traffic.

police have dismantled some of the barricades in the center of the ukrainian capital to allow traffic through tensions been high for the whole day with reports of an imminent crackdown frequently. perhaps unsurprisingly conflict reports emerging from the streets of kiev this evening now ever since the opposition movement announced their march of the million on sunday there have been reports that the ukrainian special forces and the riot police are imminently going to sweep away down an independence square clear of protest as well as you can see behind me as if yet hasn't happened but one thing is for sure is that there was a heightened police presence on the streets of kiev this evening and that has led to an increase in tensions now one source close to the one of the opposition

parties has told me this evening that the opposition party in question is claiming they've had their headquarters raided by police and had their computer hard drives taken however the authorities deny that that is the case so yet again conflicting information but as i say the one thing that is certain is that the police presence on the streets of kiev this evening is greater than it has been over the course of the weekend and i've taken a walk around the administrative heart of the capital to gauge the atmosphere on the streets tensions have been on the increase all day ever since the riot police surrounded independence square which is about two hundred yards to my left hand side you can see the right place of whom the blockade to my right hand side where is to my left hand side other protesters has a meeting of troian a covert support is taking place not far from here which these protesters think explain and justify the current police presence. when a further one hundred fifty yards down the street and you come to another standoff

between the police and the protesters now the police have surrounded one of the protesters camps meaning it's impossible for them to get in and out it seems that both sides are keeping calm neither side want to antagonize the situation here although tensions with the police to my left and the protesters to my right are clearly very high. who are now the one thing i've noticed is we. continue our walk around the governmental quarters of kiev is actually how peaceful everything is when life does carry on as normal for example just there you've got the standoff between the police and protesters but here the shop is open is normal . well as we conclude our walk through the administrative hearts of kiev we've arrived here at a rally that is in support of president. what has really struck me throughout the course of the evening is how civil the situation has been we've been able to walk

through blockades established by the police by pro-government supporters and by anti government supporters and we've been able to pass freely through them or maybe the fact we're clearly journalists has something to do with it plus it's quite a civil situation and i think the hope is on all sides that situation will extend into the evening. where we've heard more now from both for those and against ukraine's integration with the e.u. international affairs analyst an m.e.p. close to the failed economic deal as well as all of his own experts traded their arguments right here in the studio with me a little earlier. when you were there reporting in kiev what did you make of the way the authorities handled situation you know bill i've been covering ukraine and its politics and its protest for almost a decade now since the so-called orange revolution and never in my life have expected that i'll be breathing pepper and tear gas in the heart of kiev and this is this was the case no one expected such brutal violence from both sides from both

the police and the protesters we did see scenes of protesters looking fairly organized in the way they were protesting this week or yes indeed especially the takeover of the city hall building they looked like a very well prepared army because the way there was storming the building this looks like like a hollywood movie they knew what they were doing exactly and i've been i spent several nights on my down on the independence square talking to the people there was a huge part of crowds who were just spreading these these bands ukrainian flag and saying we're appealing here those people i talked with them what they were saying is we want to live in a country where law is respected where law is observed the laws are proper and fine some economists are pouring cold water on the aspirations of those people who want integration they say that ukraine's association with the will mean nothing short of an agricultural collapse the virtual destruction of ukraine's military industry and what's more important ukraine will have nowhere to export its products. in the heart of europe do you really believe that. could be the case your opinion is based

on. and european citizens says well ok nian citizeness needs various european union values are ones where the ball of the elite takes precedence over those of democratically elected officials the u.p.a. and union is about institutionalized corruption in brussels and excessive regulation will know about membership balgair of course is an e.u. member how's it been working for your country tell us the benefits gary has. seven successful in the european union so we have our good results economic in education and social spheres so in the. unemployment of course to solve the problem of influence i'm amazed that bulgarian police can talking terms about the european union when i was

a basket case importing tomatoes from. a book you used to supply all of eastern and central europe with vegetables only twenty years ago that would create all sky but that's exactly what the politicians were saying to the protesters in kiev central square over the last few days politicians from not just ukraine but elsewhere to have politicians. arriving in my down square from poland. particularly from poland but we also the german foreign minister festival and the dutch foreign minister to was was also on my down and to have these people troop the color as it were and to to support these protests i find quite extraordinary we were having a bit of fun of this on twitter today and i can only compare it to if sergey lavrov turns up in glasgow and called on london to hear the voices of freedom in scotland and then aligned himself with a group of supporters who are trained by glasgow celtic or glasgow rangers. of

course following the developments in the ukrainian capital on air and online on our website r.t. dot com you can find the most dramatic photos and videos from the own going protests in ukraine. tens of thousands of people could see their crimes paul a new i'm just a proposal by vladimir putin it would twenty years since russia adopted its constitution and is intended to bring the state and its people closer together or did it a question of reports some of russia's highest profile prisoners as well as so those awaiting trial will be following the passage of this a lot very closely as they along with the twenty five thousand others may see the charges against them dropped the end of their records are wiped clean now this amnesty has been proposed to by the russian president lies human evolution and it

also marks the anniversary of adoption for russia's posset constitution and nine thousand and ninety three when used on the amnesty first appeared of course prompted a lot of speculation on who exactly could ban of the out of this upcoming amnesty whether it could be applied to the a members of the punk group pussy riot who are currently serving their two year prison sentence for on charges of holy going to islam or to the thirty greenpeace activists who have just risen the been released on bail and are awaiting trial in sin peter's work or will it change of the fate of a number of anti kremlin activists who have been a charge where the inciting riots and unrest however it is a quite doubtful whether me how will a fall into this category as the amnesty a does not impact those convicted off various serious crimes and the ones to russia's richest man has been convicted of

stealing billions from the state and of course of this falls into the category of a serious crime. imagine watching your house literally crumble in front of your eyes and not being able to do anything about it that's how texans living in fracking sites feel right now coming up we report on the tide of the making live from talk communities in north texas and how locals found from the politicians of the. so their predicament. still to come but first america's national security agency has apparently been leading an active life in a fantasy world it's been sending its high level agents into the hordes of all ills and wars in online games such as world of warcraft r.t. it has more. these revelations center around two games that's world of warcraft and second life are these are basically alternative online universes where users can create avatars they can be no elves or trolls a fear that g c h q and the n.s.a.

had was that this type of online game could be used to discard is shady activity on the part of terrorist networks or criminal groups which is why they have been spying on the people playing these games which is basically involves them assuming fantasy identities and jumping in and getting stuck and we know that there are a lot of play is online playing these games around forty eight million according to the estimate by x. box live in fact it seems to have been quite a big operation the cia the f.b.i. and the pentagon even had to reportedly create a special d confliction group in order to stop all the spies from spying on each other or effectively playing one massive washington network game of world of warcraft and perhaps most embarrassing really what we know from the leaked documents is that none of this buying has led to any successful counterterrorism operations which has led to some suggestions online that it could have been an

elaborate florrie by board employees that you see h.q. in the n.s.a. to simply play computer games at work but certainly the n.s.a. have said that they can't comment on this said that they can't confirm or deny it but it raises questions once again about the online privacy of game is doesn't come at a good time either today is the day that facebook microsoft google and other large tech companies have written an open letter to the u.s. government asking them to dramatically change their surveillance operations so no matter how you spin it it just doesn't look good when you find out that g c h q and the n.s.a. have been found to be playing world of warcraft. in london and john hicks he's editor of x. box magazine has but your money he thinks although the n.s.a.'s interest in online games is unusual the revelations fail to surprise anyone all that much there are huge number of players and they did and people do spend

a lot of time in these games they form kind of lost being social. range of people as a rich history of people getting married having messy not world of warcraft and that kind of thing i die i must confess to being in flux as to how you would actually track down terrorists and it's made it's not doesn't really seem like the sort of environment where you could do it we could do easily the only thing that you could say that they would learn from it would just be to kind of build you know as i said lost in relationships of people seem to think it's all just. people just playing games at work i think following the you know the scale of the n.s.a. revelations we've had from the snowden files i think it hasn't really come as a surprise to anybody like the fact that you know the n.s.a. is already monitoring social networks and are sort of saying that games are also on the list hasn't really surprised anybody and it doesn't seem to be you know putting anybody off. while the united states fights tooth and nail to preserve the n.s.a. secrets it's not quite as tolerant when others seek to do the same report and how

washington is threatening swiss banks with fines and even jail time if they don't give up. plus. a group of protesters in bahrain will have to spend the next few years in jail the country's government steps up its drive against pro-reform activists as the number of those arrested it is closer to the three thousand mark all that to come after a short break. speak

your language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here. for the world talks of the r.p. interview true story. arabic to find out more visit arabic. years worth of earthquakes have hit texas in just a month and a large part thanks to the practice of fracking say experts the state is at the forefront of the shale gas revolution and oil firms are generating billions in

taxes but i just got to find out well into our communities crack and crumble the support of politicians for the drilling remains unshaken the columns have shaken so hard it's actually pulled the tram if you look around here rebecca williams is showing me the cracks in her home after a series of earthquakes shook the area she has lived here for almost a decade and had never experienced an earthquake until fracking began in her neighborhood i never know when the next one's going to hear it i don't sleep at night because they keep me awake at night it seems like a lot of them happened during the wee hours of the morning or in the middle of the night to texas real world commission the local agency that regulates the oil and gas industries trying to calm the residents fears it claims there is no direct link between the recent tremors and fracking injection wells in the area but locals are now. not convinced it's a lot like living next to a time bomb but there's no timer on it because we aren't being told when the fracking is going to start or what the emergency perps eaters are in place if

something does happen and so you're just constantly sitting and waiting and wondering is today the day is today the day so small a juice with the u.s. geological survey say fracking regularly triggers small earthquakes waste from a fracking well it's is trucked to disposal well in the case of youngstown ohio injecting of the waste started to cause earthquakes after only two weeks and when they stop injecting waste in the well the earthquake stopped but despite seismologist warnings fracking wealth keep popping up just a few steps away from private homes and even community water wells nobody knows about any of this until it's too late and if i already happened. even though the government is not concluded it studies on how fracking can affect the environment well operations are in full swing here in texas there are thousands of them

impossible to miss and it seems no study can get in the industry's way if in fact you're asking the question of whether something could happen to halt sale production the united states i think that is highly unlikely it is extremely beneficial to the national economy franking is being largely responsible for the boom in u.s. energy production but maybe like we're back i fear they could be left to pay the price for her every week there is another term or another crack in her house she says she can't even sell it and leave the area we would have never moved here if we would have thought that all this was going to go out and we were going to live in the middle of a wasteland we would have never moved here. and now are stuck while energy companies are rubbing their hands in the anticipation of gigantic profits from fracking people who live just steps away from gas wells. are increasingly fearful about the water that they drink about the land that their homes are standing on and

they don't trust the government assessment of the damage from fracking because they say the oil and gas industry will make sure that no conclusive study comes out even if it does come out that it doesn't become a basis for effective regulations in texas i'm going to check on r t. well let's move the focus from the u.s. to another country hoping to win big on fracking and that is the u.k. p. kennedy spokesman for frack free south yorkshire says the authorities deliberately make access to safer energy resources tougher looking at the autumn statement from the chancellor last thursday where he was caught in the subsidies for renewable energy and also cutting the measures for energy efficiency in people's homes spreading into over the next two years which is going to cut it by about a third. of the number of people having their homes insulated is that what is being before so on the one hundred saying that we're having an energy crisis looming where we need two desperately new means of energy production on board but then at the other. take away the subsidies and the support for people to reduce their

energy bills and reduce the need to use it and also to clean and safe methods. the u.s. defense secretary has met with pakistani leaders in islamabad and despite warm handshakes for the camera tensions and anger remain over america's deadly drone strikes in the country that's coming your way very shortly here on r.t. international. another group of activists including mine is behind bars bringing the total number of those arrested in december alone to twenty eight protesters say in recent months the government's crackdown has become in sufferable well the bahraini people struggle for reform goes back almost three years now to february two thousand and eleven when four demonstrators were killed as police crushed around me less than a month later the authorities imposed martial law which allowed troops to suppress any dissent but by that time the number of those arrested stood at the files and that has increased threefold by now but legal and physical pressure on the

activists has failed to kill the protest momentum the monarchy reacted by further tightening the screws this year toughening the punishments for those speaking out but of course there are reports this is still unlikely to silence the opposition. it's the arab spring this forgotten revolution nearly three years have gone by since the people of the rain inspired by them see tunisia and egypt both up against an oppressive regime and demanded reform but their uprising was brutally crushed within a matter of weeks who have published their name and the picture of all the people responsible of the human rights violation in my country. starting from the small police officer and minister of interior reaching to the king of bahrain who is legally responsible of all the human rights violations and syud yousif elmo hafter has been forced to seek refuge in europe because of death threats against him and his family and i gather bahraini activists he criticizes washington and its allies

for being quick to condemn crackdowns in some countries while ignoring others oh it's better than the human rights in bahrain and it was their interests it's better than human rights as a diversion in bahrain so that's where we are a victims. of their better standard because we live in oil going to be last week the global manami dialogue forum pointedly ignored the crackdown u.s. secretary of defense chuck hagel made it clear in his speech that he was more concerned about military matters. before you got there are you know that it was all slaves so that's why they don't want anyone to talk about the process of lifting the if they give them crossing are moving oh lord even. some of that was so far according to amnesty international more than a hundred people have been killed and almost three thousand imprisoned in the bahraini protests many more have been tortured in a crackdown if remains

a far removed from the world's attention policia r.t. . or any politician. who is a. rest of this autumn says the government is determined to deal with the public discontent in its own way the problem of our own is very basic to understand we have absolute authority that was concentrated in behind family and we need dollars or thirty years to be shared. by the people of floor an inclusive political system that is retaining the power of the people rule of law was never meant to. illegal law compared to the international community stand and your own forces biased police and courts that is what people are you so i thought was just part of the punishment and part of the threats and fears of position of the activists not to join them warm and calling for simple rights

universal rights of their people to be equal to have big knitted to participate in political system and to have their beloved meant that is fair with everyone. swiss banks are finding it no easy task to give up on their sentries old tradition of secrecy hundreds of the alpine hideouts are waiting until the last moment to decide whether to go along with the u.s. ultimatum at midnight tonight to give up tax dodges when it's either that or face fines and even criminal prosecution from washington and ego involved felt he's managing partner at the foreign finance group s a says many see it all is extremely unfair. the world works in in these mysterious ways and the u.s. does have an awful lot of clout is able to throw its weight around and feels justified to do so but clearly a lot of other people feel it's there isn't there is injustice in this supposed to justice system that a lot of the smaller banks will be possibly victims and i think

a lot of them some of them from this is what we're reading in the papers anyhow are not going to comply because they don't feel it breaks their had been a broken any swiss laws and they're not at all involved with us. the u.s. defense secretary chuck hagel has landed in pakistan to try and on out entrenched differences between washington and islamabad american drone strikes are a central sticking point they've killed almost a thousand civilians in the country since two thousand and three and triggered a wave of protests that blocked nato supply trucks to afghanistan two weeks ago freelance journalist mona hubby was in islamabad for us but this is the first visit by the u.s. defense secretary. to pakistan in four years which shows how much the u.s. wants to build a relationship with pakistan and ease tensions which have been occurring over these drone attacks you know recently nationwide protests have been occurring in pakistan america in fifth that these drone strikes are essentially incurred by terrorists

despite pakistani protests saying it i throw it to national security and i tack on their sovereignty as well recently a family from buckstone travel to washington and spoke to congress and told them about their story and the impact all strikes have had on their lives there have been recently confided washington and president obama in washington and the drone strikes have still continued many politicians analysts and wonder and journalists wondering what will be the outcome of today's talks and whether there is actually any point in with it and i don't think will be result because so far nothing have time no more global headlines the world updates a series of blasts in iraq has killed twenty one people the deadliest happened when a car bomb went off in a town northeast of baghdad leaving eleven dead more than twenty but also injured

iraqi security forces are struggling to contain a wave of violence of this push the number of casualties this year to its highest level since two thousand and eight. french troops have started taking control of checkpoints in the capital of the central african republic because they confiscate weapons from opposing groups and try to stifle ongoing unrest shooting broke out near the airport when a number of fighters refused to surrender their arms the pentagon is reportedly thinking of taking part in the french operation sixteen hundred french soldiers have been deployed in the nation wracked by sectarian violence well up next we have a latest round of the week's top sports news unless you are in the u.k. where you'll be going underground with afshin rattansi in just over half an hour from now we'll all be back together again as i continue with the news. i was thinking somehow i had to come back because mom was waiting for me. i just

knew that everything would be fine for some reason they were so confident because we were going to get married officially after he came back how could he not come back. out of it never crossed my mind. the militants decided to try and break through. screaming grimly. explosion blow them all run his back. it was the rule and it was all over all. we know that our comrades on our commander won't leave us no matter how tough it gets we're team. there who are both getting was a senior in his military trio. he knew that if he didn't smother that grenade with his body more of his comrades would die he gave his own life to save his friends.

washington so-called peace process to resolve the israel palestine conflict that has produced little if any results in fact the palestinians are experiencing excel in way to be legal and seizures is it time to accept a one state solution and or look to global institutions like the un to replace the current negotiating framework. dealing with torch is on its epic journey to such. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand and nine hundred top two cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand kilometers. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. a limp the torch relay. on r t r g dot com.

and i welcome to the r t sports show hof an hour of top action from russia and around the globe with me kate poetry and here's what's coming up. the road to rio fabio capello is a happy coach as russia draw belgium algeria and sas korea in their group for next summer's world cup finals. plus a big battle scarred defeated by it says scott adams the moscow traffic while champions unama overcome even for our boss in the k h l. and in the cage we have a double helping of m.m.a. with a master class from probably see over there and frank miller and the latest action from moscow's fight night.