project has began in kurdistan his story parliamentary elections with security forces on high alert to ensure peaceful polling up to politico turbulence and into ethnic violence and there they see a. candidate and now in the running for the. most good amongst the names i was surprised. on top are now as a canadian that president saakashvili his regime is using them to give up their business.

news to russia and iran the world this is all see with me your dash of all of us thanks for joining is polling stations across kurdistan have opened for voting in elections which will establish central asia as first parliamentary democracy security is being stepped up across the country which has seen bloody ethnic clashes and political turmoil enter this year but as the group is cut off now reports phase of violence still remain. this is truly a crucial vote because it's meant to and instability and political chaos in the country for the past half a year or so kyrgyzstan has been plagued by violence and the seldom parts of the country where we are now are among the most affected areas and there are fears that this violence could flare up once again during the election the former soviet republic has been struggling to achieve normality since former president. was overthrown from power in deadly street protests across the entire country specially

in the capital bishkek violent riots left dozens of people dead and put the entire country in a state of chaos people were protesting by policies which led to many people living in poverty and failed to increase the quality of life in kyrgyzstan for years the interim government held referendum which voted to build a parliamentary republic which is a milestone not only for kyrgyzstan but for the entire central asian region since if this election will be held successfully it will change the way. it's planned that the president's powers will be curbed well the prime minister will have more power than the formal head of state this is significant for central asia since traditionally countries in this region are ruled by authority leaders and this way . from such a political model for the first time in central asia twenty nine political parties are taking part in this election which is an all time record for kyrgyzstan however

there are genders are relatively similar to one another there is skepticism of all the ordinary people here in kyrgyzstan who say that this election won't improve their lives because simply not ready for such a transition and the new college won't be as effective apart from political unrest or just on has also been suffering from ethnic violence in june. there were deadly ethnic clashes here in the city of course where we are now which is populated both by kyrgyz and can nationals and as a result hundreds of people were killed thousands were injured and thousands more had to flee their homes at the moment peace is we fragile here in the south of the country and in fact at the moment many people fear even going to the polling stations on sunday there have already been reports of threats sent out to the local population via s.m.s. for many people at the moment the main priority is to rebuild their homes and

businesses after june as well it's rather then to vote for any politician despite this the authorities are still calling for the people to go to the polling stations to take poured in this election promising that it will provide the long awaited stability the selection of the next president is the final stages the united russia party has given its short list of contenders to presidents jimmy chimney to that of who now has ten days to decide who's to take charge at city hall in the russian capital fastest covering the story for us. the short list. for names that have been submitted by the united russia party t. president. on that list includes the deputy prime minister. now he's considered a strong from and a full of the position by many commentators so no surprise that he's been included in the list he's also considered a very close ally of prime minister putin having worked with him extensively during his presidency and now in his role as prime minister so he's certainly

a very strong candidate but also on the list we have russia's transport and communications minister igor levitin and the governor of michigan of girls valerie have now here actually spent ten hours the former mellish called deputy up until two thousand and five and nine hundred ninety six when i. was running for that position and. was running for the position of vice was we did an assassination attempt against him after an explosion near his home which he survived the sudden you know interesting bit of background will not come to the only female of the group that miller. and now she is the current at the moment and her role actually includes a lot of the social issues such as unemployment and health care and she's considered one of the most experienced candidates having worked in the government since ninety ninety four and also in her position at the moment perhaps one of the best place to

deal with some of the issues the president the fate of his already highlighted as will be some of the main challenges facing whoever will become the new. i think all four candidates are perfectly capable of becoming mayor of moscow the city's leader would be responsible for upholding the quality of life. issues carrying on the policies in effect and dealing with future challenges the capital demands a series of new solutions which we will discuss with the new mayor one of the main challenged. is it going to be these social reforms now muscovites going to be keeping at the some of the social programs initiated and to this cause will be made things such as we travel on the most the pension is a benefit to teachers but there are certainly many issues that they need that will still be a good thing to resolve issues such as police in the cool the cool to the headache muscovites which is the traffic problems that's an ongoing that would be some of

the issues facing now another major key role that the new base will be to gain the public's trust the specially head of the parliamentary elections that will be happening at the end of two thousand and eleven that was the lack of trust of the site it was one of the main reasons the full the dismissal of the new mayor will now have around a good to make an impact on that must by all the controversy surrounding this because he was always very good at bringing out a united russia from the muscovite and the party going to be hoping that you have a selected will have the same sort of sway with the public ahead of the elections next. year without coming up later this hour on the race took place eight sat. down for russia has installed to support the country's territorial claims in the resource rich region. and for the south

a lot when self proclaimed superhero squealing on little bugs and keeping his eyes on the country's forests. a european style democracy is a strange day for the georgian president whose proposed new constitution is supposed to serve the country on this course however many businessmen say hell saakashvili his version of people's rule is at all as with their experience to his wolski has met on top earners who claim corruption and could box are the real forces in the country. the so call patchwork baths and central police see is the perfect place to relax and have your photo taken on the way out the historical building is now owned by a private company but a few years ago it was taken from its previous owner by the government but in gold has any really still fears for his life he says in two thousand and seven he was approached by government agents who claimed he used illegal schemes to purchase the

baths allegedly through the use of threats the officials forced the man to give up his business going to court says get a goal was not an option. they said that they know where my son's school is and they could say tomorrow and bust him for drug possession but he said that they will make me sell everything and still it won't be enough to pay the mafia to be begging for mercy i couldn't have done anything to need my business to this day. immediately after seizing the property of the government solved it off since then great goal has been trying hard to get his business back. i wrote six complaints asking them why they made me give up my business but the authorities are silent so we have not received a single response here why is it going to facts here. a human rights activist says this case is not unique according to the salient have

been numerous cases recently where the georgian government has illegally seized buildings wound and other property from private individuals large and small companies. when your thirty's openly use police and the prosecutor's office to take away people's property there's no other way to cooling it tara it's a kind of official racketeering aggressive and legal and purely criminal in its nature we can say directly you can make a our second team is responsible for terrorizing the business sector. some georgian entrepreneur explain the greed and political ambitions of the country's leaders these businessmen say that in order to work safely and believe see you have to make generous donations to the ruling party or large to powerful entrepreneurs in georgia make voluntary donations by paying off the government in june the elections all of them pay no less than fifty five thousand us dollars these are official sums

we can only guess how much they have to pay an official to have us do not. call feels betrayed by the government is still hoping to find justice for this man and many others who have seen for themselves so often president saakashvili his words differ from his deeds change can't come soon enough well georgian officials claim that they have created to corruption free to me to do also lost their businesses due to pressure from the state it's nothing but spin and even though only a few want to speak out it looks like the movement against such rickety hearing in tbilisi is getting stronger does. russia norway denmark the u.s. and canada five is in the race to claim the ice caps are vast untapped resources russian scientists are literally going to the end of their on a mission to support their nation's claims on the city their groucho or join them on their icing. there is a perception that it's hard to find

a living soul in the arctic but not today this is how members of russia's north pole expedition dock with their colleagues on board the academic break up the fir drip is the flagship of the northern fleet of your chill floating lab or a tree iran do a hundred scientists have spent seventy days in the arctic gathering evidence to support the claim that the man also bridge is part of russia's continental shelf the head of the expedition looks more than pleased with the results almost two but . today we have four we confirm the geological outline or a leaf at the bottom of the loss of ridge we have recovered quality material that corresponds to international standards. russia's biggest evidence gathering weapon is a multi beam eco sounder known as spec it's hard to see and impossible to touch but it's talking to scientists from the boredom of the coldest ocean in the world.

they can go as deep as twelve kilometers so it practically covers the whole spectrum of the oceans depth there are no depths it cannot measure. the principle of our competitors are using similar equipment the american ice breaker hilly for example works with the same sound it is convenient to analyze and compared collected by the same standards. russia is in a hurry to collect evidence for its appeal occasion to the un sheffield for twenty thirteen the same year another applicant canada comes up with its claims the russian president's envoy to both poles says his people are ready to work around the clock to fulfill the mission. where you did just some say what are the russians doing in the arctic on apollo night we're not going to ask anybody water when we should do the arctic belongs to russia we want. in accordance with all international treaties and who will work day and night if necessary. in other deep

water equal sound will do its part of the job within the north pole expedition it will be installed on a movie flow and gas information on the breach nonstop for the next year the arctic may be of ostend embassy in popular image a nation but it is theirs to major that it contains a quarter of the world's untapped fossil fuels flotsam gold diamonds and other precious metals around sixty percent of total shock to gas lies in the russian exclusive economic zone so even without the models of reach being divided it seems that russia has already won becoming arctic race its in the pressure of r t from the island of visa in the arctic. and to some other international news stories now the hunger and village of holland tom has been evacuated due to the threat of a second deluge of toxic sludge is feared the we can do all of the nearby reservoir

may collapse hungry declared a state of emergency after thousands of tons of waste flooded several villages dissuade killing seven however despite the sludge reaching the river danube officials say there is little sign it has been significantly polluted. the thirty three chilean miners trapped underground for over two months have been reached by a drill digging a rescue tunnel chilean government engineers must now decide if the shelter to belong was still to avoid the risk of collapse before the operation to bring the men up one by one commences the country's mining minister says the rescue process is likely to begin by wednesday they had been forced the men might not be reached until christmas. north korean to be a live broadcast of the country's leader kim jong il with his son. a massive military parade celebration of the sixty fifth anniversary of the country's ruling party it's widely speculated that the western educated recently appointed general

in his twenty's will succeed his father as head of the reclusive communist nation the appearance of following an earlier televised events together is being viewed as a further sign of official confirmation of the succession. one man is holding the responsibility for keeping his country's forests clean his keeping his identity i know targeting those who seek to turn the great outdoors into a pigsty with litter and exact his revenge on bottom went to meet the twenty first century superhero who's taking no porkies from the little bugs. a legend on the trot this is the pig man snuffling for some rather unpleasant truffles he's the latvian state forest sunset to one of its greatest problems rubbish well just look at this mess scoundrels how could they little like this this persona outed snuffling super swine spends his days charging around latvia trying

to clean up the woods and make the culprits squeal for mercy there's even a legend to accompany him if you will turn the forest you will turn into a pig and he's not just how mean it up this old bore isn't all. once a forest warden called us and said he'd found the remains of a car by the serial number we managed to find the owner and find him two hundred laps they're still out there off and it wasn't long before we found some potential literacy of our own. but they were keen to show they were on pigments side it's an awful problem. i love it all the way it's done this man and your campaign bassett i can't see any more. when he started his work six years ago latvia's forests had become a pig sty with fly tipping and littering rife since then pig man who like all

superheroes refuses to reveal his true identity to save their bacon he works with police educate school children lobbies parliament and keeps on the hoof rooting out literacy and raising public awareness in fact he's become quite a lot of the and celebrity. really the world has for superheroes superman batman spider-man and the latvian superman people you can see how this forest is terribly littered who asked me can clean it so i will do this i will clear up the latvian forest i promise. meaning that if you're planning to litter you might report more than you sound big man could appear anywhere at any time so if i behave like a swine and do this. i'm soon going to have to clean up my act tom barton artie latvia. they modernized spacecraft carrying

a new russian american crew has successfully docked with the international space station now astronaut scott kelly and cause when all is said xander kaleri and a leg scraper will spend the next six months as members of expedition twenty five on board the station the new comers will join another three space men who are for us and presently in mining the station says arriving in jail they will remain together until late november there's to be a remarkable reunion to four in february scott kelly will be joined at the space station by his identical twin brother mark another that's astronaut who will fly a shuttle mission for the first time ever brothers have let us face. i'll back with the headlines in ten minutes time more than the third of exporters are going trogs their current of five billion hereon doses and it's up in russia every day every year and that's according to the head of russia's until now of course it's agency victor even north and his spoke to our say about the war on drugs and why under

current circumstances it can be one that's coming up in just a moment. today we're talking to the head of russia's drug control service and mr pena thank you very much for joining us today first off let's talk about afghanistan afghanistan

is the number one producer all opiates in the world when we talk about the transfer of the drugs to russia what kind of amounts of drugs are we talking about. afghanistan produced about seven thousand tons of opium last year which is equivalent to seven hundred tons of heroin we believe that about thirty six of these tons end up in russia that's a lot about five billion doses and it's about thirty five percent of all drugs exported from of ghana stand because in fact afghanistan exports less than half of the drugs it produces as drug addicts throughout the world are unable to consume everything that comes out of afghanistan so afghanistan stores a huge amount of drugs russia and other countries estimate it's about thirteen to fifteen thousand tons of opium so even if drug production stops in afghanistan the country will still be able to supply the international market with heroin for another twenty or even thirty years. what about the main mode of transportation of the drugs could you talk about the roads or the countries to which the drug trade

flows into russia. out of i.c.u. there is the northern route which is sometimes called the northern silk route after the seventeenth century trade route the reason the silk route is popular is because after the collapse of the soviet union munitions are merged and while their borders exist on paper in reality they're not even properly guarded so essentially there are no effective borders between afghanistan and russia with such poor as borders it's very easy for traffickers to transport drugs the biggest part of drugs flows through stand and kazakstan and onward to russia another part goes through iran across the caspian sea and the caucasus ridge and ends. in the north caucasus or deeper in russia's territory by the way this provides a source of financing for terrorists and extremists in russia's caucasus because they. are the americans that have got to say that they cannot eradicate most of the puppy fields because

a lot of danny's depend on their livelihood on these fields by producing the opiates what can be done about it this is their solution to the problem. when the us says you cannot deprive farmers of their livelihood it actually sends a message to the afghan leadership as well saying they shouldn't do it because first this will destroy people's livelihood and second you push farmers into the hands of the taliban i think this is merely an excuse furthermore since u.s. special representative for central asia richard holbrooke first suggested this idea that instead of eradicating drug crops the u.s. should target drug labs and traffickers which was almost a year ago the number of laps of producing drugs for russia has tripled a year ago we knew about one hundred seventy labs in afghanistan today we all have more than four hundred laps of producing drugs for russia does this not seem to be a paradox that when afghanistan was under the control of the taliban the production

was significantly lower than it is now and it has risen dramatically after the u.s. invasion nine years ago what what is the problem how is this getting into the picture and the statements that nato is trying to fight the drug trade in afghanistan in your opinion. you're right i had a meeting with my pakistani colleagues here in islamabad and they too were amazed at this phenomenon there's only one way to explain it when the taliban sought official recognition for its kabul regime and they took on president of measures to eradicate oppin poppy crops they consistently took serious steps in one nine hundred ninety eight nine hundred ninety nine and two thousand when they introduced capital punishment for. cultivation as a result they succeeded in a radical and drug crop on ninety percent of afghanistan's territory all the provinces they controlled the only place they couldn't do it was a northern afghanistan which was controlled by the so-called northern alliance but

then operation enduring freedom began and the situation changed drastically only a competent government that has the support of the people can really control the country and take serious steps to destroy drug production how can we talk about the military solution to the problem when most of the poppy fields in afghanistan are located in areas of the most intense fighting or where foreign military personnel are stationed where where is this listen to that. the nine years of the military operation in afghanistan have demonstrated that the more fighting there is in the country the small of the chances are of destroying drug production they're growing alternative crops is a risky proposition the risks are immense you can lose your crop at any stage opium on the other hand does not require any effort poppy grows all by itself and buyers come straight to the field and purchase the crop so it's obvious that you can destroy drug production this way the russian federation has developed a plan which is called rainbow two because it consists of seven points we presented

this plan to the european commission the european parliament nato our partners in the us in afghanistan and here in pakistan the plan calls for a comprehensive approach first of all this huge problem should be officially recognised as a threat to international peace and security in other words this is a separate problem that kills more than one hundred thousand people each year hundreds of millions of people suffer from this problem which everyone has been talking about for almost a decade second as i just said we need to eradicate opium poppy and the international security assistance force which is in afghanistan today under the un mandate and therefore has assumed responsibility for. the future of afghanistan should play very active role in already getting the crocker then of course afghanistan needs economic aid we need to rebuild its infrastructure by the way the legal afghan economy today operates mostly thanks for the one hundred forty two industrial facilities that the soviet union built there as far as i'm aware no new

facilities have been built there since that time also we need to make international cooperation more effective i'd like to emphasize particularly the role of regional cooperation for example there's a four party format that the presidents of four nation russia afghanistan pakistan and stand have established also i think that the shanghai cooperation organization should step up its efforts because most of the drugs produced in afghanistan end up in nescio countries and their people suffer the most because that's the sort of thank you very much for taking your time out of your day to join us thank you. imagine your life big city. the friends.