but tensions showing and economically developing economies and countries he hopes that that relation between those countries and russia will only grow and prosper if the russian president spoke at length about the importance of the asia pacific region and russia's cooperation with them. the successful completion of the new asia pacific is in the country's interest in. a constructive life i would like to note that russia is a key to this kind of cooperation especially the creation of alliances of course many issues were addressed during the a.c.n. working sessions of for example the issues of natural disasters which of course this region is specifically prone to also various other issues like economic cooperation global security dealing with the aftermath of the global financial crisis all those issues were discussed too much satisfaction it seems from the region is a very attractive one primarily because it has a lot of growing economically growing countries china of course is one of russia's

main partners and is of course a part of bric brazil russia india and china says some experts say one of the strongest emerging economies in the world today in those boys to deal with the effects of the global financial crisis a lot better than the so-called economic giants like the united kingdom the united states and the european union support also its relations with vietnam go back a very long way and they do seem to be very strong ties as russian president dmitry medvedev said in an article published in the local newspaper russia stood by the get means as they fought for their independence and will continue to stand by them as they emerge a strong economy into the twenty first century into the world arena as my calling ready it's in the ocean and found out the economic ties between moscow and how annoyed are growing stronger by the day. in the twenty first century it might look like a throwback to cool. but it's not the case vietnam is more noisy its economy

growing at an increasing rate and it's looking to his old allies to help spur the loan. russian money big companies are flowing to vietnam bringing millions of dollars of investment which is a good sign of healthy relations. but the biggest venture is still the had to build vietnam's first atomic power plant it took several years for georgeson environmentalists to find the right place haint vietnam to build the country's first nuclear plant they chose the central province one chon haiti's locals call it the land of sand and so on. there is no rain here now it's raining but it's for the first time in the last few months and as a result few people living here and that makes it an almost ideal place for future project and plans include a power stations within the next two decades we think the first unit we launched by

twenty twenty provide us with cheap and safe energy to meet up to fifteen percent of the rise on demand. people welcome the ideal the region which is among the poorest in the country becoming vietnam's energy powerhouse communities here have traditionally been dependent on fishing and dries growing but now they sense a brighter future. infrastructure and training i think one day my children go to work. for this they work hard we've got a good education yeah and you can smart you action on. that one long reach over the red river north of annoying vietnam the country's longest for years it symbolized a long friendship between vietnam and its strongest ally the communist brother u.s.s.r. its vietnamese name could be translated as rising dragon and it seems the drug got its tail flying high twenty years on after the collapse of the soviet union russia

is among vietnam's closest partners riven ocean r.t. vietnam. and on the sidelines of that summit of moscow and washington vowed to continue talks on the u.s. missile defense shield program and a new european security plan russian foreign minister sergey lavrov met with the u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton but you also praised the successful joint anti-drug operation in afghanistan and agreed to go on the fight against the narcotics threat on thursday russian and u.s. special forces conducted their first ever joint operation against drug producers in the region they destroyed four labs and seized almost a ton of heroin. but the operation hasn't met with everyone's approval afghan president hamid karzai has criticized russia for its part in the operation over what he called a violation of his country's sovereignty he says afghanistan wants friendly ties with moscow but it has to be based on mutual respect and on

still ahead for you this hour. russia's drink driving ban is getting tough as it aims to cut the country's shocking record of road deaths but some say it's going too far. and our team gets into the spirit of things to find out how russians celebrate halloween. georgia and russia might be on the verge of another spy scandal as reports emerge from tbilisi detaining twenty people allegedly spying for moscow and with no official word from tbilisi as of yet observers say it's another sign of a police state. following developments. what we do know about this story is that twenty people all of them georgia nationals have been arrested by georgian authorities no other details have been released in fact georgian authorities say that no information will be available and till the end of next week and they're all

keeping mum about the details refusing to give out any comments whatsoever and fred we are from christian science monitor believes this is something to be this is something to pay special attention to when someone is arrested they're entitled to due process that means they can call a lawyer that family members can be contacted therefore arrests are announced and it never happens i can't tell you how bizarre idea is to hear a police spokesman say. i can neither confirm nor deny that arrests have taken place secret arrests are the hallmarks of a police state and we do have to remember that the political situation in the country which has been in place for the past so a year or so a lot of opposition a lot of opposition leaders and members are finding themselves under increasing pressure from the authorities a lot of them are essentially being oppressed and if we listen to one of the opposition leaders. we will find out that in fact you do not have to be a russian spy in order to be suspected by georgian authorities of spying for russia

just kind of charges russian links russian ties russian experience which is always used in georgia's police. i just know not these people but i know that it's quite you know to be some whole reason russia knowing years peonage may be there but if. business you russia. family in. georgia is great enough for george foresman shows to make three million. in fact a special report published by the u.s. state department in march says there has been an increase in assaults kidnappings and arrests all of them politically motivated in georgia now many experts believe that this. could be yet another political stunt by president bush really experts in russia believe that georgian authorities are just looking at their american partners and learning from them of course many of us remember the spy scandal which

grows in the united states over the past summer with many juicy details and interesting personas such as on the chapman rising in the astronaut then of course the some say that we could expect something similar from this is why scandal as well because of course the expertise of the georgian authorities are simply copycats are simply copycats american politicians now howard that is still or that still remains to be seen because we do have to understand that the situation the political situation offered in relations between georgia and russia has been somewhat complicated to say the least all of that of course culminated if you could say that in the southeast georgia war in two thousand and eight. course we still have to wait and see what exactly happens where the spy scandal in georgia the latest by scandal in georgia is going to go from here yet remains to be seen. you know reporting from the georgian capital. could it

a comedian in america sway people's opinion more than the president the majority of voters on an online survey certainly thinks so so like being jon stewart who hosts a national daily talk show as the most influential man of the year in the u.s. and as honest a reports he's now taking that popularity to the streets. when it's an bots get in the way of political promises were promised during the campaign change you can believe in right it wasn't change you can believe in in eighteen months when the media up there along with fear and anger. are well in the minds of the population are attacked with misinformation there's such a lack of truth on the airwaves were being dumbed down by the news business who are americans left to trust according to a poll conducted by an online men's magazine comedian jon stewart is the most influential man in america after eleven years on the daily show how four million

voters bumped him up to the number one spot and i would be concerned if it was they said larry the cable guy was the must trust a man america so i feel like. one way of earning the trust has been confronting the mainstream media we need help from the media and they're doing us they sacked in the lies being spun by pundits taking over t.v. screens in america but. i know you don't think it's going to look really doing are you how do you learn that board really is doing the right thing there you. know. why do you think it is dangerous well i wonder what the letter would have to say about. the security in the u.s. these days that it's taking the comedian to show that the rock of trust in the

media is what's causing programs ratings to crash i have privately amongst my friends and also an occasional newspapers and television show. mentioned this show as being bad and you made the right choice you are leaving this place you know where you are you the last guy out of a burning building draw on. and you are set up and so comedian jon stewart became the most trusted man in america he calls crap like you sees it and always uses humor humor and simpler reasons to he's just a handsome man he's just a handsome trustworthy fellow but it's far from just appreciating the humor for the first time a sitting president has appeared on stewart's show just a couple of days before the midterm election the democrats this year she had to be running on. please baby one more chance. in the same pool stewart won the number one spot obama didn't even make the top twenty with tens of thousands of americans

if not more it's headed to jon stewart's rally to restore sanity this weekend the fight for truth in media and in politicians is moving almost right into the homes of the political elite and even those stewards and denies being a matter of politics there is this idea out there that comedians do not have a personal political agenda but it has one i can say that we do if the comedian were to push his agenda forward the most trusted man in america would have his followers join him which should be a scary thought things for all those politicians media pundits and the rest of the establishment so far we wait to earn trust with their own people one slice if you're going to r.c. . don't forget our web site is there for you twenty four hours a day. online for you right now monsters. looking for. year. just.

surface where you'll find more than just a. river right through the heart of the city. drivers are launching a campaign against the new drink driving law they claim it's too strict with even harmless drinks like pushing them over the limit but traffic police say the zero tolerance approach. operation in the break the driver is in full swing it's the latest attempt to

combat russia's drink driving problem one of the worst in the world. these offices are equipped with brand new breathalyzers and all those zero tolerance small little ows no alcohol at all and to drive the system. single people we're actually seeing a drop people are deterred by the new laws. indeed the several dozen draws stopped by the police and this night all test authorities say that the combination of tougher legislation and more in terms of policing is having the desired effect not everybody agrees drivers' associations have been up in arms they say statistics show the drink driving has been on the wane in recent years regardless of legislation and they claim the new laws are unworkable and discriminatory drinking a small mind of alcohol has no impact on driving licenses being confiscated from those whose ability to drive isn't impaired. it's the same question current through

yesterday gave do than is asking so sergey tries a government sanctioned breathalyzer. after a cup of tea he takes the test again now he's over the legal limit. i got one of these government sanctioned breathalyzer in my birthday last year when the legislation was introduced i tried it and was surprised to discover alcohol content can be triggered not just by drinking small amounts of beer by bread spicy food in milk and now i'm starting a campaign against islam because i am not a criminal with the sort of gay is still driving and hoping his corner experiences won't cost him his license while the police hope that the number of drink driving away from their falls from the two thousand recorded last year whatever it takes you get over on the. moscow. time now for a brief update on some international headlines authorities in yemen have arrested a woman suspected of sending explosive parcels to u.s. synagogues bombs were found on u.s. bound planes in the u.k.

and dubai officials in yemen have also seized over twenty suspicious parcels fingers are pointing towards the country's active branch last year and attempted to blow up a detroit bound airliner. and in north korea are holding reunions for families separated by the korean war sixty years ago hundreds of south koreans have traveled to to a mountain resort in the north for three days to meet their relatives on wednesday the north koreans will begin similar reunions with their southern relatives the last time such meetings were held was a year ago there are no mail telephone or e-mail exchanges between citizens across the border. at least twenty six people have been killed and dozens injured in a suicide bombing in iraq the bomber blew himself up inside a busy cafe on friday night in a town north of baghdad this comes during a period of relative calm in iraq the last major attack came on september

nineteenth when twin bombings in baghdad killed at least thirty one. is all about scaring away the ghosts and ghouls but as artie's tom barton found out in moscow it's mostly about dressing up and having fun. it's halloween time for trick or treating and dressing up but here in moscow and really an occasion for just to go to one of the clubs that we've seen not just scary coasties the whole variety of weird and wonderful god to see pirates to see system policeman to see the whole souls of professionals but also is a time to mossy with me is out i'm sky he's a d.j. . england is b.s. remember the last hole i'll always have it was my new impression it's a bit smelly is the weeds babies above and. people make

a long day at. the end of the city that was not all that we. want to see things become. seems to become popular all over the world to me like i spent a lot of time in venezuela. a really big on how we hold such a man and everybody every since addressing i mean a lot to me being a little scary going to going to sleep sometimes seems to be sort of timeless mind well no disrespect but you look like scary to. me. all right. thank you sky. i didn't know i don't think i may try my last anyway that's why i'm going to cause a very good night and spam real funny. comedy. tom barton or at least i think about was tom barton reporting there now the us overestimates the threat of terrorism and therefore squanders billions of dollars

on military operations abroad so says anti-war activist blogger and author tom engelhardt his interview is coming your way in a few moments coming up right here on r.t. one.

sir thank you for sitting down with us today good to be here i'd like us to start off by taking a look at the extent of the u.s. military presence throughout the world right now it's global i mean that's the first thing you can say the pentagon is a little hard to tell in detail the pentagon usually that mit's to about a year early to about eight hundred military bases or sites from macro to micro but in their count they don't include anything in a war zone and tom dispatch you know we've done some reporting for instance on the afghan war the present afghan war zone where we have upwards of four hundred bases again from tiny combat outposts to a normal basically american towns with boardwalks with fast food joints and whatever that we just built more or less from scratch it's an awful lot it's an imperial presence of a kind i don't think we've ever seen in history and it's particularly strange because the bases traditionally bases. more or less where the

way you kept colonies now it's very interesting that to draw that dividing line between declared war as an undeclared wars which you raise this point in your work often most americans are aware of declared wars with iraq but afghanistan over the last several years what about. the un declared war is how come nobody really talks about that the war's skirmishes whatever you know it's hard to know in this country what people know i mean i mean even the wars the afghan war for instance has disappeared more or less disappeared for years at a time from i think from the media well from public consciousness you know it's hard to say what the u.s. media you could always find something i mean there's something there and that is that is it's not there's ever no coverage but you have to be a news jockey like me you have to be reading the inside pages of the papers the war in the pakistani border line and americans obviously know very little about that i mean we are proud of our drones and so we're caught always between calling it

a covert war and actually. at actually bragging about it and americans are remarkably detached from the wars that being fought are being fought in their names and the various other military positions and so on and so forth on the globe it's one of the things that i focus on as is just the degree to which we are doing things that americans could know about basically don't and i have to ask you do you feel like the media and the military are sort of sleeping in the same bed at this point there's a history with the military of a post vietnam history of trying to put journalists in bed with it when you are embedded with the military there's an element of stockholm syndrome there just has to be with it and you tend to if you're out with american troops in afghanistan you are in the end i mean your life is at stake you are at the end going to a dead a fight with american troops let me ask you this you spent years the ciphering sort of the military's ation of the u.s. foreign policy when when when should that line be drawn between you know reasonable

national defense and really kind of paranoid expansionism is that line ever drawn any more no but basically it basically is no longer drawn and so what you really get is you get american treasure poor into by the multi-billions into you know into into remarkably. strange wars approach i've long been convinced that if osama bin laden you know had a dream for him in a nightmare for us it was to involve us in in inconclusive wars in distant lands that would cost us a fortune there's a kind of intelligence national security bureaucracy that's fed in this country fear and americans are irrationally scared since two thousand and one the number of americans who have been killed by terrorist actions it's above shark attacks but below anything else dangerous in our world and yet the fear level is so remarkably high and everything is justified upon us those lines are drawn and we don't think

seriously about what our national interest is and we're paying for it now you've mentioned money and apparently the pentagon is going to be able to enjoy as much as seven hundred twenty six billion dollars next year or something along those that are just debts and i have to ask you i mean it might seem a sort of a naive question but it has to be asked couldn't this money be put to better use and especially now in this economy from of course you know commanders in afghanistan can walk into a village they have they have a fund so they can find an afghan village elder if they want to do a hearts and minds' sort of thing they can see that the infrastructure is weak that they have canals or filled in or whatever they can just pay money to people to start digging out those canals you can't do that in the united states we're a can't do nation here we can't build anything we just we just decided not to build a tunnel between new jersey and new york city where i live because it was too expensive but we can spend billions building these bases very efficiently and they are extraordinary in a way can do x.

these huge bases in afghanistan or iraq or wherever else i think it's quite startling actually and what about the cost of civilians on the ground civilian lives we have piled up many towers in response to the towers that went down to two thousand trees three we have piled up many towers of. dead they don't have memorials nobody thinks about them i mean except obviously their families in their countries we don't know the numbers and in iraq or afghanistan but they are they are startling numbers not only has the idea of peace go on just go on the idea really of diplomacy in the normal sense as opposed to a militarized kind of diplomacy but the very high to victory at the most basic thing to military culture is gone in one of your latest articles you ask this question how old will you be when the american envoy start state goes down as you often bring up this point of a terror of an internal state of war you know is that essentially america's destiny

and in one war i'm starting out i actually think not this can only go on so long all things of course must end but in the american case you know we cannot simply continue fighting trillion dollars to three whatever it might be trillion dollar wars ad infinitum i this country simply can't afford it and washington thinks that we're in a slow long manageable decline i think this country like the soviet union in an earlier period it's in decline now most this is what americans know asked the question is this country in decline sixty five percent of americans the most recent poll say yes we are in a state of decline americans feel this washington doesn't fully feel this yet.

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song sounds stupid. stunts on t.v. . with us. nuclear. summit noise. for nuclear. another spy scandal on the horizon with reports claiming georgia has rounded up twenty members of a russian spy ring. yet to confirm or deny the report but says it will respond in the coming days. america chooses political satirist jon stewart as the most influential man of the year. politicians but

president obama made the point. of next preparing for a friday. here he's taking you on a tour of haunted moscow looking for creative ways to celebrate halloween in the russian capital. this weekend thousands of people will dress up as witches all ghouls and celebrate halloween when it comes to actually go.