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on the. news today violence is once again flared up thing these are the images the world is seeing from the streets of canada from china corporations are on the day. the bomb. for the full story we've gone to. the biggest issues get the human voice face to face with the news makers.

the french government stands firm on its plan to raise the retirement age is violent protests and industrial action paralyze the country. and there are more protests this time in london after the british government announces the biggest reduction in public spending since the second world war. a twisted show of loyalty the terror attack on the chechen parliament on tuesday may have been a pledge of allegiance to al qaeda according to the republic's interior ministry. six am in moscow i met très a good to be with you here on r t our top story in france public transportation is paralyzed flights canceled and three million people protesting demanding the

government backed down from retirement age reforms people took to the streets hurling stones torching cars and smashing windows artie's catarina as are of those following the unrest. oh it may not serve the clock of fear surrounding opposing a recent government decision to call in the pension plan. jolly crowd is doing exactly that they are standing outside the french senate demanding that you get us or go see the french president stop pushing forward his proposed television any form that is set to guarantee a chance at me building its economy and actually making it the global financial crisis will these people however want none of it in the face with a chance of working to have years more they've taken to the streets with the unions bringing in figures of up to three million people may should why all protestant this recent decision by the french government this is certainly seems to have

become a somewhat traditional french stall tactic any time french people are unhappy about a decision that their government makes they take to the streets effectively blackmailing its own government into forcing their hands and their decisions the last thing of course on the dividend was the bill and for giving in to pursue this to the protesters voting against as to who use resources and of course this is the first time that the french president nicolas sarkozy is actually refusing to listen to the protesters rallied to go ahead with the pension reform despite the crippling protests that have basically left the country in a standstill traffic communications city and as you matters everything has become suspended in mid-air as strikers across the country take to the streets around clashing violently with police others like these just standing outside and screaming i'm still willing to lose their voices until their horse where they go

but sadistically of course it's quite a different picture despite the fact that the country's economy is suffering huge amounts of money just by the. project it seems that the people who are definitely in favor of such measures over sixty percent of the country's population according to recent opinion polls say that they believe this method to be effective while forty three percent of the people say they don't believe strikes like these will actually manage to achieve anything however achieving or not it seems that the people cheer are definitely a lot more inclined to strike stand out on the streets and demand that they are heard rather than work earn their money and actually attempt to change their country's economy for the better how exactly this will turn out financially france what they will have to pay in terms of the losses to the economy is still being determined by economists but here it is already clear that the damage done to the

country just by these few days of projects is huge and the government will have to do something in order to get the country back into order of course to get us or cosy saying that he will not give in to what is called blackmail by the people and that the reform is necessary for the country's economy to get back on track. and paul valet a political science professor from the institute see also poet in paris says france's demonstrations are a reasonable. the problem with the retirement age has been raised actually a number of years ago because of the observed democratic demographic trends and so there are actually several attempts before to streamline the system to. increase the number of years that people have to pay in which is still in france lower than the average in other countries as well but all of these measures have been insufficient and so it's come to this measure of raising the retirement age which

is only a raise of two years and it's still it would still be one of the youngest ages to retire in europe so it's true that the public ought to be aware of the of the issue but it's true that also that they have been used to generous benefit regime and it's very difficult for them to we're actually except to let go of it. commentary from paul valet a professor of political science at the institute paris. there is another european country bracing itself for even more austerity new government has announced its largest cuts in public spending since the second world war the new plans will have the budget slashed by more than eighty billion pounds and cut in half and cut around half a million public sector jobs the state pension age will be raised to sixty six by two thousand and twenty four years earlier than planned one of the hardest hit will be the welfare benefits that will be slashed by seven billion pounds thousands have

taken to the streets to oppose the measures earlier my colleague bill dodd spoke with dr richard wellings deputy editorial director at the institute of economic affairs in london he thinks the government should have gone even further. i think actually george osborne should have gone further with that because let's put it into perspective by two thousand and fourteen fifteen overall government spending will only have fallen by about three percent so this is actually a very tiny cuts so i think you should have gone further he's relying on economic growth and rising tax revenues to make up the deficit reduction and he actually this is a big gamble because we cannot allow an economic growth because next year i'm really recovery's wait that. you mention the two thousand and fourteen two thousand and fifteen will by then something like five hundred thousand public sector jobs will be lost what will happen to those people obviously some will be written off but surely those people will be have to be absorbed back into the jobs market if not they'll need unemployment benefits so surely that's going to cost the government even more isn't it with all those people out of work well again i mean

the rush lee six or seven million public sector works in the u.k. so this is five hundred thousand spread over four years which surround one hundred thousand shares of us only about two percent of the public site so whether you will see i think a lot of that can be absorbed through natural wastage the obviously the problems that face the very same because but it is definitely patchy and let's not forget as well that every pound we get in this taken from the private sector are not the type thing. so you're not actually taking money out of the economy i mean we've seen huge number of job losses in the private sector during the recession and at the same time the public sides of expanding pensions when welfare benefits went up so you need to restore the balance in the economy and we've had a huge transfer from the productive private sector to the non productive public sector and this is very unhealthy for long term economic prosperity. the u.k. will also have to put off renewing its nuclear deterrence system and withdraw twenty thousand british troops are based in germany after the government announced

the multi-billion pound cuts to the country's defense budget party's laura m. it talks to people in london to find out if they are aware or even care about what was being spent on british troops abroad cut the word on everyone's lips this week in the u.k. public sector cuts in the say put the copra hence its spending review which will see nearly whomp a million jobs to go in the next school year is that and its costs to the defense budget to you which will mean that you will never be able to mount an international military intervention on the scale of iraq afghanistan and another thing the military certainly won't be able to do is to station launch numbers of armed forces in germany twenty thousand military personnel operational left a legacy of world war two prime minister david cameron's announced the old be pulled out over the next ten years but did the british people even know that they still have troops pasted to germany i was do they think that doing that no more all

right we should approach the world with more. strength. don't top post did you know if that person still had street stationed in germany. and what do you think they're doing that. maybe protecting global peace what do you think they're doing that. talking to people on the street say looks like the government has to cobb's. porting there from artie's laura and it in london well coming up here on r t we visit one of the world's most polluted towns. right ok for the economic fame has. with the seychelle and environmental cause the day. we take a look to see if there is any hope of a cleaner future for the. with a legacy of deprivation and pollution plus. weak human trafficking laws in india lead to thousands of shattered lives as

a village girls come to the big city who are by promises of a better life only to end up in a brothel. but first a gang split could have been behind tuesday's strike on the chechen parliament according to the republic's interior ministry a man thought to be behind the terror attack and may have been trying to assert his authority in the region to al-qaeda. has the details. we're standing in front of the church in palm and that has been attacked by the militants three people were killed and seventeen injured as the chechen terror and minister reports the man behind this attack could be who is same kind of a new leader of the chechen militants and this is the way he's showing what he's capable off forty year old guy kind of destroyed at an attack on the whole village of the chechen president runs on god doing this august twelfth militants broke into the village early in the morning they will be locked in one of the streets as a result of the counterterrorist operation six police officers died more than twenty people were injured all militants were killed because it's also involved in

training suicide bombers and there have been several suicide blast in grozny this year before percenter kind of was operating under draw kumar of the notorious and most wanted criminal in russia maher is the man behind moscow metro blast which killed forty people talk omar has been on the most wanted terrorist list by they do or say just to remind you that the militants drove into the parliament. killed a security guard opened fire and stormed the parliament the federal forces blocked the militants inside the building and the operation was success all militants were killed and this is how runs on producer of commented on the situation. the police did a very good job we sent two teams of six people in there it took them fifteen minutes to kill all the militants. members of parliament from the building the whole area and right now is been cleaned and today the chechen parliament resumes its normal

working hours and victims as far as we know will be receiving compensations from the state. the russian town of may once have been a center of economic activity and wealth for centuries but it has since fall into disrepair years of industrial activity unlikely to be called green such as smelting copper have transformed the town and pollution has choked this once. heartiness sara for a proportion of toxic town nicknamed the black point of the planet. it's a bleak sight that greets you when you're right in the small russian town of care about a legacy of environmental destruction once earned the title of one of the most polluted towns in the world it's going to a large copper smelter and a century of toxic fumes and chemical waste left the landscape here devastated but it's the residents who have really suffered from the. cardiovascular diseases

respiratory diseases just of system diseases are common in the world of uncle article diseases here is rather high under new ownership since two thousand and three the plant has begun cleaning up its act but progress is slowly. we immediately began renovation but you can see for yourself the problems that a company of inherited were doing a lot to preserve and develop but of course lots more still remains to be done the snail has found it to exploit the region's rich copper deposits and has contributed to the economic progress in russia over the last twenty years the price to pay for the economic boom has been enormous with the social and environmental scars. tall hills of black industrial waste surround the residence a carabao and when you're in the town the air quality is extremely poor. today the wind is blowing and different usually you can see your own outstretched arm because

of gas concentration people are being literally poisoned but the plant is the town's lifeblood as when it was closed in one thousand nine hundred seven after being branded an environmental disaster zone the town fell into poverty so it was a relief to the people here when it reopened even though residents near the more of the same pollution and unhealthy working conditions they were at least able to provide for their families. if well this industry is really dangerous it's a rule everything the units often feel and all impurities come to town on the other hand things did used to be much worse so there have been some improvements. despite millions in investment to modernize the plant when we visited the working conditions still seemed wafl inadequate at times we found it really hard to brave many of the staff appeared to be working with neighboring equipment whatsoever but there have been some successes here the waste used to be dumped into the water his

start and the company say that they're winning the battle to cut emissions and with further investment plans can care about now hope for a cleaner future. we are done with the plant yet we're going to turn the plant into a modern european type factory so everything you see around the plant will soon become history. for the residents of the mystics the past the time being remain ever present so if r.t. care about. india's working to combat a sex trafficking problem that campaigners say is the most rampant in the world thousands of girls from neighboring appall are being brought to major cities like mumbai with promises of jobs and instead many become victims of human traffickers trapped into a life of virtual slavery as artie's currency investigates. rush me may be young but she's gone through more than most girls her age to leave her village for the

bright lights of mumbai only to find she was heading for life in a brothel he said he wants to reach my why did you go with them because i didn't want to you force me to india is the epicenter of this extra freaking industry right now in the world and the reason is that there is no enforcement of laws against traffic. and joins it's taught more than a quarter of a million been trafficked in india each year some are as young as nine and come from the rural areas of neighboring heading for. either their parents nor do they have any idea of what the void is like the parents mean or little bit if television is in the village about what bombay is and to them it would represent a life stage rather than a broad. it's easy to cross the border between india and if there are well established routes for trafficking in the northern state of bihar rescue groups

keep an eye on the trains passing through they have identified who they believe are being trafficked an order them from the train but. when we ask youngsters where they are going they say they're going to study if your girl is travelling with the boy she says he's her father but when we demand their identity cards we see the aren't related to the two girls are questioned by the local police but claim they are travelling to mumbai to work well. we have no work in our village i have two young children and when i was promised a job in mumbai i decided to take up the offer but. girls are misled by people offering them jobs in big cities we apprehend them and then hand them over to women's shelters there are also girls who are convinced they can be part of a dance group and are conned into coming to india. it's easy to convince young girls in a village hundreds of kilometers away that they can make it big. but once you.

do it michael brundage not gonna be no one to see vigils in the body given the warnings of the dangers and the police more active in climbing down traffic gets out and seeing mumbai. turning now to some other stories making headlines across the globe violence has broken out in the indian capital has about two thousand demonstrators rallied outside the presidential palace protesters have been demanding the head of state resignation because there's been no change in the country since he took office a year ago police used tear gas to disperse the crowd with at least one man injured have been similar rallies across the country with some protesters setting tars on fire. emergency workers are scrambling to get aid to flood victims in central vietnam raging currents of killed at least forty people and some two hundred thousand have been swapped officials one of the death toll can rise of the search continues police say a bus swept away two days ago by heavy waters over the main highway has been found

at the bottom of a river but divers have not been able to determine how many of the missing twenty passengers are stuck inside. a disgruntled dairy farmers have taken their tractors to the european union to protest over milk prices producers from france germany and italy were among those who blockaded the e.u. parliament building in strasbourg they were demanding that supermarkets pay more for their milk prices have roughly halved over the last two years mostly hitting small private farms russia's proposal for a new pan european security treaty is not aimed at narrow objectives and will help all participants that was one of the messages of the russian president dmitry medvedev as he met with delegates at the munich security conference. but the go when it first proposed the new pan-european security treaty it was a mixed reaction some said it is time to change the old system others see that russians are trying to deceive europeans but security is a serious thing it's inappropriate to make one country a book safe at the expense of others the known glared at russia's voice is being

heard by my counterparts in france germany and other countries personal relations do not decide everything in firm policy but they really help a recent research in russia u.s. relations could not have been successful without a good relationship with president obama some of us believe that it was a good idea to push the reset button but some of us believe that we should actually go try to go further. and write new software. have better programs and more cooperation. the munich security conference is an annual meeting of higher level officials from around forty countries founded in one thousand and sixty two where it's one of eight it was a leading discussion groups now attracting more and more nations that are not in a bloc this year the conference is happening in moscow. a top russian diplomat responsible for a small thing the path with europe tells our team that russia's relations with nato would thrive when cold war stereotypes are drop that full interview coming your way

in a few moments stay with us. hi mr markoff it's good to have you with us today on. the image of modern russia

evokes fear in many europeans what does all the prejudice come from. indeed i sometimes notice that russia in the eyes of europeans is a country that in essence continues the tradition set up by the soviet union or something like that i don't think this approach is entirely correct russia is a completely new country it has a new foreign policy it has gone through substantial reform but there is no longer any difference in ideology between russia and the rest of the world the reason for all this prejudice as i see it is the fact that we still bear the legacy of the cold war my generation grew up in a time when it was absolutely obvious that the world is split into there was the world of the warsaw pact and the nato world a western world in an eastern world so this dogma still lives on in the mind of some people especially in the west how close is the link between russia relations and the new strategic concept that will be put up for approval in november is it

possible that the nature of our cooperation will change. as for russia e.u. and russia nato relations we see them as two different vectors of our foreign policy you see the european union is a conglomerate of countries that are united first and foremost by the fact that they face the same economic problems nato is an organization that's aimed at resolving military and political stability problems that is why our dialogue with nato is self-contained it would be a bit farfetched to talk about a connection to our relations with the e.u. so we have a full fledged dialogue with nato we are currently working on a list of threats and challenges in order to make our cooperation more specific these threats are terrorism drug trafficking and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction i think that nato is new strategic concept should be free from such atavistic concepts as perceiving russia as a possible threat or hints about nato as global role in circumvention of international laws these things are unacceptable for us and attempts to bring them

into the new strategic concept will hardly help improve our relations with nato russia is actively promoting a collective security system for hero does he need this system and how should it work. our initiative which was filed under the name president medvedev is initiative is very simple the essence of our suggestion is to devise a legally binding agreement that would be signed by fifty six zero s c e states including the u.s. canada european states and the russian federation the agreement would restrict each of the countries that signed it from using military means except when sanctioned by the un security council no country would be allowed to strengthen its security at the expense of the security of any other state it is a very simple method and it's very effective a similar legally binding agreement is currently in effect between nato states but between east asia and european countries outside of nato this agreement is not legally binding but purely political we want to make it legal bring it into the judiciary room don't apply a different degree of responsibility for those that would violate this order you

know that n o s e e session is planned for this year the first one after nine eleven year recess this was also brought about by president additives initiative the summit will focus among other things on individual security and of the modernization of europe security structure i think the forum is participants will carefully consider the suggestions we've made on the subject and in time take them into account because we will not be able to move on until the cold war ideas are dropped you know there is a possible that a successful reset. relations may become less important in the russia america triangle. you know i would have stained from using megalomaniac metaphors such as this triangle but there are things to consider like for instance the g.d.p. value the role and share of the g.d.p. in an economy russia's g.d.p. share is six percent of that of the us it looks a bit better if we compare it to the e.u. that's why picturing these relations as a triangle is somewhat megalomaniac on russia's part i rather say that we could

form a triangle together with the european union so if you insist on using a triangular shape to depict international relations in our case the caller's would be the us russia and the e.u. and. china that would truly be a global triangle does the e.u. view russia as an equal partner in all areas of its work it gets difficult at times due to the fact that the e.u.'s path toward unification was a long and troublesome things you were has learned as it walks that path our partners in the e.u. whether they represent the union as a whole or individual states they are very proud of these ideas but this pride is already starting to turn into self admiration and even selfishness this is why it is sometimes hard for us to negotiate this is why we often see the position of we've negotiated done it within the e.u. and your only option is to agree with us this makes life difficult of course it makes it difficult to bring our states closer together since diplomacy is the art of the possible it is the art of mutual concessions that make it possible for each

side to find solutions to their specific problems in balance and in cooperation with the partner side there is another aspect to the e.u. has its own vision of how russia needs to be modernized how well does this vision correlate with russia's own plants we are talking first and foremost about exchanging experience and high tech we have also plans to cooperate on innovation in the energy sphere for energy efficiency raising the share of green energy in our overall consumption and promoting green energy on both sides in order to correspond with the eaves regulations on environmental protection we're discussing an exchange of scientific knowledge that would benefit both sides by raising our competitiveness on the market that would allow us to become more competitive on a global level i think that the next russia e.u. summit scheduled to take place in brussels on december the first and second will see the approval of a new action plan which we are currently working on sarah people wanted here in russia by the law how to use europe as a safe haven problems related to the person.