breaking news on r t another victim of the terror attack in the russian city of volgograd has reportedly died in the hospital bringing the number of those killed to sixteen. under this week's top news in turkey riot police crackdown on protesters demanding the government to step down after a high ranking corruption scandal. and looks at events 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. branch and. we also talk to wiki leaks founder julian assange about the state of journalism today and his new media stand up the road movie where he and others offer up secret documents to various media outlets.

live from moscow this is our team sean thomas glad to have you with us it has been reported in that another victim of the terror attack in the southern russian city of volgograd has died in the hospital sixteen people are now among those killed investigators are looking at a number of possibilities of who carried out that suicide bombing artie's correspondent margaret how is it near the scene of the tragedy by 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 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 nade the suspect thought to be no male by law enforcement officials the role of the female is the use of a bomb in just twenty minutes past noon ripping through the corridor of the whole grad 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 at your disposal device was in a fact a present but did not detonate so he never intended this and planted the bomb very . clearly intended massive harm no the emergency ministry sent a fully equipped plane from moscow to build a grad 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 to what she was she's not on the list my daughter i'm looking for my daughter she was at the train station she used my son father and niece were inside the train station when the boss went to see they're all in intensive care now it was but they're badly injured they were category trained to moscow but never made it to the explosive originally reported that at its core it was covered with metal fragments that make the bombs impact more deadly one nine year old girl in critical condition her mother was killed in sunday's blast oh. also two young boys believed to be cousins they also died from the bombing of the train station one of their fathers is alive in critical condition at a hospital now we're taking a look back on the events of sunday in volgograd here's our.

the bomb went off just before one pm eastern train station did to nation ripped through an area around a security checkpoint as a suspect passengers waited for their luggage to be inspected before i bend down to collect my documents when they 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 or scaring me only outside was i able to get a breath of air and saw that to understand what was happening. i was inside in the waiting room i heard an explosion i didn't realize what had happened and i saw the giant engines towards complete and the people were coming out and say hey everybody is over. i'm going to die as soon as a police officer who was with one join just one of the suspected terrorists. from carrying out from reverse machine. to go i was with a child not far from was last happened i saw at the last shots the last. child to

floor and covered him with my body because officials say the bomb was equivalent to policed ten kilos of tube team and nesting with supported at the scene of devastation only the security check points that they did this can be much worse and unexploded commuters 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 will be a chance to take. a bus and passenger bus in october is still wrong the memories of people here back then it was a female suicide bomber she killed six and injured over thirty others. the first three days of january have been declared days of mourning on both the planet and those days are the very heart of our systems here only decent nations but this year so it is have decided perhaps understandably like the proceedings from two thousand and seven even those go by most. well there has been

a lot of reaction to the events in volgograd on social media in fact twitter eyewitnesses have been posting their reports from the scene let's take a look at some of them one of them comes from a photographer who lives nearby he tweeted that the blast was so powerful the huge doors of the railway station were completely blown out another witness reports that people immediately arrived at the scene to help the victims and the deputy governor or the deputy head of the city tweeted that all volgograd top officials were at the site of the incident now we spoke to senior lecturer at moscow state university marcus live botha he explained why he believes the city came under attack. is the principal focus simply because it's easy and close targets 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 astonished by security forces i think we can look at this time today as for more than likely a very rapid reaction force anxious to see more of the chilling the state of the art. dr your i'm a research fellow at the international institute for counterterrorism believes that cooperation between countries is essential to avoid extremist attacks. what if such attacks are not always not always easy to prevent it and as you know it takes place in other parts of the world just simply that the last several months ago in boston in america again by the ability to know you came from chechnya for the set up to be all such as cops to be prevented you must lead a very good intelligence and they did it just to be with the hands of the company consent all they said is that they have the head of post both relation between countries you go sometimes and it's not just being allowed the one place at the

expense of the different part of the local. we will be closely following the developments our team is on the scene we will be bringing you the details as we get them and you can also log on to our t v dot com for a minute by minute timeline of the events in volgograd. out of the week's top stories with 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 you saw more than twenty officials and a businessman arrested and led to a major cabinet reshuffle situation escalated on friday when police launched a violent crackdown on protesters calling on the government to step down there first 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 the corruption crackdown that's what the government the threats to prime minister. not just illustrates but from within using a posse that turned out to the demonstration was significantly smaller than that seemed to some of them the last of the clashes break out between the protesters and a guy who's 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 right now the. one actually it has become a very big. protest. in the senate will come up with the you know the this is. big enough to still. be to publicly out to the protests the prime minister remains to. continue to claim the corruption probe all of foreign conspiracy you know if you can a second wave of detentions may still be possible that the tide being a deadlock for brains with police the prosecutor publicly she's the enforcement

being in the government's pocket or if teasing a court decision to carry out will wait for government officials and their families . to listen to john that continues to unfold acutely the biggest test now facing the battle for the stuff to lies ahead of head match. test for mr. extruded crush. than we can see. the future. but other people think may be very difficult. for. and they quote to you that you know what days later the elections take place with the full impact of the corruption scandal here and. there are up to.

two thousand and thirteen is almost in the books and we are looking back at the most important stories of the year. and it's a whistleblower edward snowden who became one of the world's biggest names this year 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 he's going to judge you can comment 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 times 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 gate at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans. no sir while most americans think to edward snowden the u.s. government tectum 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 tele 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 could leaks manning released many thousands of diplomatic cables and video proof of u.s. involvement in war crimes 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 carry 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 carries. aaron swartz was neither a whistleblower in the war a journalist whether he was a champion of the free internet fighting against censorship he fills in 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 who treated him as if he were nine eleven terrorists edward snowden's revelations showed with the kind of surveillance that governments are doing by. the sea is 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 released to consistently since june let's take a look at the most important ones 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 british and german intelligence apparently helped the u.s. gather all of this data even though the u.s. is allies with the e.u. states it did not stop america from wiretapping european leaders latin american governments and businesses are also under the watchful eye of the n.s.a. and u.s. intelligence actually seems to have most of the globe covered snowden revealed that they tap 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 all dog eared because he used it to argue with his in his come pick for his 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. well what would media outlets do if they were given some secret documents in the media stan road movie answers that question a team of wiki leaks journalists travels across central asia and later to britain and of us offering up classified cables to the press the film's creator julian assange and one of his companions spoke to artes and he said now earlier. what

makes this documentary so interesting is 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 some things document but they're thinking as they're doing in most cases. there are very significant as if it constrains in fact most cases resulted in publications by the organizations concerned little of it was published material and how. 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 for 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're pretty clearly interested in publishing the full material that they got access to some in that respect no it wasn't a success but 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 has has been going on for the last year or so that is a consequence of. releases and that is the fact that it's not what. it is no direct censorship which is feasible by a particularly nations 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 and the risks to be a journalist in afghanistan is so high it sends to since the 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 go to infect the media he went to someone that's closely associated with us and specific journalist glenn greenwald and another specific journalist laura portress. 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 but 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 what the greatest power and to protect their interests and serve them your highness i want to ask you isn't as bad as greenwald is saying generally speaking if you just understand that the powerful media institutions are part part of power rather than being being so to speak mediators of information you just understand the very idea then obviously you will start looking at media consumption of news or information in a different in a different respect so yes of course there is that about 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 anything. i mean practically didn't publish anything 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. now take a swing around the globe to look at some other news making headlines this hour michael schumacher seven time a formula one world champion is in a coma after a skiing accident in france schumacher was skiing with his fourteen year old son and 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 as serious. after the accident which took

place at the merivale resort in france just a schumacher was transported to the grenoble in the mercy hospital center when 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 clash with rebels from the so-called white army near the city of the border the military reportedly used helicopter gunships against the rebels fighting erupted despite the government's offer of a truce to end the conflict in the country well 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 newly freed me hi-lo will dedicate himself to helping what he calls political prisoners the man who until very recently was russia's most high profile inmate says he wants to pay back his debts to the people who are still incarcerated but as artie's peter oliver reports their cases have little to do with politics. after ten

years in jail. has now decided will do is need found freedom and some of its 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 says 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 was the head of security for his daughter coasties oil company you cos he's currently serving a life sentence for five counts of murder. in two thousand and seven a court convicted her children of ordering the shooting of blood in me a pet you call of the mayor of a town in siberia. heard clashed with you cross 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 of the american by you this was registered there so when it came to tax revenues it was answering to the mayor a nifty you guns going with that argument with the whole of they depended on him and that was the only reason why he even matter it only time will solve the mystery surrounding my husband's murder but i'd just like a key to confess and clear his conscience. while on trial for the murder of pair of legs going with already serving twenty years in prison for the attempted murder of former holocaust good byes are all good cause 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 see the holocaust these comments about political prisoners as self-serving. how to craft a hostage of his own party he can't act differently now if he ever recognizes what his security forces were doing he will automatically become responsible that but i think now he fears that and exupery too can may start talking about that and what the third you can scase 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 are political prisoners that are and he will pretend to be pushing for release the are being heaped upon mr holocaust years left some of those watching feeling that only half the story is being told. he has stolen a lot of oil not physically by means of fiscal many policeman

and every kind of businessman in the best who had done the same would have all sought ended in prison by this story is untold in the west peter all of a r.t. bill in. well coming up after the break it is cross talk with host peter lavelle and his guests stay with us. the beginning of the old politics night moxon the face is from island life. in sin the enough temptation. to douglas last for six months. there are more polar bears than people. and it's as easy to hire a rifle as

a scooter. because the either do so in a special or a new indigenous people but there are others who do choose this frozen life. this yr i could be right about if you are the conductor. was very interesting because all the dropped out of the sky there were rohrbach up there were shift across a few degrees. and do a circle and came back at a speed which you know just astronomical speeds as you know they travel very very thoughts as it just look like a falling star that falls really quickly and then rises again what does it look like well it just worked like a star. such as one of the twenty fourteen olympics was this boy's life and why is this so special as the russian

resort prepares to welcome the world power the games shaping the city's present and future what more sochi will bring yet this is the moment they're reporting from a very cold snowy windy mountainous stuff yet beyond the olympics but come on. say. hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered on peter lavelle the year that was as two thousand and thirteen ends what has made it memorable we ask in this edition of crossfire who excelled in who disappointed us what stories captured our attention because of hope or due to dispair.