live from moscow you're watching r.t. walk up my name's kevin though in our top story of midnight here the french finance minister insists it's not a catastrophe but the markets are indicating otherwise that slew of credit rating downgrades has rocked europe depriving france and austria of their prized aaa grades and slashing the scores of seven other nations ear leaders hit back at standard and poor's the agency behind the move calling the decision incomprehensible artie's europe correspondent has more on the wider implications. this comes at a time when often as it was just about growing up when it comes to the eurozone with some positive data coming out first week of two thousand and twelve well clearly a new such as this would again dampen investor confidence and stall that process now this downgrade of france was not entirely unexpected i mean s. and p.

had given it warnings the last year and even a lot of the analysts we've been talking to had said that a french downgrade was imminent so now that it has actually happened still the markets reacted negatively to all of this is happening because of france's role in the bailout is one of the reasons in the this role is the bailouts of greece and italy through the european central bank as well as of portugal so it has left the financial system the banking system of france in a very vulnerable position now when it comes to italy this is one of the countries that has been considered too big to fail and it is comes just days after the premier mario monti had met in berlin with german chancellor angela merkel and french president nicolas sarkozy where they stressed the growth prospects when it comes to credit ratings agencies there's a lot of indignation coming from e.u. leaders there saying that all of this is happening at a time when the eurozone is trying to get out of the crisis and be put out bad news like this and in the past they have attempted to limit the influence of credit

ratings agencies in the financial markets and if we remember we go back to the question the credibility of these agencies going back to two thousand and eight financial crisis the role that they played in that crisis where they had backed assets as well as financial instruments that were essentially junk still the investor confidence one of the most important aspects of all of this which is more often than not psychological than rational if this is affected we can see a chain of events unfolding and unfortunately it might more most likely be negative . well reaction pouring in from europe with some expressing disbelief while others including german chancellor angela merkel warn of the long road ahead john laughlin of the institute for democracy and cooperation in paris spoke to me earlier on and told me that he thinks this may spell the end of the so-called most cozy alliance the downgrading of france but not of germany obviously means that the franco german

axis is no longer tenable proposition what we see in the euro zone is that there's only one country calling the shots not two and that's germany there's no doubt that it will strike a terrible blow for sarkozy is only real chance of winning the election was to show himself as a safe pair of hands as the devil you know in a crisis now it's clear that france has both a crisis and the devil you know i mean it's true that these agencies are not above reproach they've made a lot of mistakes in the past and goodness knows the financial services industry including the ratings agencies is far from perfect but i think that european leaders are being completely paranoid when they blame the ratings agencies for their problems any fool can see that there is a massive debt problem in europe the fact is there's been a lull in the crisis but that was really to do with the christmas and new year holidays they have assessed the situation and they have come to the conclusion as have many other people that the situation in the eurozone is untenable and i think

when the euro finally collapses as it will do surely within i would think probably the next year we will see just a this announcement that downgrading of france and as having been one of the decisive moments. italy the economy dubbed too big to fail is also being dropped two notches bias and pay many there are adjusting to the reality of austerity among them of course the countries the tories matfield to more than the kaiser report coming away next hour. mafia now italy's number one bank as crisis bites the sky marial monti is not running italy he's a leg breaker with ties to goldman sachs goes back years already so he's a dick cap with a capital you know he's of course he's asking the go more and the cosa nostra from the south to come on up north baby we got a lot of people here you can financially rape with your predatory loads mario monti says a three card monte you know it's a global aspiration to be a gangster on

a wall street make part of daraa loans extort money. next back to the present thousands of have taken to the streets of the country's capital a year since the popular uprising put an end to president ben ali's rule they were calling for freedom of the media and more democratic values were all chanting revolutionary slogans many believe little strange though since ben ali resulted you're still playing employment crippling economic problems the country seen a wave of suicide protest a term for people sort of absolve the life of the space of just the past week and is a really good reports. since the revolution it's been a radical religious. it may have looked like a successful revolution getting rid of authoritarian regime while retaining its westernized facade but in parliamentary elections that followed tunisians voted for

a new idea and islamist party which now firmly holds the majority of seats in the new parliament don't have political culture he. knew for the first experience. making the choice between political programs it was hard especially political campaign. that pushed people to choose either with muslims and non muslims. if you. don't believe in god but western tourists need to have nothing to fear the party's leaders see beer in bikini's irregular staples of tunisia's holidays hot spots here just yet recent events at the maneuver university one of the largest in the country show the tunisian ways are indeed changing major protests erupted right here at the amman they were going to verse thirty several female students came in wearing which is the this in the islamic headdress which covers most of the face the windows the

eyes open they're going to burst of the authorities have prohibited such head dress from being worn on campus so the students went on strike saying their freedom was being oppressed. the majority of students were against the strike but there was. by those in the minority we held out on principle we are against girls wearing a headdress in their genitals and during the exams it's a question of security and of trust and professor believe he acknowledged the students' right to wear whatever they please after all she says this is the essence of freedom but in the case with niqab she felt a different from the simple issue of dress code since usually had just serves to protect the woman from possible unwanted advances and activists for women's rights in the country believe the underlying political tendencies are thinly veiled by the strikes at the new beginning versity. whether one wears any cop or whatever else this thing an important i'm not afraid of women's desire to wear head dress i'm

afraid that this issue may be used to provoke other problems the parliamentary opposition meanwhile fears this may mean bad news for the born tunisian democracy because. we're worried that we may slump down to a new head to rule by one of the representative parties and not to receive forty percent of the seats in the assembly the post of prime minister is also there's every tunisian is afraid that confrontations and riots may occur. and says that they're not going to turn into a strict sharia law state but many in the country are already saying that the worrying signs are here. are tunisia the middle east expert terek ali told us about the new islamist leaders are indulging in emotional populism instead of real solutions to the country's woes. the way in which the young meats been operating there we're. extremely unintelligent president

marc good to see who has been operating and the way in which the new justice minister than the slow minister of going social and moral creature to decide what can go on and what can even go on and what shouldn't go on television is awarding the real problems of photogrammetry which are social and economic problems and look and needs to be implemented to help the boy of the people who are treetop and addicted to the fact to be so-called moderate islamists are basically concentrating on moral censorship and what people should do in general is the sign of the bankruptcy it's because they are not of the people anything else so they are receding along. the emera of cad has become the first arab leader to openly support the idea of military intervention in syria he says arab states should send in armed forces it follows reports that the syrian deputy army commander fled to

turkey two weeks ago becoming the highest ranking officer then to defect so far patrick henningsen of the investigative website in four wars dot com told me he believes the west is stimulating the defectors with material incentives. this is a really murky area just this issue of defecting military defectors and so forth with regards to the united states and britain normally what they do when they're destabilizing the country was what we saw in iraq the main incentive was financial ok they shipped in a lot of dollars and they managed to buy off and this is admitted by dick cheney oh huge portion of the iraqis national guard revolutionary guard with regards to libya the promise that nato made to the national transitional council prospective leaders was that they'd be given a major seat at the table in a new libya so there is power broking going on behind the scenes and i absolutely wager that the same thing is happening with syria they've either been bought off

financially or they've been promised a major role in a new syrian regime let's look back at libya qatar played a crucial role in the destabilization of libya and actually provided one thousand five hundred one thousand six hundred troops on the ground during the libyan uprising so i think with could talk are they do have an alliance with nato they're aligned with the u.s. as you know toward doha hosts u.s. centcom central command so there's definitely synergy there with whatever america's agenda is with regards to syria could talk will be in lock step with the u.s. . coming up military optimism outweighs sober intelligence the pentagon's top official says the u.s. is doing well in afghanistan the taliban is losing ground while the cia report says the campaign is mired in a stalemate report ahead and in egypt the legacy of the ousted former president

forces one of the main liberal candidates for replace him to pull out from the race . powerful unions in nigeria plan to resume talks with the government after five consecutive days of nationwide protests against skyrocketing fuel and food prices the move comes after the unions threaten to stop all crude natural gas production this sunday we lazed the worry from several reporters dot com told us financial decisions made by the government have driven people to the war but it's clear that this is not some kind of mass action or strikes juden by the unions or little you know this is the nigerian people rising up years of dictatorship corruption and mismanagement of the resources and they are the ones driving the fight against the government now just happened to remove subsidy on gasoline it was the spark or use my movement to use so you could because if.

the jury has the best we can country of black people we were about to lose their leader and in the gym people are calling this an urgent how maternal as opposed to the arab spring the fear is that the total shut down of oil exports from nigeria could deal a major blow to the world's wobbly economy the editor of the pan-african news wires told r.t. the west has every reason to be concerned. keep in mind that right now as far as the united states is concerned some twenty five percent of the all that's being imported right now into the united states is coming from the african continent nigeria is the number one export to the united states and his number two in fact. all of that is export from africa into united states now seeing. all of the basics that exported from the entire arabian peninsula so u.s. is very much concerned about maintaining stability in nigeria for the simple fact that it is heavily reliant upon the ball that's being imported from nigeria into

the united states. where the tensions of the middle east are always fears dominating the world stage we invite you to keep up to date the latest on our web site as well r t v dot com good news there are reports there for you plus the stories as well tonight part of bigotry saw from planted clear to win the league office very nice way to be remembered that's what russia's former envoy to nato want to do with the alliance headquarters but he felt that mention the trees he had in mind here the name of the russians newest nuclear missile how did that go down with nato you can find out of our website at www dot com. the i phone craze turned ugly china at the scrum crowds pelting one of apple's flagship stores legs prompting the tech giant to shut down its operation in beijing again we got a load of them out of you at r.t. dot com.

to egypt now there the former head of the un's nuclear watchdog mohamed el baradei has called off his bid for presidency says he's not going to run as the old regime is never really gone away. been seen by many as one of the front running liberal candidates but one of gyptian commentators says he never really stood a chance of leading the country. brothers stance to to not run for for presidency and withdrawing his candidacy is an extension to stance during the mubarak rule where he refused to be a presidential candidate in light of corruption so what he actually means by withdrawing his candidacy is to send a message out that the regime has still not fallen and that the scaf are mubarak's extension and that the regime is extremely corrupt and so he hopes to bring light to the fact that nothing has changed in the regime he didn't have much of

a chance under the current regime because it's was still the same chances as he had during the mubarak regime the military wanted to maintain control over every aspect of egypt's political life there's a campaign called has a boon which means liars which shows how the military are lying actually about the . everything they've said so far and their brutality against egyptians so that there is says been more dissent in one year against the military than mubarak has garnered over thirty years. coming up in a few minutes on r.t.c. often deep delicious but rarely regarded nutritious find a way up the part is a vegetable that american school where one of three children a dangerously overweight flight that just stared in a few moments before the. u.s. defense secretary leon panetta says the american campaign in afghanistan is suppressing taliban activity and heading in the right direction that though is in direct contradiction to the league

a report presented to the white house earlier which cast doubt on the optimistic rhetoric suggesting that the u.s. operation sunk into stalemate several top commanders have signed a letter of dissent in response to the paper saying it doesn't show an understanding of taliban tactics and it's based on flawed evidence the cia report concludes that troop in reinforcements about ineffective because of corruption incompetent government and attacks by taliban fighters who were hiding out in neighboring pakistan this may of course therefore resulted in even longer stay by american troops beyond the planned withdrawal of twenty fourteen also says kelly lurie of the new world strategies coalition. it has been ten years that has not unified the country i said should have been it looks like there is no chance for the americans to see your government standing on its feet however this could prolong americans be on a stand for a quite a number of years i would say and the years are unknown at this time but it looks

like it's going to be a long time because there's a corrupt government function in the way that it is right now the fact is that there's a friction in the white house right now that some or say no basically the pentagon going military is the one that's calling up that same to you know we should not really rush in fast as we can. the beasties long been a major problem for many children across america and while many look for solutions the government's now standing accused of turning a blind eye to a trend that's causing diabetes and heart disease but also spells profit for the giant food corporations what is more important tasted what's on the menu in u.s. public schools. it's a super sized crisis impossible for america to disguise an insatiable love for food and big portions has served up a nationwide majority of overweight children none of us want this future for our

kids as first lady michelle obama attempts to tackle the epidemic by advocating more exercise healthy eating and penning a book about the white house garden u.s. lawmakers are getting kudo's for stirring the health problem her efforts which i applaud in a single woman tension fear will go nowhere given the allure of the. recent decision by the congress to send pizza was a vegetable you heard correctly the greasy cheesy cheap meal known as pizza is served as a lunch vegetable to thirty two million public school children how because u.s. department of agriculture guidelines qualify two tablespoons of tomato paste as an official veggie serving in november u.s. congress rejected a request from the department that would have changed requirements and ultimately removed from school menus congress has really shown who controls them and that's

the big corporations and the big food corporations companies like con agra and swans these are the makers of the frozen pizza and they have huge financial interests in that obviously according to published reports food companies spend five point six billion dollars this year lobbying specifically to keep pizza friendly u.s.d.a. guidelines in place the social consequence of overweight kids has millions currently battling diabetes and millions more vulnerable to heart disease and shortened life expectancy granted issues such as corporate control and obesity are not new problems for america but over the years the hunger for profits has compromise. as the health of an entire generation the u.s. department of defense says twenty five percent of young americans are too overweight to join the military and that the damage is so bad experts say threats to national security see.

our short but quite telling unscientific poll found americans picking logic over the world of their lawmakers like pizza. it doesn't want to get to me. make sure to speak to the service that's that's not that's what it's like it's much made of beer and all that from. now that's what the nutritional value of. the terrible whatever it is i don't think whatever they're feeding in public schools is terrible knowing that u.s. leaders have a hand in cooking up the ingredients can also leave a bad taste in many mouths porton iowa r.t. new york now to some of the stories making headlines around the world fifty three forty one hundred wounded and bomb attack on she of pilgrims in southern iraq

according to local officials a terrorist in police uniform approached the checkpoint and blew himself up at the middle of a passing crowd hundreds of thousands of shia believers of making their way to a swathe of the city of karbala to mark a religious festival scores of pilgrims have reportedly been killed in sectarian violence in the past few weeks despite stepped up security. three people have now been confirmed dead after a cruise ship ran aground off italy's northwest coast the victims were two french tourists and a peruvian crew member over seventy others are still unaccounted for most of the four thousand people aboard the costa concordia were evacuated on lifeboats or swam ashore the vessel hit a sand bar near the island of giglio which according to the captain wasn't mark talked about. but in suicide bombers attacked a police station in northwest pakistan it sparked a firefight that left at least three officers dead up to ten of the attackers dressed in police uniforms and besieged the building in two suicide bombs were

detonated during the battle no one's claimed responsibility for the attack that the taliban did have a base in the neighboring region until a military operation in two thousand and nine. no extra feature more trailblazers among russia's ex-parte entrepreneurs as they share their stories of success with us. and here in russia foreign job seekers have often been preferred over local talent but terry lindeberg who created the staff well recruitment agency took many of the country's homegrown and gifted candidates out of the shadows and she and they have never regretted it sids. i am really fortunate that i've had a really good run with our business in russia i started southall in two thousand and that was still during a time when it was a little bit of a crisis here after the ninety eight financial crisis and i think the key to our being successful one of them a very big one and we had an excellent chief accountant who really helped us set up

the whole financial side of this business and that to me for going to set up any company in russia you have to have a good finance team we have one competitor here who set up their business right at the beginning of the crate actually right before the crisis so they came in about two thousand and seven and they really i mean they did not survive i mean they're here but they've had to downscale their offices like a skeleton crew and that's because they i mean some of the things that they did you know they did wrong they had management that was not successful they had huge huge expenses i mean right now i mean we're still in an upswing at stafford which means that recruitment is moving along nicely we just need to get through the election period and then things will probably go very smoothly with any business for it to be successful you've got to constantly be on top of it and constantly motivate everyone to just keep going if you want to succeed no matter what the market environment is i think there's a lot of opportunities here you have to have the you have to have the drive to do

that you know and that's what i think you know naturally in the world russia as well as anywhere else sometimes there's a fear of putting that drive into place or there's there are some you know barriers maybe but but anything can be done here if you just put your mind to it i mean look at me i open my company and it's you know one of the strongest recruiting firms in russia and who was i you know i don't have the big education or the big experience but i had the drive and i had the will and i had a love of what i did and i wanted to succeed and i just pushed myself and i worked extremely hard day and night nonstop and i loved every single minute of it so that's the key come on. so really heavily engaged in sports here in russia so i i do taekwondo. i will go bowling i play softball a lot of different sports i'm involved with really helps the first of all networking and the focus a lot of it. like the type of for instance for me it takes away

a lot of the stress that i may have sometimes on different things and i can bring it in here and just be much more focused and i am always accomplishing it i think my family is you know it's extremely important to me and that's one of the things that has kept me here obviously is we're here they're very happy here and now i get a lot of support from them in terms of i mean everything i do is for them really you know the love of my life my little boys are just incredible and i really have a great family and very close and that's why you do everything i think you know in life so it's very positive place to be and that makes me happy i think it makes a lot of people have. real good news story good so you know where the news is looking for a seat of moscow this sunday morning. next to you coming from moscow . all revealed shortly the sport where the next thirty minutes is putting.

this is art. to reclaim the american dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many we are one that won't we breathe we hope. to me the american dream is

to live in peace and prosperity and freedom and a government under socialism is not a government of free. you . have very motivated out cross the country who are activists who are willing to fight for what they think is right for themselves but the fact is already we're brick and. we are counting. properly drowning and i think it's spread by it's cutting off our. it's making real democracy. all but impossible. wealthy british style.

markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy is a report. from moscow our top stories tonight defiance despite the downgrade from says it's not panicking in the wake of losing its top credit rating status a style that imposed deems the eurozone increasingly unfit to deal with this debt crisis. for years since president ben ali was ousted than it was the misleaders are accused of ignoring the real issues of poverty and unemployment in favor of spreading a radical religious agenda. and rights bring the situation to boiling point.