the. treat. president. more than two hundred million dollars worth of. russian. voted in brazil's first female president.

and recapping the top stories and headlines of this past week. president medvedev becomes the first russian leader to visit one of the country's most far flung outposts the. remote far eastern archipelago lies thousands of kilometers from moscow but it's just a short hop from japan and for decades it has been a bone of contention between russia and japan. it's a leftover from the second world war old soviet tanks rusting on the shore with their barrels pointed towards your pan the cornish island together with three other pacific islands was thinking over it by the soviet union sixty five years ago but the tussle to define its national identity still goes on. this cross appeared here a few years ago soon after the russian orthodox church opened its parish on the

island of see katon to decades of thing its population the window on it is now in the midst of a baby it will. have the highest birth rates in the interests of holding region where a lot of young people votes of servicemen. their living standards are quite decent nowadays there are many kids here and parents bring them to be baptized it's wonderful to have children on the island building the church is part of the russian government's effort to raise the living standards of the korean island beach here means reinforcing national identity. all but the band and in the nine hundred ninety s. they are and saw a large influx of japanese charities and officials trying to persuade the locals that they might be much better off if the audience were under japanese administration because you know if we get the owners bark we won't move the russians who live there we know how painful it is then you look for them citizenship. the dispute over the korean islands known as northern territories in

japan always had a third party to it it was the united states that encouraged the soviet union to take them over in nineteen forty five and it was also washington that later still japan's territorial claims but now many japanese see both russia and america as occupying forces you knew of the japan has two issues one is a territorial claim to russia and the other is to get rid of american military bases on japanese turn tree under international law the real island unequivocally belongs to russia but due to geographic and economic reasons it's residents of palm of bricklin get to japan than to the mainland. and while russia may be in their hearts japan is still vying for their minds and it could you mortar is teaching japanese at a she could turn school has so respected by the japanese government i was is a very popular when you come to the school the children are already waiting for

amanda's people who i see there are many people who came here last year i'm happy here sometimes it seems to me that i am with my family again and here class seventh graders study alongside their parents who hope to get a job in japan life at the career law lands may have proved in recent years but not quite so to stop eyeing the horizon according to a two thousand and nine nationwide poll about ninety percent of russians would strongly object to handing the krill audience over to japan but the overwhelming majority of the respondents have never visited this territory and are very unlikely to do so in the future the audience may be an integral part of prussia on the map but they cannot make clear and logistical way there is still very much a foreign land some r.c. in russia's far east. and the tribute to the current ireland comes on the heels of a visit to vietnam and

a summit of southeast asian countries and annoy the multibillion dollar deals were signed and russia agreed to build the country's first nuclear power plant dmitri medvedev also stressed the need to help vietnam develop as a powerful and modern state the two sides signed additional agreements on construction of a hydro power station and cooperation in the oil sector moscow seeks to strengthen already well established ties with the former soviet ally. the first ever joint us russian anti drugs operation in war torn afghanistan has been hailed a success special forces knocked out for drug labs on the afghan border with pakistan and confiscated a ton of heroin worth hundreds of millions of dollars. afghan president hamid karzai condemned the operation claiming it violated the country's sovereignty but russian officials say karzai statement is confusing as the raid was and led by the afghan interior ministry artie's a cut to the neglect of a reports that for some moscow's part in the u.s.

led mission came as a complete shock. if the order this one died of so did this one group and this one group or this one died too while this one lost his leg and he got a mush is showing his cormorants killed in the soviet war in afghanistan two decades ago only four out of the fourteen in this picture made it out alive andrey was a commander over mine disposal unit in kandahar in two years his school board lost thirty five people dozens of others lost limbs a third of all mines used against soviet soldiers were american made most of the us were enemy which supplied the mujahideen with the quitman weapons medicine it was american street in asylums which helped shoot down our planes. two decades after the soviet army is x. it and really was taken aback to find out that russia was back in afghanistan again

this time with its former anomie. these are the pictures he saw on the news reports for drug producing labs on the border between afghanistan and pakistan were destroyed in a special rate and a ton of heroin worth over two hundred million dollars. after we gave information to our u.s. and afghan partners the three sides planned the operation for three months we used about seventy special forces units three landing helicopters and six supporting ones the whole operation lasted less than four hours. but many experts say washington needed a push before it started to act it's unbelievable to me that it took russia to tell the united states where the drug labs were when we have a hundred thousand troops we've spent eighty billion dollars on intelligence we

have one hundred thousand additional contractors so we had to know were crawling all over every inch of that country but it took a year or two in fact to out the united states to force us and to embarrass us to cooperate with you to stop the drug trade which is in the interest of the entire world including the united states with more of the truck passing through its forges than any other country russia is convinced that the skin which must be confronted at its source however those who know first hand what fighting in afghanistan is like learning against being drawn into a full scale war because. of course there should be special operations carried out against drug cartels but again special units should be in charge of this nineteen year old boys should not be recruited for the job every single operation should be planned in detail starting from the intelligence sections of the operation itself and the wrapping up of the operation it's easy to get trapped in this war and hard

to get out of it as long as islamist militancy and drunks emanating from of ghana's stand are seen as a threat to its national security rush is likely to remain a force in the region even as the u.s. works out an x. it strategy. faced with bigger war is less reliable the region the united states and nato appear willing to accept growing russian influence at this point they need all the help they can get at the gathering florrie opportunity in afghanistan is a sign. and this time around how does the us cold war and of the. day. it's in about trouble are. coming up scouting for bombs. two soldiers await sentencing for using a palestinian child as a human shield and forcing him to check for explosives while his family. in brazil the incoming leader takes up the baton to close the gap between rich and

poor that's coming up in a few minutes. russia and georgia could be entangled in a spying scandal with reports to detain twenty people on friday for espionage an anonymous source. said those detained are all georgian and are suspected of being part of a spy network and gathering information from moscow the georgian interior ministry has so far refused to comment and says it won't do so until next week russia's foreign minister sergei lavrov said moscow is not aware of any details as there are no diplomatic relations between the two countries experts. shows how authoritarian the country is. 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 ideas to hear

a police spokesman say. i can neither confirm nor deny that arrests have taken place secret arrests are the hallmark of a police state there is a new law before the georgian parliament which is called the freedom charter and it's something akin to the patriot act in the united states it will drastically increase the powers of the security service past its first reading in the in the georgian part parliament recently and it is possible that someone is trying to whip up. a social mood to support that. one of the country's opposition leaders says tbilisi uses the slightest link to russia as an excuse to prosecute these kind of charges russian links russian ties russian is spirit which is always used in georgia's political propaganda i just know anything about

these people but i know that it's quite enough to be some holding three zero. knowing your spinach may be there but if you are business you rush. the family in russia and you are with the judge it's quite enough for georgia law enforcement off shows to make criminal you scared. iraqi lawmakers are demanding very government investigate allegations of war crimes the police comes a week after the online whistleblower wiki leaks released four hundred thousand to secret u.s. documents on the war in iraq the files detail american forces handing prisoners over to iraqi interrogators despite overwhelming evidence of torture the data also shed light on fifteen thousand killings over the past six years which had been previously unaccounted for iraq's prime minister nouri al maliki says the revelations are aimed at undermining the country's political stability but that's an overreaction and unlikely motivation for the leak according to one leading

expert on the country. i think that would be very doubtful to imagine that the wiki leaks and the soldiers responsible for giving these documents to them had the undermining of the iraqi government in mind when they chose this date and let's bear in mind that there hasn't been an iraqi government for seven months so it's not likely if there's many dates to choose from when it comes to releasing this in this sense this is u.s. military documents really unlike any previous media story or report from iraq this is words from their own mouth which makes it very difficult for them to deny it and they're not really doing that if you actually listen to what the pentagon and state department spokesman is saying what they talk about is the critical nature of the nature of the leaks and whether u.s. soldiers or informers or people working with the u.s. will be put in danger by them talking about the method of the message rather than the message itself now the message itself paints a very different picture of the iraq the americans have been telling us about the last seven years some fifteen thousand iraqi deaths have not been accounted for so

the history of iraq is being written by these documents which are as i say from the americans miles themselves. this week a top aide to saddam hussein was given the death sentence on charges of murder and crimes against humanity but the verdict has drawn international condemnation british m.p. jeremy corbin says referring to the old regime was a ruse to deflect attention from the revelations by wiki leaks the reason they're doing it now correct on this is to divert attention away from the wiki leaks issue because wiki leaks if exposed to torture that has gone on systematically and i think the death sentence pronounced for me is to divert attention policy absolutely no point in this form of victor's justice being carried out will be nothing to reconcile people in iraq i think what we need is a real investigation into the behavior of the occupying forces and the iraqi army and its forces ever since the invasion of two thousand and three cancel the death

penalty abandon the whole idea of the death penalty and instead look at the issues of human rights and justice and look at the behavior of forces ever since the invasion took place i do not see the value in executing terakhir sees any more than executing anybody else it will not bring the dead back it will further brutalise what is already a very brutal situation the death penalty does not work the seventy four year old was sentenced to death by hanging on tuesday he served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister to iraq's former president saddam hussein he was convicted of killing members of political parties opposed to saddam's regime although he denied any personal involvement. coming up later this hour the streets of moscow. vampires devils and pumpkins as it celebrates halloween and find out more right here on our team. brazil chooses dilma rousseff to be the

country's first female president she will succeed the highly popular outgoing president lula da silva rousseff from the ruling party has campaigned on the success of silva who is credited with lifting millions of people out of poverty lauren least her reports from sao paulo where the gap between rich and poor continues to shrink. in brazil there are those who live tucked away behind barbed wire walls. and those who live behind shanty cinderblock ones but in this developing nation and one of the fastest growing major economies in the world where they are pioneering deep water oil research and ethanol production for example signs of human development to marked by a before and after before outgoing president lula da silva took office he forgot the people didn't recognize the poor today the rich are en route because the poor

as poor as they were before people have the opportunity to think he's increased the job market civil construction for me and for others he's giving jobs to people who didn't have it after lula's eight years in office is a brazil where jobs but really social policies are bringing inequality down were income from the poorest in the country has grown eight percent a year while the richest has grown only one and a half brazil is part of a trend in latin america of countries that are electing leftist governments that are essentially redistributing wealth to the poor in neighborhoods like this in brazil you see that most evidently and their program called both a familiar. janina and her two daughters live together in one shared room about one hundred square feet in this vella are slum she gets by on a few odd jobs and she gets the equivalent of twenty four u.s. dollars a month from the government through both the familia and helps with food or sometimes i use it to pay a bill in return for both of familia cash to naina has to show the government that

her daughter samantha gets her vaccinations and is in school and intends at least eighty five percent of the time samantha's life is one of learning an opportunity where once in a slum like this reaching her age meant dropping out of school to work and help the family this is what i want them to said he a lot so in the future they'll have a profession and they're not going to suffer like their parents suffered so i want them to stay. about. how at the same time the parents are suffering less balsa familia is responsible for a sixth of the reduction in poverty in brazil while it cost just a half percent of g.d.p. basically it's considered very cheap and efficient it's a model being transferred globally from mexico to new york city and we're here for the first time arguably in its history the walls separating rich from poor don't look so set in stone. or in mr r t so paulo brazil. the

european union is facing a shake up after leaders endorsed plans to enforce tougher budget rules on friday the deal which amends the controversial lisbon treaty was spearheaded by germany and france alterations include reigning in the excess of overspending nations it's all an attempt to shore up the euro after it came close to collapse last year the new system will be in place by twenty thirteen but m.e.p. gerard says the single currency should be scrapped to save europe's economy. their problem is always that there isn't enough european union not with us 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've created in the first place economically in a terrible state because of the european single currency greece portugal spain all these countries their economies are going down the tubes the economies of countries like germany and france and the u.k. it would be a lot more healthy if they weren't burdened with regulation and in the case of

france and germany with membership of the euro and of course they have to bear the tremendous burden of countries like greece and of course spain and italy and portugal what we need is to get rid of the european single currency get rid of all the over regulation on business and allow economies to actually revive and become more healthy under proper free market economic conditions the wide things that go on at the moment is they can ever inevitably only get worse. mass opposition in france against the raising of the retirement age has weakened after president sarkozy's reform was voted into law unions and said they would end a strikes at nationwide oil refineries and ports where protests have been taking place for several weeks the law has been successfully passed by the parliament the country's petrol stations should resume normal service by the middle of next week but experts say it's not only the protesters who suffered from the strike but the country's economy as a whole. certainly the of the protests and strikes that had caused some economic

damage or there was probably quite hard work next act exact figure on this but one ought to bear in mind i think that the the people are actually striking they're not going to actually pay these these costs for the most part people are actually on strike from the public sector apart from the fact that they won't be paid for the days they were on strike they won't be affected by the negative economic fallout of the of these kinds of protests so that's the reason why in fact they are able to go on actually i think for so long two israeli soldiers are awaiting sentencing for forcing a nine year old palestinian boy to check for bombs during the invasion of gaza almost two years ago activists however claim that the conviction bypasses those who allow the rampant practice to continue policy or met the boy who was thrust into the line of fire. measured robber was just nine years old when soldiers grabbed him and made him check for bombs all i was just sitting here is really soldiers took me

over there there were two bags and he told me to open them but i didn't know how to do it. he was terrified of the abandoned briefcases which the soldiers thought could be booby trapped and he's frightened family forced to watch whatever civilian one of them put his hand on my son shoulder and made him go into the toilet cubicle i heard a few shots fired soon afterwards i felt like i was dying my little daughter he was with me kept saying they killed him. and yet it was five years ago that israel supreme court made the law crystal clear human shielding is an absolute absolute no no endangered civilians deliberately is absolutely prohibited but the reality on the ground is still very different you had to show his army years in the palestinian territories he knew the supreme court's ruling but watched his sergeant ignore it so did he and the soldiers serving under him so what we did is we just

bumped into a house nearby house we grabbed one of the kids we took him with us put him in the front of the patrol you just walk your patrol in the village with your kid and then no one for a start one hundred sixty complaints were filed about the way soldiers behaved in the gaza war two years ago but only forty seven criminal investigations were ever carried out most of them have since been closed but i think that to ask a combat soldier and serve in the occupied territories or use power. as human shield is like to ask you to drink coffee in the morning but israeli lawyers say convicting the two soldiers is to the i.d.f. scribus there are always soldiers who step out of line but that's that's part and parcel unfortunately of running a military operation to say that as a general phenomenon as i.d.f. soldiers you use human shields that's absurd for much of the family they take comfort they find to be getting just. just even if it's only against ranking soldiers and not the commanders they accuse of allowing human shields behind the

back. jerusalem and now into some other world news this hour more than thirty people have been killed in a police operation to release hostages from a catholic church in baghdad militants took over the church after attacking the country's stock exchange where they killed two guards they were reportedly demanding al qaeda members held in iraq and egypt to be set free. an explosion and the stumbles main square has left at least thirty two people injured police say a suicide bomber was targeting police officials the blast occurred near a place where riot police were present in case of protests after this blast more detonated explosives were found and defused. authorities in yemen have released a female student suspected of sending explosives to u.s. synagogues earlier qatar airways said one of the two parcels posted from yemen last week had been transported onto planes before being seized in dubai bombs were found

on u.s. bound planes in the u.k. and to dubai u.s. officials are now going to yemen to check security practices and holes in the system. indonesia's mount merapi volcano is once again spewing ash down its slopes the disturbance caught many people that had returned home to collect possessions following along with activity no casualties have been reported thirty eight people died last week when the volcano began to erupt and at least fifty three thousand have been moved to safety. which is and that zombies have been taking center stage in moscow as people get set for the freakiest holiday of the year halloween this weekend clubs have been full with a crowd that is swapped its gladrags for real rags and wigs artie's dumbarton join the fun and has all the details. it's halloween time for trick or treating and dressing up but here in moscow really an occasion for just to go to all of the

clubs that we see not just scary costumes but a whole variety of weird and wonderful to see some to see system policeman to see whole souls of professionals but also it's a time to party with me is out of the sky he's a d.j. . england's b.s. name from the last holloway's father was a new impression the same day. the wings maybe. they make a little. bit the end of the city it was the week. seems to become the all over the world to me i spent a lot of time in venezuela and really big on how we will say to them in every way everything seems a chance to be. scaring wants to go to sleep in different time zones to see sort of

time. well no disrespect but you look like scary you may. be going beyond the thing. thank you down in the sky oh my i didn't know i don't say scary. but anyway. awesome very good night scary funny. movie. and certainly glad to see that tom is in his element there now for more on how moscow celebrates the scariest of day. day of the year head to our tea dot com you can also check out the latest news and analysis here's some of what's online for you right now. americans put their trust in comedians above politicians tyrus of jon stewart is maybe the most influential man in the u.s. . and in moscow authorities it sounded the alarm as estimates suggest the city is probably with some figures and even claim to rodents outnumber people in the

russian capital more t.v. dot com. now in a couple of minutes why america is throwing good money after bad by miscalculating the real threat of terror i'll be back with the recap of our top story shortly.

if. russia would be so much brighter if you knew about someone from funds to crash and.