actually doing it to get. today's news in the week's top stories on r.t. international the e.u. calling on turkey for more openness amid a massive corruption probe that triggered an arrest in a major government shake up. doing to look back in two thousand and thirteen this time the story of a computer worker who grew up in the u.s. extensive global surveillance network. russia's foreign minister talks about the years of breakthroughs and challenges from syria to the missile defense spat with nato. ten am in moscow i met reza bring you today's top stories and a look back at the week's news we begin in turkey where the country needs to handle

its deepening corruption scandal with more transparency according to concerned european officials the probe that forced the arrest of twenty four people including the sons of two ministers and a massive government a reshuffle seen as prime minister heir to ones biggest challenge is coming to power more than a decade ago meanwhile some four thousand people gathered again in on her i demanded that the pm step down sarah firth has been following the protests in istanbul. it's not uncommon sights on a stumble streets in a year that's been marked by widespread protests but this time the rallies taking place in the wake of a corruption crackdown this rocks the government the threats to prime minister now comes not just from the streets but from within his own party the turnout for the demonstration was significantly smaller than the seen the some a non the less ugly clashes broke out between police and protesters believe added i'm still in power for such a long time has maintained control

a lot of people said that a lot of good things stirred the country right now the. thing was actually it has become very very simple protest. in the center there is like an awful regime there was no democracy and big enough to stop this speaking publicly outed the protests the prime minister remains defiant and continued to blame the corruption probe all of foreign conspiracy and a second wave of detentions may still be possible they say the tide being a deadlock for mains with the police the prosecutor publicly accused the law enforcement being in the government's pocket by refusing a court decision to carry out more raids government officials and their families as that political drama continues to unfold arguably the biggest test now facing the embattled prime minister still lies ahead of him match. test for

mr mammograms. strewn across. van we can see. a rabbit promising. a future country. but other people think may be very difficult. at. and it could well be that when days later the elections take place that the full impact of the corruption scandals created. if that. international relations professor hussein bobsy tells us that the corruption scandal isn't just going to blow over it is the biggest political corruption in history and if it is the case it is more than one hundred billion euro. as some sources say i think the government is having difficulties to. cover the

prime minister is not the video han by this and i think is the intentional reaction sent from abroad there will be more strong positions and the turkish government. somehow tried to defend the lost a lot of good in the eyes of turkish rate and also in the international public opinion for a man made to crusader former oil tycoon throwing his weight behind getting his jailed colleagues out as well once russia's richest man calls his ex associates political prisoners and values to fight for their rights we'll look at how they ended up in behind bars in the first place. first but just as he was the a few days left in two thousand and thirteen we're looking back at the events that shaped the year. one person who arguably generated more global headlines than any other this year was a previously unknown i.t. worker from the u.s.

on a job at the cia he didn't like what he saw so edward snowden went public telling the world just how far and wide the u.s. electronic surveillance really went but the truth had consequences guided schicchi on reports from washington on how the n.s.a. whistleblower joined a long list of those persecuted for exposing government secrets. edward snowden says george orwell's fictitious big brother is no match for the u.s. national security agency the tiresome collection the book microphones and video cameras t.v.'s that watches are nothing compared to what we have today snowden revealed that a secret court rubber stamps warrants for telecommunication companies to hand out the data of millions of their customers he also leaked the programs that the government uses to track virtually anything anybody does on the internet and also store that information and he showed how the u.s. government had lie about mass surveillance does the n.s.a.

collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans. no sir while most americans think to edward snowden the u.s. government tacked him as a spy and a traitor the united states government classified its evidence of its own criminal misconduct its its violations of the bill of rights what we're doing is said to catering to tell a tarion procedures which is gathering information about all the individuals in the world. the former intelligence contractor is now in exile knowing for certain that he'd go to jail should he return to the u.s. like bradley and now chelsea manning who was sentenced to thirty five years in jail this august through weekly leaks many released many thousands of diplomatic cables and video proof of u.s. involvement in wartime just another man who found himself in jail this year was john key the first u.s. official to confirm the government's use of waterboarding to interrogate carries

suspects i caught up with him shortly before he went to serve his two and a half year sentence i have never believed that my case was about a leak i have always believed that my case is about torture in the hunt for whistleblowers journalists have been targeted as well u.s. authorities secretly tapped the phones of dozens of associated press journalists the partner of glenn greenwald who broke the story about n.s.a. surveillance was detained in london while carrying materials from edward snowden to british authorities so closely cooperate with washington now accuse him of quote terrorism. aaron swartz was neither a whistleblower nor a journalist but he was a champion of the free internet fighting against censorship bills and advocating the online release of as much information as possible on the government on january eleventh the twenty six year old committed suicide. prosecutors wanted to put him

in jail for up to thirty five years for downloading academic articles from a subscription based research website at his university with the intent to make them available to the public but this was somebody who was pushed to the edge by what i think of as a kind of bullying by our government a government treated him as if he were nine eleven terrorists edward snowden's revelations showed with the kind of surveillance that governments are doing i'm a sees out the window but this year will also learn what happens to those who embrace this new age of openness and accessibility of information that showed that while governments in the u.s. government first and foremost won their populations to be open and transparent they themselves become increasingly secretive in washington i'm going to shut down our team it all started june sixth when britain's guardian newspaper published a court ruling demanding american phone company horizon to hand over its customers

phone records then came the exposure of the government's prism program collecting users' personal data from firms including google and facebook it was later revealed that the n.s.a. had been spying on global leaders followed by claims that a number of countries were also in on the eavesdropping former cia officer ray mcgovern says those behind the surveillance should be brought to justice. i am delighted to hear that ed snowden on his desk in honolulu had a copy of the constitution of the united states all dog eared because he used it to argue with his his come patriots there it is say as to whether what they were doing was legal whether it was constitutional whether it was a crime for them to be corrupt to be cooperated in using their technical expertise to violate america's privacy right and left the question should be why those who aided and abetted this whether they should be in the spose peached in their case

and brought to trial for these of gross violations of their solemn oath to to support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies throughout the day here on our t.v. were showing media stan a program about a group of wiki leaks activists who travel across central asia in search of media let's willing to publish the leaked u.s. diplomatic cables while also host makes an extensive discussion later on sunday on the world whistleblowers the challenges they face and the risks they take all here on r.t. international. st augustine. strategic leadership. team of journalists trying to release wiki leaks documents. united states is trying to. be a local media more pro-american counter fear ignorance pressure. country

blocks the way to information freedom. russia's top diplomat says the u.s. and its allies are moving closer toward moscow's stance on syria but with some key issues with nato still needing to be ironed out sergei lavrov spoke exclusively with r.t. about the years foreign policy achievements jaeger piskun i was among those who interviewed the foreign minister. yes it was the national average of things for finding the time to meet with us we have three channels here are the spanish arty arabic and english. with a whole year to cover there were lots of things to discuss it brought russia several diplomatic victories including the chemical arms deal with syria geneva two is the next step and according to mr elaborate of preconditions from the syrian opposition remain among the key obstacles including the one for president assad to step down something that the west is now moving away from. the threat of jihadists

coming to power in setting up a caliphate and the realization is doing that region change is not the way to resolve this problem our western partners are becoming increasingly clear about this. there are also changes in russia's relations with the west and apparently there are signals for more transparent and trustworthy ties on both sides but a called warming town is still something that moscow has to deal with. some leader members have a phobia against russia which is really said this leads to similar european partners still wanting to keep dividing lines within europe and even move these lines eastward a country could either be with them or against them in the comments for the last november's nato draws near russia's western borders the largest in ten years six thousand troops from all member states as well as finland sweden and ukraine practiced defending the baltics from an identified threat from the east while president putin is question of what was the point of still planning to build an anti missile defense system in europe without a threat from iran still hasn't been properly answered by washington there aren't

any firm guarantees the system want to be aimed at russia either you're going to spin off r.t. moscow or fall exclusive interview with russia's foreign minister right now at r.t. dot com and on our you tube channel. britain's working class suffering the biggest decline in living standards in victorian times yet the government's helping the other end of the scale with a tax break that's letting the rich get richer we report on that in a few minutes. berland social science center just published a study suggesting that two thirds of the muslims in western europe hold their religious rules and the laws of the countries that believe that if you read the bible if you if you go into christianity you find the sentence that you should obey god more than caesar. means religious schools

and pull to. more convincing those of the students in the very same thing that is now referred to the muslims. was very interesting because it would drop down the scale of the rohrbach up there were shift across a few degrees. do a circle and at a speed which you know just astronomical speeds as you know they travel very very is it just look like a falling star that falls really quickly and then rises again what does it look like a lot it just worked like a star. thanks for staying with us quarter past the hour now the free to former oil mogul mikhail khodorkovsky may still be deciding what he wants to do next but one thing he says

is for sure he wants to get his former associates out of prison one of them serving a life sentence for organizing several murders but holocaust he says he was put behind bars unjustly peter all over has more. after ten years in jail or how hard it has now decided to do knows his new found freedom and some of his plans have caused a few raised eyebrows. some of my comrades remain in jail they are my fellow sufferers for example my friend platon lebedev alexei protrusion there are still other political prisoners in russia not only those related to the u. cos case i am free now and i'm asking you to think of it as something which symbolizes that the efforts of civil society can lead to the release of some people who no one thought would be able to walk free to chew good and was the head of security for his daughter called these oil company you course he's currently serving a life sentence for five counts of murder. in two thousand and seven

a court convicted good of ordering the shooting of blood in me a pet you call the mayor of a town in siberia but you call four hundred clashed with you cos over his insistence that the oil giant paid taxes due to his tone the court found no link between the murders and the head of you cos however because widow believes this was a crime that went to the top in europe and by you this was registered there so when it came to tax revenues it was answering to the mayor a nifty uganda ready made with the hope they depended on him and that was the only reason why he even matter if only time will solve the mystery surrounding my husband's murder but i just like how to ask if you can sense and clear his conscience. while on trial for the murder of pair of legs was already serving twenty years in prison for the attempted murder of former holocaust ski advisor all good cos dinner after quitting her post with you cos she went on to work as the

head of p.r. for the mayor of moscow it was then that a bomb was placed in her moscow apartment fortunately it detonated while no one was home because dinner sees the holocaust these comments about political prisoners as self-serving. how to cover skews a hostage of his own party he can't act differently now if he ever. recognizes what his security forces were doing and he will automatically become responsible of butter i think now he fears that. may start talking and what the third ucas case could potentially be is a further investigation into those murders and assaults which the company security forces carried out a lot of crafts he has no other choice he will continue to insist people from the security department up political prisoners that are and he will pretend to be pushing for release the ideal ation being heaped upon mr years left some of those watching feeling that only half the story is being told he stole

a lot of oil not physically a bar by means of fiscal or many police. every kind of businessman in the best who had done the same waterfall thought that in prison of this story is all told in the west. p. to all of a billion to r t dot com to learn about the mass resignations in the world's most populous country as many as five hundred chinese municipal lawmakers now jobless after gaming the system read about what exactly made them take flight. and this time the little holes and wires may not look like a cutting edge space rover but that's exactly what nasa is planning to send one of saturn's largest moons and searches for new discovery. declaring egypt's muslim brotherhood

a terror group earlier this week deep in wounds in the divided country the move coming into effect after a suicide blast at a police headquarters in the nile delta that killed fifteen people street unrest flared daily in different corners of the nation as people vented anger at the crackdown on former islamist leaders and anti-government activists some clashes turned deadly including the most recent at a cairo university campus where several buildings were torched by angry students saturday one of them was killed as police moved in to quell the riots cairo based journalist here i mean the things everything's being done to make sure the brotherhood is wiped from egypt's politics. well this is a new escalation in the long running feud between the security state and the muslim brotherhood what they are trying to achieve is to crush the islamist group altogether and not to leave any room any space for that group to enter into political life again but they see more defined the never saying that the coup

is the real terrorism here and they feel that this is a return to plead january twenty eleven the return of the police state repressive measures being taken. all measures taken to silence any form of dissent so i expect more violence more bloodshed and it's a vicious cycle where earlier this month huge amounts of breeder readmitting substances were discovered at another reactor at the crippled fukushima power plant the government wanted to complete the decontamination work by next march but it could now take another three years japan expert our excursion is tokyo's done so much to keep secrets hidden that it's hard to associate actual scale of the issue. entire system of management of tepco in fact of the entire nuclear industry of japan is going to rely on unskilled uneducated that under specialist d.

the workers the guys that pick up off the street and are brought in paid a daily we wouldn't have and some of them don't even realize they're going into a radioactive circumstance well it's not professional. it's a comedy of errors and the attacks are just one of many many structures that were built originally without expertise without consulting it or national specialists it's fair to say that it's a big mess and they will get worse if the real problem is that the government has that so much energy in hiding the information that at this point i can i think it's fair to say that nobody knows what's really going on thirteen out of some other stories making international headlines later on sunday a rescue ship should reach or trapped russian research vessel that's been stuck in antarctic ice since tuesday it's hoped the australian ice breaker will reach the stranded academic chicago after a failed attempts by french and chinese ships despite being stuck in the ice since

christmas so the scientists aboard are said to be in good spirits and continuing their work. activists in syria say government airstrike on a crowded food market in aleppo killed at least twenty five the barrel bombing campaign comes ahead of a key peace conference planned for next month but the main opposition alliance threatening to pull out of talks if the air raids persis international inspectors say they won't meet the december thirty first deadline to remove syria of its most dangerous chemical arsenal blaming god bad weather and shifting battle fronts. any government protesters in bahrain have been met with tear gas and sound grenades hundreds turned out across the gulf state following the arrest of the head of the main opposition bloc shaikh ali solomon his party has been one of the main. drivers of the arab spring inspired protests that started in two thousand and eleven opposition campaigners say bahrain's rulers are leading toward the country their country toward dictatorship with widespread torture and detention and hundreds jailed for attending human rights routes. iraqi security forces arrested

a prominent sunni muslim lawmaker and government critic a raid on his home in western unbar province killed at least five people including his brother and guards there are fears the incident could inflame ethnic tensions in a region often the scene of anti-government protests so tarion violence is on the rise in iraq with more than a thousand people killed there this year i made biting welfare reform and social spending the british government has still managed to secure a tax cut but only for those already making a mint details from artie's poly boyo. for many of those working here in the city of london two thousand and thirteen has been a year of prosperity thanks to a tax cut that kicked in earlier this spring the u.k.'s highest earners have been able to make even more money this year the rate of tax for people earning over one hundred fifty thousand pounds per year has gone down from fifty pence to forty five so for every hundred pounds they earn over that fifty pounds used to go straight

into the treasury but that figure has now been reduced and now they're only paying forty five pounds to the tax man from every hundred now all these save five as a rounding up in the u.k. is authorization labor party has done the math they say that collectively the u.k.'s highest earners have saved almost one hundred million pounds thanks to the tax cuts you have seen the longest fall in living standards on record you've got half a million people using parents now you've got i think homelessness is up by around since two thousand and ten these are serious problems why is the government choosing to cut taxes and sound like this when the government's made such play of the need for seriously bizarre there's little evidence that it's benefited the u.k. economy so most people. have their tax cut they're not investing that money this

investment storm before they're just going to basically london isn't called a millionaire's playground for nothing you have more super rich individuals living in the capital than anywhere else in the world you have the world's most expensive houses here and butlers a back in fashion but away from the glitz and glamour thirteen million brits are going to be starting the new year living in poverty u.k. prime minister david cameron has been fighting off claims that his political party only represents the privileged few but this later. tax cuts only benefits the richest one percent twenty boy. next worlds apart with oksana boyko stay with us.

summer break a time when all students rejoice and most importantly relax but in russia summer break for male students could change dramatically and involve lots of guns currently male russian citizens have to put

a year into the armed forces but the ministry of defense thinks that they can make things easier by having students spend their summer breaks in the military this training would tie in with their future professions such as engineering students being put into military engineering position now the question is does your summer break belong to you or another words of the government have the right to tell you what to do and make you serve in the army even if just for three summers during your college years i think the answer this really depends on your culture in places which haven't been invaded countless times or have a strong individual ism streak any form of conscription sounds barbaric and oppress . but if you come from a country that is less individualistic and has been attacked invaded by pretty much every country that possibly could like russia then having a draft makes more sense i think this program could work and if i was in college i would be pumped to spend my summer vacation with some heavy artillery but this is definitely not a universal idea for all countries i don't think liberals or libertarians in america would take too kindly to it and rightly so but that's just my opinion.

hello welcome to worlds apart in addition to its religious significance christmas is also the most celebrated secular holiday of the year of reflecting a very peculiar place that religion plays somewhat in daily life what is the current state of affairs between the big church and the state well to discuss that i'm now joined by dr gakkai probert a member of the international consortium for law and religious studies dr roberts

thank you very much for your time we're having this conversation involve a country that has a very complex i would even say a love hate relationship with religion about a century ago churches and mosques were actively. blown out by the authorities nowadays at the state actively supports their construction but i think one thing that these grounds have in common is that both have been led by the state and i wonder what doesn't really tell us that religion is to. this date or rather that you are not asked separated as we would like to believe well i believe that the state religion they have owned specific fields and i would not speak in terms of strength. i would rather speak of what kind of tasks does the state have and what kind of tasks does religion have their.