i am. russian officials aventura behind the barbed wire at america's materials guantanamo bay prison where more than a dozen detainees are reportedly being forced bad i made an ongoing hunger strike. one calles are turning syria into any emerging drugs hey then we report on how the country has become a major production side for one protein stimulant in the space of just a few yes. the massive data collection on american and therefore nose around the globe will be kept in place indefinitely as president obama is a criticized for a lack of action following his speech on the n.s.a.'s practices.

wherever you're watching us from it's good to have your company with us you're live with us on our t.v. international i'm on with say a delegation from moscow is trying to secure the release of a russian citizen who's been held without charge one time or bay for more than a decade the russian officials also looking into the ongoing hunger strike and the force feeding of detainees of the u.s. military facility or does an issue an associate took in our reports. for the first time in twelve years a russian delegation spearheaded by the foreign ministry special representative for human rights got access to visit the guantanamo detention camp the goal meeting with the sole russian prisoner of held there without charge for a decade and taking steps to push for the detainees returned to his homeland we spoke to the top diplomat of the visiting delegation to get the details you will remove it looks. significant churches they gave their lives are.

you. basically because. you were a cute you know. you broke the you know the written on proper litigation. to where we have been given to her to refute kuku are a little bit different but we've got to look. more politically all the details putting extra pressure on the u.s. to shut down the scandalous camp was also on the agenda of the foreign ministry the prison has been staining america's human rights and legal record both at home and abroad for years leaving the detainees staring really into the abyss of indefinite detention and just last week the world saw the twelfth anniversary of the first detainees of the world of the war on terror being brought to the scandalous prison camp which obama made a promise to close on day one at the white house last year the world's attention was returned to one tunnel as the majority of the prisoner population was on

a hunger strike for over six months making world headlines and really forcing the obama administration to refocus his attention at least on words for now to the detention camp although plenty of bureaucratic and political reasons continue to be used as an excuse instead of just shutting the place down when we visited guantanamo three months ago we found out that at least fifteen detainees were continuously being force fed before it's passed on the news we lubricated and we give the. a choice they want to have. which is agent it will numb the area or if they want of will to lubricate the tubes. most of our patients have been using all of the well you seem to like it in fact some of our patients are so used to this they will describe which nostril they want about other aspects of prisoner life however there was

a lot of secrecy we were taken on a largely staged and prepared to or around the prison facilities without being able to see much of the real conditions that the prisoners live in and speaking to any of them was of course out of the question let alone seeing them one or two of them actually for more than a minute a lot of secrecy and a routine tour around the premises also turned out to be the experience of the russian delegation as well and as they said you're going to r.t. new york lawyers for the one time or detainees claim the number of hunger strikers at the prison has gone up in the past month and now stands at thirty three but the u.s. military which runs the facility has refused to release any updates there fishel excuse is that the fate of those are no longer relevant to quote more important issues like the wellbeing of the prisoners and the security of the american person now we spoke to clive stafford smith a who advocated for several of the detainees he claims the us military is using some painful tactics to try and break up the

hunger strike different prisoners from camp six matches the least count goes on hunger strike to be automatically get transferred not just count five votes count five record which really has most abuse took place in. prison as a whole. basic human rights just as a punishment strike force feeding techniques are very much action unfortunately against the very abusive force feeding techniques i mean casting aside the question of whether it's not the culture course the tour on the road medical association says it's not you know unfortunately the techniques they're using grow time in the armed groups your assistant. for example and i've written some of their used to leave but shoots out the prisoners noses and it's much better still probably every single time tries to force them back out each time. forcing far too much too

quickly into the prisoner prison so if you're sick or just carry on doing what he really is. thousands of skilled professionals have been a feeling the eurozone as a new was member lebia we look at what's driving exodus and whether the government's capable of ending the mass population decrease that's just ahead here on out international. after nearly three years of bloody conflict syria is becoming a center of drug production with most economic activity practically nonexistent coupled with the proliferation of armed groups the business is ripening quickly let's take a look according to recent a reuters report syria has become a major drug exporter and consumer in the last few years and outlawed stimulant known as captain god is now produce the in huge amounts it's so profitable that the

country easily replaced lebanon as the main producer which saw a ninety percent fall in production in the last two years lebanese officials those also sees over twelve million pills of the drug last year and the trends affecting other states turkish authorities as the seven million pills made in syria which way on route to saudi arabia. has more details. with syria about to entering its fourth devastating year of war the lack of law and structure has allowed one dark industry to slowish the country has become the number one producer of a drug known as camp to go on its aston's a synthetic stimulant was first manufactured in the one nine hundred sixty s. and it was at that time used as a medicine to treat hyperactivity and depression but it's too addictive and this is why it was banned in most countries so here in the middle east it's still very popular it's cheap and it's easier to get but today syria not only produces

more than any other country in the region but it's also kept a girl's main consumers believe that five terrorists are taking these pills to maintain vigorous energy levels you're led to battles because it helps you keep away tony for hours and hours but there are also reports that ordinary citizens those who have been living in depression and in this war and tell you for almost three years now are also toting to the drugs for these cases before where it's them and it's lucrative it's between fifteen and twenty doors it's killed and the right hundreds of millions of them been taking all trafficked and the result is evidence that the revenue raised is buying weapons from both sides of the syrian conflict the un office on drugs and crime. has been reporting that syria which is located at a crossroads here in the region has for a long time been

a transit point for the drug going from europe to turkey and lebanon but since the war began kept the guns trades gone the mastic and factories are appearing these days all the cross syria and production has increased and sales of boom here in lebanon the authorities seized around two hundred million dollars. worth of tablets lost here mostly hidden in the tracks going through they say remember any border from syria to the lebanese pours from where they're cheap to its final destination including the gulf countries some of the most ardent supporters of the syrian opposition and saudi arabia where around a billion dollars worth of a drug was seized just last year with authorities saying this is nothing but just ten percent of the real turnover of the drug in the kingdom. and the editor of the pan-african newswire by a man as the q web believes that the drug straight along if you will be protracted

syrian conflict even more. i think it should be investigated we've seen the relationship between illicit drugs very addictive substances and imperialist war as the rebels lose more and more ground as the syrian government of the syrian military gains more territory the degree to which they stabilize the country even further the resources that are coming into syria from the western countries and from the countries that are allied with the west in the middle east this is going to of course make the rebels even more desperate and their supporters even more desperate to raise funds in order to finance them so i think this is a reflection of the failure over the last three years of this u.s. and nato finance to rubble wark all that's been leveled against the people of syria it's caused a tremendous amount of deaths injuries dislocation and now of course drug

distribution and addiction as well. in the meantime there's still no unity in the ranks of the syrian opposition as a jew to peace conference fast approaches the divided ranks of the syrian national coalition have been convening in turkey but despite president assad's proposal of a cease fire in the economic hub of aleppo and the prisoner exchange coupled with extensive pressure from the west there's been no decision on whether the opposition will attend the peace talks the coalition's the main blog had previously threatened to boycott geneva two and many of the members have already pulled out. now you want a humanitarian affairs mission reports of israeli attacks on the west bank palestinians an increase of full fold in less than a decade. thousand one hundred attacks on a palestinians were carried out by israel in the past eighteen yes'. the threats local thoughtless experience daily on

a website and. also online any telly in sydney a member of the international olympic committee calls america's decision to send openly gay athletes to the winter games in sochi political extortion get the full story on a website called. i

. no the plane. the olympic spirit travels with the flame from its birthplace in greece. joined james brown for an elemental and a big journey around russia and beyond. where

are forced to go. as a new physician i swear to abide by the hippocratic oath. to the best of my ability and judgment. i will prescribe for the good of my patients. i will not give deadly doses to anybody. or advise others to do so. i will never do harm to the. doctors of the dogs and.

it's just gone always mind fifteen here in the russian capital you watching r t international the invasive data collection by the n.s.a. the exposure of which sent shock waves around the globe will continue indefinitely the move was outlined during barack obama's speech on the operation of the intelligence agency which introduces a number of reforms yet as many say failed to tackle major privacy issues our days some sex reports. after nearly seven months of n.s.a. disclosures president obama finally came forward with reforms to the spy agency acknowledging that the current capabilities of the n.s.a. do leave open the possibility of abuse given the unique power of the state it is not enough for leaders to say trust us we want to be use the data we collect for history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. our such a system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power the president address the n.s.a.'s most controversial program section two fifteen bulk telephone metadata collection

basically the president no longer wants the government to be in control of these massive metadata databases but that doesn't mean the president wants to get rid of bulk collection in fact the bulk collection of virtually every american is metadata will continue indefinitely and the new restrictions announced by the president requiring the n.s.a. to obtain pfizer court approval before searching all that metadata doesn't satisfy privacy advocates who argue the pfizer court has acted and will continue to act as a rubber stamp nothing in obama's speech put any rain rain dan this collected all approach and yesterday that there was a big revelation of i called this fire program that just fire program was collecting all tax calls literally hundreds of thousands of text calls every day are going into the n.s.a.'s vacuum it's gigantic coover regarding spying on foreign leaders the president said he's put an end to surveillance on friends and allies

but did not say the n.s.a. will stop spying on diplomats nothing about the n.s.a. breaking encryption standards and ports that the n.s.a. has been breaking into the data links on google and yahoo servers while some specific reforms were introduced how exactly they will be implemented moving forward remains to be seen especially since the same government agencies that have overseen the massive growth of the surveillance state are now the ones tasked with reining it in in washington d.c. sam sachs r t michael kahn president and general counsel for the national whistle blow a sentence says major is use were overlooked in the president's speech. real thing that the american people are looking for is what are you going to do when you have a whistleblower like mr snowden who has critical information that the american people have a right to know he did not address that issue it's being swept under the rug instead i think in

a fair view of what's going on it is merely window dressing covering up the abuses that have been identified who's to say there are a lot more abuses that have occurred that haven't been identified because there's no channel for the n.s.a. whistleblower to make their allegations public or known in any way so that at best it's window dressing it's punts a lot to congress to try to fix the problem and it addresses in no way how the american people have a right to understand the abuses of our government. elsewhere around the grove activists clash with police in french capital madrid notices that gathered in solidarity with demonstrators in the northern city of course the unrest there erupted over plans to revamp a street which locals claim is a waste of limited resources solidarity rights have been reported across the country forcing the mayor to postpone the project. a suicide

attack in the afghan capital has killed fifteen people including three u.n. workers and a representative from the international monetary monetary fund one bomber blew himself up at a restaurant popular with afghan officials and diplomats interior ministry says guards are killed two other gunmen who tried to storm the venue the taliban's claimed responsibility for the attack. nature has bitten another chunk off the iconic statue of christ the reading we're overlooking rio de janeiro's it's right thumb has been chipped by a powerful lightning strike sorties have assured the damage will be repaired soon enough but a metre tall monument is a frequent thunderbolt target and underwent a multi-million dollar renovation in two thousand and ten the euro zone's it newest and poorest member latvia may be europe's fastest growing economy but its population has been falling leaps and bounds and those leaving the country are

blaming government negligence post got caught up with one of them. serv a gay is one of thousands of workers who will leave latvia this year but his destination is perhaps surprising he'll be leaving this state to work in azerbaijan and that is that. life is always hard but in this country it's harder as the government is much more concerned by politics not economics and the life of the common man so gay isn't the only one the world bank says a lot because population is shrinking by almost sixty thousand people per year i feel i'm not alone the governments are squeezing everybody wanting more and more from us for less money between two thousand and nine and two thousand and twelve not because population fell by around ten percent in a country of only two million people this decline is sharply felt especially since those leaving a mostly of working age the major work force males from twenty to forty go in find

jobs abroad and then move their families over this leave just older people this demographic shift poses significant economic challenges which the government says it's keen to try and tackle there is a government program to return people to latvia but it doesn't work they pay for people to return but there's still no work for them the only way out is to create new jobs and a suitable atmosphere for investment but it isn't happening and over the next twenty years the population will decrease another third so as leaders desperately try to arrest the worrying trend the message from at least one of those with bags packed for a better life elsewhere is simple. the government has to stop its aggressive social policies and lower taxes so that people can live and not simply survive. got l.t. latvia. the somebody in bahrain saw hundreds of rallies suppressed and many campaigners arrested in response the opposition has now released

a report looking into the government's reaction to the mass demonstrations and calling for greater freedom many quality in the sunni led kingdom let's take a closer look at that now more out of more than seven hundred protests last month a four hundred were violently dispersed by security forces almost two hundred people were detained by the authorities many of them children police raids were often carried out at night and without officers providing arrest warrants the report also reveals cases of vandalism torture and other heavy handed treatment by the authorities in almost four hundred cases the crackdown on dissent took the form of collective punishment human rights activists and advocates most always says there is little hope of achieving a true constitutional monarchy. the violation. remain lots of people are arrested and detained vandalism and torture is still ongoing

while the authority are denying that they are torturing people in the investigation rooms but actually it is ongoing practice the constitutional monarchy is our aim and our goal we are going to work is the author of the respect the opposition demands and consider what's going on in the region it will be achieved but not recently let's say it will take years unfortunately in today's exclusive u.k. share going underground artie's action returns e speaks to an aspiring film director turned politician about his emerging political party that ensures support the interest of the little people of us in the u.k. can watch it in a couple of minutes here on r t everyone else can see it on our website at r.t. dot com. democratic first. isn't functioning because you have one large group of society who are not represented i mean if if if the democratic

institutions doesn't include the the interests of a large proportion of the population then the democratic process isn't functioning people will pretend to speak for them but they're not here representing those interests the interest being a job when you're sick. a good pension security of somewhere to live your life and that security that that prospect of a dignified life it is no being is not being represented. well that shows coming up a rival bell for all of us in the u.k. but here on out international we track the olympic flame on its epic journey across

russia on the road just watching. all. of the playing. field and big spirit travels with the flame from its place in greece. joining james brown for an elemental and epic journey around russia and beyond. oh.

it was supposed to be just another news or of course although admittedly for a special occasion it was one hundred twenty three days before the start of the winter olympic games in sochi and i was in greece for the lighting of the olympic flame the ruins of elim pierre one of the most famous monuments of ancient greece the site of the very first olympic games where stones like this would have been part of the temple. the temple. temple owes.

me. from.

well that was a rather surreal. definitely the way to stream i've had for a while. it was a memorable ceremony. it was one pretty sure the high priestess never spoke to me. what was it she'd set follow the flame or something. perhaps a lot more of course of base. from which the top story this morning than the thirty twenty pulteney olympic flame isn't right in moscow seven days after it was first late in the ancient greek city of libya carried by russia's deputy prime minister dimitri call with ak the flame traveled in a small mountain to red square where president vladimir putin spoke of its meaning for the russian people. the olympic torch the symbol of the world's primary sports

competition of peace and of friendship. but he has come to russia because there are many marks the start of the longest tools relay in a limb take a story the flame good it's great that so many people have turned out to the start of the russian relay it looks like a lot of fun to back. in a minute that couldn't be. but it was. the stone i picked up in and then it was on my mantel piece and if that isn't a sign i don't know what it is. i knew i had to get down to red square and experience them a space for myself fortunately they were having a two day event. so from sunny greece to rather soggy moscow just at the very start of the torch is journey around the whole of russia i'm excited.