it's now thought a terror attack in the russian city of volgograd could have been carried out by a man fifteen that were killed by a suicide bomber targeting the city's main railway station. and this week's top news in turkey riot police crackdown on protesters demanding that the government step down after a high ranking corruption scandal. and looks adventure that shaped the world in two thousand and thirteen we review the revelations by former n.s.a. contractor edward snowden which exposed america's mass surveillance. the old media organizations of. our branch and. we'll also talk to you leaks founder julian assange about the state of journalism today and his new media stand up movie where

he and others offer up secret documents to various media outlets. and a live one from our studios in moscow this is r t i'm sean thomas let's look at our top story for that night now investigators say that they are looking at a number of possibilities of who carried out a suicide bomb attack in the southern russian city of volgograd that killed fifteen people artie's correspondent margaret howell is at the scene of the tragedy near the railway station. well i'm standing here in volgograd literally a short path down from the volgograd regional train depot just behind me where a bomb went off sunday december twenty ninth killing a fifteen people so far and a sixteenth person believed to be the suicide bomber over thirty five people in new

to change now though it was originally reported that it was a female suicide bomber now believed to be a male by law enforcement officials possibly a male bomber at this point it's inconclusive they originally believe the suspect to be a female twenty six year old from the republic of dagestan however finding a male finger in the clip of neda the suspect thought to be no male by law enforcement officials the role of the female is the use of a bomb just twenty minutes past noon ripping through the corridor of the volgograd train station it was detonated around the security checkpoint this instantly killing the police officer trying to stop the bomber now the police have since found that another device was in fact a present but did not detonate so whomever intended this planted the bomb and carried out. clearly intended massive harm now the emergency ministry sent

a fully equipped plane from moscow to volgograd with medical personnel including a trauma surgeon trauma surgeons on board to collect those seriously injured those that were taken to the hospital they're now coming to grips with the horrifying consequences that resulted from today's blast take a listen she's not on the list my daughter i'm looking for my daughter she wasn't the train station. my son father and niece were inside the train station when the last one of their old in intensive care and now they're badly injured they were headed for a train to moscow but never made it to the explosive originally reported that at its core it was covered with metal fragment. that make the bombs impact more deadly well a nine year old girl in critical condition her mother was killed in sunday's blast also two young boys believed to be cousins but also died from the bombing of the

train station one of their fathers is alive in critical condition at a hospital now taking a look back on the events of sunday in volgograd here's our. the bomb went off just before one pm p.c. train station it did to nation ripped through an area around a security checkpoint as a suspect in passengers waited for their luggage to be inspected. i bent down to collect my documents when i saw a flash of light and there was a blast i was thrown back by the explosion when i came to my senses a man was carrying me only outside was i able to get a breath of air and saw the to understand what was happening. and i was inside in the waiting i heard an explosion i didn't realized what had happened and i saw the giant engines do was completely ruined and people were coming out with their hair and bodies were burned among those to die at the scene was a police officer who was reportedly trying to stop one of the suspected terrorists

from carrying out for murderous mission. to go i was with a child not far from where the blast happened i saw a blast shot at last why i pushed the child to floor and covered him with my body officials say the bomb was equivalent to policed ten kilos of t.n.t. and nesting was supported by the scene of devastation only the security checkpoint prevented this from the much worse and unexploded grenade was founded the scene of the bluster and now investigators are looking at whether second bomber was involved this is the second time in just a few months that the southern russian city is fully baked in to terrorists. in october is still wrong in the memories of people back then it was a female suicide bomber she killed six and injured over thirty others the first three days of january had been declared days of mourning in both the great engine those days i do very hard of russia's new year holiday celebrations but this year

though it is have decided perhaps understandably because stevie's should be considered even goes. most. there's been a lot of reaction to the events in the volgograd on social media and twitter eyewitnesses have been posting their reports from the scene here are some of them let's take a look one a photographer who lives near by tweeted that the blast was so powerful that the huge doors of the railway station were completely blown out another witness reports that people immediately arrived on scene to help out the victims while the deputy head of the city tweeted that all of volgograd top officials are at the site of the incident now we spoke to senior lecturer at moscow state university mark slip botha he explained why he believes the city came under attack. well look good is the principal focus simply because it's an easy and close target to the south of the

caucasus. just yesterday there the russian security services reported that a principal aide to the self-styled leader of the caucasus doku umarov was killed in dog a stand by security forces i think we can look at this time today as for more than likely a very rapid reaction presidential attack for the killing of this local arts. doctor yoram a research fellow at the international institute for counterterrorism believes that cooperation between countries is essential to avoid extremist attacks was such a not always not always easy to prevent it and as you know that takes place in other parts of the world just the same shit that last seven months ago in boston in america again by a bill originally came from chechnya for the set up to be all subject talks to be prevented we must lead

a very good intelligence i think that it just will be with the hands of the company consent all they said is that they have to have of course bulk relation between countries because sometimes and it is being allowed the month place and thinks visit a different part of the loan completely. and we will be closely following the developments and we'll bring you all of the details as we get them and you can also log on to our team dot com for a minute by minute timeline of the events in volgograd. and to the week's top stories in our weekly program we start in turkey which has seen a wave of massive anti-government protests reminiscent of last summer's demonstrations this time public anger was sparked by a corruption scandal and saw more than twenty officials and businessmen arrested and led to a major cabinet reshuffle the situation escalated on friday when police launched a violent crackdown on protesters calling on the government to step down or to use its air for reports.

it's not uncommon sight so they 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 that rocked 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 of them the last of the clashes break out between police and protesters other times been in power for such a long time has maintained control a lot of people said that a lot of good things stirred the country why now the. government actually it has become very very important protests. in this. region that is not the this is a victory well to stop this between publicly outed the protests the prime minister remains to blame and continued to blame the corruption probe all of foreign

conspiracy and a second wave of detentions may still be possible if the tide being deadlocked for mainz with at least a prosecutor publicly accused the law enforcement being in the government's pocket by refusing a court decision to carry out the raids of 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 a batch. test for mr mammograms. extrude new crush. than we can see. grab a pen and. pad the future of country. but other people think may be very difficult. for them. and it could

well be that when days like the elections take place that the full impact of the corruption scandals created about some of. the stuff. would you like to know a secret later in the program we'll look back after the impact edward snowden revelations had on the world while the wiki leaks founder julian assange tells our t.v. about his road movie where he offered secret cables to media around the world all that in just a few minutes right here on our to international. the beginning of the long haul take note most of the faces full island life. was lost for six months. as the people.

and it was easy to hire a rifle as a school. because the island is so inexpensive there are no indigenous people but there are all those who do choose this frozen life. this is could be right about if you are. and welcome back you're watching the weekly here on our t.v. and two thousand and thirteen is almost in the books and we're looking back at the

most important stories of the year. and as a whistleblower edward snowden became one of the world's biggest names this year has u.s. security leaks revealed just how much everyone is being spied on america says the fugitive former contractor is a traitor and wants to try him for espionage but as you can reports other whistleblowers have already paid the price for lifting the veil of secrecy edward snowden says george orwell's fictitious big brother is no match for the u.s. national security agency the types of 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 edward snowden the u.s. government tectum is a spy and a traitor 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 so we kill leaks manning 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 the 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 that 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 fully embrace this new age of openness and accessibility of information 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 check on our

team. snowden's leaks have been a recently released excuse me constantly since june let's take a look at how the most important ones have unfolded now the world learned that the national security agency is collecting millions of u.s. phone records daily and it seems that data from some of the world's biggest internet companies is not out of the n.s.a.'s reach either now british and german intelligence apparently helped the u.s. to gather all of this information even though the u.s. is allies with states it did not stop america from wiretapping european leaders now latin american governments and businesses are also under the watchful eye of the n.s.a. u.s. intelligence actually seems to have most of the globe covered snowden revealed that they tapped data straight from the fiber optic cables which carry most of the world's online traffic former cia officer ray mcgovern thinks those violating privacy should face justice and not the leakers. i am delighted to

hear that ed snowden on his desk in honolulu had a copy of the constitution of the united states of all dog eared because he used it to argue with his in his campaign there it is say as to whether what they were doing was legal whether it was constitutional the question should be why those who are aided and abetted this whether they should be brought to trial for these of gross violations of their solemn oath to support and defend the constitution of the united states now what would it media outlets do if they were given some secret documents the media stand road movie answers that question a team of journalists travels across central asia and later to britain and the united states offering classified cables to the press the film's creator joined us songs and one of his companions spoke to our teas and he's an hour early. what makes this documentary so interesting is that we have different media organizations

in different countries but all starting out of the same place. journalists come to them offer them the same type of material the us government diplomatic cables and then we see what the response is publish not publish censor something to document what they're thinking as they doing in most cases. there are very significant significant strains in fact most cases result in publications by the organizations concerned that all of those publish some material and. do you feel like the mission you documented in media stan was a success there were a lot of reactions i remember in tajikistan with people saying you're not going to make a difference nothing will really change if we speak about making a difference or if the mission in itself was a success. obviously when the regards to actually getting the material published in

the various medias it's difficult to call your great success because there were actually quite well not that many newspapers neither in central asia or for that matter here in the united states that you actually declared you interested in publishing the full material that they got access to so in that respect no it wasn't a success. from a broader respect of course we can see that the leaks releases have made a large impact they will. change the way that we interact with with media since then and i think that if we just look at the. whole affair which is has been going on for the last year or so. they wrecked consequence of that we can fix releases and that is the fact that it's not what. it is no direct censorship which is feasible by a particularly musicians with replication that happened in different countries in different places where it is possible for them to become in afghanistan obviously

the risks are a whole different kind of risk there are you going to continue your work to try to keep revealing the truth. i think this is our responsibility as journalists to reveal what's happening behind the scenes within the government and the regional level as well as international level so i have been working as a journalist since two thousand and six in afghanistan. the risks to be a journalist in afghanistan is so high it sense too since early since early two thousand and thirteen there have been sixty cases against. journalists relation voile and. many other cases against journalists in afghanistan so that there are there is a high risk to be a journalist in afghanistan but this is our responsibility not to give up and continue our work as a journalist edward snowden should use the media and not wiki leaks to channel his revelations don't you think that's

a good sign that he was able to do it through the media. well i think it's quite sad actually it would snowden didn't. infect the media he went to someone that's closely associated with us and specific journalist glenn greenwald and another specific journalist laura portress. the most prominently a couple journalists to wiki leaks has gone clean greenwald's for his part was then working with the guardian has left the guardian as a result. of the censorship by the guardian all of that material to date less than zero point zero five percent of the snowden i think documents have been published. the majority of the media are still reluctant to challenge the government like you said and speaking of glenn greenwald recently he reprimanded journalists across the globe for not standing up to the government lets out so have a listen to what going greenwald had to say at

a recent conference and hamburg what it is that we were targeting in the behavior of the media over the past six months is just revelations have emerged almost entirely without and despite the role of the us media and their british counterparts is to be voices for those with the greatest power and to protect their interests and serve that your highness i want to ask you is it as bad as greenwald is saying generally speaking if you just understand that the powerful media institutions are part of part of power rather than being being so they speak mediators of information you just understand the very idea that. looking at media and consumption of news or information in a different in a different respect so yes of course there is there is that bad. and if we look at an institution such as the washington post which was one of the first institutions that had access to snowden's documents they decided not to publish and.

i mean practically didn't publish anything first and what we can understand from that is that there is a direct relationship between between the different power institutions in our societies and media is most definitely one of the most important power institutions that we have in our society three wars as we know it's now take a look at some other headlines making news around the world this hour michael schumacher seven time formula one world champion is in a coma after a skiing accident in france schumacher was skiing with his fourteen year old son in an off piste area between two marked runs after the incident he was airlifted by helicopter to the grenoble university hospital center the director of general care described his condition in a serious. way after the accident which took place at the marable resort in france mr schumacher was transported to the grenoble university

hospital center so he arrived at the clinic in a coma and underwent immediate surgery for a serious head trauma. violence continues to rage across the south sudan government troops clashed with rebels from the so-called army near the city of bor the military reportedly used helicopter gunships against the rebels fighting iraq today despite the government's offer of a truce to end of the conflict in the country rich south sudan has been in turmoil since two thousand and eleven when it gained independence in this month alone at least one thousand people have died in fighting in south sudan. well coming up after the break we visit a norwegian island in the arctic ocean for a glimpse at life there you're watching our two international stay with us.

i'm an old school kind of guy i like tradition and heritage and all that stuff when i look to the past i see that there's a lot that we could learn from our ancestors however one thing we don't need from them are debtors' prisons which according to a fox news report are somehow on the rise in the united states in the twenty first century the a.c.l.u. and the britain center for justice claim that the local courts have been sending individuals with unpaid fines and fees jail which the courts may not even realize is illegal these courts are locking up people with fines that have exploded in size due to interest imposed on initial amount and for the representation they had when they were in court which i always thought was supposed to be free but worst of all some are still in prison for fees they occurred while being in prison like having the audacity to use toilet paper hey that's taxpayer money down the toilet the kicker to this all is that throwing people in prison for their public debts costs

more than the debts the prisoners have to pay off that's right the local governments lose money doing this someone please resurrect the founding fathers america is running out of time if you aren't worried about this comeback of debtors' prisons are you think those rednecks deserve it so let me ask you something how's it going with paying off all your loans and bills i hope for your sake you don't miss a payment fashion just my opinion. spitzbergen is the starting point for expeditions to the north pole a little over a thousand kilometers away. as next to no

sunlight each day what little remains continues to do. in just ten days the sun will stop rising above the horizon all together. it will begin. like it is on the mainland in the middle of. the locals say there are three four seasons here day night and snowmobile season. people on the island because of the environment but a very small few have chosen to live here.

yes. just. be careful. to. go. to great at the norwegian town of. special ceremony. it wasn't until nine hundred twenty eight of the island's became norwegian territory. unique status. in commercial activity here.