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a russian icebreaker is one of three ships in prison to nice to save four hundred people. stranded for a week. it's the start of a difficult rescue operation to bring you all the details of it in just a moment. just because we're in a financial recession issue we know we're in a moral recession with the new york president a few. months is a drop in the streets a city known as the center of this boston turning junkyard. and

a city where the streets had no name palestinians name places in ramallah after those that they regarded as heroes causing some anger in israel. and coming up in the business news clips food prices be on the rise i'll have more on that in twenty minutes time. this is r.t. live from moscow an ice breaker off the far eastern coast of russia is towing one of three ships stuck in freezing water to safety through extreme weather a second vessel is trying to follow while the third remain stranded four hundred people aboard the ships have been a stranded now for a week let's get all the latest details from. the bring us up to date on this and hello to you tom so after a week of being stuck in this icy landscape the rescue crew finally have some good

news to tell me what's happening now. please. seems that things are beginning to move maybe just slowly the ice breaker that's managed to to smash a path towards the ship stranded in the ice has now started towing one of those ships out of its having been freed out of this search zone and they're going to try and hook up a second ship to that of the two smaller ships the ice breaker is going to try and attempt to tow them out our team managed just in the last few moments to contact the captain of one of those told ships he said that currently everything is going ok so they're all focused on doing that the third ship which is slightly larger has about three hundred people on board and. they think that at the moment they're not going to be able to pull it out with the existing icebreaker are going to have to wait probably three more days referred icebreaker to arrive all of this has been

monitored from moscow on for more for a tease locally and we spoke earlier to one of the people at the federal fisheries off forty who has been monitoring the situation. with enormous effort and icebreaker reach the three vessels rican a canal through the ice it's towing one of the ships and they have started to leave the icy blockade they have been followed by another three stranded vessels plus the two ships arrive in a safe zone the icebreaker will return to the biggest of the three vessels this will jurist this ship is actually bigger in size than any ice breaker so the dish will help will be needed to pull it out next to ice breaker is expected to reach the ship by january the ninth. so as we can hear it's been a long process getting to these ships is going to be a difficult process getting them out but it is now underway tom are talking about what's what's been the main factor hampering the rescue of times what had taken so

long at this point. well read this region the sea of all sorts of just off the far east of russia is known to be a difficult place for ships in the winter but that has been much aggravated by the weather conditions this year for russia's scales and also very low temperatures about minus seventeen at the moment in this region have led to a lot of ice forming up to eight meters thick in some places and that has simply trunk ships and encased them which then had to be try and be rescued other ships have also run into trouble and the first icebreaker that was sent there was that wasn't strong enough requiring this extra help that was sent on the ships themselves the crew that we've spoken to and reports that we've heard say that things are currently all right there's no media danger to the crew there's enough food and supplies for the moment but they just want to get out of this situation now and get on with their jobs so everyone has their fingers crossed is really

looking to try and get these ships towed out and certainly tom we have heard that when it comes to the crew stranded out there they're all in very high spirits at the moment so wishing the best of luck to this ongoing rescue mission 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 glamorous city is beginning to look more like a junkyard artie's anastasio dives headfirst into the big apple's russian 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 even cause the street with a baby carriage to hold the people cannot even walk and sit discreet. anthony is a mailman his job takes twice the time these days sadly he notes his salary has not

doubled so that makes my work very very hard because the blog really box. 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 issue 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 terribly upset about it

it's gross it's ridiculous the in an ad good enough 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 stacy churkin new york. democrat dominance on capitol hill have now come to an end and you are us call. has been sworn in the 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 the opposition against the president in the recent months and are now adding to the rail obama's health care reform they also stole the passage of a nuclear arms reduction treaty with russia which was eventually ratified by the

senate late last month west benedict from the libertarian party says the current bi partisan system is leading america down 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 the 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 r.t. and there's still a head for you in the program here how goods from a nuclear contaminated area may soon end up in european shops ukraine turned the noble atomic disaster zone into an agricultural center we take a look at the safety features also. balancing agent mysticism 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 folks believers 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 difference is because the russians like to mock the religious feasts using the julian calendar whereas most western countries use the gregorian calendar on a thursday night vigils will be held in thousands of russian churches all across the world patriarch kirill of moscow and all of russia will head of service in the nations and main place of worship christ the savior cathedral in the capital a number of other orthodox churches also celebrate christmas on january the seventh including those of serbia macedonia and montenegro. well the decision by authorities in the west bank city of ramallah to name their streets after prominent palestinians is proving controversial as artie's reports some streets have been named after people who israel accuses of planning suicide bombings or who palestinians regard as martyrs and heroes. in palestinian ramallah they are 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 the one law there were nor 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 and 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 read on this issue here with real. or not 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 named after chief harassed 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 always killed by those that he was even in the school so that the murder and the smarter 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 the evening. broad's in st after my son is in my heart and i miss him he's the hero of no sign. 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 busy street in ramallah after her was unanimous rachel was part of the international solidarity movement a group israelis charge aids her masts and other palestinian extremist groups the

people in the. fed up with the way that they have been doing the past fifteen years. that there is something polls show him ask growing in popularity in the west bank as talks between rival palestinian faction fattah and israel deadlock come as a changing us is trying to speak with. the with. a stance 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 understand police here are t. ramallah. and you can head to r.t. dot com for more news blogs and analysis it's a taste of what's waiting for you there right now a stone turns to seize russian territory on a coin that is find out more about the controversy surrounding a stone using new euro currency on r.t. dot com. and russian scientists enlist

a troop of tiny astronauts to aid humanity's quest for more distant fronting as its space mice that are paving the way for a possible mission to mars. it was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster but now ukraine has plans to develop parts of the contaminated china mobile zone for agriculture so it is believed that some plants of actually become immune to the radiation caused by the explosion at an atomic plant twenty five years ago there are to use alexy reports not everyone is convinced that 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. of the earth alive start the. activity on the surface so.

much problem and the 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. 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 in 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 grain all right now let's get to some other international stories making headlines this hour and a white house report says management leading to failed safety procedures calls at last year's oil spill in the gulf of mexico it warned the industry to change the way it operates to prevent it from happening again a blast at 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 at fault. and in china twenty four children have been taken to hospital with a lead poisoning caused by battery factories chinese media suggests at least two hundred children have high lead levels in their blood it's thought battery factories in the eastern province of and who we are the cause of the poisoning two of the main factories in the area have now been shut. and this addiction is 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 reached a peak that was lower than first feared hundreds of homes are underwater with more than two hundred thousand people affected by the floods have left at least ten people dead in queensland since november. 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 their vehicle skidded off a highway overturned and plunged into a gorge the incident happened when the bus was returning with tourists from a popular resort now shamans are the mystical messengers between humans and spirits they've 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 calling a fall causing a four rather in the number of practicing sharman artie's sean thomas travelled to meet with some of them. from the ceremonial rhythm of the drama. to ancient rituals and traditions. the belief in the power of the shaman is very much a part of the i couldn't way of life to put it there so there are answers does always had very powerful shamans around the law to protected them gave them blessings and ensured security and safety in all circumstances and every day life

as a hand on a journey and that's who. as sherman 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 practiced the faith were persecuted now there are only three recognised sharman 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 sharman 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 age and mysticism is

a problem for the sherman. among real shermans 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 am from a remote northern region. trying to make the best of it all life is a delicate balancing act for the cuttin people. don't they but we are an interesting people when we are in trouble we do three different things at the same time we turn to sherman we pray in a church and then make use more mattson a unique way of keeping a tradition that has been part of your code for centuries but it. made us some protect what it created the spiral in the middle is a symbol of fire may the warmth of the fire in your name protect you and may your three spirits be united the spirits of the womb the spirits of air and the spirits of the earth in your quote here shawn thomas r t all right up next the business

news with serenity. hello welcome to our business program i'm sure. the food and agricultural organization has warned that the world is facing a food price shock this comes after f.a.o. as benchmark index of agricultural commodity prices shot up to a nominal record last month surpassing the levels of the two thousand and seven two thousand and eight food prices 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.a. and food agency 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 colum 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 governments approved a three hundred billion dollar energy efficiency program to trim the fat from factories and buildings inherited from soviet times it was. 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. as 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 but is no other remedy tool and energy efficiency apart from letting consumers be economic prize for the energy 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 we've been reducing energy consumption per g.d.p. by roughly three to five percent but you know a lot of other countries moved much much faster and down this road. right now in our energy inefficiencies are everywhere it's public buildings. consumers electricity gas wearing etc it's tremendous 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. going clean could bring in the green calling break. 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 to five per sound to help spur

a landing after the financial crisis however the easy money if you do inflation which has risen above target currently stands at more than eight percent 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 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 you have different strengths which makes it all that harder to follow policymakers 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 oil prices but economists believe the country is well placed do you bank for instance predict g.d.p. growth of five percent in two thousand and eleven significant ruble appreciation and higher capital inflows that you look at equal the business. and that's your update for this hour but you can always find more stories on our web site that's dot com slash business stay with us.