would be so much brighter if you move a song from phones to christian. news crews don't talk t.v. don't come. russian icebreakers finally reached four hundred people in prison and an ice for a week as rescuers sailed through frozen waters off the country's far east coast. however the rescue operation ahead is going to be fall from easy to bring you all the details in just a few months. just because we're in a financial recession issue we know when to morrow's a recession in new york residents fiore piles up like the masses of rubbish on the streets city known as the center of the llama boss turning into

a junkyard. and a city where the streets had no name palestinians name places in ramallah after those they regard as heroes and that's causing some anger in israel. this is aussie live from moscow welcome to the program an ice breaker off the far eastern coast of russia is battling extreme weather to finally free three ships trapped in the ice the four hundred people aboard have been. stranded for a week now let's get all the latest details from our teaser tom barton who is working for us now. hello to you tom so after a week of being stranded in an icy barren landscape there must be sighs of relief echoing across the decks now bring us up to date with the rescue mission what's happening right now. absolutely rory as it stands at the moment this ice

breaker has monies to reach the three trips ships currently trapped in the ice in the sub collins straits in the waters off the far east of russia's territory those those ships have been there for a week and now it's hoped that once but now that the ice in some places up to eight meters thick has been punctured by this ice breaker they can start to extract those ships from their current search trapped condition a representative from the far eastern shipping company told us a bit more about what that's actually going to involve. one brand new breakers me to know they have to decide which of the three ships will be told first this issue ation is complex the ships will have to be told one after another to very short distance from the tugboat. as you can hear it's going to be far from easy a very tricky operation to extract those spies those those ships with the

icebreaker and difficult choices are going to have to be made about which chips are going to be towed and then how the operation is going to proceed indeed well miles of ice gale force winds are tom and tom is whether the main factor to blame here for the duration of the stranding and the difficulty of the rescue. well the collins strait is well known to be rather a treacherous part of water there's few open stretches of water there but the situation has certainly been complicated by this year's weather lots of fresh water coming out of nearby rivers has been rapidly freezing and those with that combined with very fast and very cold winds have been leading to ice formations up to eight meters thick those ifor ice formations and trapped in the ships other ships sent to help them a smaller icebreaker failed to work to get them out earlier on the conditions were too tough from it and so they needed this much larger ship to come and help them on

board the ships the crew of the what was one of the ships has three hundred crew on board it they say at the moment there's no immediate danger they have enough food and water for the moment they spent new year on board not a great place to spend it but they're all ok they want now just to get out of this predicament to get on with their jobs and to be freed from the ice so that's the hope confidence and gritted teeth out there in the waters off the far east of russia right now reporting thank you well in a city of skyscrapers it's now piles of garbage that towered over the streets of new york residents are outraged there glamorous city is beginning to look more like a junkyard. dives headfirst into the big apple's rotten reality. if you're standing next to a pile of garbage taller than yourself how does that make you feel it's a pretty impressive world the world marks the new year one thing marking new york

are melton's of garbage. striking a huge blow to the city's traditionally glamorous image you can't even course the street with a baby carriage older people cannot even want to sit discreet. anthony is a mailman his job takes twice the time these days sadly he notes his salary has not doubled that makes my work very very hard because the blog really box so i have to do the work in one instance however the mounds of garbage prevented a tragedy as one new yorker suicide attempt proved unsuccessful this weekend when it jumped out of the window did not turn fatal due to an unexpected software drift into piles of refuse one of thousands filling many of the almost six thousand miles of new york city streets the average american is said to produce fifty tons of garbage in a lifetime new york city has reportedly accumulated as much as fifty thousand tons

of garbage in just one week just because we're in a financial recession is sure to mean that we're in a moral recession but it will world recession is exactly what the trash invasion has turned the big apple into and while some officials have graded themselves and a plus for handling the situation new yorkers are outraged he was very upset about it it's gross it's ridiculous in a good enough job for taxes that we are praying for as an economic crisis leads to budget cuts that lead to boycotts in the sanitation department that lead to all this garbage out on the street it may be time to ask how soon before the big juicy apple turns rotten and. new york. two years of democrat dominance on capitol hill have come to an end and you are. has been sworn in with republicans now sitting in more seats the party seized control of the house of representatives in november's midterm elections obama's democrats did manage to

retain a slim majority in the senate chamber the republicans have been putting up hefty opposition against the president in recent months on an outing to do rail obama's health care reform they also stole the passage of a nuclear arms reduction treaty with russia which once eventually ratified by the senate late last month west benedict from the libertarian party says the current bipartisan system is leading america to a dead end if you look at what the worst policies that congress has delivered most of them have been bipartisan for many years the bailouts of the banks the invasions of afghanistan and iraq but the deficit spending even a lot of the health care programs have been supported by both republicans and democrats the united states is spending itself into oblivion we're going broke or doing way too much spending on millett on the military if congress stop doing

anything that would be the second best thing that could happen the best thing would be that they start cutting government i think that republicans will pretend they're trying to cut taxes or cut government and claim that democrats are being a roadblock to it and your only solution is to vote for more republicans democrats have used the same tactics when it comes to various programs if you don't elect more democrats you know either republicans will stop a so yes they will be playing politics republicans and democrats are both being hypocritical if you really want change in america you've got to look outside the two main parties. you all with artie it's good to have you with us today still ahead for you in the program how goods from a nuclear contaminated area may soon end up in european shops ukraine plan to turn the atomic disasters on an internet agricultural center we take a look at the safety features also. parenting agent mysticism but with

a modern technology i'm sure on thomasson coming up on our t.v. we explore the world of the siberian sharman. christmas is over for most christians across the world but for some orthodox belief as the holy day is yet to come thursday is christmas eve for the russian orthodox church that celebrates the birth of christ on january the seventh the differences because russians marked religious feasts using the julian calendar where as most western countries use the gregorian calendar on thursday night rituals will be held in the thousands of russian churches across the world patriarch kirill of moscow and all russia will head a service in the nation's main place of worship christ the savior cathedral here in the capital a number of other orthodox churches also celebrate christmas on january the seventh including those of serbia macedonia and montenegro. a decision by authorities in the west bank city of ramallah to name

a street south of prominent palestinians is proving controversial as artie's policy reports some streets have been named after people who israel accuses of planning suicide bombings but who palestinians regard as martyrs and heroes. in palestinian ramallah they're naming their streets to celebrate the city's one hundredth birthday this is. for the citizens to know where they are imagine never gating your way around here with no street signs to help well until two years ago that was the case in that one there were normal numbers for houses and for this digs but now yasser arafat gets a street as does a neighborhood that used to exist in arab jeff in the one nine hundred thirty s. the neighborhoods long since disappeared and the streets a call for palestinian refugees to return to israel the criteria are simple

palestinian heroes places and ideas supported by the people on this issue here with real. or there or. if anything the opposite members of both groups are glorified which might surprise those who think palestine is most modern city would shy away from praising her master what's like this main thoroughfare in named after chief a mass bomb maker yahia yash dubbed the engineer for three years he was the most wanted man by israel for his part in suicide bombings that killed ninety israelis until he himself was eliminated. and this martyr was killed by the israeli internal security service after they tricked a friend of his into giving him a cell phone that was booby trapped fourteen years on his family is as proud as ever and. i'm very pleased even in drugs in streets after my son is in my heart and

i miss him is the hero of those time. but not all street names are palestinian rachel corrie was an american activist who was killed by an israeli bulldozer during a demonstration in gaza in two thousand and three the decision to name this business . st in ramallah after her was unanimous rachel was part of the international solidarity movement a group israelis charged aids her masts and other palestinian extremist groups the people. for the with the way that they have been doing the past fifteen years. eager to try something polls show him ask growing in popularity in the west bank as talks between rival palestinian faction fattah and israel deadlock commerce is changing the trying to speak with. the with. and as the new street signs go up in ramallah it's becoming more and more clear a mass is also speaking in the language of palestinians here and the stand point is

here r t. now you can always have to r.t. dot com for more news blogs and analysis is a taste of what's waiting for you there right now a story i turned to see is rushing territory on a coin that is find out more about the controversy surrounding the stone years in new york city at r.t. dot com. rocket scientists and list a troop of tiny astronauts to age humanity's questions from more distant from tears its space mice paving the way for a possible vision to mars. but it was it was the start of the world's worst nuclear disaster but now ukraine has plans to develop parts of the contaminated noble zone for agriculture scientists believe that some plants are actually become immune to the radiation caused by the explosion at an atomic plant twenty five years ago it was artie's alexy to shift the reports not everyone is convinced products from the area should end up being sold in europe. these berries may look ripe and delicious

but they're definitely not part of a healthy diet the bush is inside a thirty kilometer chernobyl exclusion zone in ukraine and radiation levels are off the scale people do not live here anymore but same cannot be said about flora and fauna some say it is the absence of anthropogenic harm in the church novel exclusion zone which made nature develop here rapidly after the one nine hundred eighty six fallout in chernobyl the environment suffered badly one strip of forest was burned by radiation and turned red people left the area but mother nature stepped in now chernobyl is home to many species of wild animals and rare plants scientists from slovakia studying most in the area made an incredible discovery a lot of the plant life is immune to radiation. we still don't understand how it's

possible plans to grow. at the very beginning of the earth when life started the. activity on the surface. level of. how much problem and millions of hectares of land were left contaminated a quarter of a century on kiev has decided that this soil no longer poses any threat to humans in march twentieth love and ukraine's government will launch a plan to get things growing again. we will establish what parts of the contaminated areas could be used for agricultural needs there is a possibility that cultural products will be grown there when we have so much unoccupied land why not use it. those well familiar with chernobyl like the idea.

that half a million people works to clean this land of radioactivity now we're being told this is did land this is not true just look at nature's riches and the exclusions. however there are those who worried about what could end up on the dinner table critics fear ukrainian and russian markets could be flooded with radioactive agricultural products and there are legal hurdles. ukraine has a law regulating any activities in the exclusion zone it says no agricultural product can be drawn on this land and for now experts you know possibility of this law to be changed. the dominant view remains that the nearest save zones from the blonde are still hundreds of kilometers away in northern ukraine and some parts of belarus the dead zone in chernobyl is still deemed too dangerous despite some optimists but the fact is radiation can stick around for anything up to twenty four thousand years. see reporting from chernobyl new crane now it's

just approaching the seventeen minute mark of the hour here in moscow you with r.t. let's get to some other international news now making headlines a white house report says bad management leading to failed safety procedures caused at last year's oil spill in the gulf of mexico it warned the industry to change the way it operates to prevent it happening again a blast that a b.p. oil rig in april leaked millions of gallons of oil into the sea before finally being kept in july the investigation found several other firms other than b.p. were also what fault the turkish police have arrested a man who was attempting to hijack a plane it was overpowered by passengers on a flight from oslo to istanbul police say the turkish citizen demanded the plane go back to norway saying he had an explosive device but the bomb was found to be afraid and the motives of the man at this point still are not yet clear. i mean predictions of more heavy rain in australia flood water has begun to recede in the

northeast of the country water levels in the city of iraq hempton reached a peak that was lower than first feared hundreds of homes are underwater with more than two hundred thousand people affected the floods have left at least ten people dead in queensland since november. and at least twenty two people have been killed and over a dozen injured after a bus crash in northern india thirteen children are among the dead police say the vehicle skidded off a highway overturned and plunged into a gorge the incident happened when the bus was returning with tourists from a popular hill town resort now shamans other mystical messengers between humans and spirits who have been called upon for healing and spiritual guidance for centuries and it's an ancient tradition still alive in some parts of russia despite modernization causing a fall in the number of practicing shamans sean thomas travelled to meet with them . from the ceremonial rhythm of the drum.

to ancient rituals and traditions. the belief in the power of the shaman is very much a part of the cuttin way of life to put it there so that our ancestors always had very powerful shamans around the land to protected them gave them blessings and ensured security and safety in all circumstances and every day life at the high end on a journey and that. a shaman is someone who acts as an intermediary between the spiritual and earthly worlds relying heavily on nature to get his message across when russian orthodox christianity moved eastward and then later with the soviet union shamanism was banned those that practice the faith were persecuted now there are only three recognized shaman living in all of the. wealth i help people find faith in the fact that their wishes will be fulfilled their family relations in conflicts at work will be fixed when a person has this faith he can do anything i live in

a time of crisis and my mission is to help people in this troublesome time every shonen has his own mission. to help certain posts with the engine symbols of the sharman adorning them standing right next to power lines from the modern world there's a contrast between the modern technology and aged mysticism as a problem for the sherman. real shamans live far away from big cities and small villages because contemporary cities with computers cars cell phones and the constant rush distract from true unity with nature and the spirits i myself i'm from a remote northern region. trying to make the best of it all life is a delicate balancing act for the cuttin people but with them we are an interesting people when we're in trouble we do three different things at the same time we turn to sharon we pray you know church and then make use more mats and

a unique way of keeping a tradition that has been part of your couture for centuries. maybe some protect what it created the spiral in the middle is a symbol of fire made the warmth of the fire in your name protect you and may your three spirits be knighted the spirits of the womb the spirits of man and the spirits of the earth in your good year sean thomas r t i just a few minutes we find out how russians are to give a helping hand to those in need first though the business news with children. hello welcome to our business program i'm sure if you are the food and agricultural organization has warned that the world is facing a full price shock this comes after f.a.r.'s benchmark index of agricultural commodities prices shot up to a nominal record last month surpassing the levels of the two thousand and seven two

thousand and eight sort of crisis the surge in the food index is based on rising costs for corn sugar vegetable oil and meat the situation has been made worse by inflation and increasing economic challenge in developing countries including those of china and india however the f.a.l. and food aid agencies are driving are drawing comfort from relatively stable prices for rice one of the most important agricultural commodities for global food security and russia is the leading export of energy resources but also one of the most energy inefficient economies in the world but both state and commercial businesses have modernization projects in the pipeline in a bid to improve the country's competitiveness artie's column bray has the story. every year russia wastes enough energy to power the french economy but now the kremlin hopes it can turn industry from leaking losses into a green money making machine to get it started the government's approved a three hundred billion dollar energy efficiency program to trim the fat from

factories and buildings inherited from soviet times these plates will fit the leaders in terms of efficiency our industrial giant transport and housing utilities many industrial sectors of the economy are two and a half times less efficient than their european peers the room for improvement is huge it. is the biggest oil and gas producer on the planet the people of russia enjoy cheap energy with prices set by the state but those low domestic costs drain the desire to conserve fuel there is no other remedy tool and energy efficiency apart from letting consumers pay the real economic price for the energy of their consuming president medvedev aims to slash wastefulness by forty percent over the next decade initiatives range from phasing out incandescent light bulbs to state backing for billionaire may help project to build an inexpensive hybrid car in southern russia but there's still a long way to go for the last twenty years so we've been reducing energy

consumption very g.d.p. by roughly three to five percent but you know a lot of other countries move much much faster and down this road and. right now there are energy inefficiencies are everywhere it's public buildings. and budget consumerists electricity gas wearing etc it's around us being eco friendly goes hand in hand with energy efficiency recently russia's natural resources ministry drafted a bill to make factories recycled materials they currently throw away by selling them to biofuel plants right now russia uses twice as much energy than china uses to produce the same amount of goods and russian companies are struggling to learn how going clean could bring in the green collar in bray r.t. . russia's inflation in two thousand and ten grew eight point seven percent that's

according to politico data of the federal statistics service the figure fail to meet the government's seven point five percent target and almost equal the previous year's inflation in a bid to curb price growth in two thousand and eleven experts believe a refinance rate hike is in the cards such an employee called all reports. russia's central bank account interest rates on four consecutive occasions in two thousand and ten to seven point seven five per sound to help spur a landing after the financial crisis however the easy money of fuel inflation which has risen above target currently stands at more than eight per cent central bank has to react in order to keep a lid on inflationary pressures that's one of the major most important mandates of the central bank so i think it's also a very important signal that inflation is very important for the central bank a signal that is very important to all of the economic agents i think

a hernia refinance rate may boost carry trades with investors cashing in on high interest rates in russia compared to the rest of the world but analysts say central banks monetary policy is hard to predict which is helping to limit hot money different estimates which makes it all bit harder to follow policy makes i think the central bank here. has created kind of a deliberate ambiguity you know it's kind of constructive ambiguity you might even say in their minds at least about policy here and i think they did that in particular and successfully in a way because they didn't want to see large cap large capital short term hot money inflows russian economic growth has been slower than expected in two thousand and ten while inflation has been higher and the ruble hasn't appreciated as much as it could given the current prices but economists believe the country is well placed do you bang for instance predict g.d.p.

growth of five percent in two thousand and eleven significant ruble appreciation and higher capital inflows that you have about equal the business. and that's your update for this hour where you can always find watch stories on our website that's archie dot com slash business stay with us.