it was and. the last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our call. the u.s. government shutdown ends as america escapes default by way sky but the debt ceiling raise has some worry for that have time for you has only been delayed. he. says and he's hit take on the police as thousands hit the streets to battle the anger at the government's new austerity loaded budget. also this week i love a huge spike in radiation levels at fukushima as readings in a storage tank will rise by thousands of times in just a day. and what's behind the barbed wire gone

tunnel they don't see gets unique access inside the notorious prison. we've heard about it like several movies but you don't really it's just a place that people forget about like they don't never think about it. this stuff will be dissension come to the point of why they've taken the trouble. the latest news on the week's top stories this is the weekly hero in all she was me thanks for joining us. it was a near miss from default to 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 ever higher so the whole world watched the deadline drama worried it could cause another global

recession and the ending they got wasn't all good news as he's a nice and now explains. global market eyes were wide open while washington was shut waiting and bracing for impact. because this auction house had to come in more not to be struck she did. have to act on it. 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 until 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 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 valuation 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 costs 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 americanization this was really a spectacle following a series of spectacles that has downgraded america's image worldwide to levels i've never seen solo gentleman something the scare was just that

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 percenter 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. the us debt and skyrocketing already at rosa rickles three hundred twenty eight billion dollars as soon as the deal to raise the ceiling was in place and the two weeks of budget brinksmanship calls the u.s.

government a lot of transformed voters before the long awaited bill was passed we gauge the 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. i have the shutdown was my job 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 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. and president obama put the blame for the look down squarely on the republicans he said squabbles in congress dealt in a man's blood to take us 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 he called a self-inflicted crisis and there are just a few months left before congress will face the debt ceiling problem again and james midway from the new economic foundation says america's political system appears and able to do what needs to be done it does look like a quite seriously dysfunctional political system and certainly first 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 and he's being registered around the world you'd be find people lesson last week to treat u.s.

treasury bills and the dollar itself as a safe haven somewhere that is guaranteed to be where you can put the wealth and it will hold its value over time. and here's one of the more dramatic marvelyn so big crucial nightime vote in congress the house transcriber unleashed a rant about god and the freemasons before stunned lawmakers she was forcibly removed from the chamber explain later she was during the will of the holy spirit. is or is economy ministry has been at times by theorists protesters angered by the government's cost cutting drive thousands took to the trees denouncing the ongoing us territory measures failing to dig the country out of recession. or or staff. at some point during this mass protest rally which has been taking place throughout the last two days really in central role. for young radical protestors started

throwing eggs at the finance ministry and also with 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 have been going on for the past two days now and they are aims to protest against austerity measures and the heavy economic problems which italy is only going through according to different figures from fifty thousand to seventy thousand people took part in events they are protesting against high taxes extremely 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 is going through the

worst recession since the second world war huge unemployment is standing at just over forty percent and really the latest caused by the release of the latest state budget which critics say doesn't do the souls any problems. and let's not talk about this right now is james rolleston turned in politics expert from the american university of rome mr wilson thank you very much indeed it's great to have you here with us on aussie so a turbulent nice in a run can we expect to see even more unrest. well we are we are seeing more this morning this morning the protesters have camped outside one of the gates of rome ironically where the where the italians came in to conquer rome from the pope's in eight hundred seventy and they are it's today of course it's a major traffic hub and on

a sunday doesn't matter too much but the traffic around the city from the center of the city is blocked because they are protesting in their campaign and they say they want to have they want to mobilize the city so this will this is going on and will probably go on for in different ways for a long time now so the thousand going to review this and popular budget that actually triggered such public discontent well the budget the budget was pushed on the fifteenth so a few days ago and eight will be passed that this is this was the proposal from the government it has to be passed by the end of the year it's going to be more. and the government has not yet said how they're going to modify the the budget but so many people from the employers to the trade unions to different political parties and very strong protests from the young people of various sorts who said

we do not like the government we don't like the budget we want and recovery budget new growth budget this is what they're complaining about this they complain about the same thing as the employers it's an unusual situation but that's what we have right and even the red cross is warning about this particular stary say in europe what we're seeing now it says it's caused a deep social crisis that will be felt for decades so why continue with it. well the the your economy and to a lesser extent the whole of the europe in economy those e.u. countries outside that the euro system is conditioned and in some would say actually run by. germany and chancellor merkel and as we know the germans and in particular chancellor merkel and i can have an abhorrence to anything leading to inflation and by putting into it into effect a growth package there is the risk of inflation this is certain to some inflation

and this is a risk of serious interest not of a suit not a very big risk but there is a risk of serious inflation and because of what happened in germany eighty years ago ninety years ago. there is this terror of of inflation the germans have put a limit on. growth and they want to get everybody's accounts right this is what we're starting to get started because the greek economy but from the world reasons that we in the european system the real economy was way over over budget they'd been spending far too much for far too long alan budget not about it but the. debt is in the same sort of situation so what the germans are trying to do is to reign they seem but of course in many ways it's made things much worse and we will have some sort of change now the chancellor merkel is back in that seat and she has a new mandate there's a good chance that we will have some sort of growth at

a european level we're going to have to have growth budgets in local. sat saying so also and it's not in politics accept from the anarch and us to have run mr off the thank you very much. and news just in we're getting reports that at least thirty people have been killed by a car bomb in syria the explosion targeted a government checkpoint in the city of hama the syrian observatory for human rights reported in terms of gunfire after the blast and of course we'll bring you more details as we get them. record high radiation levels were detected around japan's fukushima nuclear plant on friday water samples showed radioactive elements shooting up thousands of times in just the day reaching the highest level since meltdown in two thousand to eleven and this is just the latest in a long line of troubles the power plant has struggled with as reports 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 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 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 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 its because she was like a 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 a guy our team. because she was problems go back two and a half years one

a powerful earthquake and tsunami hit japan desiring the planet's cooling systems and causing a meltdown to the government yet to admit mistakes by the operating company tepco led to the disaster rather than the natural calamity itself several months later the company also admitted as the crisis could have been avoided if it had done its job better and this summer 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 day nuclear power expert on old gunderson explain to us why that is so disturbing you know that this leak had something called strong chimney ninety in it john should ninety is a bold seeker and it causes leukemia in huge quantities so now in the pacific ocean it merely it gets diluted in an even bigger under water

but it's truly frightening now we're releasing structure not only into the pacific ocean. and also asked arnold gundersen about the possible risks from natural disasters that are frequent and they spot of the world and he said that even as slight as quake could cause and other 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 fail and all that material will run across the ground surface into the ocean 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 you can also had

a website for the latest updates and more analysis on the thick ocean a crisis has been closely following about it since the disaster struck explain extensive reports opinions and eyewitness accounts all that online at ati dot com. more news ahead including why i count casing the actual death toll of the u.s. war in iraq has proved less than simple. and he's done to suggest that the real body count is why he's been anybody does to admit he talks to one of the surveys also says that's ahead. it's a quick fix for a long and increasingly intoxicating addiction the u.s. may have avoided. 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 and much of the western world in 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 we may need is a japanese culture warning to get in or else. you're

watching the week you hear an else he's good to have you with us let's move on not a new report on the real death toll of the u.s. led war in iraq came out this week so trusting that almost half a million people have died as a result of violence and the country's poor infrastructure the studies based on speaking to a randomly chosen is wrong to households and is seen as the most rigorous to date where i asked one of these surveys also why many still underplayed their real human cost of this. 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 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. at least six people have been killed in the northern city of samarra after a suicide bomber blew himself up policeman's house over one hundred people have now been killed this week alone iran is us trying to survive through daily violence and a bitter sectarian drive part of the deadly legacy of the u.s. led invasion and a me go in also told as a deeper analysis of the iraq war could reveal it even more shocking number. one major fly of the study is that households who experienced a great deal of violence were very likely to leave the country and we are pretty sure we missed a lot of people who might have told us about deaths because those people have left

so we think our count is actually low. and on screen and online get. trickled all we have for you on ati dot com. and immigration law in the u.k. is left after receiving i guess out of the u.k. message from the british. border agency tens of thousands of texts were mistakenly sent as part of a campaign telling illegal immigrants to go. under from deep space to do these tongue trying to ride been recovered from a russian lake bed and go to the celestial sailors rescue comes in motion a section. of a geisha of abusive force feeding on to two hundred day hunger strike gone tunnel by prison is rarely out of the news now as he has been granted special access to

the infamous us trail and his innocence citric and i was here look across the friends. after a few months of people work to get cleared to visit the base the trip to get mobile . from the big apple to fort lauderdale in florida and from there a 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 they 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

a twenty eight one ton of most her second deployment you've heard about it like several movies but you don't really. it is a place that people forget about like 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. very right one side of the area where. the president says but the main part of the people and the center for their. 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 where american flag could never be that this is a place policy and a native state for us 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. families all stay on one. or 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 what 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 ports to follow suit you're going to r.t.

guantanamo bay cuba. we're now outside to an octave camp a long time ago where patients are forced in the interim out of their strike the world's attention to the place that some job guards mines. and some more international news and brave this hour in paris hundreds of students roughly been support over deported the roma schoolgirl this comes despite an announcement by president francois hollande that she could return to france but without her family at least one person was arrested after trying to break through the ring of security offices. as the support for minority groups in the czech republic in the city of all strata over three hundred protesters demonstrated against the country's roma community that tempted to march towards a district heavily populated by the group but the police halted them with tear gas

. under state has been declared in south east australia as a bottle's the wasta bushfire season in full day k. dry winds and soaring temperatures are forecast to find the flames making them even was hundreds of people have been forced from their homes and one man has died attempting to protect his house massive plumes of smoke from the while still the fires near sydney have plunged postle decision into darkness. and up next the default near miss in the u.s. accountable to an american businessman and financial expert in the wilds upon.

the. economic downturn in the final. days the new york sank night and the rest because i was so unique case you'll be a briefly. the welcome to worlds apart it's a quick fix for a long and increasingly intoxicating addiction the united states may have avoided

a deep hole but it keeps dragging the world into an average people are data told is it still possible to break this vicious cycle well to discuss that i'm now joined by an american investment broker and financial commentator peter schiff mr chef thank you very much for your time be i appreciate your being here now when i think about the kind of sick anomic relationship that the united states has with the rest of the world it reminds me of a family with an addict son. but he who used to be a pretty good reliable guy but slowly but surely developed this addiction to foreign dad and this habit is definitely getting out of hand he's behavior is getting more and more unpredictable and the rest of the family doesn't really know what to do with that because they constantly like that any longer but they can't leave him alone as well so he thinks this is an accurate metaphor i mean it's very close to me it's almost like where.