mineral water members of trade unions and students continue taking to the streets just outside the french senate protesting a reform that is pretty much already guaranteed to take place they haven't even had a chance to learn the new slogans but it's not enough to stop them. this is of heard we can strike. against the reform we have decided to montreux distance with no possibility of retreat we're here because we have resolved that we have an obligation to complete our plans with these protests meal a convincing enough for news broadcast but do the unions in france really hold any sway at the moment the only thing they've achieved is to cost the already struggling economy a shocking two hundred million euros a day. as the protests spread across the country they got out of control of the unions throughout october the unions had only one tactic left to lead the protests and try to tame them to avert widespread violence because of this the risk we face

is greater than just the spread of violence which we face before now we have the blockade of production and disruption to the traffic because of lack of fuel and blocked access to gas stations and fuel. so what has changed between one thousand nine hundred five when the same unions managed to shelf the pension reform in one thousand nine hundred five the unions enjoyed a lot more public support compared to now where only fifty percent of the people say they would support those on the streets but not go out themselves today only the two main train unions are united in their fight against the pension reform in one thousand nine hundred five most of the existing french trade unions were as one on the streets even prime minister was seen as a cold technocrat and despite the fact that the current french president nicolas sarkozy is not a popular figure in france his popularity ratings are still a lot higher than the former prime ministers but the main difference it seems is that the french people are tired of losing battles that drag on grinding life in the country. to

a halt. extremist there is an extremist populist radical current in france today that encourages violent actions and this time they went too far. even more with the people losing patience with not only the government but also the never ending protests it appears public opinion is changing and the trade unions may well lose not only the battle but the war as well. gas runners are the r t pairs. while european countries are fighting to slash their budgets the european union itself is often more cash that's running billing larger states which resent paying for the problems of smaller nations they're pushing for strict new penalties including the loss of voter rights for countries which break the budget rules about lisbon treaty amendments is set to dominate a meeting of heads in brussels and very soon very soon will come back to our top story with more details on that. a pakistani born american has been arrested

for carrying around surveillance on the washington d.c. metro was part of a suspected terror plot for two med is accused of providing support to people he believed were al qaeda members but who were actually f.b.i. agents and u.s. counterterrorism officials said there's no indication ahmed was ever in touch with real militants but still the incident has helped to stoke fears of so-called homegrown terrorism in the u.s. and does artie's marine airport found out critics say the f.b.i. may not be fighting terrorism so much use and trapping vulnerable humans. may two thousand and nine according to the f.b.i. the four men intended to carry out their planned day for african-american muslims are arrested or you have to say sarah paraded in front of new york news cameras presented as the faces of homegrown terrorism or even if it was a. jewish facilities here in the bronx it also takes on a military aircraft. terrifying plot the f.b.i.

claims to have toward the suspects quickly dubbed the new book for our poor illiterate ex convicts with neither passports nor licenses no direction by a foreign entity or a real terrorist group instead it direction came from shahid hussain a pakistani immigrant on the f.b.i. payroll reportedly paid nearly one hundred thousand dollars. for his services f.b.i. operatives provided the fake c four and actually showed them a fake stinger missile fake weapons and a manufactured terror plot according to court testimony hussein recruited the economically strapped defended by offering cars in cash to carry out the orchestrated operation then the agent provocateur or testified as the government's key witness in this nine eleven america the f.b.i. has upped its ante against terrorism how much relief boiling pot surprise the country question is would there be any plots well with our government in place

to help free despite surprisingly little criticism from amnesty international and human rights watch others have expressed no more over what they term entrapment it's a practice considered unacceptable in countries all throughout europe but i don't think it is i know what is tracking it a leash in mcwilliams mccullum is the honor of twenty nine year old david williams one of the newburgh four she says her nephew is languishing behind bars for a fake terror attack grown in the home of the u.s. government they are creating scenarios they are manufacturing crimes that would not have occurred if you had not planned. to see it into a community bin laden is still out there you are a real terrorist that we should be concerned about and they should use goes where you sources to find those individuals in not sit back and rely on a woman's to make up crime well these are all people that we begin to identify

attorney steve downs who tracks cases like newburgh for argues the u.s. government is systematically employing preemptive prosecution targeting those whom officials deem predisposed to committing crimes before an actual crime is committed or taking some really down and rather vulnerable individuals. and not only implanting the ideology of jihad on them giving them all the things that they need all the material setting up the plan doing all the research everything else and then grabbing them and then claiming that these were homegrown terrorists it's just a fiction downs' created this ten foot wide visual listing the names of individuals he believes were entrapped by the f.b.i. government decides that for some reason your ideology is causes them concern because then they can come after you and they can manufacture crimes against you and they can make up a whole case and put you through the whole thing and eventually if they can persuade a jury that this manufactured case is valid you can go to jail for

a very long time guilty verdicts for all four men as is the case of david williams and the other three who now face life in prison i don't have slaveholders i got a government. government that will sell of me off a political game. and this is a god damn shame it's a sad was said to be a goddamn thing to date. r.t. new york. in the us immigrants and minorities could face even greater pressure than they do now because dark forces are at work within the system and growing stronger by the day or so says american professor historian norman markowitz his full interview with r.t.d. is coming up in around twenty minutes time but here's some of what he has to say. today in the united states they are dangerous and sinister reactionary forces who.

are unlike european countries where these forces are organized in groups like the national front and. in france and here these forces have become a significant force in the republican party and the dangers of these elements. becoming a major power in the u.s. government and what they would do to immigrants to minorities to workers. what they would do in terms of. at the very least creating a deadlock with the obama administration. the possibilities are catastrophic potentially. internet users a cross the globe can now breathe a slight sigh of relief after an investigation busted the man thought to be the world's biggest spammer you've got a good stuff is now on the run after becoming the first ever spammer in russia to

be criminally accused is blamed for a fifth of the world's junk e-mails tom barton has more. you might not have noticed but there have been less spam messages churning around the internet every day in the past few weeks in fact fifty billion less spammers are a source for hard to find and how vast networks acquire is controlled computers to pass on emails but it seems that once you do start looking in the right place the results can be fast dramatic officials say the recent fall in spam emails is because the world's most prolific spammer has done a runner although no pictures of him are available bigger goose of is suspected of flooding the web with bogus marketing. according to the law he might get as much as five years in prison for this kind of crime we can't tell at this point how much money he has an easy counts he's considered the biggest spammer based on his grabbing knees and the number of messages he was sending. goose effused the web

site spam it dot com and glove med dot com which supposedly paid spammers to promote fake versions of prescription drugs often quite new blee anyone who responded to the mails will be paying to further the scam rated as the internet's largest such operation but with the russian police investigation closing in on who serve he still to fled the country searches of the seven removable hard drives for flash cards and three laptops found in his moscow apartment may bring charges related to his online empire which reportedly made him move a million dollars both to serve and his lawyer have denied he promotes spam but now that he's gone the amount of prescription drug related junk mail has dropped significantly amounting to a fifth less daily spam traffic worldwide spam itself of the big problem for everyone so from this point of view yet it does a pretty dangerous and currently the no it is the. number of especially the

pharmaceutical spare computer security companies however being cautious warning that spam volumes could quickly spring back to their previously high levels tom watson r.t. r now let's return to one of our top stories now and the issue of the e.u. member states suffering under a financial crisis let's talk to british m.e.p. and euro skeptic gerard bath and good to see you so tell me is the situation the end of the european superstate dream do you think perhaps brussels bit off more than it could chew. oh no i think this is a is an inevitable step on the way to increasing economic and political union which is what the european union is all about and i think this this current move to create economic and financial governance of europe is inevitable from the european union's point of view it just happens so happens that the financial crisis actually gives an excuse to actually try and speed the process up and make it happen but i took so long to agree to the lisbon treaty in the first place is another germany

and france want to change it surely no one ever thought that all e.u. members would do equally well financially. i think what this is about is whether there's going to be a new treaty or and therefore inevitably a referendum in the u.k. on a new treaty and i think that what they'll try to do is to force through these new rules under existing competencies and transfers of power under the lisbon treaty and what the speculation is in the british press and i would tend to go along with it is that david cameron will try to do some kind of deal so he gets a bit of a reduction in the u.k. budget hike for the you so he can trumpet that as a great victory while this whole stuff goes through he'll say we won't be affected by it but because we're not in the euro but that won't apply because mr run poyan his report said that the these new conditions should apply to europe and you're a member so i think inevitably in the lot made to longer term they will apply to all european states whether they're in the euro or not and of course what he's

proposing for example is that there should be penalties for countries that have a larger deficit than they're supposed to happen and they could impose fines on them so britain could well find itself in that position in the future are now let's turn our attention to the issue of penalties and that of france and germany sarkozy and merkel want to deprive the weaker countries are voting rights and we're talking about penalties here could this just be the beginning or we're going to see countries thrown out of the e.u. in the future how bad could it get you know i don't know you're going to. frights fine country thrown out the because the one thing the e.u. wants to do is to keep on expanding it certainly doesn't want to contract but yes that is mooted in the proposals that they could take away britain's sorry take away countries voting rights if they infringed these financial regulations and requirements and i think this is where it could affect the u.k. because the u.k. is a very large budget deficit and we could well find ourselves that we won't be affected by this and then find that under the rules that we actually have our voting rights

removed even though we're not a member of the euro because we infringe the requirements on budgetary deficit so cameron should give us a referendum you obviously won't because it's the last thing on earth that he wants because he knows that he would there would be a no vote in the u.k. so we'll see another typical tory weasel out of this situation whereby as i said earlier he'll try to claim some fantastic victory like john major did with the treaty on european union while at the same time leading us deeper into a european political and economic union and then the former rash that we're in minnesota i'm running out of time now but just if you take a step back tell me this quickly how is the health of the. how is what's right encourage the health of the european union. well i mean economically it's in a terrible state because of the european single currency greece portugal spain all these countries their economies are going down the tubes because they're fixed into the european single currency and what they really need is floating exchange rates

but from a political point of view the e.u. the opinion is powerful than ever it's you know under the lisbon treaty vast more areas of power were given to the so from its own political point of view it's doing very well it's practically eighty odd percent of new laws now come out of the european union not domestic parliaments so from their point of view it's all fine and their problem is always that there isn't enough european union not that there's too much of it but they don't have enough power so they see every crisis as an excuse for demanding more power to solve the problems that they created in the first place or a general. batton a member of the european parliament thank you. you're welcome. well let's have a brief look at now at other stories making headlines around the world this hour and more than three hundred forty people have been confirmed dead following a tsunami in indonesia thousands of people have attended funeral ceremonies for the victims already over four hundred people are still missing and are feared to have been swept away by the giant wave nevertheless rescue teams are still hoping to

find survivors after reaching the worst hit areas a failure of a tsunami warning system is being blamed for the scale of fatalities. un chief ban ki moon's issued an ultimatum to me in mars' military government while visiting neighboring cambodia he said must release political prisoners or risk november's general election not to be recognized the ballot will be the country's first since one nine hundred ninety when unsung to achieve one that pro-democracy leader has been under house arrest since then and me and maurice self has been under military rule since one thousand nine hundred sixty two. in a russia's far east has been buried in ash after a volcano on the peninsula erupted schools and offices had to be closed and there was little signs of life first several hours thousands of people were forced to stay at home or urged to wear respiratory masks if outside crowds of stretched

thousands of kilometers across the peninsula your say they're likely to remain for another few days. britain's a drastic budget cuts announced last week are already making their impact felt universities around the country are having to make do with less and as artie's laura met found out top academics are starting to look at broad for better funded research positions. fifty of dreaming spires and academic excellence but not the long. according to some if the government refuses to support it professor brian foster loves oxford he's a particle physicist head of one of the leading research departments in the world but he's also a reluctant participant in a brain drain as scientists abandon the u.k. for better funding abroad everything about oxford is fantastic except that the funding we're getting to do our research from the government you know perpetually

going down becomes a point when you can no longer even with the best people do what you need to do so professor foster's off to hamburg where the government will give him a million euros a year for research into whatever he likes plus a generous salary that's a lot of money he says roughly half what he gets in oxford to run his entire department with thirty academic staff and all that entails for now britain has one of the best research reputations in the world held by prestigious universities like oxford but some academics believe that ranking could be undone within five years if funding is withdrawn and this is a time when other countries like singapore france and germany are increasing their budgets scientific research got off relatively lightly in the government's recent spending cuts it will see only nine percent of its money disappear due to inflation in the next four years instead of the feared twenty five percent hold coalition

government has recognized the importance of science and research for the future of british economy so even in these tough times when we have to save money we are protecting the science and research project in cash terms it's going to be stable for the next four years but it may be too little too late the u.k. has international agreements with institutes like cern in switzerland and it's already finding it difficult to meet its obligations in the past three years it's withdraw. from several such agreements since the time i've been here the amount of funding that we received in oxford which is not one of the world's leading universities and is one of the world's leading particle physics groups has dropped by approximately a factor of two for the size of my department is about one half of that in terms of support staff technicians engineers but it was when i arrived dreaming spires they may be but if the government continues to cut funding academics say the only thing

they'll be trimming of is former glory nor am it artie oxford. time now for the business news with staff. hello and welcome to the business bulletin a troika dialog has been in talks with both renner and nissen about the possibility of selling its stake in russian carmaker after bouts troika rhino and state holding russian technologies each twenty five percent of active us c o carlos gong spoke exclusively to business r.t. at the world economic forum for the middle east and north africa on whether the stakes here explained the french and japanese firms position. but we have a desire to buy troika dialog share and after advise and we are in negotiations however we have not come to any decision yet we are not in a hurry and have plenty of time however both renault. are interested in buying

troika dialog share the tender for the tribes took off oil field appears to have broken down as all of the betters except one have been rejected on technical grounds the last ago was so good enough to guess which failed to pay its deposit on time with only bashing left still left there's been speculation that tender may have to be reset alexei coke and from explains the government is not obliged to do so. the simple solution is to go on with three reading with just one brutal left of the rules of the auction which is not technically an option which is more of a bidding process. so these rules don't really require the government to council the process if only one bidder is left the government may councillors but of my. just leave it as it is and proceed with with the same goal. which is motion of. let's take a quick look at how the acting markets are doing european stocks are higher in

london the footsie is trading about half a percent in the black the south shares of royal dutch shell have gained more than one percent on the well received earnings reports from the oil giant telecom and metro are among the top game is on the dax the south. and the russian markets are also trading high on thursday here in moscow boosted by energy stocks that's one is the top gain on the my sex but banks are also gaining as you call it down sorry lou call is down a quarter percent this hour. greece may have a greater budget deficit for two thousand and ten than the eight point one percent agreed as part of a rescue package from the i.m.f. and the e.u. the new york times reports it may reach eight point nine percent of the country's g.d.p. investors fear that greece will be unable to close the gap week ten year bond yields have jumped to one percent on the names. and staying with the e.u. the european commission plans to launch legal proceedings against its own member states that pay over flight fees to russia the move is

a roundabout measure by the commission to eliminate billions of dollars in fees that russia charges for european airlines to fly over siberia germany france finland and austria will be the first to face proceedings but the other twenty three member states are also under investigation the commission says the deals with russia break rules that require all e.u. citizens and companies to be treated equally. russia's state kerry era flop has entered into a sponsorship agreement with n.b.a. team the new jersey nets and by russian billionaire profit off this is the first time air flight to supported a professional sports team in the u.s. has just been agreed for two years but team representatives hope it will be extended this is the second sponsor contract team has signed with a russian company that agreed to a five year alliance with still vodka earlier this month. about one fifth of russian insurance companies are facing bankruptcy the insurance watchdog said out

of seven hundred firms up to two hundred fifty are in financial difficulties but some major market players say the industry is in need of some rationalization. those are not a very real. business or leave the market they provided the market for her also through the call for all the market. i believe probably exceeds five per some saw a real cost of mars the will nor the wrongly be affected by this cooling of the market. b.p. could invest up to two billion dollars in a shell gas project in ukraine's don't yet the russian british oil company says it could put in fifty million dollars in the first stage which involves drilling a six test wells but b.p. warns the investment will only be possible once a memorandum has been signed with the ukrainian government. russia's biggest dairy producer venable down has bought back eighteen percent of its own shares from done on for four hundred seventy million dollars the deal marks the end of the french

food companies involvement with pinball dan which started eight years ago the transaction was able to proceed after the government approved the merger of russia's donald's milk production with ukrainian you know. and that's what the business is for this hour but of course you can always find more stories if you log on to our website at r.t. dot com slash business.

dear mom i'm sorry that i. to do this i've been in so much pain in the past year that i can't take it anymore the stomach and chest pains of me getting worse and no doctor has been able to help me please know that i'll finally be at peace and with no more pain i wish i could have had a life with it was a bit always pictured her being my wife and mother to my kids i love you all see you all in heaven when your time comes i'm going to meet jesus christ. thousands of u.s. troops in iraq received one of these drugs a drug called lariam and it may have prevented many soldiers from getting sick the question tonight is whether or not soldiers were adequately warned about its rare side effects serious life changing side effects. hungry for the full story we've got it first hand the biggest issues get

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the hour here in moscow you are with on the top stories now a fresh wave of strikes engulfs france but the majority are fast becoming tired of the costly disruption particularly after retirement reform law has got parliament's approval stamp anyway . a new arrest in an f.b.i. string fuels fears of homegrown terrorism in the u.s. and criticism of the agency's entrapment tactics are catching the wrong people. and sending too much junk e-mail might put one man in jail russia's investigation into one of the world's biggest spammers sends him on the run and slashers circulation of e-mail ads by one fifth. of all next two years on

a stock you're going to talk to professor and historian norman walker will find out how americans are dealing with the current economic downturn stay with us. sitting down with professor and historian norman markowitz sir thank you very much for joining us today you are welcome i'd like to be i'd like to kick start our conversation by drawing parallels and really. comparing the situation that is going on in europe right now and in the united states in europe and here we have a lot of people that are very disappointed with the consequences of economic crises that took place and in europe we're seeing dozens of cities filled with people rallying really disappointed expressing their outrage in the united states silence why is that why i wouldn't say they're silent at all. the.