing out on billions of pounds of cash from the people's republic of germany to be far more proactive in terms of promoting trade so for instance germany exports some seventy billion dollars worth of things to china every year we get twenty five percent more tourists going to france and coming to the u.k. which is ridiculous you get chinese ladies. in paris q you go to buy handbags i

think we've been very slow frankly and i think we're going to be are again we think people will come to us i mean the reality is china is the largest growth economy in the world it just so happened that mr osborne's trip to china took place at the same time as the u.s. government shutdown but it's hard not to see the irony while politicians the world over speak of the potentially disastrous consequences of the washington debt crisis and economists warn of a loss of investor confidence in the u.s. george osborne's not here in westminster he's over in beijing courting chinese investment at the same time a strongly worded opinion piece in china's leading government news outlet said that the world should start to de americanize the article went viral it spoke of the need for a new international reserve currency that would replace the dominance of the u.s. dollar and not altogether crazy prospect for some analysts. plus and fall in kind

as a reserve is mounting and the us seems to be printing money with no end in sight the us dollar has lost equity to the obvious value since the fed there was also stablished and there was little return for huge investment and then with. trade opportunities opening up in terms of sources of assets so china has been diversifying its reserves. maybe even all but a pos think it and of course the space would be gathering speed and with the u.k. struggling too much from recession it looks as though for westminster china's money is now more important than its politics there are some. seeds i. think. it's a big. move. they.

says it's leaving. so good to have you with us here and up next just around the corner we investigate one of the worst oil spills in history and the big fix just ahead. you know when i look more and more into it i find that there were a lot of myths 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. sane 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 hell 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 although they are usually trivial this celebrity case actually sets a dangerous legal precedent but that's just my opinion. after

the b.p. spill doctor on to louisiana we're in bury terry which is forty miles from the gulf and about one hundred fifty miles from the wellhead the oil and dispersants have come into here yesterday the wind blew really hard this table got this cloudy gritty glaze on look at that that's just what's on the table before we even start the interview. was b.p. about to repeat the same strategy that exxon used with the valve these oil spill this pack of confidential documents were uncovered as part of the toxic tort lawsuits that followed with you.