week's top stories here on our team moscow's long serving mayor had it is had been shown the door after the russian president loses trust in his office. moscow lies a rising sun east with a major oil pipeline to china open the flood gate with russia's largest trading partner. and un figures show despite a fifty percent drop in afghan opium production traffickers still rake in the cash is prices soar. five am in the russian capital we're taking a look at today's top stories and

a look back at the week that was here on r t. moscow's long serving mayor was shown the door by the president this week dmitri medvedev said he'd lost confidence in your illusion of who'd worked eighteen years as the capital's chief luzhkov leaves behind a controversial legacy loved by the hated by others as artie's murray if an ocean explains. so i decided to dismiss the mayor of moscow the decree i signed states that i as president have lost trust in your. shoes. once deprived of power the phone support of the top was hard to come by a challenge it's obvious the professional relations between the president and moscow had worsened meanwhile the man is subordinate to the president the not the other way around certain steps should have been taken to return the situation back to normal so where did it all go wrong. an oligarch has won over a patriot and a good manager and all that's inside one man. luzhkov the patriot was

always in love with moscow his passion to build and reboot changed the face of the city in two decades the russian capital was transformed from di's trades to more than make a law place but corruption allegations and suspicion is of a cave's a business relationship with his property tycoon wife were to prove his downfall he would do it the authorities began to look more attentively of course private activities it turned out that funds allocated for the reconstruction and expansion of my school street and rules were invested in some enterprises from which someone receives a huge profit. luzhkov has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing he says duz with his wife's company were transparent and above board the three sentiment crew as they warden of contracts to learn about to his company how ten become russia's only female billionaire and want her place on the forbes rich laced your linen it alive now but is something else again hard charging in the plastics

business in the construction business why they said to be in the corruption business there was also anger over luzhkov attitude to the city's cultural heritage he ordered the demolition of seven hundred historical buildings and new ones were put up in their place so that ministration you know it and to public opinion this is one more example of. brian monroe approach to your cultural heritage and architecture of the shipmaster but it was handling of the summer's wildfire crisis which proved the final straw while the capitol was choking from toxic smoke for more than a month the city's mayor refused to kushal his holiday prefer in the clean air of the alps. beautiful because this bitterly if the mayor of moscow comes back from

holidays the day off so the smoke has dispersed i think it's unacceptable but i think you should have been here half an hour after it started in the end started taking the blame for everything the night traffic jams or his law for ugly monuments around the city it seemed there was a loss of trust not just strong one but true many people and a perception that in office too long. just like many of the moderates he approved of course was a political figure who was hard to ignore loved by some he was hated by others and after eighteen years in office it was his growing band of critics who are worn out and. refreshing are to. michael being in a former moscow correspondent for britain's times newspaper says despite mounting criticism deserves credit for improving the capital's infrastructure. i think one shouldn't underestimate his achievements particularly in the early years in office where he really got things going when he came to power it was really chaotic mess

had very little of its infrastructure cleaned up the buildings admittedly he knocked down a lot of the historic grounds which should have been preserved but those that were preserved were wonderfully cleaned up and he presided over a real boom in the city's infrastructure but of course the taint of corruption lingered so long now the question is whether in fact the corruption charges will stick whether he actually will be accused of corruption i think it would be a messy drive if it came to that. russian oil will be directly into china by next year which will triple supplies the pipeline to make it happen was open during president medvedev is three day visit to the country the trip included talks with the chinese leader on boosting regional security but as artie's oksana boyko reports workers also study the secrets of china's economic phenomena three c.d.'s in three days a cascade of liftoffs and touchdowns that old russia and china to leave to major

projects something ground and touch upon their strategic partnership. attention to detail has always been in china's very chair they may have rolled out the red carpet for the russians but their meticulous bargaining proved just this tiring as climbing the great china. it was these are serious important talks as there are a large number of issues to discuss here. while both the natural partners in each other for years russia and china have been haggling over the process of russian hydrocarbons but almost fifteen years to build this oil pipeline in the first between its neighbors because of the. talks on the price of gas are still ongoing. china doesn't want to overpay it claims that it can offer a rapidly growing market in the future gazprom in turn is waiting for the price of natural gas and its share on the chinese market to increase at the moment gas

accounts for just ten percent of the overall consumption of energy resources in china it's too little to be interesting to gazprom tough bargaining is a useful skill in these beijing neighborhood nickname to russia town it attracts thousands of vendors on a hunt for knockoffs this is the third year with a village there was there's a here it used to be an open market with rows of counters only recently they built everything at our expense if i may say so. but it's shamelessly low prices and high turnover areas like this one managed to transform themselves from shanty towns into glitzy shopping quarters russian china's trade has undergone a similar make over in two thousand and nine china surpassed germany as russia's largest trading partner. we've overcome last year's negative tendencies the global financial crisis was the reason for the collapse and our trade turnover volumes shrunk but this year we have managed to make up for it and will most likely get

back to the pre-crisis level in trade and economic cooperation it's a big achievement for former communist allies while meeting second world war veterans in delhi and the russian president was once again reminded of the two countries shared passed. through us you're a symbol of a country that gave us marxism leninism and communism. but two days later in shanghai it became clear that it was now china's turn to spread the word there was them but its economy and infrastructure revamp in just three decades china seemed like a perfect case study for the more than his asian oriented russian president when you go this exhibition is a unique chance to speed up the modernization of our economies and institutes innovative development is certainly the choice of our country we are following this path and we will do everything for our economy to modernize change and adapt to modern life. and while a three day visit may not be enough to learn the secrets of china's economic

miracle the russian delegation was still able to take home a few pearls of wisdom for the course of this visit russian officials think about equal liking to side in confucius and china scholar her mother had by few followers again developing friendship with somebody who can a teacher any good well china is definitely not the case this country has made such a dramatic leap forward that you want to comment is big brother russia is more than willing to learn. from a boycott are facing trial. and there's more high level musical chairs on the other side of the atlantic in brazil worth girl power on the march as we were four years ago has cast its vote for a new president but because the popular this over has served the backs of her. leading lady on the first ever woman in charge of the country. germany parties to mark twenty years of reunification the economies struggle to

stick together we talk to experts about the huge you're facing. first panel says opium production in afghanistan has dropped by half this year but it's led to an almost three fold surge in price is thursday's report says that could encourage farmers to cultivate more of the heroin producing crop the survey also suggest the hike was prompted by a plant infection that devastated yields it adds that despite nato operations the size of the area used to grow the poppies remains the same the south and west are major growing regions which are also taliban strongholds allowing extremists to rake in cash but as artie's policy or explains for many farmers are still their only source of income while that's tightly controlled by militants and even drug addicted bullets. abdulrahim used to put people behind bars for doing drugs now he's been put there himself but the former army commander denies the charges he

insists he never swayed from the white side of the law because. we saw a truck driving on the main road something made me suspicious and i checked out the cargo we found narcotics heroin in some drugs but what for him claims he didn't expect to find a driver who told authorities he was involved in drug smuggling. himself is guarded by another policeman if. he's been taking drugs since he was twelve and went for treatment only recently after the prison warden found out he's in good company according to a recent us congress report hosni us companies are doing drugs. when i grant you the policeman that i was doing i kept quiet about two years oh they are the policeman. quantity. new police who are drug addicts are not telling anyone they're just saying i'm smoking something. pullet afghanistan's biggest

jail many of the five thousand prisoners here are doing time for drug smuggling and or drug use but the locks are not a sure safe way of keeping their drugs out. there and. these are the different kinds of drugs we collected over the past years. this is a mix of all your contacts. but this is opium. this is the kind of tricks drugs inside a calm family members coming to visit bring these with them we found drugs in shoes over the years prison guards have been charged with lending a hand. it will be yes it's true when i joined a few years ago lots of guns were involved in smuggling drugs into the jail they are not ready. and they are not joining the

produce truth out of the people join the police to solve them but the ministry of cantona katic insists it's now got a hold on the problem but questions remain what if some of those fighting afghanistan's drug war are actually foot soldiers for the other side and with the many challenges the country faces doesn't really have the resources to tackle the corruption within its ranks inside these full wars is a snapshot of the problems facing afghan society tell it members drug traffickers and petty criminals and the prisons are overcrowded for this year are teen preaching he was in kabul a former white house drug policy spokesman says it'll take a combination of wiping out poppy crops and giving farmers a new living to secure victory against the afghan drug trade. the only way that you can cut off money from the taliban and money from al-qaeda because this is drugs or seventy percent of their funding is to eradicate the drugs that are the source of

their money and they will go to that proportion disappear and so will the violence against all the countries on earth that terrorists are. disappear and be drastically reduced by that so it's a wonderful development that we now have a strong drug czar from russia but the eradication must be combined with what hillary clinton is proposing which is crop substitution you can't just throw the farmers out and say you're not allowed to live you have to give them a way to live those two policies combined eradication and crop substitution can be a solution. with most of the votes counted it seems likely that brazil will have a second round of presidential elections dilma rousseff from the ruling workers' party failed to gain more than fifty percent of the vote needed to avoid a runoff she now has a close to forty per forty six percent while her nearest opponent jose serra security around thirty three percent of the vote artie's lauren lyster has more from sao paolo. the largest thing that people know about this candidate dilma

rousseff is that she is the candidate of the current president lula da silva who is one of the best presidents people say brazil has ever had and has had eighty percent support of the people during his two terms in office which are coming to an end she has been leading the polls in large part because she is a choice really little is known about her by the brazilian people she's his chief of staff she's a. she did fight against a dictatorship years and years ago in her youth but since then has really been in the public eye so she is running on track record and when you talk to people on the streets that are lula's supporters and. candidacy in her campaign they believe wholeheartedly that she will continue the programs little has started primarily mirroring the gap in this country between the rich and poor which is incredibly vast and they say no other government has really taken charge and doing and is social programs that have worked for this country and a way that is relevant to an emerging nation and not necessarily impressed upon

them by another nation or an outside influence so she's really been leading in the polls at about fifty per cent her leading opponent is at about thirty percent but if she doesn't get fifty percent in this first election it will go to a runoff because that remaining votes in the polls have been split between two candidates now the next candidate is a little more conservative now when you go to the polls in the rich areas where the upper class vote this is who they're voting for this is still a country that is vastly divided along class lines and you can really see that in this election now supporters of lula saying that this opposition candidate being nominated would be devastating for the progress that brazil has made especially diplomatically they say this would align brazil again with the u.s. and impress policies that rely on the market to solve social problems and they say in a country with eighty percent poverty that's just not realistic and it's just not possible but jose serra supporters that you speak to. they did it and it is the ideal my

presidency rather would be the disaster. coming up here on r t the depths you can go to beat stress. well they started feeling like great. yeah this feels very very strange the soul is very cold and also heavy now i'm doing all right at the moment i think it's going to get more scary we take a look at what it feels like to be buried alive all the interest of terror. first though germany's been marking twenty years since reunification chancellor angela merkel led the celebrations in the northern city of bremen where tens of thousands turned out to celebrate it marks the culmination of a process marked by the fall of the berlin wall and nine hundred eighty nine bringing together east and west germany but that led to a turbulent decade with the huge cost of rebuilding infrastructure in the east causing recession even today there's a large that in living standards between the two halves of the country after surviving that recession europe's largest economy is now covering the cost of much

of the banking crisis political and business consultant christophe for still warns germany can't afford to keep paying the debts. they feel they do have enough to deal with and they're not really happy to pump out more money to europe that's quite understandable and the last bailout we had to organize for greece which amounted to guarantees to five hundred billion euros half a trillion this was so to say because very clearly germany doesn't tell the kind of money and is obviously not ready to extend more than do you have all these kinds of economic guided movements of populations inside europe and of course i would just say the present crisis is not really adding up to the solution of that it gets to an amount of an interest which may endanger the eurozone as a whole. it is very clear that problems arising right now might lead to another

financial crisis and the next financial a big crisis like the one we had in two thousand and eight and in may the. very heavily the growing to give the the european union the north korean leaders youngest son was given to keep promotions this week in what's widely seen as a lining him up to take over from his ailing father kim jong un was appointed second in command of the country's central military commission and made a four star general it happened at a rare convention of the ruling workers' party after which images of kim jong il son were shown in the media it's the first time anyone seen him as an adult only childhood pictures have been shown till now i was the first such meeting in decades kim jong il awarded a top post to other family members but irrational security expert dr jim walsh believes it's far too early for kim jong un to seize power the youngest kim was only twenty something years old he has no experience when kim jong il was young his

father kim il some took twenty years to groom him for this position this is a rush job they are rushing this through for a person who is really has no experience and that's why they will point to sort of again from medieval times a region kim has appointed his brother in law to sort of hold things together until the youngest son is old enough to take over but how long will that last will the military want to have a greater say in what's going on will others want to fight for power how will react during a period of vulnerability these are all big questions with potentially big consequences and they'll have to be answered first before we see what kind of leader the youngest son turns out to be. staying with their region this week pakistan blocked nato supplies to afghanistan after cross border fire by alliance helicopters killed three pakistani troops the convoys had to take an alternative route through the north but with deadly consequences friday suspected militants torched several dozen nato trucks as a result twenty seven fuel tankers on troops in afghanistan were destroyed u.s.

led strikes against alleged militants in pakistan have been happening for years but it's a partnership that's becoming increasingly dangerous. as it will consider getting tougher on nato if it forces if its forces continue incursions into its territory political expert ahmed correct she explains why pakistan's patience may be running short. there's a strong feeling that box that box done is getting though the bad side of the stick we didn't get what we really expected from this alliance with the united states with nato in afghanistan and of course fox money interests are not being looked after or respected throughout the past eight years of course boxen has been coming up with suggestions in order to defuse tensions inside of gun is done box down the ideas box any suggestions box on the input were completely ignored and in eight years of course we've seen the situation go from bad to worse in afghanistan i don't think it is possible that you could do and you could achieve that kind of an end in afghanistan without having a strong pakistani involvement. stay with us here on r t still ahead in the next

hour we reported on the safe return home for a russian boy abandoned. his adoptive parents left him behind in the dominican republic now police want to know if he may have been sold for drugs was. oh i just don't feel like we're getting all the facts the news media isn't just news in the morning no news is news senseless. it seems like they try and they show why everything to americans trust the evening news anymore the resident got his opinions on the streets of new york. taking a look now at some other stories making headlines across the globe the united states has issued a travel alert for its citizens in europe because of intelligence suggesting an increased risk risk of terror attacks in major cities britain is echoing the warning specifying a high level of threat in france and germany visitors are being told to be vigilant but aren't being advised against traveling to the continent for answer first of the threat as real but isn't increasing security levels germany says there are no

concrete indications of an imminent attack. fierce fighting in somalia as capital between government troops and rebels has left eight dead and at least eighteen wounded there's been a surge in violence in the past month as al qaeda backed intensified efforts to overthrow the u.n. supported government the militants have become more powerful in recent years and now control much of the south somalia hasn't had a fully functioning government in almost twenty years. egypt in jordan are supporting the palestinians refusal to negotiate with israel if it continues to build settlements in the west bank this comes after they held separately ting's with america's middle east envoy george mitchell the arab states said israel decision to restart reboot restart construction is undermining to keep peace talks underway right now israel refused to extend this is spent in despite a palestinian threat to walk away if it resumes on. ballots are being counted in bosnia as presidential and parliamentary elections which will solve parties

encourage people to vote according to their nationality it's the sixth election in the former yugoslavia republic after the war finished in one thousand nine hundred five that divided the country into two nearly autonomous parts a stronger central government as a condition for bosnia to join the e.u. all bosnian serbs are calling for independence. most of us have to tackle the degree of stress at some point in our lives but when things get too much here in russia there is now an extreme therapy on offer being buried alive despite a few grave concerns artie's ivor bennett went to check it out. above ground there are a few signs of life below the surface a man trapped with his greatest fear is pavel has just been buried alive for twenty minutes not torture but extreme therapy. the first thing you experience is panic once your face is covered with dirt you start tasting us and thinking what

the hell am i doing down here or you want to come down to simply no other place like this these are the grave digging therapists modeling the burials on an ancient form of self in light and meant practice by shamans they wanted to make the rights more accessible believing everyone can benefit. there's the most effective and powerful method of overcome an internal problems person can neither see nor hear anything nor even move underground they have no other option but to delve deep inside their minds. a burial costs around one hundred sixty dollars attracting both men and women from students to fifty something professionals all aiming to suffocate their worries the maximum burial is forty minutes beyond that the mind struggles to cope with the lack of physical function that they're thirty centimeters any deeper and the pressure would be too great to stand once under that volunteers breathe through this chewed the organizes a ten year veteran of living burials and says this shouldn't be tried at home. but

are we have to be able to get the personal very fast and also contact them earth for us to be distributed in a certain way across the body so that the key joints weren't pressurized you can't practice burials without knowing about things things that until now i didn't think i suffered from any cost a phobia and that could soon change because i'm going to try this for myself now me given this to breakthrough which i'm told that we monitoring at all times so when i stop and all i have to do is make a noise so here we go. well they started to fill in my grave as it were. this feels very very strange the soil is very cold and also heavy i'm doing all right at the moment but i think it's going to get a lot more scary and i was right five minutes after being buried alive i was very

ready to see the light of day again. thank. one of the weirdest experiences of my life i felt completely trapped and i'm definitely never doing that again either bennett r.t. moscow. stay with us here on our team you got lots more coming your way in the next hour i'll be back with a recap of the top stories after a short break stay with us. wealthy

british science says it's not time to see the times. markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my next concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our.

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