all of them. presidential progress on syria's chemical disarmament. to discuss the elimination of. the conflict and the prospects to end it. and it's hard to tell right now exactly how long this mission easy to deliver the closure of guantanamo is. the

reports from inside on future it may face also the. police have been clamping down on illegal immigration every friday they go. looking for illegal immigrants it's friday morning we go in with the police on one of those rights. this is an international news and comment russia's president has praised the cooperation between syrian authorities and the chemical weapons watchdog in a phone conversation with the syrian leader became the first head of a un security council member states in years to talk to bashar assad. who's reported from the war torn country several times explained the significance of the

phone call. this is very significant in terms of of course from russia and from the u.n. security council to show support for all the mission that the syrian authorities are now undertaking to end the crisis in the country and mostly focused on the chemical arsenal of syria the demolition of the chemical weapons of syria but also another important talk because geneva two peace talks that despite some skepticism is considered by many as important and crucial to the we saw when peacefully the track to the crisis in syria as they say it takes two to tango and this is where the main obstacle in solving the syrian crisis lies and has been lined since the since the conflict started because syrian opposition has repeatedly rejected any dialogue with the syrian current authorities with president assad personally saying that they will never talk to him and they will never come back to

dialogue. to he goes and things bashar assad is a legitimate president of syria so it is quite. sad. so we actually heard some opposition factions saying that they are now ready but i've been to syria many times including held rebel held territories and i've seen that the opposition is very much divided and sometimes fractions that are fighting president bashar assad in syria are not doing connected to each other they don't even know bout that child is so it's like even if we're hearing from one fraction but. now ready it doesn't necessarily mean unfortunately that all their position all the forces are now ready for dialogue and this is why it's quite difficult at this time to talk about any peace between the warring sides. they

held key positions in the world's biggest military and they want to present closed thirty eight of the united states' most respected retired generals and admirals want the senate to take immediate steps despite pressure and promises the jail still reached its twelfth anniversary punctuated by torture and hunger strikes along the way where almost eight hundred inmates have gone through guantanamo but only seven have been tried and convicted washington says the rest are too dangerous to release but analysts say the evidence against them is speculative and as for the hot potato in getting it closed both congress and the president blame each other even though barack obama has full authority to shut it and then there is the cost which is tripled in just five months according to estimates keeping one inmate costs an astounding two and a half million dollars a year and that's roughly one hundred times more than the average mainland prisoner and started chicken wire reports on the detention centers future.

when it comes to this prison the numbers speak for themselves since being set up after the attacks of nine eleven a total of seven hundred seventy nine detainees have been held at guantanamo today one hundred sixty four people remain. have been long cleared for release but remain locked up a total of six people is currently under trial alleged prisoners of war brought here since two thousand and two removed from the battlefield of america's ever expanding war on terror it's both the policy of the u.s. not to hold anyone longer than necessary but we also know that whenever we release someone we assume a richness over a period of more than a decade the majority of detainees held here have been set free and if the men of guantanamo are really these superhuman monsters you know the worst of the worst quote dick cheney. they would have been. most of those still kept locked up have

not been charged and are being held indefinitely what sort of a black hole of the existing in would the president of the united states simply refuses to say the innocent but u.s. officials say the law of war remains behind this barbed wire the idea that in a war when you capture folks you as the capturing authority are permitted to hold people during the duration of hostilities. when hostilities and or if there's no longer any purpose legitimate purpose to to hold them then they must be released a tiny problem the war on terror has no geographic borders with men once held here repeat treated to a wide array of countries. who are only specific to guantanamo you can't even you couldn't even the case in the u.s. mainland because it would be unconstitutional and illegal the war on terror also has no end in sight and national security is a popular excuse to simply ignore the law. the spite the rhetoric really isn't

about national security or prisoners being so dangerous that they can't possibly be released and that can't be true after being locked up the legal process if any moves at a glacial pace in two thousand and twelve five detainees were transferred to had completed their military commission sentence two were court ordered released. detainees been repatriated and one was a suicide over the years countless detainee claims of mistreatment and abuse dozens of suicide attempts mass hunger strikes lost patience and hold just this year the majority of the prison population refused to eat for six months straight only to be force fed the. mandate that we have is being able to provide adequate nutrition to preserve life washington has appointed a new envoy to close a camp that is a dark spot on america's image this comes after a mass hunger strike that returned the world's attention to the place that some have dubbed the gulag of our times even if close to it seems. to remain

a state in u.s. history forever it's very easy to end one ton of. you release the men that you're not prosecuting. and as you said only six men are being prosecuted right now the military prosecutor has made clear that he intends to prosecute a few more but he's also made clear that it won't be more than a few more direct obama promised to close the notorious facility on day one of his presidency he's now in his second term it's only a president can do it and the idea that it's you know that it's congress's fault is just not correct it is the president the top holding these men in detention some the president has to come in and this. it's hard to tell right now exactly how long we'll be down here doing this mission.

or exceed one ton of moby cuba. more than half of guantanamo prisoners are yemeni nationals and for them release from the prison may not mean the end of their misfortunes the u.s. and yemen are discussing plans to build a new center to house inmates after their release and it's already been labeled as one to our correspondent has just returned from yemen where she met relatives of some of the detainees and shared her experiences with me it's difficult to stay positive about these detainees coming home when you've been awaiting us long as over a decade as was the case with some of the families who we've met now yemen is in a specific different situation for a variety of reasons but other countries more than half of the remaining detainees are yemeni citizens to fifty six of them have been cleared for release to get sent back from guantanamo not a single one has come home and in fact the last citizen toward trying to the country came home in a body back in twenty twelve and that is the fate that some of the families that

we've met with worry could be in store for for some of their loved ones one of the fathers that we met said that his son told them everything was going well and then basically found out through news reports that his son was participating in quite ill from the hunger strike which we have covered here at r.t. interesting enough to. detention center being set up in yemen do you read into the rights of basically getting government has been pushing for years now for a so-called rehabilitation facility which would basically take these detainees help them adjust to society and make sure that they don't rejoin with terrorist networks which is the main concern of the united states what we're learning now is that the united states and yemen actually had secret talks in rome about this proposed facility but there's very little details that have emerged and the issue really boils down to trust and money yemen has tried to use this as a political issue to get more funding from the united states in the past so the u.s. isn't necessarily willing to foot the bill actually the funding issue is something that we spoke to with yemen's human rights minister this cost of money we want.

to integrate them into society to into predictive element in this society i'm sure that they have. any. yemeni government because they have the feeling that we neglected them since a long long time and just briefly it's not a. ton of it could actually be closed i absolutely would not read into that at all for u.s. officials the key concern isn't the difficulty of reintegrating these former detainees into society it's the concern that these detainees will reintegrate into al qaeda networks and it's not a completely not valid when we have to remember that al qaeda in the arabian peninsula was founded by former guantanamo detainee so it's certainly a valid concern this is going to be such a long way off i mean if we waited this long for it to close unfortunately i don't think it's going to be sped up just because of this idea. at all if you don't call me series on life inside as well as more interviews with former prisoners and

in-depth coverage of the international pressure to close the facility. russia has the world's second largest population in search of a better life the majority come to the capital moscow. but worryingly high numbers of them stay in the city illegally a concern for the authorities and the locals paul scott has the details. migration in moscow is a sensitive subject right now following last month's murder of russia the back of allegedly at the hands of an azerbaijani migrant and the nationalistic riots that followed the issue is firmly in the spotlight and an r.t. camera crew has found out just how sensitive the topic is we went to a market on the outskirts of moscow to try and film an interview with mohamed magick the president of the russian federation of migrants despite getting private mission to film it soon became clear a presence was not welcome. you russian though i have to repeat myself the site and

he's with the fence we have actually set up our interview away from the market. yes i think they may have suspected some illegal activities to of course and when you have thousands of migrant some of them may not have work permits or residence permits. the exact number of migrants in moscow is hard to calculate the best estimates put the figure around one quarter of the population and according to official statistics one in five murders one into rapes and one in three robberies a carried out by migrants your thirty's or came to be seen to be tackling the problem as we found out before our meeting with mohammed. since the under arrest in the outskirts of moscow police have been clamping down on illegal immigration every friday they go on a range of accommodation places of looking for illegal immigrants it's friday morning and we're going with the police on one of those raids and it didn't take long for the police to get down to business demanding people's paypal want. to.

know where do i leave. where do you leave. now the raid on the outskirts of moscow in the stuff i was last did to just about an hour and so far police have rounded up thirty five individuals who don't have the correct type of walk. around one hundred eighty thousand work permits a growing to each according to mohammed this figure is full to live up. to address it so you need to conduct a survey as to how many migrant worker a small school needs if it needs a million workers you should issue a million work part of it's not a mere hundred thousand. it's believed around three million migrants are working in moscow twenty four percent of the legal aid is creating a vast black market for cheap labor market looking to keep out of the spotlight let's go to. mosco. in a couple of minutes from now insights into the surge of sectarian violence in iraq

which claims thousands of lives each year stay with one life in moscow. the idea that heads of government think they can talk freely. without the risk of being intercepted whether by agencies of the state or even by private enterprise is crazy. zakk what happened i don't know but. here's lakers when i got arrested for. for a crime i did not do. we have numerous cases where police officers lie about polygraph results. innocent people to confess to police officers don't beat people anymore i mean it just doesn't happen really. in the course of interrogation why

because there's been this is like meant no because the psychological techniques are more effective in obtaining confessions than physical. abuse they were off taking they could do what they wanted they can say what they wanted and there was no evidence of what they did or what they said. in britain you're never far from feeling a tap on the shoulder from the tax man but not everywhere under her majesty's jurisdiction gets forced to fund the crown's coffers in fact it can be quite the opposite to know such a place. have you ever heard of pit care. ok no. not ever heard of pitcairn. pick an island or you.

think of the pacific so why. did you know that part of your taxes go to that island . have you ever heard of pitcairn. if you've never heard of pitcairn and you're an e.u. citizen it might be well worth knowing for that's where part of your taxes are go a. bit as one of britain's overseas territories a small island in the south pacific with a total population of about fifty people now locals don't pay taxes and the islands main source of income include tourism and postage stamps but it's still heavily reliant on british and e.u. eight well let's break down the numbers here in the ninth european development fund or e.t.f. care received two million euros in aid allocated for infrastructure building in the tempi v.f.p. it can receive two point four million that's a total of four point four million in thirteen years about six thousand eight hundred euros per person per year but that's not all earlier this year it emerged

that the u.k. had sent about ten million pounds over four years proponents of development aid the importance of maintaining quote solidarity and peace in developing nations and the european commission has indicated its attention to strengthen the focus of the e.t.f. on the world's poorest countries but details are scarce on how that assessment of the allocation will be done but critics in the e.u. and particularly the u.k. have long been voicing their disapproval on the government's money management interest essentially protecting what's given to others while slashing budgets for those at home now a two thousand and twelve you gov survey says that fifty four percent of the british public think that the british government should not be giving very much overseas aid. regardless of what public opinion surveys say for now the status quo remains in place reporting from london i'm tess are cilia british blum told us what he thinks lies behind these shadowy spending it's all about politics

geopolitics influence and money and who's actually getting back and us who's dealing here who's being that there's no wood it trail they really seem to know what's going on nobody knows why the money goes and it's absolutely a national it's a national disgrace it's a european national disgrace but of course what they're doing is buying influence if you go down to those french polynesian islands and you couldn't buy the entire town council for a few hundred euros and then you could rate their fishing waters and i think you'll find this is what it's all about. the pope is taking the gold in a corruption crusade and one investigator warns that the pontiff could be in danger as he tries to clean up the catholic church that story right now at all. and even though nature has member countries been watching the pennies we tell you how the alliance is still managed to find a span of billion dollars to build

a new headquarters. with your comment. on the face i think you. should have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure. three attacks targeting shiite worshipers in eastern iraq have left at least forty one people dead the blast took place during events to mark a sure and most important day in the shiite muslim calendar more than seven thousand people have been killed by insurgency in the country this year political

refugee from saddam hussein's regime told us that iraq is suffering the consequences of america's divide and conquer policy used during its occupation the united states wanted to separate all the iraqi forces and to play on sectarian divisions snick divisions exasperating and natural differences. but there is also this presence of the terrorist organizations. which is. fear of conflict between these political organizations and groups represented with government. not only iraq feeling the legacy of the united states interfering there's been bumper crops for afghanistan's farmers but that's bad news opium cultivation has hit record numbers meaning huge profits for local warlords and hundreds more lives destroyed by the drug well the latest un report says poppy

production has risen in some regions by more than a third this year generating phelan's of tons of opium and nearly afghanistan provides ninety percent of the drugs total global production for the farmers it is a lifeline the only realistic chance for their families to earn a living wage traditional agriculture just doesn't pay in the war ravaged state we're going to can look at the roots of the problem. opium production has increased forty times in afghanistan since nato started its war on terror in two thousand and one and now the drug money goes to fund terror and god knows what else not to mention of course thousands of lives taken by heroin consumption every year but expect more drugs coming out of afghanistan because the value of opium is so much higher than any other crop available to afghan farmers that afghans are not planning on giving up on poppies anytime soon even though the tribal leaders in the afghan government publicly denounce opium production according to afghan farmers

they still manage to packs them for that and this is what one farmer said government officials grow opium themselves and if they don't grow it themselves they rent out their land to farmers who grow it if the officials don't care about the law there is no reason for us to respect it that's according to this farmer for more than a decade nato and the us of course of the government that it had put in place in kabul every fuse to impose a clear ban on poppy growing possibly thinking that such a ban would turn more people against the u.s. but here's how u.s. officials explain it this isn't just trying to eradicate property and the opium it's also trying to give people an alternative mechanism to live and to feed their families but there is so much money behind narcotics that even with alternative ways to make a living it's very difficult to imagine that such massive drug production will stop unless there is a clear cut then on it in washington i'm going to check on. what we can

talk to one of the people who took part in the u.n. report on opium growth in afghanistan and is in vienna right now why do you think there has been such a drug production there in afghanistan. well one of the major reason of the surge of cultivation in afghanistan is the answer to the farmers and the country see after two thousand and fourteen and saw cultivating apia on better remains a lucrative business or is a way also to think of how to. look at the future lucrative for the farmers group for other people as well as the government doing about this or perhaps. one. way is looking at it in the sense here for the farmers the be obtained you know four or five times what of a kind of team there for the same amount of land effectively have from other licit crops or but mostly who really benefits are from this business that are the

traffickers are the clean organisations are inside afghanistan but also outside afghanistan where the. cutter from a dance for me. to air alina morphine and then trafficking these substances outside afghanistan where they are huge market and where the prices of heroin and opium are . getting much higher than in afghanistan it is the afghan government doing about it. yes i mean is that the content our car to have worked earth while of the year trying to. read occasional campaigns or to eradicate fields or but this is also very. is a difficult because there are insurgents are so it's harder also to eradicate all the fields about the the mean when the government definitely tried through an education campaign or. two. to try to stop farmers about that they reach only

about seven thousand of the regulated fields are and that compared to very more than two hundred thousand of our cultivation is just a tiny percentage when you talk about how is used beyond afghan's borders but where is the real demand coming from for this well afghanistan is the major producer of and then of course of our in the world so the afghan opium gets to all the major consuming markets in europe or in russia centrally all saw in part of asia partly also china but also australia malaysia africa canada so this is a way for the farmers to earn a living if it stopped what's the alternative water of livelihood would they have. well indeed in order to support the farmers to starve. governments and

international community should support them in addressing the real root causes that are turned into off to really look at the development and rural development policies are and where it's important better counter-narcotics counter narcotics is mainstream the. broader development agenda and just briefly nato's presence really doesn't seem to have stopped any of this trafficking or the production of tall of opium once nato is gone it's just going to get even worse as . well what we have seen also in previous years is that opium is quite debated where these new control from the government of all of that is no control over territory so it really really depends on what will happen in the future because indeed the where there is no control of any is likely to be more live from vienna where it's important sure thank you very much thank you very much indeed

angela me from the un off on office on drugs and crime live in vienna for you very much for joining us here in our three. well coming up very shortly some of the second war was darkest days retold by the people who were there two years siege of leningrad more news in half an hour. you know i love these rare moments where action of something totally sounds positive to share with you the f.d.a. is working to ban partially hydrogenated oils which are the leading source of trans fats and foods and possibly the cause of up to twenty thousand heart attacks per year across the usa according to f.d.a. commissioner margaret hamburg as you know i would like the chemicals in my food kept to a minimum but the thing is the people at the f.d.a. are surely aware of all the hormones and beef and gitmo is being produced why does

this ban have such a very narrow narrow focus in fact when you look at all the things that americans consume smoke use that to swear health some get the violent band hammer while others are completely tolerated if you ever talk to a hardcore marijuana smoker they'll tell you dude we does better for you than beer and that's legal man and they kind of have a point i think there is this is one of those rare instances where a balance position isn't really a good idea well the country could go the libertarian route and let it be everything be legal let people make their own choices or do what i think would be much much better actually really ban all the things that are destructive to our health both of these paths have positive and negative effects but they are a lot better than our current plan of ban some harmful things for some reason and a lot other harmful things because well they lobby better but that's just my opinion.