this hotel telling us it's hard to the point of pleasures and i would prince harry to the splendid hotel in touch with the hotel and touch your group if it's a good go how would international sounds good to achieve every green goal her toe into. greece is shaken with mass protests over the government's agreement to raise taxes and cut jobs to pull the country out of its debt hole. similar problems for the u.k. where around three quarters of a million teachers and civil servants are staging a strike to prevent their pension from being slashed. plus retiring u.s. secretary of defense robert gates leaves three wars to deal with for his successor many question whether the incoming cia chief will turn the pentagon or some around .

but from our headquarters in central moscow here watching our team with me and he said now it's two pm here in the russian capital one pm in athens greece is picking up the pieces from the latest bout of civil unrest when thousands of angry protesters flooded the streets that's after a part of the men gave the green light to tough new cots in order to secure a further financial one fine from the e.u. demonstrators clashed with police in the capital on the second day of a general strike financial journalist in los witnessed the under arrest you can still. smell the chemicals that were sprayed when i walked into the hotel i have my eyes started to tear up again and they haven't dropped anything since last night so it's really just residue and things that are coming out. and in fact one of the things that is circulating around here today is a very. it shows police not just police brutality yesterday was

a lot of that but also police working with provocateurs agent provocateur which would be escorted into a safe location and they were communicating with and relaying information from so i guess what you're getting a lot right now is people are taking a break they're assessing the environment they're assessing the situation there's a report that the head of the pharmaceutical national pharmaceutical station here in greece is going to be filing a lawsuit along with other people against the government for use of illegal substances because these weren't just this was just here gas there were other chemicals and including us fixating agents and that's why you see a lot of people here i saw them myself yesterday and on a lot of people other people saw them passing out not being able to breathe people inside the metro station not being able to breathe a lot of the hospital for that reason there was no mall really in the violence yesterday there was no real break normally you get a kind of a break as a sunday gets the set and people begin to collect themselves for a kind of renewed. amount of protesting and i bet you didn't see that yesterday i think that people here pretty much given up on the three hundred members of

parliament that reside in the in the heart of the building across the street from the constitution square i think the only real option for them right now for the protesters and for the greek people is if some sort of political option or movement develops out of a society out of the ranks of ordinary people who are intelligent or capable who come from universities who have some idea of what the country needs these this latest proposal is about rolling over debt but it's really about rolling it over so that they can be basil three compliant in case of capital. liquidity capital issues the banks are not really working to solve the problem in a meaningful way to what it can can can provide a lasting solution. but you can share your view of what's waiting for greece now that's part of the mint has a great new cots let's take a look at what you think so far most of you believe banks have not give up their fight and early elections however many of those who contact think worst austerity is in fact calm and bankruptcy is still on the cards. some even believe greeks

should have random shit but emigrate you still have a chance to tell us what you think drop us a line on what is happening in greece go to our t.v. . it's not only greece that seen massive on rast in the u.k. around three quarters of a million public sector workers are protesting against government plans to change their pensions half of the country's state schools are closed and transport is disrupted as workers embark on a one day strike and they listened to the voices of frustration. down tools up with industrial action and autumn of discontent starts here as the u.k. braces for a wave of strikes not seen for decades this time it's three quarters of a million public sector workers walking out unhappy with the planned reform of their pensions which they say will see them paying a lot more and getting a lot less we don't think that should be wasted what's the functions we think if one deserves to have security retirement people are talking about withdrawing from

the pension scheme because it costs more to pay the mortgage at the same time as paying for the connections and people are really angry that time and because i'm making a complaint says yeah ok we're being asked to take a pension in our cajuns to pay more for a change it's reality is we've got to for the rest we're just using these people do a huge variety of key work from teachers and lecturers to air traffic controllers and coast guards unisons the u.k.'s biggest public sector trade union deputy chief paul babbly says his one point three million members are ready for prolonged industrial action and we're almost at war fourteen we've got thirty million claim set aside and with or a strategy work out but i must strangers that's not what we want to do we want to talk to the government and negotiate a sensible package to nor the ridiculous package of their proposal at the moment

that package involves raising the retirement age from sixty to sixty six raising pension contributions by workers and having payouts based on average career earnings rather than final thousand the unions admit public support is fundamental to having a successful strike action the government's very unlikely to change its mind about reforms if the public at large doesn't back the unions but that's by no means a short public service workers do already get very generous pensions and the. cost of those pensions is very much to the culprits and the burden falls on to the next generation it really is absolutely essential that public sector pensions are reformed and even after they are reformed public sector workers will get solved the pensions and most private sector workers the unions want to apply enough pressure to force the government to change its mind and it's no stranger to you turns it was hell bent on reforming the health service too until it decided to take longer to think about it causing friction in the coalition the government's doing this to

reduce the current fifty billion dollar pension bill but it may be cutting off its nose to spite its face that the wider issue here according to the u.k. pension. it let me public sector work if no don't think that helps is what while they may stop the abuse think that if there was a widespread with the pension fund would collapse and that would leave u.k. p.l.o. the very shores of investments just what it needs it more than ever big unions will be fretting that but is the government listening to your avatar to love the. scale of the walkouts in the u.k. hasn't been seen for decades later we hear from british trade union leader mark who says if the government found to take notice this time people returned to protest an even greater number. having three quarters of a million people from four different unions on strike or something now this hasn't

happened in this country for decades it's the start not the finish where our message to the government is if they try to ignore we'll come back in the autumn and we may well see millions of people on strike so the idea is to build pressure so the government realise they're working people the length and breadth of the u.k. i'm not just going to let them get away with what they're doing and we believe crasher ultimately come forced them to change direction saying you want to go just when they're having a chat with a few people in a room is one thing saying you want to go see it when there could be a million. the people to the construction is entirely another we actually believe that the six million trade unionists plus the thousands and thousands or hundreds of thousands of pensioners and students all becoming a joint campaign is going to be politically very powerful and already seen in the march of one hundred to five hundred thousand people or three months ago transform the political mood in this country with a march continue our view is a work of strikes actually to.

you can watch the full interview with british trade union leader marks or walk in twenty minutes time during r.t. . well also coming your way this hour tensions are still high over a one way to change in egypt the capital yet again reach a boiling point as thousands of protesters the queues being turned government a lack of action but with the deaths caused by police during the recent revolt. and history repeating itself we find out about how the hardships of a whole nation of people forcibly displaced and now struggling to get back to their native lands. but first the african union has condemned france for supplying weapons to libyan rebels its chief said the move threatens to put the entire region at risk and wednesday france became the first nato country to openly admit to arming tribal fighters who are striving to topple colonel gaddafi rebels

have recently been making gains and hope to advance on tripoli john laughlin from the institute of democracy and cooperation in paris says france's action reveals the true colors of nato mission in libya. the admission that france is arming the rebels is very obviously an admission that what's going on in libya is a fight between the government and rebels and bills are not civilians so any attack by the government on armed rebels in libya is therefore not necessarily a war crime in other words this news is. not only incompatible with the case that's being made for war in libya it completely contradicts it there is no doubt that the three countries britain france and america who are waging this war under the disguise of nato of course wish to see the rebels seize power by force and overthrow gadhafi we must be careful about using the word nato this war is being fought by britain france and america they use nato is the fifteenth but nato itself

is of course much bigger and there is not unanimity in nato only a few days ago the italian foreign minister said that there should be a ceasefire in order to allow humanitarian aid through so i think that this latest news from france will possibly increase tensions within the coalition although i repeat that the war is being waged by three countries using nato as a disguise. for last five years he's been the man at the helm of the u.s. military and responsible for the billions of dollars that have flowed into the pentagon's coffers from washington now secretary of defense from case is retiring leaving behind three wars in ever growing defense budget but with the director of the cia stepping into his shoes critics doubt there will be much change in the pentagon's course if you check out reports from whoever's in the white house in the pentagon it's business as usual robert gates was secretary of defense to two different presidents obama was elected on a promise to end the wars of his predecessor george w. bush but america's worst continued and one more was even added to the plate of

inconclusive campaigns libya. or change between parties there really isn't a great deal of training in the pentagon under robert gates is watch america's annual defense spending approach that really in dollars rising at the pace of about five percent a year but statements from his office were often contradictory spending that nearly doubled the. budget over the last decade the gusher has been turned off and will stay off the u.s. is supposed to leave iraq by the end of the year but it seems that bad line is not final he gives all kinds of contradictory statements for instance not long ago he said that anyone who advises support u.s. land army in the middle of an aging conflict should have his head examined yet at

the same time. he's done everything you can alone over several times to baghdad to leave with nouri al maliki government to please please could u.s. soldiers stay after the deadline at the end of this year the pentagon says they expect the iraqi government will ask them to stay beyond their scheduled december thirty first departure date but with the announced troop withdrawals from iraq and afghanistan the you must started actively waging a different kind of warfare what they call an intelligent war one that's waged with drones without sacrificing the lives of their soldiers in countries like pakistan yemen and libya and many say that's the main issue that happened in military operations under robert gates a shift that some say can only lead to more destruction. the united states has increased the intensity of the focus on pakistan in terms of drone strikes those

remotely piloted vehicles while targeting terrorists the u.s. has been criticized for killing mostly civilians it's also making us less secure from a policy standpoint we can intervene over the world it just fuels the insurgency needs and fuels and i am american and always say the deaths of thousands of civilians in afghanistan are part of the reason why the u.s. has failed at curbing insurgency the. now the u.s. is preparing to pull out third of its troops by the end of next year many afghans fear that less troops doesn't mean less bombs dropped on their homes as the u.s. that stop aerial strikes in the region the possibility of waging a war without having to justify the deaths so the american troops as a bit calmer more palatable for the pentagon the cia has been at the forefront of america's undeclared wars and with

a new secretary of defense leon panetta who was the head of the cia the trend is our mike we can change. our reporting from washington our team. if you ever missed something we're covering on air you can always find it online at our team got more news they are an eye catching videos here's a look at what's lined up for you today in the u.s. more and more states are relinquishing their duties are running for president and those private attention is driving critics say it's because of the millions of dollars these institutions are making also. music stores to new heights and not sought after not joins legendary just protocols frontman and an out of this world do ads for war go to our tea cup of coffee. egypt's fragile in terms of leadership is facing the strain with renewed violence on the streets officials have ordered

a probe into clashes in cairo which have left more than a thousand people injured during today's protest riot police used tear gas to disperse demonstrators who pelted officers with stones and firebombs the rest began over the slow pace of prosecution of senior officials and police officers accused of brutally brutality i should say during the mass uprising in february activists are also calling for the speedy implementation of reforms demanded during the fall toppled president mubarak analyst pepe escobar says many are frustrated by the. of change. the regime is doing in place and the political parties and the political forces who are take a licking for the next elections they don't care about this they are just all again icing to grab political power later on and do it young generation the connected deal employed young intellectuals of egypt now they're back in the streets again because they see that essentially nothing has changed these people

who committed these atrocities in fact against civilians especially in february. still at large. i would say it's a fair bet that they won't be going to trial for the next few months because most of the people who are actually protecting them still there at the ministry of interior the problem here is these new forces in egypt. intellectuals the unemployed the contractor the first generation which we are doing recent they still don't have the political participation organized as well but the fact is that the muslim brotherhood is already very well organized even do a progressive streak of the muslim brotherhood is splintering in forming their own political party because these younger muslim brotherhood people think that the old generation is too conservative and that's absolutely true. coming up to eighteen minutes past the hour

a look at some world news in brief for you two french journalists who were being held hostage by the taliban in afghanistan have been freed they're going back home after spending five hundred forty seven days in captivity the two men are said to be in good health and good spirits and t.v. reporter and his cameraman were captured with afghan colleagues in late two thousand and nine filming in a mountainous area of the country. venezuela has delayed next week's mayor major summit of latin american and caribbean leaders as we go chavez is still recovering from surgery in cuba it comes after state television showed the fifty six year old talking to fidel castro in appearance which fell to quell speculation over his health job as well also miss massive ratios marking the two hundred year anniversary of venezuela's independence from spain on the fifth of july president was rushed into emergency surgery earlier this month suffering from a pelvic ops. the first tropical storm of the atlantic hurricane season has

brought the threat of floods and mudslides to mexico central gulf coast the state oil company is monitoring the situation and ready to order the evacuation of oil platforms if necessary heavy rains have already been faltering and castor say many parts of the country could be swamped the region is still recovering from major flooding last year. almost seventy years ago an entire nation of people were displaced from their homeland four hundred thousand were scattered around the globe and even today are still not made to feel welcome in their cars in their country in the country i should say of their ancestors artie's medina question of takes up their story. as it turns out this. was an inviting everyone and into people can't make their way back to georgia the lines of their ancestors. we will just come out so. learn from it's hard to in georgia that's what we've been fighting for and dreaming of for many years there

are some four hundred thousand people with this dream spread across the globe there have been left with no homeland mishaps and turks are often described as the twice deported people they were forcibly displaced first from georgia and someone's got to stand and after almost seventy years of there are no magic existence their only hope now is that one day they will be able to return to their own age if was it was the still in regime which deported over ninety thousand mishaps in turks to central asia in nine hundred forty four but they had to flee again after violent as nic was in his back is done in nine hundred eighty nine most of them now live in azerbaijan in turkey as well as wash and the united states georgia finally adopted a repatriation law under pressure from the european consul in two thousand and seven but even four years on the law doesn't appear to have changed anything.

they know george isn't the richest or the most stable of countries that's the first thing secondly they seem to realize they're not welcome here to come to an entirely new country that's going to be unknown everyone is capable of that. came into power but was surrounded by so many bureaucratic barriers to collect so many documents it may coming back almost impossible the chairman of the world organization of massage and turks saleman but about cancer has traveled to georgia repeated li in before i to make that we patch ration lot more factus but last year saleman was arrested in georgia and imprisoned for less and years he was accused of forging documents and fraud but his supporters say the charges were trumped up my will measure is that there is no proof that he's guilty i'm sure he was arrested for boys you don't want to stick reasons we can't do anything to help him for now most miss hatch and turks continued to leave the law and scattered far from where. they consider home and in distant lands their holds of return still seem equally remote in additional artsy

reporting from the north caucasus but just a few minutes of british trade union leader shares his concern over the pending changes to the pension plan but first a check on what's happening in the world of business with corey. our welcome to the business here in r.t. thanks for joining me and we go straight to our top story russia's gas giant gazprom is holding its annual general meeting the company has announced its increased dividends and made investments to a record level for more let's cross over to our marine corps for a who is at the gas problem headquarters marina. ikrima all the latest that we're hearing from gas problem is that there will be explore new opportunities in europe and they see germany as a very attractive market for new projects we also point out that expo looms in the first half off twenty eleven increased by twenty six percent compared to last year

and now we're still waiting to hear about those record breaking dividends gastro missed proposing to get out just under four roubles per share and if that is approved it will be the biggest amount of money ever given in the company's history now twenty ten results were positive for gas from cells revenues went up to one hundred eighteen billion dollars and that was historically low and export volumes reached pre-crisis levels as far as this year gas from will be increasing its spending and also there will be higher because of higher demand and higher spot prices and also there will be increase in their investment program and we hear that that could be up to forty four billion dollars which is a record and of course all of the decisions will be made with a new board of directors who will be a like the later today back to you kareen. thank you very much reporting from the gas provider will meeting here in moscow now it's called to tell the stories russia

is about to realize its biggest investment dream in the country's newly created ten billion dollars will come up with the first project in september and head of the farm has outlined its investment priorities. agricultural prices are increasing dramatically so i agree business is very important health care. health care can be much more efficient and can be improved dramatically we sprawl pretty fast once i was poor girl i know how energy efficiency we all know that's real so much of the parental manager price under all sorts of new energy efficient technology has produced very significant cost savings so it's not sure projects it's not for research projects so for the projects where we can see sort of predictable cash flow and such as energy efficiency it will produce good results but also good for the country. does take a look at the markets oil prices are low after arriving earlier this week and the increase followed a u.s. interest report that showed a sharp decline that surpassed expectations light sweet is trading at ninety four

dollars a barrel brant is a hundred and eleven dollars a barrel. and european stock markets are high as greek lawmakers approved additional austerity measures this will help the country get more aid and avoid a default put sees that point seven percent quit who is banking group surging overnight a half percent on a well received cost cutting plan other banks the world bank of scotland and barclays also added five and two percent respectively energy sectors access as well as of for making me jump one point two percent dutch shell rose point eight percent here in russia stock some makes this hour the outgasses higher and advise it since needs to read now let's have a look at something digital shadows make a come out as it is gaining almost a percent supported by news it could create a joint venture with its belorussia rival by the end of the year their bank is also on the rise reports its a.d.r.'s have been approved for trading in london and frankfurt gross telecom is up over two percent average announced

a six percent increase in net profit for the first group of. russian equities a strong. for direction but so gay so they're all. banks says blue chip names are still the pick up a crop for future. owners general mistrust for second piece of that and just don't invest and secondly there's a need for it and we can use their presence so there are no i'm not where many of them play they do say in blue chips as no one here probably is the most favor. by the market but there are sometimes some of the for almost a risk that the in september in the middle of the sort of the not fit on the to the market and some discount and the solution we buy that's rising interest from is going to bump in dust from other news some kind of some on taxes so also a month a bit that there's something not on the stocks but most blue chips chip oh

multiples of basis and i think is a for general optimism not a wife from the market the people that will buy most of for much of. our business. in about forty five minutes from now with more here on the sets.

to. add. one thing to your different order. here this street still keeps secrets but now it's time to reveal versions of the soviet files on r.t.c. . is what i was just thinking about my future before the foreign companies came i dreamed of owning a can cutting factory. but we have less garbage now. somebody

that has to come here make fun of me. figure out garbage boy i'm not bad like people think. i'm a good person. it's just the people don't see me. but i feel it was time people like me. that one. that i feel people will start to appreciate us.