live from the heart of moscow this is r g bringing you the top news in headlines from around the world some news just in to colonel gadhafi youngest son and three grandchildren have been killed in a nato air strike in the libyan capital tripoli the libyan leader and his wife were at the home of their twenty nine year old son at the time of the strike but they themselves were are. now onto the latest news in syria. there the army reportedly kills six protesters as it takes control of

a mosque in central iraq point over the anti-government resistance in the city this comes as experts condemn washington saying sanctions and support for the opposition can only make the situation in syria worse. fighting for the soldiers activists who demanded the severe bullying in the russian army could seize many young recruits falling victim to their own comrades a committee of soldiers mothers says the ministry of defense is not doing enough to stop their brutality. and authorities in new york are accused of chasing the buck right out of people's pockets into the city coffers with heavy penalties for the offenses fines are levied on everything from the taking from. riding a bike in the park. and up next is a guest on spotlight is a photographer brian alexander he shares his experiences of his favorite place.

it's. the big. pile of yellow welcome to spotlight the interview show on r t i'm doing often today my guest in the studio is brian alexander. in our rapidly moving we don't have an opportunity to hit the pause button and give a particular frame a closer look maybe if we did notice more for their actions then i would chose to rethink and maybe even reduce or here's where photography fails they get

our guest bryan alexander has brought some real the artistic troubling stills from his favorite dr. reiner alexander's real love to the arctic started during his first visit to the region nine hundred seventy one with difficulties and extremely low temperatures only to experience the hospitality and generosity of the locals they revealed to him the riches of their land and brian says if it hadn't been for them it would be impossible to take such astounding shots of the arctic but the mostly untouched region is in danger the civilized world trampling on the primal landscape and the centuries old way of life of the peoples of the progress is rushing headlong into it and there seems to be a north force that can slow down no force called. into the show thank you thank thank you very much for being with us well first of all we just saw this wonderful picture of you somewhere in the arctic or antarctic

if you look just as this guy i mean i mean just as indigenous as the people of all infer well first of all i want to ask you what's your attitude to. to this green movement people that say no to furries never wear fur coats and so on and so forth . so i think it's you know you get the support at least right now no absolutely not i mean i think that if you eat meat and you love the show you're going to learn a lot. the whole question becomes sort of really. i think that compared with the industrial forms of food production. the idea of hunting is a much more civilized and. a much better way of overtraining food you know the animals running wild for it's all but the last second or so of it's

life and then it's shot it's much better than being you know one of these factory farming food producing units and a lot of our food comes from and as a matter of fact one of the one of the arguments of those people who say no to for is that is that the high tech jackets. the ones are produced in china probably that they're better they're warmer would you say this is true or this traditional clothing used by other people is better because i was in no question for the for warms. reindeer skin clothing which has hollow handles is infinitely warmer than anything that i would use anything else there's no question i mean i've sat on a sled being called behind a snowmobile for ten eleven hours of the time minus forty and i thought very very comfortably warm. the face well even if there is

a covered with you yeah but then you know there are ways of sort of turning your head out of the window and saw. you destroy you first you first went to greenland and back in nineteen seventy one you know and since then you always you traveled to siberia greenland alaska canada the arctic i'm terribly all over how did you get involved with that region how why when i got involved really when i was studying photography in london then i did a project on the on the technical problems of photography at subzero temperatures and that took me to the polar research institute in cambridge. where i sort of happened upon. books written by rasmussen and peter freud and about the innuit of northwest greenland i got interested it's a seem to me to make a lot more it was a lot more interesting than what they did a lot of explorers who had just after achieving some sort of geographical saw

you're actually started by trying to make the camera work at subzero temperatures yet not just the camera working at subzero temperatures but it was also the noah but the actual processing film minus forty and being able to drive it you don't so you're processing folder no i'm not doing the project i was working on was basically but looking into that because actually the american military had done a lot of research on this in in antarctica and the other but there's no woolfolk there these days is there well there is from these days in fact film is rather better than digital for extreme cold but yes you're right that you know we're entering a digital we've entered into a digital world what why would you say that for extreme cold film is better than that it's all those little things. i mean film is something there's something that can freeze break or whatever other put the problem with digital is that it's largely electronic and electronic and coal don't go well together and so you find i

mean the camera that i use now which is a digital canon camera it works down quite comfortably to about minus thirty five but it stops at minus forty and some of the photos that. i take it will go on no one here will like you press the button and nothing happened stop and whereas you know in with with film i've used them down to minus fifty it's also saying i would . ok now you. of course have. a lot of challenges the whole world working at the in this region one of them is. but you just mentioned challenges for the camera but what kind of challenge for yourself keeps you going there again and again because it should be a challenge it's not the comfort of the ordinary it's just a it's the images i mean you know this last march i was. with a group who took three reindeer herders into kafka perhaps the most traditional

group of. indigenous people that i've ever worked with and you know in them we were living in i suppose you'd relatively uncomfortable conditions and each morning you know when i woke up i think to myself you know. doing this sixty one isn't quite as easy as it was it doing it at twenty two but then i look at the pictures and that's what keeps me going you should have millions of those pictures where you will be more well because the arctic's changing and i knew i'd never come across these people before i'd never photographed a year rangar before which i've just done so over these years i know i read that you you have been through a pretty dangerous situation fairly fell into ice water right at minus forty and so on and so forth here do you have something. in mind in your memory which you could consider is the most dangerous. episode in your life or falling through funny

through falling through thin ice in the water minus forty is danger but it's only sort of a problem for a few minutes because that you either get out or you die. but i suppose the most significant thing i can remember was being adrift with a group of hunters we'd gone war something off the north coast of greenland and then during the night the ice broke up for purposely just to just know crap and off we went you want but we woke up we were floating between israel and canada and we're about sort of i don't know something kilometers off. the coast and there for i think nearly five days before we were rescued by helicopter so it during that time you're kind of going through highs and lows and wondering whether it's going to be your last photo shoot well you have been here have been focusing on people here and the indigenous people and you have been witnessing in registering changes in their life in their attitude even their appearance what's that made true and

what we have seen today where we're now entering the twenty first century or. i suppose i mean the main trend is one of much as far as native peoples concerned is one of modernization there's much more you know access they have access to t.v.'s now a lot of. people even at remote hunting camps have you know d.v.d. players and televisions and stuff so there's been a general modernization i suppose and with that comes a sort of deterioration of traditional publisher. bad well in many ways. there's nothing wrong with you know the modernizing and and cultures have to change you can't cultures in a museum but. when people are you know. sort of if you like you want to say educated from their own culture if you give them a sort of danish educational russian education then we should let you know education should lead somewhere there should be jobs or something for them to do and that's what the danger as i see it at the moment in

a lot of northern communities there just aren't the jobs so you know the people are left sort of between two worlds they're neither in their traditional culture nor they generally kind of accepted into european or whatever culture they were what would you want to deceive or example if those people of the indigenous people of the north get educated get more modernizing there they may still be there for codes but watch d.v.d.'s listen to listen to that i felt things and so i think they take some absolute time is it ok i absolutely sure we all lose something shit chill. that humanity lose something important if they start drifting and i said and stop and stop hunting but go to go to cities and start going to work in the in the back or going to well know that i mean no culture is this a happy trade i think it's a shame of cultures. of diving you know people are up in arms when a particular species of animal that is often becomes extinct. you know what i feel

pretty much the same i think it's sad i mean the it's the sort of mix and wealth of cultures in our world that enrich is it and so every time you lose one i think it's a bit sad when a person like yourself comes to live with the church or you see he looks so good. swear of life and what people do and say well i think they are happier then ursa live in the cities i've always thought this was this was like our procedures or no and i think that's probably less but if you talk about a traditional way of life i think there's less. less stress less i think generally people randi heard is that i have groups i've been with certainly i would say are sort of on the whole fairly content with their lot and they're in. pretty good shape when it comes to survival because i can give you an example that in ny in the early ninety's when i first traveled to the mile this is these were

chaotic times in the north of russia i mean you couldn't get food you couldn't get i mean it wasn't transport they were just no end of problems right then went out with a group of minutes when you heard us. and spent altogether three months with them on the tundra it was a very different story everything was very organized we had arranged to meet we had issues much food as we needed we had very good shelter we had rain is intense as much firewood as we needed to keep warm we had transport in many ways we were much better off than people who are actually in the villages or the towns of the amman and probably a lot of places in russia says brian alexander an award winning photographer spotlight would be back shortly but after a break so stay with us we'll continue them to be in less than a minute. machine

would be so much brighter if you knew about the sun from feinstein aggression and so. we start our teeth dot com.

welcome back the spotlight i'll get out and just a reminder that my guest in the studio today is brian alexander an award winning photographer. a use spend most of your time. taking pictures in the far north of arctic and antarctic regions and these regions of the planet considered to be like the true barometer is what scale well well what's changing in the climate on the whole planet so so is there really any visible change over there certainly visible change i mean i've seen it in areas of north greenland which i've been sort of visiting sort of on a fairly regular basis for the past thirty nine years so i've seen glaciers have receded and also what tends to be happening. is that the.

ice around the coasts of the arctic and the rivers and lakes are freezing later each autumn or later in the autumn and that same night is then breaking up earlier in the spring and that poses problems for people who are going to need to travel on their on the ice and rivers. churi alexander one of the b.b.c. worldwide photographer of the year back in the early five years that's right here with a picture of a blue eyes very good in this and what i read about it is that is that one of the reasons is that. those blue eyes very very rare those days but no they're not this is climate change also the reason i don't think blue icebergs were ever particularly rare is that the picture and i know that's hard think so you know that's a that happens to be a picture of a piece of iceberg that's taken at mid-day particular polar night she was taken at midday in january during the polar night and it's

a piece of ice with the moon reflecting off. so so so so the back on one of those who was going what amount of life you know the blue icebergs you know they were there never that right i mean that was just a particularly stunningly beautiful one and of course it had penguins on it it just it looked absolutely delightful and it was a great shot but i think that. what's happening now is that. they're more common i'm not sure it is i just think that there's more people going to the arctic and going to the handler they can seeing those a rush for economic economic exploration of the region of the arctic specially right now do you think it's an opportunity or do you think it's more a danger. for this region which you really love but i think you know for the rain for the people who are that it's not so much an opportunity i think it's probably a danger but you know i presume you're referring to all the oil and gas that's in the arctic and it's something. we need i mean russia needs

a prison economy and you know the rest of the world needs concealment so it's something that i think that it's sort of inevitable. that these resources are developed you saw the saying of whether it's sort of good or bad it's just something that's inevitably going well let's see what people in russia now thinking about investment so the arctic spotlight. has the answers hi there well the arctic has been a topic of hot discussion lately due to undiscovered oil and gas reserves which estimated quarter of the world's resources global warming is causing the ice caps which in turn is triggering an increasing interest to the area let's people in this country think that it's time to start investing into the region. i think it is very important for our country to invest money into the arctic because of its resources which were discovered

a long time ago and that time there were no technologies to get to those resources but today such technologies exist and many countries will try to get to the regions and try to get a bigger piece of the pie. i think it's a very good idea for our country at this moment because it can serve as a good foundation for future generations. i think it's necessary for any state which is aspiring to be global because the arctic is our future do try to understand that resource use your the best i think it is very important to invest money into the arctic because we need to protect our sea shelf. yes i think we need to invest money into the arctic but it shouldn't be large investments because russia has enough issues within the country which are lacking financial support from the government. i think we should because if we won't do it somebody else will definitely get to those undiscovered reserves. i think development of

technology for more. yes i think it's very important because of the reserves and the northern reached asia how i got here his good question asked him the economic development of the arctic destroy the everyday lives of the indigenous peoples of the know well the answer is yes yes yes absolutely will it i think it's. it's almost saw i think it will in the areas you know obviously where the main mining or oil and gas extraction. is taking place yes but as well if we compare the life of the indigenous people of the north and from sample the indians from canada world or america you know in states around say that they are the life of the indians is destroyed i mean what's left is more like museums of what used to be but the life over there is still worth do you agree and i'm not i'm sure there's

a lot of crean indians in in northern canada who wouldn't agree that their life has been destroyed they may have you know a lot of modern boats and. and also snowmobiles and and all the other modern paraphernalia but they're still hunting and trapping and this it's you know the price of food in the arctic can be very high so this use of traditional foods is kind of important. what do you think that. the sort of the the big industrial complex is the big industries. that russia is planning and already starting to construct in the celtic regions are big. and their impact on the environment will be will be very serious well there's a potential for of course environmental disasters we've seen what happened in the gulf of mexico but from

a point of view of. destroying cultures yeah because reindeer herders like in the your market which is one of the areas that has is very very rich and gas. you know they face a very uncertain future because the question of the ownership of the land they need land to be able to migrate with their reindeer and they follow the traditional routes you know there's a view of. of nomadic people of just sort of wandering aimlessly across the tundra it's not that at all they have to say specific routes sort of lay in there and has been taking for centuries now is a question if a gas company then comes and wants to drill there what's going to happen. if they're no longer going to be allowed there and that certainly happened in areas of the whole large areas of the tundra just been closed off and. all people that scooted from it apart from you know official gas company workers so there's

a you know there's a very serious sort of threat there from this oil and gas and you know the question is whether how you compensate for that and whether in fact people will be well prime minister put it as a matter of thank you you don't see me you don't seem to be pretty much worried about the city the ecological situation but the russian prime minister he ordered to start cleaning up cleaning the mess in the in the air russian arctic and he said well do you think that this is because he knows better than you out there i mean that nick logical situation or is just like well partly well no i think we're talking about the mess that's already there i think is what he's referring to. and that goes back you know to the fifty's when you know people were sort of exposed exploring in the area and they just saw it as a sort of wasteland and they just discarded all the rubbish and all equipment that they didn't didn't use and it's was a very similar case in the north of canada. as well but they're the they've

taken very active steps understand a lot of money so you know people are more cautious gurgly yes i think the environmental attitudes have changed dramatically since the fifty's people are much more aware of. sort of preserving a sort of arctic as a sort of pristine environment if it just came up that we've been talking about the urge to call that i want is close to russia what about the antarctic. is it is the situation different and i tell you that yes absolutely i mean the antarctic is protected by a treaty which at the moment and the world it is also well yes but the there is you know at the moment the antarctic treaty prevents any industrialisation being carried out on their how long that would last if. vast deposits of oil or gas or oil are so valuable minerals worth this were discovered there i don't know i suspect not too long but at the moment it's impossible so so what really needs the

attention of the environmentalists is today is the arctic yes. yes because i think they are while it needs it more than the i mean there are other areas of the world where they need the ultimate attention from environmentalists not just the arctic but you know the antarctic can say is it's already rate well regulated and controlled the arctic is much less thank you thank you very much for being with us and just a reminder that my guest in this studio today was an award winning photographer brian alexander and that's sort of from all of us here if you want to have yourself spotlight or have someone of mine you think i should point next out to drop me a line at al green or at the t.t. that i will be back with more of them stay on pressure today and take thank you thank you betty.

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