quite. first parliamentary elections correspondents bring you the latest from across the country. the vote is considered to be crucial for the central asian state as it's going to change the way the country is really enjoy. life from. being counted here in the largest city. has returned after months of. remembering a tragedy. since the polish president's plane crashed near the russian city it's ninety six. review of the week the war in afghanistan.

the longest in u.s. military history this year has been the deadliest year for foreign troops. and destination albeit. the international space station lost from the baikonur cosmodrome. with a note back at the week's top stories and the latest developments this is. so it stands finished in its national election. poll which will see the country become central asia as first parliamentary democracy counting is now underway exit polls suggest the party of the former prime minister. receive the majority of the votes when the results are expected within a few days of correspondents. following the elections from.

the security has been throughout the capital bishkek over the past couple of hours it has been rather quiet here there's a lot of police patrol. the streets bishkek out the moment no serious violations have been registered here the average turnout throughout the country at this election has been about fifty percent in the according to play really been there a record still actually has gone rather smoothly it is indeed a landmark vote for the country because after this election after the votes are counted. regardless of how many people have showed up at this election will become the first central asian country to become a parliamentary state where a prime minister has more power than the president and it's accountable to the parliament in a pro this year when president barchi was overthrown. many people

were killed and many more were injured and people were unhappy with the former president's policies that have led many to live in poor verty and this is the reason why he was overthrown and after he was overthrown temporary government of kyrgyzstan has held their restaurant and during which it was decided to turn the country into a parliamentary state to the southern city of now you go it showed the highest turnout this sunday so what's the atmosphere like there in the city that's the biggest news from off the sun is that this city showed the biggest voter turnout in the entire country around fifty percent of all the people who locals you're eligible to vote showed up to the polling stations and cast their ballots this is really only expected since this city really won a lot of really difficult in the four times in recent weeks the last few weeks there was massive ethnic clashes between the local population will be cured and

commercials armed gangs businesses and the sure and as a result hundreds of people were killed several thousand were injured and several thousand more had to flee their homes the city recent. still recovering from those sort of while and back in june that's why there were fears that this while in school reemerge the warning is healthy but nevertheless the warning was held in the calm fashion quite a lot quite little people on the street that we saw today and this is despite the fact that previously there were you forced brats being sent out to the local population why s.m.s. and pollsters and flyers distributed in here and in order so the city's calling for violence despite reports by international observers that there were no serious legal violations or trouble the security has been tightened to the polling stations to protect the count so is there still

a perceived threat well indeed the security has been tightened just two hours before the polls have closed the police started patrolling the streets and there was a lot of police and a lot of people believe that this election may be accompanied with a lot of roy and many people still believe that after the votes are counted that political rallies can still take place on the streets. so it's really too soon to say out whether they be elections granted smoothly and we out of the people that we've spoken to on the streets many have said that they believe that many leaders of the political parties might get attacked. correspondents. reporting. from kind of a stand and under mcentee a former observer in kind of a stand says the country's new leaders have plenty to prove after they assume power . from hope in the political culture it's felt that while the power is being taken

away from the presidency towards the parliament to get into the parliament nevertheless the prize is the presidency so that's a curious situation that that's being discussed even this very weekend the question is will there be a real cultural shift politically and in the way that government has run will it be open government will it be good governance in the sense of transparency so that any potential corruption is. or will it be the usual that for example a majority government will be the new regime which has just taken over the transition government and they were marginalized completely those who supported by that was an associate on dawson and but can and leaving some instability there these are questions which really have to be to be answered maybe in a week or two is time. the victims of the plane crash in russia killed the president of poland and many of its top officials have been remembered at a ceremony at the site of the tragedy six months ago ninety six people were killed in the city of smolensk at

a sivits reports. a day for poland to remember and reflect it's six months since the two of one point four flying from warsaw and bound for russia smolensk region crashed a little before eleven am ignoring the advice of local air traffic controllers to divert to another airfield the crew attempted to land in dense fog all ninety six on board and in one day poland lost its president its first lady and a large number of its top military political and religious path now they've been on their way to a ceremony marking seventy years since the nine hundred forty katty massacre when over twenty one thousand poles were murdered by soviet secret police april the tenth twenty ten has come to mark the beginning of a new chapter in this strange russia polish relationship but tragically not in the way it happened around the year on and it's the families of the victims of that

plane crash who called for sunday's memorial commemorations they flew in from poland to pay their last respects the morning was led by the wives of the russian and polish presidents both emphasizing their shared sense of loss and grief boy he scored the whole of russia shadd the grief and sorrow through and during these hard times you were together with you were praying for those who died in the plane crashing we were asking the lord to give you strength to cope with this terrible tragedy. i cannot hide my emotions when i am here at the site of the tragedy this commemoration could only have been looked at by the family of the victims and i want to thank you for the order of taking part in this polygamy together with the victims' families they inspected the salvaged remains of the plane itself before making their way down the runway as smolinski to the place where the plane crashed kilometer away. large stone marks the spot where they

prayed and laid flowers respects were then paid at the nearby memorial complex marking the site of the county massacre one notable absence was get us live kaczynski the brother of the late president and leader of poland's largest opposition party he's been highly critical of the way in which both polish and russian authorities have investigated the crash and its causes while the polish military have conducted their own probe president medvedev appointed prime minister putin to lead a joint russia polish investigation the last is findings suggest that two normal crew members were in the cockpit at the time of the crash the question as to whether the pilots were put under pressure to land remains open after four months of studying the flight recorder parts and collecting eyewitness accounts the commission has handed over its findings to the polish or forty's they will soon be

made public polish experts will say plans to excavate the crash site on october the thirty flowers and candles now mark the spot where lech kaczynski its presidential plane crashed on april the tenth ballads the hope is that today's memorial ceremonies led by the two first ladies together can be taken as a symbolic gesture that russia and poland and united not only in their grief over what's happened in the past but also as they look forward to happier times ahead alice habits. and now a rundown of the week's top stories the u.s. led nato campaign in afghanistan entered its tenth year with no end in sight the longest war in america's history has turned into a vietnam like quagmire the taliban are still launching regular bomb attacks and coordinated assault twenty ten is already the deadliest year of the entire campaign for nato troops and the fighting is taking a heavy toll on the afghan people with civilian casualties spiraling. reports.

camera happy u.s. soldiers are helping the taliban when the propaganda war. f.l. schools up in smoke and with a justified or not tempers fly in the afghan capital culprits soldiers who can be heard saying fantastic before posting the clip on the internet even if by burning the house accidentally a copy of the koran is housed that can be easily used as a tactic or as a means of practicing more young. religious students to go and join the taliban and al qaeda and it seems to be working more and more islamic extremist websites are hosting direct links to videos put up on the web by the soldiers themselves in blogs and social networking sites it's the enemy who's not want to be helping the taliban fight its cause they can easily be

copied by al qaeda and the taliban. easily make. the us forces fail video clips if you want. you want to hang. out in some cases the us soldiers videos are prankish and childish other times they're down large criminal or extremely provocative in this clip u.s. soldiers burn the bodies of dead muslims facing mecca today in afghanistan the internet is becoming more and more popular but look around it's no surprise that in a place like this there's still only a few people who have access to us so you'd sometimes home connection is so unreliable that every afternoon he's here watching videos that make him angry one of the only going on we see hundreds of videos about afghanistan nato new americans are talking about human rights you can see the proof on line it's

a lie. internet cafes on the buzz in downtown kabul hundred have been has managed the small and overcrowded cafe for the past two years and although the connection is slow it's fast enough to keep people logged on. varied and. easy for people to watch these videos put up by the american soldiers because the most popular videos are on the first page of you tube also when one guy sees a video he tells his friend. and less than a decade ago when the taliban was in power home computers were banned there were only three places in kabul that had internet but now the global jihadists understand that sometimes an e-mail might just be myself then the sword followed once and me a male and so the taliban send message by by mobile phone and. make what are you but a good video clips the word it seems always has

a way of getting out of one people not to see this kind of thing in the internet because everything you see is consumed in the life with the taliban picking up on a form of communication that once banned it now thoughts on coalition troops to censor themselves point c. r t kabul. the number of afghan led cooking up drugs for export to russia has tripled and according to russia's drug chief the united states is to blame. and he goes 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 know of more than four hundred laps they're producing drugs for russia. and you can watch the full interview with even all in about fifteen minutes time here on. an alleged russian arms trafficker is appealing against a thai court ruling that he should be extradited to the u.s. for it to brutalize claim there's no evidence against him and insists the judge should question witnesses his family affairs that if extradited he'll be forced to confess he was already understand that it's quite possible the extradite him and just lock him up on some aircraft carrier and force him to give whatever testimony the u.s. wants him to give i think they'll go as far as it takes to get it and i'm sure

everyone understands there are plaintiff ways to do it these days starting with chemical sense psychological pressure. on tuesday the criminal court to drop charges of money laundering and fraud against beach clearing the way for his extradition charges could have delayed his being sent to the west which is supposed to happen by november twentieth he was arrested in bangkok turned her fears again and again the hardballs ever since washington accuses him of fueling terrorism in conspiring to supply arms to colombian rebels which he denies a former u.n. trafficking expert says that if it is extradited to the u.s. he might not get a fair trial. i have concerns about what's the big two will be going back to based on the only other person who in recent times has been convicted on a sting operation involving the fox the colombian rebels is a man called monster or counsel who was an arms dealer who strangely also was assistance to the americans on many occasions and when his lawyer sought to bring

that into the courts he wasn't allowed to do so or not president i think it's unlikely that his depends chain will be able to bring into evidence the fact that he has on occasion dated assistance to the pentagon on two of the nato countries in providing acra. i think it's unlikely that people who want deliberately to harm anyone but i think harm is sometimes done as part of the process but what people may see is getting good getting the truth out of somebody she my concern always has been not the pictures necessarily innocent of all charges but the sting operation of some he didn't do quite clear existing operation and he's not the merchant of death which the media portray him as well i would agree he's a versions of some death. still to come this promotion gone wrong but if we can show the video to encourage people to save the environment is criticize is going too far for showing climate change is being blown up.

president dmitry medvedev has hit out at his bell a russian counterpart for trying to make an enemy out of moscow in his video blog alexander lukashenko is stepping up his anti russian rhetoric the russian leader thinks it's all to do with the upcoming presidential election in belarus i was hoping to state power as the by the russian leaders trying to distract voters from domestic problems political union between moscow and came into effect in the year two thousand but there has since been a steady decline in relations vivid that the current tension should not affect the brotherly ties of the russian but of russian people. the u.s. might claim to be a champion of freedom of speech but not it seems if it's coming from russia iran venezuela or china the head of the media organization which oversees america's international broadcasting says it must up its game to combat the rise of what he called media enemy seeing cluing us kind of has more. it's

a common belief on capitol hill that the best way to raise money from congress is to scare them walter isaacson the head of a government agency that manages u.s. international broadcasting apparently wants a lot of money the cost to fight america's enemies in the media which he identifies as he ran venezuela russia and china we can't allow ourselves to be out communicated by our enemies there's that freedom house report that reveals that today's autocratic leaders are investing billions of dollars in media resources to influence the global opinion you've got russia today iran's press t.v. venezuela's tell us and of course china is a launching international broadcasting twenty four hour news channels correspondents around the world spence reportedly set aside six to ten billion dollars we got to go to capitol hill with that number to expand their overseas media operations to me it sounded like

a declaration of information war but later mr isaacson backtracked i don't take a russia or artsy as an enemy and certainly did not mean to imply that they're an enemy so that's just not right maybe mr isaacson really did not mean to offend russia or china it's all a pitch for more money from congress which he's trying to kind of appeal to by saying that other countries are spending more on international communications gear is really the buzz word that's used to try to generate money for the defense department a cia intelligence agencies and now for international broadcasting but getting the u.s. message across this costly there goes that mr walter isaacson is heading is called broadcasting board of governors it includes radio stations voice of america one of them and a fairly unpopular middle eastern t.v. channel and all this the board spends more than seven hundred fifty million dollars

and it's why. a more than the budget of r t iran's press t.v. and then as well as tell us or combined or maybe money does not really make up for global media clout mr isaacson says that it's truthfulness that will make the difference and in the air and the truth is on our side and if that's the man that raised the alert with some freedom of speech advocates somebody who says that truth is always on the united states side is a propagandist and not a. journalist and i think that's bad it sets a bad example for other countries when that when they say that because obviously other countries have their perspective many times u.s. media is slanted toward the united states even the private media and the credibility of the broadcasting board of governors was under even more scrutiny when reports came out about the white house influence on the b.b.c. reporting after iranian presidential election and some experts say american broadcasters that once used to be

a powerful voice in the international media are now facing a crisis the problem that they are facing is that the messages they have. called the world are supposed to work is not resonating it's not getting traction it seems washington they still getting used to the increasing volume for media voices giving fresh perspective on world issues kind of chicken or t. washington d.c. . a simulation of school children being blown up in front of their classmates may seem an unusual way of trying to convince people to reduce pollution and that's exactly what british campaigners did in order to promote the global eco day called ten turn the producer of the movie four weddings and a funeral made a short film to spur people into reducing their carbon emissions by ten percent but it's controversial screen killings generated anger rather than awareness it was pulled from cinemas just hours after release the film's director said it was always

risky trying to be funny on a serious subject however environmentalist peers corbin believes it's not the way to promote green issues. by and i'm not supposed these images were directed against any f. nicol religious minority like black people or jews then there would be absolute international in fact this man wouldn't have even thought of making the kills. is he can get away with it by attacking the children the people who happen to disbelieve even their four children at science and want evidence based on it i mean it is utterly unacceptable the message is a lot they can only get it across by this sort of nonsense the fact is this old soil it's. hard them so they got no difference other than the emotional blackmail of styria and lawyers they are arrogant malevolent and dangerous people

and they have to be stopped. you know as a mother of world news in brief for this stage of the day at least eighty three being killed in suspected u.s. missile strikes in northwest pakistan the drone targeted a tribal area in north waziristan believed to be dominated by a militant group blame for attacks on foreign troops in afghanistan the u.s. has often been criticised for the strikes which last week killed two pakistani soldiers islamabad reacted by closing the key border used as a nato supply route the border was reopened on friday ending the eleven day. leisure clash with hundreds of anti gay protesters of a gay pride march in serbia around sixty people reportedly wounded in the violence places tried to break through heavy police cordon protecting the gay activists who were kept back by security forces last year the parade was called off after the government said it could not guarantee the safety of the participants. think china or at least seventeen people have been killed and dozens injured in a road crash that involved a collision between

a bus carrying over fifty passengers and a cement truck the truck then caught fire and rolled off the road investigators say click for you could have caused the accident. the upgraded soyuz spacecraft has arrived at the international space station after taking off from the baikonur cosmodrome two days ago the crew made up of two russian cosmonauts and a nasa astronaut who stayed there for half a year they were greeted by three astronauts have been manning the station since june remarkably family ties are soon to become part of life at the. aunties told barton reports on the special bond of brothers beyond. twins in space within a few months scott kelly and his brother mock both astronauts and will be in orbit together courses as kids growing up we never thought we would be in this. you know unique in privileged position to be able to use the build up to scott's launch of russia's baikonur cosmodrome on friday was filled with technical question just

seeing that there was human moments to go there yet there were smiles. and goodbye to his eyes when his brother mark joins him on the i assess in february it will be the first time they've worked together there's very long time and we have occasionally flown together in the navy as a test pilot but before that i think we you know i was working in dairy queen were twelve years old mopping the floor part of the last jet of the last job we really had that we worked together and then the time came mark said goodbye scott and to the rocket these two russian crew mates everyone went it's only twenty minutes to go until the launch one brought us on the ground the others preparing for glass so that they both know firsthand what they're counting down. not what his brother flyaway into space the trip he'd made three times in south. it's you know it's a credible to watch any rocket launch and all my brothers are board makes it even

more exciting i've seen them launch three times now and it's pretty incredible thing to see when they both meet again on the international space station in a few months time it will become a family space station tuesday but just like his brother mark doesn't want to be too sentimental it's going to be a busy busy fly but you know to get a chance to do that with my brother is is a great opportunity scott and marc on celebrity twinax we're so yet but it'll be a uniquely human moment when the hatch door the siblings meet in space time bottom potty. stories videos and blogs are online at r.t. dot com what's on the site right now for you the political future of the russian capital becomes clearer with three men and one woman shortlisted to become the next mayor of moscow. and the grand old you can pork super hero known as pig man he's cleaning up and clamping down on the little problem in the country's.