deadly kier human rights activists accuse the pharmaceutical giants of using people in india as human guinea pigs as the number who die in drug trials in the country source. shadowy influences newly declassified documents that reveal israel's covert attempts at shaping the u.s.

media agenda and american policy in the middle east. occupation of redefine the u.s. withdraws its last combat troops from iraq ahead of president obama's deadline but critics say nothing will change in the country. and the troop pioneers it's a fifty years since two dogs from the soviet union became the first living creatures to survive space travel paving the way for future exploration. broadcasting live from central moscow this is our t.v. the top story this hour pharmaceutical companies are accused of using people in india as guinea pigs to test new drugs without their consent human rights groups

say even those people on tests who are alerted to possible dangers are not told the full story meanwhile india's health ministry says the number of deaths linked to clinical trials has risen this year alone more people have died than in two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight combined archies charan singh investigates. india government run hospitals provide treatment to the poor but there are increasingly aims that being made in guinea pigs in drug trials for western pharma companies without their knowledge here at the. hospital in golf. the north has been taking pills for the last six months on the advice of his doctor he suspects he's being experimented upon i mean to get to me i had a pain in my abdomen they did all sorts of tests and gave me all sorts of pills to have in the morning afternoon and night but i haven't got any better turn around to recap they can test any medication they like on. allegations have surfaced in the

media that the hospital conducts illegal drug trials on patients police are investigating the complaint the hospital officials say any trials are being conducted in accordance with government guidelines india is fast becoming a global hotspot for testing new drugs with two million people estimated to be taking part in clinical trials or without their consent caught or next year drug trials are increasing here because they cost just one sixth of what they do in the west the regulatory system here is comparatively corrupt inform the companies can easily register patients and begin trials in developed countries it would take six months to register five patients whereas in india in the same time they conduct trials on two thousand people. giving informed consent to be part of an experiment is the golden rule of all clinical trials but many patients here sign on the dotted line without understanding the nature and the consequences of what's being

administered to them. are americans or treaty indians as guinea pigs the patients being used for trials are literate and pool they don't even know details of the drug or that it is a drug trial this is unethical to root patients in without proper consent without informing them that they're taking part in a drugs trial it is both an ethical and illegal and even patients sometimes sign up out of desperation to them experimental health care is better than not at all. but agreed to let her child be treated with a new drug which she's been told will bring his fever. to cheat ministry sound happy with it. there are regulations in place to monitor drug trials including setting up takes communities and hospitals to ensure safety but these are often used by doctors to simply rubber stamp trials so when. the ethics committee has the

important responsibility of money touring drug trials but it's a very ad hoc system that is misused for instance a medical institute in foreign women by gives permission for a drug trial in cities like indoor popal and jubal poor how can you use permission from an ethical committee of another institute in another city just to find drug trials in institute here. with over one thousand three hundred drug trials coming conducted in india this industry's already said to be worth one billion dollars yet it's clear that the laws against unethical trials are not working and the government will have to come up with other ways to stop the country's poor from being enticed into medical experiments that could potentially have serious side effects seeing r.t. india. here with our teen live from the russian capital still to come for you this hour. they came to the now theater inspectors leave after spending four days in russia to determine the nation's by ability to host the world cup details ahead.

also a trip to russia first a seaport and a place to search for diamonds marquees close a visit to the north. secret files declassified in america have revealed covert public relations and lobbying activities by israel the national archives made the documents public following a senate investigation may suggest israel has been trying to shape media coverage of issues it views as important the files are available for download at the website of the institute for research on middle eastern policy f. smith a director of the independent washington d.c. based organization told r.t. about what's been uncovered. these files are from a sealed senate investigation which was the result of the senate foreign relations committee as the u.s. department of justice looking into groups that brought thirty six million dollars

into the u.s. to plant stories in the us media and promote israeli foreign policy objectives in the united states they're extremely relevant because they revealed for example of vast effort to divert us attention from the israeli dimona nuclear weapons facility by saying it was merely a research center they carefully tracked how that story was playing in the us media and they also were using outlets such as the atlantic magazine funneling fifty thousand dollars into that magazine in a major effort to disrupt the u.s. peace proposal which would have involved bringing some palestinian refugees and allowing them to return to their homes and properties in israel it's extremely important for people to see this media influence and the mechanics of it because over the passage of time this is only gotten worse they have successfully built

a campaign financing system in the united states that's extremely at fact of at pushing israeli objectives by withholding or dispersing campaign funding to u.s. politicians so there is a high degree of control that's in place but firm for your average american it's almost completely hidden. listen we're of the council for national interest in the us a pressure group on middle east policy believes israeli influence is corrupting the american media which no longer represents the views of the countries people. this is not hyperbole these are the facts that when we really study the u.s. media coverage of israel and when you study the u.s. policies around middle east they do not represent american interests or american values they seem to represent what a certain faction with very close ties to israel wants u.s. policies to be and this kind of manipulation the american media is very disturbing

in some ways it's not surprising to me i have done my own studies and found how extreme the israelis centric the coverage is that we're getting but the specifics that this has revealed are extremely important and very troubling i think is really lobby is very central to the whole ball of a legend war on terrorism i think they're very complicit in the coverage of muslims and arabs that make them seeing dangers that make them seem alien to americans i think that the israel lobby is pushing them and it's so very sadly part of their agenda i feel and this is supported by the facts is that very gendered is to make americans fear and hate arabs and muslims and also i fear to me muslims and arabs fear and hate americans. this is very troubling and it's. going on in

a variety. russian president dmitri medvedev has said that those behind tuesday's car bombing in southern russia should be punished or wiped out if they resist arrest he was visiting visiting schools where a blast outside a cafe injured thirty people on tuesday as well as discussions with security chiefs visited with victims fourteen of whom are still in local hospitals the president said the key to restoring stability in the north caucasus region which has seen violence for many years is dealing with acute poverty in the region. the last american combat forces have left iraq two weeks ahead of their planned withdrawal at the end of august but a fifty thousand strong us military contingent will remain to support and train iraqi troops until the end of two thousand and eleven although designated as non-combat have the power to use weapons in self-defense or at the request of the iraqi government pentagon statistics show more than four thousand four hundred u.s.

soldiers have died during the last seven years of combat anti-war activist michael thinks the number of private contractors in iraq means that the country will still be under foreign occupation. why central is happening is they're going to stay there for at least twenty years and that's the length of time the oil contracts have been signed the fifty thousand troops there is also been sleeping number because it's actually about one hundred thousand private contractors there that number is likely to increase so i don't see any change really for the iraqi people between now and then life is just going to be one big struggle for the iraqi population and it's really sad tale five hundred thirty innocent civilians killed last month alone that's more than one in afghanistan and the moment all we're hearing about is afghanistan but look at the permanent military bases there in iraq i mean they've spent so much money that it's really unlikely they're going to move this look at the american embassy the u.s. embassy in iraq in baghdad is now the size of the vatican city i mean that's a huge investment there's no way they're going to believe in that what they're

doing is they're rebranding the occupation and instead of calling it combat operations they're going to call it stability operations it's not it's not a mass exodus at all you just need to look at where the permanent military bases have been built and where the money's been spent you can actually do a dot to dot on the map and be there with the resulting line is exactly what the pipeline route is going to be. some of these iraqi troops some of these u.s. troops in iraq will probably be redeployed into yemen as well which is a another undeclared war that the u.s. is beginning so between yemen. afghanistan pakistan and iraq this is this is just permanent war this is what they've been talking about for the last ten years. russia's emergencies minister says that the country's fire protection measures needs to be rethought to prevent future disasters such as this summer's wildfires the cost of combating the blazes was revealed at over four hundred million dollars however this figure does not reflect the overall damage which experts expect to be

around fifteen billion dollars officials say fifty three people died and three and a half thousand were left homeless however rescuers managed to save around four thousand towns and villages from burning more than one hundred thousand rescue workers and volunteers were involved in the operation the emergencies minister added that earlier warning of what was developing would have helped reduce the scale of the disaster the heat wave which triggered the wildfires has now come to an end in most parts of central russia. they say every dog has it's day and for two dogs in the soviet union very day saw them launched literally to international fame half a century ago. became the first creatures to orbit the earth and return alive giving the u.s.s.r. a lead in the space race their success and turned them into world celebrities and pave the way for the first manned mission eight months later. but it.

just. became the first ever human in our space first thing to return i don't know if the first space. before manned space yielded to man's best friend at least fifty seven dogs were sent into orbit by the soviet union arguably one of the most famous travellers were too much or whitey and little arrow fifty years ago after months of strenuous training they and a bunch of mice rats flies plants and a rabbit boarded sputnik five all. the most important criteria was the dog's size there was only that much space aboard the spacecraft also dogs are much better at tolerating cold temperatures but it wasn't every dog that was acceptable their character their physical condition all that was taken into account. he worked with the soviet space program for decades he remembers bill can still get as they really

were under different names. the dogs got named systems on the girl's name these two dogs and mark they liked the sound of those names but then our boss found out and he was not impressed he criticised us for giving these dogs foreign and politically incorrect names so we changed them and that's how they became famous and. still his fame continued on the ground she had six pups one of which was presented by the then soviet leader nikita khrushchev to j.f.k.'s daughter caroline and international room and believed to be true or fluffy and another kennedy dog called charlie they in turn had puppies which the u.s. president jokingly referred to as pop nicks man's best friend became not only a link between two friendlies of the cold war dogs were also the guarantee scientists needed to safely send a man follow. in their part prince. nobody knew you see whether

a living organism could survive in space how a body would react to those conditions which is why bill constraints were the first giant leap for mankind you could see that belka was more educated in that the dog's worry times uncomfortable but the made it safely home in scientists knew that it was man's turn to reach for the stars. the. stamps calendars became the subject of tales in news reports fifty years after their flight their trip thousand eight. and the museum where their displayed is proud to tell their story again and again catherine as are about r t moscow russia hosts the football world cup in two thousand and eighteen or two thousand and twenty two is now in the hands of fifa its inspectors have wrapped up their fact finding mission which included a meeting with prime minister vladimir putin. airport. russia

waits to see if its bid was strong enough to fight to woo the inspectors now for four days the committee toured russia and four of the thirteen cities slated to host the world cup games in those cities include say petersburg moscow comes on and sochi which is poised to be the host of the winter twenty fourteen olympic games and they did all this to make sure the russian is in fact ready to host a world cup game now on thursday here at the airport the lead investigator along with the minister of sport met with the press before the thief inspectors left town and prime minister putin promised that all available all funds would be available and that all projects would be done on time the lead and specter said that he was very impressed by what he called an excellent trip and that he said that russia's bid committee was very forthcoming and gave them all the information

that they would need to make a fair decision now football is russia's number one sport and fun fans feel pretty good about its chances of being able to host a world cup including a legendary soviet goalie. and we have successfully staged events that proves we can host this world cup we've already held in one thousand games in the champions league final which everyone was happy with and the fact that we won the bid for the sochi olympics also proves that we are able to host big sports. next afifa heads to the u.k. and the usa before going to zurich to make its final decision december second. time now for a look at some other stories making headlines around the world the united nations general assembly is holding a special emergency meetings to boost international aid to flood devastated pakistan officials say much of the aid sent is failing to reach remote regions the world body says it needs more money for the disaster and while almost half

a billion dollars have been raised the response has been slow at least fifteen thousand people sorry excuse me fifteen hundred people have died and twenty million have been affected in the country's worst ever disaster. three people have been injured in fresh clashes between police and protesters in the troubled indian administered region of kashmir warning shots were fired as india demonstrators had defied a curfew and accused paramilitary troops of attacking their homes it's the latest in a string of incidents which have claimed sixty drives over the last two months many kashmiris reject indian rule calling for independence or want to merge with neighboring pakistan says forty people have been injured appearing in spring after being over friends out of pakistan at least five victims including a ten year old boy were taken to hospital others suffered minor injuries reports

say took fifteen minutes to bring the animal under control before it was killed officials say incidents of this type are extremely rare. south african police have used rubber bullets against protesters picketing at the entrance to a hospital in the country's capital. on day two of a nationwide strike the number of civil servants taking part rose to more than one million as teachers were joined by hospital workers strikers want higher pay and housing subsidies rejecting a government offer a seven percent increase a lockout of medical personnel paralyzed hospitals workers and a newborn baby died after being rushed from a clinic which had shut due to the dispute. now it's time for the close up series where we take an in-depth look at russia's diverse regions including some of the more remote.

and today we visit the city of our friend yells located in northwest russia it became the country's first seaport way back in the seventeenth century recognized as a regional capital it now has everything from ship building to diamonds he said tessa are still to explore. thanks to its waterways and hungus is known as the gateway to the arctic but this wasn't always the case in the one nine hundred twenty s. it was called the national hard currency shops as its rich timber and paper pulp industries yielded the lion's share of the treasury's hard currency earnings it's a controversial part of its past these industries flourished thanks to tens of thousands of prison inmates forced to work in the north during stalin's time but on hunger els did make a more positive and lasting mark in history when peter the great founder of russia's first shipyard here and it became the motherland of the country's fleet our crew visited a ship repair plant in the region which has also recently started making vessels

the facility was set up in the one nine hundred fifty s. especially for repairing and retooling soviet ships and submarines in the ninety's or whenever the soviet government radically cut the number of defense contracts and the plant's output fell they had no choice but to diversify and went into diamond cutting. where you know dining cutting was one of the alternatives the idea of cutting rough diamonds in the direct vicinity of the diamond field looked attractive. that diamond field is the law manasseh of mine named after the local scientists and poet mihailo manasseh of back in the seventeenth century he said that there were diamonds in the region but the gems weren't found until much later this period opened in one thousand nine hundred eighty two and the first dime. and was extracted just five years ago not an easy task in a water rich region the field is located smack in the middle of a marshland and it rivers and springs engineers had to build an eight kilometer

long kamau to divert the water flow just like you i don't know any other diamond fields where the extraction conditions are so complicated their work is like looking for needles in a haystack in every truckload of rocks only two or three diamonds can be found but there are no ordinary diamonds. deposits produced transparent or barely colored gemstones here we find intensely colored diamonds green yellow even pink and blue. this side right here is one hundred metres deep and it produces about half a million carats worth of diamonds each year now this is just the beginning because they plan to go deeper into the earth or the soil is richer and where there's a lot more of that precious stone many women called their best friend. but before anyone can even see a single sparkle a long process has to be gone through. and

what you get are real gems jewelers as well as women from all over the world called it. tess are reporting there from the city of. a soviet war veteran who fought in afghanistan in the nineteen eighties says of us is failing in its campaign because even after nine years it still doesn't understand the country or its people. speaks to artie's natalia just a minute. but

first mr kraft well thank you for joining us today sochi has hosted this summit the second of its kind after the july session last year and this is me russia is strengthening its position in the region where it's always been present and is opening up new opportunities for cooperation primarily with afghanistan and pakistan. i think that russia is trying to strengthen its position russia is trying to reserve its position in the settlement process in afghanistan via this quartet to achieve this goal which is really important for both afghanistan and for the region as a whole as well as for russia these regular events take place pakistan has one view

on the afghan crisis stan has another view russia may have yet another position but as for russia entergy christan it's obvious that they want to settle the situation in the country as soon as possible they are concerned with terrorism and with drug production and trafficking that's where pakistan. it has been playing a double game over the past forty years verbally expressed the willingness to fight terrorism but in fact and everyone knows that everything that is now going on in afghanistan has pakistani origin pakistani influence and impact on the overall. mission the drug trafficking issue the sadistic see that about thirty thousand people in russia and nearly died because of drugs coming from afghanistan how can the american presence in afghanistan help resolve this problem and can russia solve it on its own. course. you lot of thought to finish it on the shield the point is the status of the international forces the un mandate stipulates their

participation in anti-drug measures from time to time they take part in such operations but it sporadic and aimed at small producers and small smugglers when carrying out anti-terrorist operations they come across some drug caravans destroy them of course but nothing more but at a recent international conference in moscow nato refused to state that nato troops must fight narcotics they fear that it will only pose a greater threat to them and aggravate their position but. president obama plans to begin pulling out troops from afghanistan next summer how realistic is this. discussion to me over the past nine months the position of the american authorities has changed considerably on the one hand american congress the house of representatives and most importantly the democratic party categorically insist on a considerable pull out of american troops from afghanistan starting july first two thousand and one on the other hand the u.s. military commander especially after the start of david petraeus his term as

a commander has been looking for excuses to delay for president obama's decision or to postpone it you must remember that the larger part of the u.s. military serves interests of the republican party and so does the u.s. defense minister the longer the forces u.s. and nato forces stay in afghanistan the more they will destabilize the region it's evident that the presence of any foreign troops nato u.s. or soviet troops will only inspired terrorism in afghanistan you cannot depict the country as a den of terrorism or its people as terrorists by default this is not true there's a faction of people within the rebel movement that use terror methods some of these people do indeed have links to al qaeda in no way does this mean that any afghan or any armed afghan is a terrorist the u.s. is facing a philosophical problem if they spent. nine years there by december two thousand and ten the length of their military presence will match that of the soviet

contingent now over this period they have failed to understand the afghans outlook on life they do not understand afghanistan barack obama is now facing the gorbachev dilemma of whether to withdraw u.s. forces if you pulls them out it will be bad if he doesn't it will go from bad to worse the first couldn't have been you standing sap than in afghanistan or pakistan is affecting other countries including russia what could russia do to establish the security team in this region and with. no single stakeholder in the region will be able to do anything on their own the us tried to do so but failed they brought in the nato contingent and failed again i can say that countries in the region with their different stances and viewpoints will never come to consensus on the afghan crisis in order to find ways to settle the conflict from outside of the region we will certainly have to draw neighboring countries into the peace process iran pakistan.