the. last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on. the u.s. government shutdown ends with a temporary deal of economic yet some still concerned the collapse is simply being delayed. japanese authorities race against the public a fresh radiation leak at the fukushima power plant. the fury over its. budget spills over as protesters in rome take on the police following massive anti-government rallies across the city. as the detainees hunger strike at the guantanamo bay prison continues. to the

infamous u.s. military facility. and a look back at the top stories from the past seven days and the latest developments this is the weekly. american lawmakers. this week as their bickering over a new budget drove the country to the brink of default yet the last minute deal is only a temporary reprieve with more issues expected to rise in washington in the upcoming months as a new report. global market eyes were wide open while washington was shut waiting and bracing for impact. 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 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 going to leave you money at any price the scare sparked global a 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 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 the gentleman from say the scare was just a way to come in and save the day at the last minute upon the table this. does 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. democrats and republicans have been blaming the impasse on each other for weeks with president obama having the last word 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 the president stressed repeated calls of the world to lose confidence in america and condemned what he called a self inflicted crisis congress is set to revisit the problem of the debt ceiling in just a few months he's president of the investment advisory firm strategies believes america's debt will eventually eat up all its earnings. the united states cannot

afford to even pay its seventeen trillion dollars in debt that's seventeen trillion everybody says it's one hundred seven percent of g.d.p. well that's true it's one hundred seven percent of g.d.p. but who really cares about the percentage of g.d.p. it's the percentage of the debt as a percentage of the revenues it's seven hundred percent seven hundred percent of our revenue and is growing that at the deficits are growing at thirty percent of our revenue every year added to the debt and deficit we have already so it's unsustainable what's going to happen eventually as we have a currency and bond market collapse and it's not going out twenty years in two thousand and sixteen we'll probably be spending forty percent of all of our revenue just to service our debt that's what the interest payments will equal japanese authorities are racing to dispel the latest radiations gas pump by a freshly could be crippled fukushima facility the operator says

a storage tank has spilled highly contaminated water into a well from where it may have already seeped into the ocean country prime minister visited a nearby port and ate locally caught fish in a bid to reassure the public it was auntie's of in english the reports troubles proving so easy to contain 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 well for when it comes to wiping up remnants of the nuclear catastrophe it has had its own death the last in a quarter of a century. when other footbridge should be treated just like chernobyl has a record of mostly retired put in a sarcophagus but the problem with is that they can't decide whether they want to close it 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 english r.t. . well for consumers problems began when the earthquake and tsunami ruptured its cooling systems in march two thousand and eleven. causing multiple meltdowns it took a whole year for japan's government to admit the nuclear disaster was caused by the improper handling of the situation and the plant operator tepco admitted the crisis could have been avoided if only it had done its job better and more than two years after the disaster struck a leak was discovered at a storage tank for contaminated water and when tepco finally admitted the spill it revealed that up to three hundred tons of radioactive water was flowing into the ocean every day nuclear power expert on gunderson says the science is

a serious health risk. 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 lee 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 asked on the condition what could happen in the fukushima if another earthquake which is strong he says some of the radioactive material there is barely contained on another natural disaster could set off a manmade 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 it wouldn't take an earthquake as big as the one they had. two and a half years ago to potentially really do a lot of serious damage there. and you can head to our web site for more updates and analysis on the focus of a crisis we've been closely following events since the initial disaster struck extensive reports opinions and eyewitness accounts all that old line at all t. dot com. government buildings and italy's capitol came under attack on saturday by furious mall angered by rome's cost cutting drive and sell to tens of thousands marched through the city to not see the budget for next year which paves the way for more painful austerity. reports. forty percent off youth unemployment and the worst recession since the second wall more critics say the two thousand and fourteen thirteen budget will not do enough to solve the

economic problems for three days italians have been taking to the streets of rome protesting against the government's economic policies are bringing along ten saying they won't leave until their voice is heard previously on saturday tens of thousands of protesters took part in a mass rally in the center of rome which started peaceful many brought their families along and even children but it ended in clashes with the authorities when a group of young radical of protesters started throwing eggs at the finance ministry and bottles sticks and under flashes or paper bombs as they're called here at the police as a result several policemen were injured arrests have also been made now tensions are high but so far thankfully sunday's protests in rome have been peaceful you've got this kind of arty role. as some demonstrators are now camped by one of the gates of rome and italian politics expert james walston more and more unrest could

be looming with very different social groups all united by fury against the politicians. but i want to mobilize the city so this will lease is going on probably go on for in different ways for a long time so many people from the employers to the trade unions to different political parties and very strong protests from. young people of various sorts who said we do not like the government we just like the budget we want a recovery budget we want to growth but this is what they're complaining about because they complain about the same thing is the key to the unusual situation but that's what we have to really going to be closed over the budget and they've been spending far too much to go. there isn't the same sort of situation. this is the weekly here in our tease still ahead for you in the program this amid kidnappings of foreign journalists plan to set fighters in syria parties where if

an ocean it goes deep into rebel held territory and speaks to a free syrian army brigade stay with us for that report coming your way after this short break. according to the. numbers we have more than two thousand political prisoners and 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 as terrorists.

right. first. and i think. on our reporters there. we hear live in moscow r.t. within twenty four hours a day in syria a suicide bombing at an army checkpoint has claimed the lives of at least thirty people in the central city of hama state media reported the truck loaded with explosions around the post and detonated and the damage was intensified after a fuel tanker nearby quarterlife we the country's been locked in a tug of war between the government and the fragmented rebel groups who have. made

it to one of the opposition stronghold you don't want to. tell your brother next to the syrian lebanese border is just eighty kilometers from the capital damascus but it is like a state within a state that has its own security forces police and even the army can see its symbols of new authorities here everywhere graffiti or three stars that means free syrian army is controlling this area the syrian military cannot enter your brut is the center of a large mountainous area in western syria known as. in two thousand and eleven local residents were among the first to support the n.t. assad campaign it seems been cut off from damascus and run by the rebels. i cover my head as all women 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 motifs and lawyers the kerio justice we run the town by ourselves 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 born in kuwait and having spent two years traveling the middle east and the gulf he only came here months before serious protests began. to resist to the end we have a plan and we have forces to make it happen yes this is who he's talking about the self-styled free syrian army but these fighters don't work with other militants functioning instead as an autonomy armed brigade. they 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 shaikh he's taken 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 prescribed or forbidden

by islam i ask them whether the judge had the law and then qaeda affiliated radical islamic groups openly operating in syria like no no no no no we have no relation with the nusra we 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 hearing al-qaeda leader we have normal relations with them next we are supposed to meet with people from my list but when our armed guys learn of this they do all they can to stop us the groups controlling the area are not only fighting assad they compete with each other even for me to. attention i mean among journalists is seen as something prestigious a school did and i told the film from the car but it's one point twist top by a group of gunmen apparently from a hostile brigade and they ask about who we are later our guards told us the men

were kidnappers from remote village least nineteen foreign journalists 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 just 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 for 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 corrections and goals increasingly divergent parties morea for national reports from fragmenting

syrian rebel held territories. syria on the rebel grip on our city. on our website we have a report that says the reason edward snowden managed to get hold of highly sensitive classified data is because the n.s.a. failed to install software at his former workplace you can find out how the spying agency overlooked it's a white facility. also. the sort of drunk vehicle would look like if machines could enjoy a tipple is this like well this video from the highway inch partner may give you an idea the eye opening footage of scoring thousands of hits online and you tube check it out the section on our website. lawyers for several detainees at guantanamo bay have filed a first appeal to put an end to the painful force feeding of hunger strikers at the facility handful of captives are still refusing food but of being strapped into

chairs and fed daily by the u.s. military and that hunger strike began in february but has since subsided to listen to a dozen protesters against indefinite detention welty has now gained rare access to the prison and here's the first in a series of reports by understands a chicken or. after a few months of people work to get cleared to visit the base the trip to get mobile hop and a skip from the big apple to fort lauderdale in florida and from their short hour and a half flight one largely kept under wraps with no indications of it on departure boards. the minute we landed 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 at 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 headed to the logic area now it's about a twenty minute area ride one side of the bay area where the airport is. several repressive insists but the main part of the people be and the detention camp are over their head is 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 feel that this is the

place policy what a night it states for us presidents 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 shot. 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 a 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 because what it cost to do it right

we're doing it right only 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. cuba. where the outside active camps have matan in melbourne where patients are of course met in the monitor and the first strike never turned the world's attention to the places that some. of our times. we start our world update this hour in the egyptian capital cairo police terrified to gas a crowd orders of ousted president mohamed morsi the group ended up the seats in a prestigious muslim university to stone throwing protesters brought to road many of its students back morsi and his muslim brotherhood it's the second day of unrest in the universities close to where islamist had a protest camp which was demolished in

a deadly raid in just. a matter of lawsuit for just half an hour but that didn't save a gay parade to montenegro from becoming violent and around one hundred fifty participants had been marching through the country's capital when they were attacked by anti gay protesters police used tear gas and battens on the mob which responded with firecrackers and stones the country's government has recently passed a bill against all kinds of sexual discrimination as part of its bid for membership . but a thousand people poured into the streets in hong kong to protest against their government not giving a license to a new t.v. station established by locals and every hong kong television network promised to bring intertainment to the waves the state's decision and lack of reasoning to hold back on the so-called free to air license sparked public outcry some four thousand people signed a facebook petition demanding an explanation from the authorities. thousands

right across the world demanding a ban on shale drilling on saturday activists in over twenty countries came out to send a message to governments over what they see as the danger of environmental disaster in canada protests held over the past week ended in violence and dozens of arrests activists from other countries join in later with anti fracking sentiment particularly strong across the u.s. we have a side of europeans also campaign a group called young friends of the earth gathered in london to highlight worries about how the younger generation could be affected by fracking and one of the u.k. campaigners and the child says that the system will be always putting profit before the environment. what you've got is a situation where they're going for ever more extreme forms of fossil fuel in a situation where we know you know the recent reports from the london school of economics for example show quite categorically that we need to be leaving two thirds of the non-fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we're going to prevent catastrophic climate change that being the case you know that you know the last

very last thing we need to be doing is looking for for more fossil fuels in the extreme for when the only reason that that's going to hades is because of the why the be all and gas industry has got their claws into governments across the world and you know. when you've got. to profit from fossil fuels. have a cost in terms of the long term the environmental and social benefits of the people in the area. that's it for me up with needs to move just have often enough and in the meantime we take a closer look at gun control in a small county in the u.s. state of kentucky where being locked and loaded can be a minimum. switzerland

will soon vote if they should start giving out thousands of dollars in cash to every adult citizen in the country you heard me right there's a grassroots campaign that is trying to get the government to give out to every adult citizen two thousand five hundred swiss francs approximately two thousand eight hundred dollars per month the motivation for the project is that many in switzerland fear that the financial crisis has caused wealth inequality to skyrocket you know i'm not an expert at swiss culture so maybe people there are different but if they gave out thousands of free dollars per month anywhere i've lived you would see the majority of people going into early retirement and not working at all and sort of like how they tell people not to feed the bears at parks because then the bears lose their instincts and will go hunt because getting a sandwich thrown at them is a lot easier i mean why go through the effort of auditing when the sandwich just magically appears handouts often creates law according to reuters some people are proposing a much better law for switzerland limiting executive pay to being twelve times

higher than that of the lowest paid employee although this plan is making headlines it seems like a much better idea because it doesn't to motivate people to be productive and yet it would create almost utopia like levels of wealthy quality also if the bosses salary is tied to the employees that a lot of people be getting raises very soon this one to twelve pay ratio is much better than the free swiss francs and it gets my seal of approval but that's just my opinion. this is cumberland county in south kentucky deep in the american countryside far

from the sprawl of life. a place where alcohol is neither sold not consumed in the bible reign supreme. in a village of eight hundred people there are forty churches. it is a pious close community get weapons are part of everyday life here for protection and so hunting. exposed from childhood it is not unusual here to own your first gun in kindergarten. how many people own guns in this village more probably to than go. with these things are you. saying that in the absence of the big man of your own go not everybody in the county has bought a way of life here you know everybody wants round here and they let yesterday but i would say you know a very hard majority country people own guns my grandsons.