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video on demand ati's money build costs and r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the dot com. a russian icebreaker chose one of three ships imprisoned in ice to safety four hundred people aboard the trapped vessels have been stranded for one week. as the start of a difficult rescue operation we'll bring you all the details of it in just a moment. christmas arrives for all dogs believe is that thousands gathered to celebrate the birth of jesus and the country is made good all the details coming up in our teeth in just a few minutes. just because we're in a financial recession issue we know when to morrow's recession new york succumbs to

rubbish residents rage at the high rise refuse heaps now growing in the city of skyscrapers. and broadcasting live from the heart of moscow this is our team and for those of you observing the orthodox calendar merry christmas. and i sprinker off the far eastern coast of russia is towing one of three ships stuck in freezing waters a second vessel is trying to follow while the other remains stranded with over three hundred on board they've been trapped in the ice for a week tom barton is following the developments. it seems that things are beginning to move maybe just slowly the ice breaker that's managed to smash a path towards the ship stranded in the ice is now 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 our team managed to contact the captain of one of those told ships he said that currently everything is going ok but off of the icebreaker is telling us towards clear waters right now the situation is normal we are getting out of the ice one of the other ships trying to free us but was unsuccessful we are very happy we will be home soon we hope everything will be all right we're hoping to reach clear waters by friday night 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 we're going to have to wait probably three more days preferred by sprecher to arrive all of this has been monitored from moscow and from all four it is 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 break in 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 one of the two ships arrive in a safe zone the icebreaker will return to the biggest of the three vessels the sadrist far this ship is actually bigger in size than any ice breaker so additional help will be needed to pull it out next to icebreaker is expected to reach the ship by generally 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 this region the sea of our hearts 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. ferocious gales 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 other ships have also run into trouble on the first icebreaker that was sent there 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 immediate danger to the crew is 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. parties tom barton reporting for us there now russian orthodox christians are marking christmas day in accordance with the julian calendar which they follow celebrations were led by the midnight vigil which has been taking place had russia's main church the christ the savior cathedral in the very heart of moscow you covered in a crutch of it was there for tea. it feels like the holy days finally in the air for russians and all those who believe in god it's of course one of the most

magical nights of the day the night which celebrates the birth of jesus thousands of people have been floating to the country's main cathedral christ the savior cathedral behind me since afternoon today to see the patrick of moscow and all of russia feel to listen to his inspiring speech after the end of the service and also to see the president of the russian federation who was attending the service together with his family both he and the prime minister of russia vladimir putin regularly attend history and at christmas the chills perhaps one of the most. vivid differences between how russians celebrate christmas and those in the west is that unlike us ceremonies which are prone to include more commercial aspects to the holiday russian christmas remains a religious holiday a very solemn learned a very family one even russian christmas carols have family is spirit we ask people

what this whole the demand for them and they said that's what they were celebrating of course had a very soul the most sophisticated below jiggles sense but on these very night they couldn't help but feel like children previously in russia christmas was also celebrating on december twenty five in pretty much the same way as elsewhere across the world for catholic christians but then this tradition was stopped after the revolution and nine hundred seventeen the holy day was banned so people were of course celebrating but not publicly and only after the collapse of the soviet union in nine hundred ninety one the holy day became public unlike before the revolution it was now celebrated pulling the julian calendar names out. juices for a key real nice christmas was the second as the patrick. all of russia and just. like last year after the end of the service he held a very inspiring christmas speech to the floor looking at some of them options

through solidarity in a multinational society is sure to mean living and working along with people of different ethnicity and culture all of us are indeed brothers and sisters for we have one father god created humankind on this christmas night the orthodox churches are filled with chanting god is with us humans we christians believe and know that god embodied himself in christ to really enter human history and our lives calling to people that they should follow his laws consolidating peace love and truth from the depths of my heart filled with joy i congratulate you my beloved ones on the great and salutary holiday of christmas and happy new year. after the first star appears in the night sky people sit at a table and there is a feast which hands officially ends a forty day fast

a very strict one. and they have this dean outre day of worship and. these to really just be jewels at churches they change presents and it is also the beginning of the two week so hold christian tie it is between the christmas and epiphany on january nineteenth it is also known in russia is to be out this is traditionally a pagan holiday was disapproved of by the church but it has remained very popular among russians even nowadays it's believed that ghosts and spirits are among the leading during these two weeks and you can also then any questions considering your future so it's quite controversial hold a date still with many religious people but they stick to the tradition and they have these ethnic dances open air fire staking plays games and carnival sold this very beautiful of course but it's also had tonight is

that christmas night tomorrow is january the seventh officially christmas for russian orthodox believe years thousands have been taking pausing the jewels across the country eight and thousand monasteries and churches have held these christmas christmas ceremonies not only in russia in ukraine in serbia in macedonia and montenegro as well. reporting for us there now still ahead for you this hour where the streets ahead. find out why a west bank cities choices to identify the highways and byways is causing road rage in israel and. how goods from a nuclear contaminated area could end up in european shops ukraine plans to turn. noble disaster zone into an agricultural site would take a look at the safety fear. in the city that never sleeps it's now

the stench from massive piles of garbage that are keeping people up new york's residents are kicking up a stink that their city is now looking more like a landfill site on the church takes a dive 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 cause the street with a baby carriage to hold the 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 blood 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 going 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 of 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 very upset about it it's gross it's ridiculous 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 a new york. and you can head to our ti dot com for more live coverage of the christmas mass in moscow the whole service is streaming online for you right now and here's a taste of what else you'll find on our web site right now. attempts to seize russian territory on a coin find out more about the controversy surrounding a new euro currency on our website. and a russian scientists and list a troop of tiny astronauts to aid humanity's quest for more distant from tears space mice paving the way for a mission to mars. the west bank city of ramallah is marking its centenary by dedicating street names to people which the palestinians regard as heroes but it is infuriating israelis who say they are terrorists policy or reports

on how some see it as a growing sign of extremism. in palestinian ramallah they are naming their streets to celebrate the city's one hundredth birthday this is right for the cities to know where they are imaginary casing your way around here with no street signs to help well until two years ago that was the case there were no numbers. houses and no names for the sticks but now yasser arafat's gets a street as does a neighborhood that used to exist in arab jaffa 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 read on this issue here

between the public or there or. if anything the officers members of both groups are glorified which might surprise those who. palestine's most modern city would shy away from praising her master warts 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 by. the murder 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 a lot of the larry i'm very pleased even in drugs in streets after my son is in my heart and i miss him his this year off those trying. 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 charged aides her masts and other palestinian extremist groups. for the with the way that they have. to present the poll show her mask growing in popularity in the west bank as talks between rival palestinian faction fatter and israel did luck come as a changing. 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 policy r.t. ramallah. it was the side 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 have actually become immune to the radiation caused by the explosion at an atomic plant twenty five years ago but as artie's 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 noble 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 blonde 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 start to. activity on the surface. level up. somehow. how much trouble 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. 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. of half a million people works to clean this land of radioactivity now we're being told this is dead 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 no possibility of this law to

be changed. the dominant view remains that the nearest safe zones from the blonde are still hundreds of kilometers away in northern ukraine and some parts of belarus the dead zone injured is still deemed too dangerous despite some optimists but the fact is radiation can stick around for anything up to twenty four thousand years. reporting from chernobyl ukraine let's take a quick look at some of the world's other top stories right now. a white house report has determined that a string of risky cost cutting decisions caused by last year's all oil spill in the gulf of mexico it warned that without significant reforms a similar incident could happen in the future the blast at a b.p. operated raygun april leaked millions of gallons of oil into the sea before it was finally kept in july the investigation found several other phones that fall for the disaster as well as b.p. . the f.b.i.

is investigating two suspicious packages that gave off smoke when they were opened at separate government buildings in the u.s. state of maryland state officials reported that parcels had exploded but now say there were no blasts the first was addressed to the governor in the state capital while the other was sent to the maryland transport department in the town of hanover mail rooms at government buildings across the state are being quarantined until it is determined whether there are more suspect packages. and in china twenty four children are in hospital with lead poisoning caused by an illegal battery factory in their village chinese state media suggests that at least two hundred children have high levels of lead in their blood as a result of proximity to the factory the reports don't confirm how the children were exposed but battery factories are known to pollute both air and soil with

their emissions. merry christmas to all orthodox believers watching around the world will be back with the headlines in just a few moments just now though regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time leo tolstoy has made a significant imprint on literary history over one hundred years on from the russian novelist his award winning biographer. message is just as valid.

as a biography what attracted you to tolstoy. he was the great giant of the novelistic form great. to great so that was for. him. a serious reason and it was his. greatest tell stories books i'm thinking specifically of war. talk. of the best book do you agree with. you can't really compare war and peace with any other novel. himself so it wasn't a novel and it isn't really a novel. it's a book about everything it focuses yes all the years you know five campaign culminating in the battle of our salutes and then the invasion of eight hundred

twelve but the further it is on you realize that it's a novel about the whole of russia and also it's a novel about personal regeneration tolstoy with as much effort lost the fact as writes out what do you thinking compass is his philosophy in life if you think of that really quite early work of his. the cossacks there's a moment in that when a lean in who's been hunting. for the deer and is all covered in that is beautifully described fantastic scene and he's all alone doesn't quite know where he is in the caucasus covered in that it's very hot very sweaty and he suddenly gets down in the hole. where the itself has been lying and he has this strange feeling of life of reason. with which he's trying next to. he's not sure whether the future life whether there's life after death but the

significance of life itself for each one of those mosquitoes are biting him just as for him justice for the. warriors and justice for the muslims that they're supposed to fighting there's an extraordinary significance in every single life and he has all his thoughts about being an heiress to trapped being a member of society in wall street they mean nothing to him what matters is this feeling of the sacredness almost the holiness of life and the importance of trying to live for other people now that's a very very early story and then when you get to the end of tolstoy's life career the thousands of people who were following his coffin when he died they weren't following him because he was a great novelist they were following him because he had taught not only russia over the world how it ought to live how we should be less selfish how we shouldn't be wrecking the planet we shouldn't be fighting wars so this early story in which only anyone has a sense of of the goodness of life the significance of life and how we should live

more simply and more response to nature and to our conscience that really runs through the whole of his life and he century and underwent this transformation didn't he from high society author to spiritual on a case told well what i was trying to say by mentioning because archy is that it's always there from the beginning actually this feeling that we are called to a deeper truer life away from the absurdity of society and so forth the tolstoy family were very grand i mean some of them were advisers to the emperor the family . on whom old principle construct more in pieces based his maternal grandfather was also very grand military and political figure tolstoy himself lived almost entirely in the country at his estate and yes my apology on the he never really. played a big part in the political life unlike his cousins caught in petersburg or in

moscow but you're right to say there was this huge crisis in the middle of his life when he'd finished and i train you know. which was a fantastic success as was war and peace and i made it very very rich which we hadn't been before been landed and had peasants and it had the states but it wasn't very british he then became a multimillionaire as we would say and he had a crisis what's the point of it all there's a moment in his autobiography where he said he couldn't even be in a room in the room with a piece of rope for fear that he would want to hang himself he then thought the way to live was to try to be like a peasant and for a few years he pretended. he'd by the way set up schools not only on his own estates but for vast acres and miles around the us and i probably on the starting education he was the great pioneer of russian education and even now they sometimes in some russian schools use his p.c. to teach people to read. so it wasn't just sort of pointless try dreaming but

having pretended to be a peasant he then went back to being the reasonable latin unmanned he was tough i was a deeply religious man but he did get into quite serious conflict with the orthodox chat well he was religious in this way that you get in the novels i think if you think of pierre or prince andrew in war and peace if you think of being in. the their worldly young man. soldiers or land owners of people very much like himself as to crafts with women trouble and all that and then they reach a crisis in their lives and they turn to what it's all about to member prince andrew thinking he's dying. and then what it's all about is this great stride he can sort of. he can identify with the mystery of nature tolstoy was full of that to the end of his days where he parted company with the church.