time already jailed former russian tycoon files. to find out how many more years he will have. russia's prime minister. and airline personnel for what he calls unacceptable behavior thousands of stranded passengers in moscow said they were left to fend for themselves. plus the u.s. military budget grows less money flows to welfare benefits some americans are wondering whether they're paying too much to fill the nation's war chest or.

just after one am here in moscow you with r.t. welcome to the program just days before new year now and mikhail khodorkovsky is still waiting to find out how much longer he'll have to spend behind bars the former oil tycoon once russia's richest man still doesn't know what sentence he and his partner platon lebedev will serve after being found guilty of investment. is outside the courthouse with the latest. but new charges suggest more you laundering and embezzlement persecutors are saying that mc rove about his former partner blood on livid if so as much as around thirty billion u.s. dollars worth of oil why are you going to the oil company formally one of the biggest private owned companies in the world in the first trial they were found of tax evasion for which they were sentenced eight years behind bars and right now the prosecutors are insisting on extending that turned out to fourteen years behind

bars and now michael died it was cool explain to you this scheme for which the money laundering was done as according to the prosecutors the court concluded that about of course not only but if blundered carried out a complicated scheme of embezzling oil and money through dealings with three smaller subsidiaries of you can see some other news to gus. and you guns can have to gross all oil extracting companies each was forced into a deal that was highly profitable for them but extremely profitable for you because the result said billion dollars worth of oil still going by what are called skinny legs if through you can see here is how it worked the oil was bought from the companies at a nominal price said by you can see it was then sold at the same level to offshore trading companies secretly owned by that accord skin neighbors if when it was then resold at market price they pocketed the difference six billion dollars was moved offshore through thomson have to learn that of course negative were found guilty of embezzling a total of three hundred fifty million tons of oil worth twenty four billion

dollars this way just rolls over so widely criticised boy the worst calling it a ballet shoes of human rights but the russian foreign ministry has made an official statement statement about this saying that if first such a case were to appear in the united states for example that for such charges a person could be facing up to a life time in jail russian foreign ministry has also said that this is a domestic issue and it's all. all about russia's dish ill system and it has to be resolved within the country without the pressure from the international community on the floor of the third day of the hearing has come to an end and media lou is expected that the hearing of the verdict would be done before the end of this year and again we heard that there were three hundred pages worth of paperwork in the verdict right now we're hearing that it could be as many as eight hundred of them and not even half of them has been voiced yet so it does look like it might take longer than until the end of this year. because the reporting for now rushers the

prime minister has told everyone in charge of moscow's airports on their power supply that they will be working during the holidays it follows a severe disruptions caused by freezing rain several travel hubs across the capital and that severe perfect storm of snow and freezing rain is also paralyzed the city's traffic one point on wednesday one estimate suggested the length of queues equaled over three thousand kilometers more than the distance between moscow and barcelona they're going to go. you would think wildcards would be used to all sorts of extreme weather right now especially when it comes down to winter conditions but this year residents of the russian capital have been in for something of a trial a particularly heavy snowfall has paralyzed traffic all around the city average people today will have to wait to spend about three to four hours let's you know i have to leave home by eight in the morning to make it to work in time i don't have

any other option i think the weather doesn't have much to do with this traffic it's a daily problem you know the feeling moscow is always full of traffic it is a matter whether it's snowing or not there are just too many cars i've been stuck in traffic for five hours so you have to also keep in mind the fact that over the past weekend temperatures have risen significantly and then dropped literally overnight and the entire city was covered with ice sheets of ice on the roads on the sidewalks so there are massive traffic disruptions because all of the conditions on the roads there are very many accidents the ice that has engulfed the russian capital over the weekend has paralyzed not just the traffic on the ground it actually also caused massive disruptions to of most cars major airports. thousands of people stranded for days on end without proper food water. someone that you see everyone responsible for this situation has to be in place celebrating

the new year it was out of power but people continue to arrive at the airport there was no information provided eight thousand people were stranded there what did you do to help people nothing but weather forecasters are saying that this kind of sort of weather but actually take a turn for the worst as there is more ice and more i see rain is expected to fall and mosco in the next couple of days so this actually may not be such a merry holiday season for most guys after all. reporting there now a little bit later we'll tell you how people. stay fit whether it's minus twenty. two. joint exploration to. reach. young. fifty five trillion dollars and counting that's the total u.s.

debt the highest in the world congressman are calling for tougher cuts with social spending already trimmed down but as i. reports the military still getting more and more money. if there is one issue that both sides of the aisle agree on and we need to cut the spending yes we need to cut spending it's cutting spending to reduce the country's budget deficit even top pentagon officials acknowledge it as the country's most potent problem the biggest threat we have to our national security is. the federal government's debt now stands at thirteen point eight trillion dollars and is projected to hit twenty trillion by the end of the coming decade we're not going to cut the defense budget and half. the country's military budget now seven hundred twenty five billion dollars a price tag of epic and historic proportions the largest since world war two. it

includes one hundred fifty nine billion dollars for america's wars in iraq and afghanistan the reality is this is what america does neil collins like robert kagan who urged war with iraq long before nine eleven helps keep this reality alive by equating military might to global leadership and world domination we intervene in grenada nineteen eighty three panama nine hundred eighty nine iraq nine hundred ninety one somalia nine hundred ninety two haiti nine hundred ninety four bosnian one thousand nine hundred five cost of zero nine hundred ninety nine afghanistan two thousand and one in iraq two thousand and three. the united states spends nearly as much on military hardware fixtures and training as all other countries combined we see at a time when there's twenty five to thirty million people who are unemployed or underemployed where forty seven million americans can't go to a doctor when they're sick there's a limitless funds limitless resources for the war budget the military budget is

hardly ever questioned that town that is dominated by its industrial complex. advertisements lined the metro. commercials showcase the latest hardware and politicians cave into the lobbying campaigns and you can see it by the budget figures that the united states is in fact a warfare state it's addicted to militarism it's addictive the war spending and it's addictive the war profits this is where the war profiteers are headquartered tearing over the pentagon this place is known as contractors row and it's from this clear point we see there were evolving door through which employees from the defense contracting enterprise one job to the government and likewise a significant number of officials in the government the pentagon and the cia fly into jobs in the military industrial complex despite this military contractors spend close to thirty five million dollars lobbying congress according to the

congressional research service defense contractors also dish out substantial amounts of money for campaign contributions in election years meanwhile a congressional watchdog group found in two thousand and eight one hundred fifty members of congress had one hundred ninety six million dollars collectively invested in defense contractors and so as lawmakers scream louder too we need to cut spending and federal spending for education health care and social services has been reduced cutting the military budget which makes up over twenty percent of the federal budget is not on washington's agenda jan hottest r. t. washington d.c. . r.t. is coming to you live from the russian capital where it's now just ten minutes past the hour let's let's get to some other world news in brief right now five suspected islamic militants have been arrested for allegedly planning a gun attack in denmark police say the target was the copenhagen offices of the

danish newspaper that printed the controversial mohammed cartoons five years ago officials described the most serious terror plot ever attempted in the country the publication of the cartoon swan which depicted the prophet mohammed with a bomb shaped turban caused a mass protests among muslims all across the world. the president of south korea says resuming six party peace talks with the north is the only way to resolve nuclear tensions on the korean peninsula followed north shelling one of the south's island last month killing four people said the attack was a response to seoul's recent military exercises being called a quote path of military provocation by the north it's considered the worst spy intentions on the peninsula since the war sixty years ago. severe flooding continues to wreak havoc across northeast australia with water levels expected to rise even higher in the coming days rain swollen rivers have burst their banks

destroying crops bridges and hundreds of homes over a thousand people have been evacuated from the worst affected areas and nearly three hundred roads across queensland have been closed have declared several towns in the region disaster zones. out of office out of favor and now in trouble with the law moscow's deposed mayor yuri luzhkov could face charges of corruption money laundering and fraud and. over reports russian investigators suspect alleged murky dealings may have been an inside family affair. why it's called the workers at one of moscow's banks are facing. for lending too much credit and trust to the city's former mayor your english golf and his wife russia's richest woman board and find themselves at the central yet another scandal prosecutors suspect them of laundering some thirteen billion rubles almost half a billion dollars in

a somewhat primitive but simming really effective for a lot the bank of moscow owned by a friend of the gulf is accused of approving a whopping great loan to a dummy company which then use the money to buy land from the mayor's wife is here is the scam was carried out under the control of city hall and luzhkov personally in three months this premier estate company appeared and with a little more than three hundred bucks in his account to get a loan worth five hundred million dollars unbelievable it was clear the company may not pay it back and could evaporate then this premier state company bought land from both tuna and it covered her debts bankers across the world to committing suicide the eggs man's wife came out squeaky clean. on closer inspection and to piers the bank of moscow may only have been

a middleman in the transaction suspiciously a couple of weeks before the loan city hall gave the bank fifteen billion rubles and it is should news shares prosecutors suspect this was the money given to prime your estate to buy land from the mayor's wife many are now wondering did the mayor really steal the money for the love of his life the last scam haggard mask of a face a the shady deal was so blatant it looked as if the former mayor took the money from the city budget wrapped it up for christmas christmas for it from his office and presented it to his wife in full view of the bank. the price paid for the land also raises questions seven million dollars perhaps or of land on moscow's outskirts is astronomic experts say and there is no sign of any construction taking place all of these paths to the bad smell left behind by the former mayors

acrimonious x. it. will of the months instead of promoting himself and playing political games the mayor should have worked the city has a huge number of problems corruption is going through the roof this is unheard of it's impossible to get anywhere through fair competition who gets all the work contracts and tenders who has always won until recently as the mirror of moscow used to say those who exhibited outstanding business skills and prove their right to work on these projects are the most talented entrepreneurs but we know what kinds of decisions were made. you. know that these allegations are out in the open experts believe those in charge will be forced to pick up the tap. or glasgow got out of the case has received too much publicity this people will have to pay one should not forget that the man has changed so if they don't pay up they'll be jailed to find those in. it will be easy there's

a loan agreement in place. so the consequences of a controversial time as mayor are still being felt and it could be that it's small time bank workers that will be paying the price of alleged big time corruption exiting the show r t. now for all of our stories and much much more just head over to our website. and here are a few of the stories you can find online right now mysteriously like in the sky above southern russia some speculating that aliens had come down to greet in the new year with the locals but for more explanation just visit c.n.n. dot com. to find out why russia's a father christmas and be a model was a fine three hundred dollars i did from moscow that's waiting for you at our team dot com.

it's now a seventeen minutes past the hour here in the russian capital you with time now for the latest on our close up series exploring russia both on and off the beaten path . this week are to use a close up team is in the region which is in southwest siberia in the second part of the series we now take a look at how locals there are living and we get a chance to learn about their customs and traditions our very own guide in the region shows us how people survive the cold and what they like to do for fun in their spare time. the view from the end of a cossacks spear but not to worry the young cossack on the other end knows what

he's doing he's part of a tough cruel tradition which has lasted for centuries. let's. see media they start teaching us friday when we turn servant and to trick ride at the age of thirteen depending on chance abilities and as for me i was very good at do i do a horse at eleven as well as that i can handle a spear and a saber that's got three or ottoman the others have a demanding daily schedule and horse riding is the glamorous part for youngsters in the village built this gym themselves another training in it will have a lot to do to prove themselves as hunters and horsemen in the training communally potters a team spirit in this cossacks society. a team spirit necessary for the cossacks noblest pursuit hunting on the sharp end the beloved fast russian dog the. bred to perfection over centuries and not for any ordinary prey. but they were selected for this

speed in anger because they must be able to get the better of a wolf. raghuram is master not just of his hounds but of this whole course village he's called the atom and he has to show. skill and leadership from solving village disputes down to training dogs to catch hares. although he prefers the larger prey will always more restrictive be a likely route in old times to get the chance of becoming an atom and it was considered prestigious to bring home a wolf tied up. with the ring and all after the day's outdoor training we caught up with our at a man at the evening meal where he tells us about their history the cossacks originally came from lambs far to the west of here but they proved a useful militia force conquering and securing siberia for the czars in return for grams of land. the idea was to create villages along the country's

border so that people are bound to the land they are living on. the cossacks strong independent traditions were disliked by the communists they were suppressed and marginalized since the end of the soviet union they've been trying to rebuild their self-sufficient way of life especially when it comes to resisting the bad habits of the city. it's no easy matter living in the country of course but on the other hand we're protected from the harm of the city from drugs alcohol smoking. but tonight at least the elders of the village were allowing themselves a few liberties. artie's top are reporting that now wiki leaks is the world's number one whistle blowing web site but it's only been around for about four years so who or what came before it and who really is behind the leaking of top secret government documents to whistleblowers well we have the answers coming up next in our special interview you stay with us.

before there was ever wiki leaks there was cryptome the website cryptome dot org has been publishing information prohibited by governments this includes classified and secret documents on u.s. soil since the one nine hundred ninety six now the co-founder of that site joins me now to tell us more john young i want to thank you so much for joining us now as i

said crypto dot org has been in the business of making government secrets public long before wiki leaks was tell us a little bit about the history and philosophy of your web site the so i was set up principally to publish information about communication security which is the fundamental technology for keeping secrets and it grew out of my participation in a group called for points which was also a group were learned his skills and so that this group was composed of very highly educated engineers scientists and technicians who were mostly working for corporations or government on the technology of communication security and they knew that this was going to come into the private market as a cold war wound down and they want to get information out to the public about what was coming so we set up the site to make that information available from people who had access to it but did not want to be identified as a source everything we're doing we know that we could not keep it. secrets about

our site and we tell our readers you should not expect us to protect you because we are being watched and every other side is being watched just like we hear leaks is being watched so there is no secrecy on the internet and we make that clear that's the lesson we've learned and we now try to spread that. to be very aware of the internet which is a very large scale spying machine what really really motivates you though to expose these secrets and why is this your vocation why do you feel strongly that this needs to happen well because secrecy is the biggest. enemy of democracy. it is way over done and so threats to democracy are coming from the inside above from the secret keepers and that they need to be expose that made it become a huge industry it's extremely expensive and you can't criticize it you can't get access to it because those who go inside that world are sworn to lifetime secrecy about it and they can never talk about it and i'm saying that's a system that is anti-democratic and it's a big business now thousands of firms have been drawn into it since nine one one

because it's very lucrative and so we need to have less secrecy in congress about secrecy in the presidency has to come see in all forms of government you should know that governments leak more information all the rest of us put together for their own purposes and their own disgruntled employees or are encouraged to leak secrets and to see what happens and they leave laptops around and so left behind by a drunk they leave papers around they put stuff on wiki leaks these are all well known techniques to a lot of the public create sympathy and get more funding there are schools to train people like bradley manning and doing just that on the internet it's at fort huachuca this is one of their training syllabuses that we publish as they actually teach young people how to run these sting operations by the leaking information to test the system something called a team should be teams that do combat on the internet but leaking this stuff and hard hackers to do that hackers in fact are a favorite employees now of such groups and so this is talked about it hacker conferences about how you go to you know if you can pick up good money by one being

an informant to is running these test systems infiltrating systems. sending out false information. but this is not new this is been going on ever since sort of been a spy world and so i just say it's now the internet is now used for that purpose what does that achieve that well it achieves one fundy if you don't have threats you don't need the system so leaking threats so then people say oh no this is scary this information that has randomly surprisingly gotten out so we need to go support whatever our government is saying it means. in terms of ramping up homeland security funding or. you know breaching civil liberties in the name of protecting protecting against terrorism that sort of thing is that we are effective the latest one that perfectly budgets we could use was called stop or security with a brand new cyber command has just been given a huge amount of money it's been in the works so ever since the internet popped up cyber security and so if we could leaks hadn't invented itself must assume that it

did it would have been invented because this is a goldmine for people who deal in cyprus security and don't forget most of this work is handed out to contractors and universities and research institutions and so is widely based. money flow and so without that we would have no defense department we'd have no national security apparatus that would have less need for the president or congress so one of the things that's important to keep in mind here is that this is a deeply entrenched approach turns out i'm not i'm tired of i'm not anti-government i'm anti secret government but one of the ways though you cover up your own fault is to raise a new threat and blame other people and that's what we see coming with wiki leaks it's going to be blame for the state department's own failure to protect its own material to operate threats will probably of eventually replace terrorists that you know there's been this claim that terrorists are using the internet to plot attacks on us so it's a kind of wedding of the two and so there's these kind of accusations of these new

teacher congressional people about we could be speak of terrorist as expected part of that pattern it's a repeat of the red menace and all these other kinds of fabricated ministers and so now they have that now they've got a fabulous opportunity to say well the enemy is already inside the u.s. they're on the internet because we set it up it's ours and there are they've infiltrated what are about people that would listen to your take on that and say that just sounds like a conspiracy theory well conspiracy theory was invented by the spies no one knows more more conspiracy theory than spies do national security out of paradis conspiracy theories all the time but they put out the story that is just going spirit. the theory as always contemptible but in fact they're the ones who cook up the threads that are far more complex and those are than anything we ordinary people could ever cook up and they get billions to fight it thank you so much for speaking with us thank you.