last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on the u.s. government shutdown comes to an end. but the debt ceiling raised some worry that catastrophe is only being delayed. the. protesters in italy take on the police hit the streets to vent their anger at the government's new austerity loaded budget. also this week. out of new clear. a huge spike in radiation levels at fukushima as readings in a story rise by thousands of times in just a day. behind the barbed wire at guantanamo bay. unique

access inside the notorious prison. heard about it. but really this is a place that people forget about why they don't ever think about it and. to find out why they took on the job in the first place. we are highlighting the top stories of today and the week here on our course it's the weekly with me welcome to the program today 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 watched the debt. drama worried though it could cause some sort

of another global recession though the end result wasn't entirely good news as artie's and he said no way now explains. global market eyes were wide open while washington was shut waiting and bracing for impact. because i sucked in households to come in more nuts and she did. but at the so-called eleventh hour congress struck a deal to deal with it later if that's what it is the agreement reopen the government and funds it in till january fifteenth allowing the u.s. to continue borrowing until february seventh america barely avoided defaulting on their almost seventeen trillion dollars in debt brand america took a beating here. time

and time again these political crisis appeared in the us 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 us 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 has downgraded america's image worldwide to levels i've

never seen so low 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 soar for 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 sat down reporting from washington and he's now a party. on the two weeks of budget brinkmanship cost the u.s. leadership an awful lot of trust from voters before the long way to bill was passed here in our 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. for a little bit. don't even want to go into the patheticness so. our government i think it's very sad we are the people this is for the people and people are going to remember this idiocy and foolishness 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. for president obama himself he put the blame for the lockdown squarely on the republicans he said squabbles and 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 than the spectacle that we've seen these past several weeks obama said the full scope of the damage is still unknown condemning what it

called a self inflicted crisis. meantime the u.s. debt is skyrocketing it rose a record three hundred and twenty eight billion dollars so as soon as the deal to raise the ceiling was in place and there were just a few months now left before congress will have to face the same problems again james medway from the new economics foundation he says america's political system appears ultimately unable to do simply put what needs to be done. it does look like a quite seriously dysfunctional political system and certainly most ordinary americans already view it is 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 this year back in may so yes it's

a deeply deeply flawed political system and that will be registered in these being rich sit around the world you'd be find people less and less to treat us 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 for the show you are one of the more dramatic moments of the crucial nighttime vote in congress for the house transcriber unleashing a rant about god and freemasons before stunned lawmakers and she was forcibly removed from the chamber you can see right there she explained later that she was simply doing the will of the holy spirit or to rome we go where italy's economy ministry has been attacked by furious protesters i'm good by the government's ongoing cost cutting drive thousands took to the streets denouncing the ongoing austerity measures failing to dig the country out of recession. that you got pissed off with. 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 the 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 they 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 . of the you delayed a state budget which critics say doesn't really solve any problems and what we're seeing here now really reminds us that italy is still in law in the same line with the other sovereign 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. hitting the top stories of the week here on r t it is the weekly and the record high radiation levels detected around japan's fukushima nuclear plant that was on friday the water samples showing 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 been struggling 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 eradicated 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 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 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 station on its hands maybe hoping an international effort would solve both problems at the same time it in a college go our team. fukushima's problems go back to two and a half years it was when 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 mistakes by the operating company tepco led to the disaster rather than better than natural calamity itself several months later the company also admitted the crisis could have been avoided if it had done its job better and this summer a leak was discovered in 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 old gunderson we spoke to him and he explained why these

issues and figures and facts are so disturbing you know that this leak had something called strontium ninety in it ninety is a bone seeker and it causes leukemia in huge quantities so now when it gets in the pacific ocean it minutely it gets diluted in an even bigger pond of water but it's truly frightening now we're releasing strontium ninety into the pacific ocean. and we also lost out on all gunderson about the possible risks from natural disasters that happen to be frequent in that part of the world he said that now even a slight quake could cause 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. two and a half years ago potentially really do a lot of serious damage there and i do head over to our website for the latest updates and more analysis on the fukushima crisis we have been closely following events since the disaster struck extensive reports opinions i witness accounts all of that available for you right now at all it's a dog. i still have many more stories coming your way here on this sunday including why calculating the actual death toll of the u.s. war in iraq has now approved less than simple a brand new study suggesting that the real body count is far worse than anybody thought i hear about see we talked to one of the surveys all those just ahead.

it's a quick fix for a long time to increasingly intoxicating addiction the u.s. may have a border. but it keeps dragging the world into an ever deeper debt. is it still possible to break this vicious cycle. is real journalism a thing of the past in much of the western world. the name of security challenging the official media message of the elites is often met with serious threats and reprisals whistleblowers are damned in need to feel severe consequences what remains is a deafening echo chamber warning all to get in line or else. thanks

for joining us for the weekly here on r t were highlighting the top stories of the week and off today a brand new report on the real death toll of the u.s. led war in iraq came out this week now suggesting that almost half a million people have 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 i hear it out to you we asked one of the surveys all those why many still under play the real human cost of the war clearly the public in both the u.s. and the u.k. . underestimates 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 risk of a very specific deliberate. strategy on the parts of the 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 less the public was able to track havoc that we were wreaking mongar they could sustain the end of the intervention without public outcry and iraqis are striving to survive through daily violence of sectarian divide a part of the deadly legacy of the invasion in the first place on thursday the worst day this week scattered attacks in baghdad and all across the country killing at least seventy seven amy hagopian also told us here on r t that deeper analysis of the iraq war could only 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. or the on screen and on line you can just go clicking away and find out what we have for you every single hour at r.t. dot com one of the stories right now an immigration lawyer in the u.k. left be amused after receiving a get out of the u.k. a message from the british border agency tens of thousands of texts mistakenly sent as part of a campaign telling illegal immigrants to go back. from deep space to deep water this half ton chunk of meteorite right here or recover from a russian lake bed you've got the video of the celestial sailors rescue in the in motion section at r.t.

dot com. allegations of abuse force feeding and a two hundred day hunger strike the guantanamo bay prison is rarely out of the news now has been granted special access deep inside the infamous u.s. jail here's an associate with a first hand look right across the fence. after a few months of people work to get cleared to visit the base the trip to get. from the big apple to fort lauderdale in florida and from there a short hour and a half flight one largely kept under wraps. 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

a 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 to most her second deployment you've heard about it like several movies but you don't really it is just 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 twenty minute ferry ride one side of the area where the airport is that several of the residence is but the main part of the evil b. and the detention camp are over there at a given its reputation 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 be able to tell that this is a place policy going to be native states torrijos present 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 still . on one side and the rest. 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 just as you're going to party guantanamo bay cuba. or the outside to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced that the interim or strike never turn the world's attention to the place that some. of our time they are starting with piracy is jumping to the update now where hundreds of students were rallying in support of a deported roma schoolgirl who had come to spite an announcement by president francois hollande that she could refer to return to france i should say though without her family i replace one person was arrested after trying to break through

the ring of security. for the czech republic there is less support for minority groups in the city of ostrava over three hundred protesters demonstrated against the country's roma community attempted to march towards a district heavily populated by the group but police stopped them with tear gas. and to argentina where a commuter train slammed into a platform injuring at least eighty people in the capital of buenos aires it is yet to be determined why the train failed to stop though it was exactly the same railway station just last year fifty one were killed in a similar crime. now police in moscow are promising weekly round ups of alleged illegal immigrants in the latest raid seven hundred people were detained as russian nationalists pressure the government on this ongoing issue it all started with a peaceful protest of local residents over the murder of a twenty five year old russian who was going home when an unknown man of nonce

origin attacked and killed him in response things grew a gleam in softer an angry mob of nationalists and football fans demolished a vegetable market where many immigrants were on tuesday the suspect was found and arrested in court the azerbaijani national pleaded not guilty to murder saying he was acting in self-defense and dmitri babich a political analyst at the voice of russia radio network explained why he thinks tackling illegal migration in the country particularly. this is a very. unpleasant wake up call for their authority just because the brought them all the legal migration needs to be handled part of the population one says visa regimes. are the formal kind just of the soviet union but that's going to be difficult because unlike kind of euro some like colombia for the night the states or on like algeria and libya. you know the former republics of the soviet union for

many kids were part of the same country with russia and there are also human lives between us so how will these these a regime affect these things of course negatively that's why they're for it just so very reluctant to introduce this kind of these a regime. and now to migrants in qatar who are working flat out to get the country ready for the twenty twenty two world cup now the foreign population there and in the neighboring united arab emirates is well beyond eighty percent in kuwait around seven out of the ten workers are migrants in oman and saudi arabia it's about thirty percent of the total population that means for the region as a whole almost a half of the total population come from somewhere else entirely. she went to qatar to see how the immigrants there fairing. the reno to organize. the tour trended to fifth vote cop is coming.

but the initial celebration and christie's have been overshadowed by ford workers claims of maltreatment not getting paid anywhere that not being allowed to leave the country the international trade union confederation claims that about four thousand migrants could die before a football is kicked in twenty twenty two the worker becomes the property of the employer they are not allowed to leave the country they're not even allowed to leave trying to a job unless the employer agrees this means that the workers have no real power no real voice to. fix up very very bad working and living conditions zire balloonists knows this all too well a french football player who arrived in qatar in two thousand and seven he says he hadn't been paid for more than two years he filed a lawsuit to claim unpaid wages and says his club but then we fused to give him an exit visa unless he dropped the case. when i went to the tribunals i never imagined

that i wouldn't be able to leave the country i didn't think they would block me my wife is depressed and she can't work i thought of going on hunger strike but my lawyers told me not to they already hurt me and a hunger strike would only hurt my wife and kids enough is enough. blueness is high profile story isn't the first either. doesn't change its ways i have the courage to say that in two thousand and twenty two we will have the world cup of shame the world cup of slavery bellew this in the meantime it continues to hope his problems will soon be resolved i'll have to stop playing football they ended my career mentally i don't see myself playing and then i'll have to see what to do with my life. r.t. . well before we get to venture capital for now the olympic flame continues its epic journey across russia of course on the way to solve the way it will eliminate the winter games that get kicked off in february passed from hand to hand the torch

was already gone through hundreds of towns in russia traveling by air space water and horseback and even boarded an ice breaker ship to go around the north pole of course a spare flame kept aboard just in case the arctic adventure now just one of the steps along the way and the flame will go to the bottom of russia's huge lake baikal and reach the summit of europe's highest mountain that of elbrus it was ventura breaking the record of the longest ever. all right as promised katie philbin is joining us in just a moment here business venture round up with venture capital that's just around the bend.

according to the behind center's numbers we have more than two thousand political prisoners i'm behind right 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 us terrorists. right to see. her strip. and i think you're. on a reporter's. instrument. be a mum.