updating you know on this hour's breaking news an explosion at a nuclear facility in mark you in southern france one person confirmed killed several injured authorities say no radiation leak has been detected the explosion happened after a fire in a processing area for radioactive waste the site is involved in decommissioning nuclear facilities and handles nuclear waste with low levels of radioactivity will bring you more on this breaking story shortly coming up later though we focus on the environmental footprint of war in our special report but first maria joins us with business. hello and welcome to business here on the right seat deals worth four hundred million dollars have been signed then the visit of the u.k. prime minister david cameron says that they base in includes blue chip companies like royal dutch shell b.p. and british airways british the i y rethink alerting fresh air will unveil

a plan so open and nine stores in russia total investment could reach two hundred and fifty million dollars the u.k. is also expected to sign a deal with the russian state energy corporation which will get help companies wind contacts and losses. in the street. and i'm on the other notable deal was the russian state nanotechnology corporation that is behind a forty to fifty percent off the london bass pro bono bio for an undisclosed announce the financial times describes the company as a medical company launch in the world's first molecular scale and that it's acknowledging treatments pro bono by a plan celeste in moscow ellen then within four years. tony hayward is stepping down from the anglo russian oil firm. and that's less than a year after joining the board as a non-executive director the former chief executive of b.p.

who was fiercely criticized for his handling of the gulf of mexico oil spill is going to pursue other interests in the energy sector departure comes out a sensitive time following b.p.'s failed it's time to join with force not so explore the arctic the alliance was broken by the russian partners in seeing k b p who are now seeking compensation this group of course from the british parent company. let's take a look at the markets now it will start with oil prices there are lower investors fear europe's debt crisis will harm economic growth tempering demands for all materials light sweet is currently trading at eighty six dollars per barrel while bryant is hovering at one hundred and eleven dollars. over in europe markets are seeing heavy losses shares and u.k. lenders are under pressure after the independent commission told banks they will have to ring fence their retail arms following the credit crisis the footsie is

losing close to two and a half percent well that x. is down three and a half percent and european that warrants are weighing on the russian markets as well in this is our x. then the last week's losses in monday's straight the r.t.s. is the out of four point three percent the south the my sex is down two and a half percent and let's take a look at some index movers on the bisects energy majors are losing ground with gas prongs that in over three percent banking stocks are also on the preferred bull rush is the largest lender losing close to a floor percent this hour although it's trading slightly better head of its own ordinary appliance to discuss a buyback of company. from minority shareholders this hour it's adding point two percent. here's our mounts in the world is set in rapidly for

a second dip of the recession russia's finance minister alex acquitted says it's not probable now then before the summer russia's balanced budget means it is reasonably well placed to ride out the turmoil but troika dialog strategist chris we first says that's will only offer limited protection when the mood turned sour. in reality russia is in a much stronger position than it was in two thousand and eight so you know the brush is in a much better position to be able to withstand global downturn. you know to to to remain fiscal be solvent and stable that's the reality it doesn't matter the perception is that russia is still a high risk environment most international investors view russia as a derivative of global growth therefore if they become optimistic about global recovery russian asset prices tend to rise higher faster than others and equally when there's a selloff as we saw in august russia nasa prices will go down probably even faster

than the rest. from running both charter and a local flights routes full of big events of the country's major airlines who will also get state subsidies other less so this could reduce existent passenger traffic by up to forty percent with just a few companies operating in the markets the move is that improve in russia or aviation safety record after almost an entire professional eye sockets was killed in a plane crash last. and that's all the business news for now for more stories you can always type at our websites r t dot com slash business but in the meantime stay tuned for the headlines with mats.

please. please just say. i'm stunned. if it. comes.

in two thousand and ten especially economic zone for industrial production was established in russia somalia region with a total area of six hundred sixty five to as. its investors are granted exclusive tax and customs benefits which includes a five year exemption from profit seeking lands and transport taxes as well as an income tax reduction to fifteen point five percent of the special economic zone operates as a fleet customs on which enables manufacturers to market their products in russia free in four g.'s the some are region as he said is currently witnessing a surge in infrastructure construction in the sim our region special economic zone

promises exceptional opportunities for developing fuel business in russia will come to the smaller regions for more information log on to the book invest in some are of the all you. hundred thirty pm in moscow these iraqi headlines there's been an explosion at a nuclear facility in southern france one person's dead several injured have visuals reported no emissions outside the site that handles nuclear waste with a low level of radioactivity. stronger relations for mutual benefit russia and the u.k. agree not to allow their divided opinions on issues like the live in ngo scandal and the resolution of the syrian crisis to stand in the way of a political economic partnership. generating power iran plugs its first nuclear plant into the national grid the facility at bushehr was built with russia's help.

italy moves closer to the center of the eurozone debt crisis as its crucial austerity package enters the final stages triggering a new wave of protests and tough spending cuts but much debated fifty four billion euro program is aimed at balancing the country's budget and triggering growth. up next we look at the silent casualty of war the environment which faces severe and long term damage from both the production of weapons and combat itself stay with us . sometimes we think that it's easier to make war and to work to create an it or to clean up after it the military is a major player in terms of environmental outcomes. the environment is wars silent or short when we talk about the

costs of war we're really focused on what happens to the way or the animals we rarely focus on that which sustains human or. we're completely out of sync in defining threats to our security. at one time the principal threats were in the what cheery they no longer are there now environmental in the homeland security department there speaking about vulnerability and preparedness we just could be the same and yet in climate change but we really need to do that at the minute it sit for sleepwalking insta zoster we can't afford to straight walk into the future we must take decisions and action which creation of world that we want our children and nature are trying to grow up.

war has changed much over the centuries yet our perception of war has changed a little we memorialize the fallen take some note of collateral damage to

civilians but in calculating the cost of war we seldom acknowledge its toll on the natural environment. well when one deals with warfare one has to realize that this tremendous amounts of damage that have done not just human damage but damage to the physical environment in which the battlefield takes place and whether it's a small war of a couple of days or whether it's a major war one war two vietnam war or the recent wars in the middle east tremendous amounts of damage done by aerial bombs by napalm. chemicals that are used i would say there's very little consideration during combat operations to the effect on the environment one gets totally preoccupied in the firefight so. after major combat operations are over and almost anywhere you have

unexploded ordinance. staggered about the landscape then the use of agricultural land to the population you can tensions lee in fact water supply and the food chain and i would say that that's basically the case almost anywhere that you use fire power either air power artillery. the primary goal in warfare is to beat the enemy and when you want to defeat the enemy as quickly and as. probably cost effectively as you'd like to use the most dangerous weapons you can the most but the most are your own troops your own population happens to be on the battlefield. with three six battle. each capable of firing up to six thousand women all of these dragon ships big heavy.

when i arrived in vietnam. february one thousand nine hundred seventy. there was a really a great deal of destruction we were taken out on missions mainly by helicopter our missions were called search and destroy we would try to search out the enemy and destroy the enemy and we could cheer area they were in numerable tunnels and usually we would try to blow these tunnels up the same for explosives. and we seldom saw the enemy we tried to destroy the earth that concealed and sustain the enemy i often wonder if our struggle is not against human beings but against the earth that sustains them. we've become experts and going the earth using

bonds i tell me more doors see for gunships and they plan to reduce the earth to ashes. in the history of life on earth they're going five moments. in which they spend a major spasm of extinction and the best known is around the time a source left the stage as it were we are now clearly in the first stages of a potential sixth spasm of extinction in the human footprint on nature it's it's just the way you can see the increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere you can see it in the proliferating dead sun some coastal waters around the world you can see that the oceans becoming acid in terms of warm preparations for war

that becomes a list of things in itself whether it's. are sonic boom so factoring in mammals or it's the burning oil fields around iraq or it's destroyed coral reefs in the pacific for branding purposes or do worse just goes on and on in wartime damage the habitat and wildlife is a given sometimes unintended sometimes the result of a deliberate strategy one of the wisdom samples of the environmental impact of warfare it was seen during the iraq invasion of kuwait in one nine hundred ninety one and the deliberate igniting of the oil wells in q right by saddam hussein streets but also stealing a vast amounts of oil in fact tens of millions of barrels of oil into the patient gulf region and this had it cherohala faked on the marine farm and on bird life in

the area by its migratory and night shift birds. once was in that is it had his farmer in a fit and it is it is not just a collection of millions of patents of sand it is that it's an ecosystem and for vast amounts of oil into a consistent that is terribly destructive for. also fair in love and war as they say and that's why. aircraft will hit the chemical industry they'll sink tankers. to nuclear power plants will hit anything that might bring up the society or a city or wherever you're fighting it to its knees as quickly as possible with tremendous amounts than likely of environmental damage such deliberate targeting of a environment during the vietnam war prompted the addition of article fifty five the protocol one to the geneva conventions article fifty five of protocol one additional to the geneva conventions of nineteen forty nine states that care

shall be taken in war to protect them against widespread long term and severe damage to the united states. although it is accepted almost all of the provisions protocol one has taken exception to that. in our bombing campaign and nineteen ninety nine milosevic did not capitulate and just a few days as we had anticipated and we bombed for seventy eight days we bombed oil refineries resulting in a mile long oil slicks that extended down the danube through remaining into the black sea. we bombed have true chemical plants and fertilizer factories spreading mercury. other carcinogens

on the landscape and to a canal lead into the danube river it will take the eco systems decades to recover. forests are among the ecosystems that are most often damaged or destroyed in combat itself the main reason for that is because they are very useful for guerrillas trying to find concealment from forces with superior firepower forty years ago when the united states was trying to prevail in vietnam and its enemies the viet cong were using the force for concealment the american forces tried through fire and chemical defoliants to clear large parts of

the forests of vietnam. not in build up what. they think of themselves as wrong on the basis. they fly seven days in a week fifty two weeks and yet those days in the planes and spew out a total of nearly eighteen thousand gallons of people here. from one hundred sixty two to nineteen seventy one u.s. military conducted a large scale defoliation drive code named operation ranch air planes helicopters and tanker trucks sprayed nineteen million gallons of herbicides on south vietnam. i should mention agent orange which was also one of the main ways that the way and was rather just a place that had been sprayed would die and we sometimes the we sort of say banana plants would become enormous and then they would die and it

looked like a ghost landscape almost everything had been killed aging our engine was developed actually in world war two at that time it was not thought that this had any effect on human beings so this became a wonderful commercial product but also a very potent product that could be used to just. jungles to destroy food crops to be able to be used as a tactical weapon of war without being considered chemical warfare in the sense of rising gas fifty percent of the asian aren't consisted of a chemical called to four or five tea which. unless the conditions of manufacture were carefully controlled would become contaminated with dioxin which is an extraordinarily potent toxic chemical so much of the agent orange or the

surface side that was sprayed in vietnam was heavily contaminated the americans did not want me to follow your mom's humans more. on the rights and the wrongs of it seems like both teams will be aging vietnamese with more anyway these are my holcombe i don't just think not only but it makes no more than a mission accomplished. in one thousand nine hundred four us veterans who attributed a variety of adverse physical symptoms to agent orange exposure settled out of court with the manufacturers twenty years later their families fought to have a plaque added to the vietnam veterans memorial it states in memory of the men and women who served in the vietnam war and later died as a result of their service we honor and remember their sacrifice. you that the united states government nor the manufacturers of agent orange have compensated the

vietnamese people. when we first started working in afghanistan one of the things that surprised me was that it actually was an area where natural and wild pistachio and woodlands grew i didn't know that they actually existed there before and in fact they were a significant part of the pre-war economy people picked at the stash and actually exported them and it was worth millions of dollars as a source of income to people. in the deforestation we see in afghanistan is a product of three forces first of all you have the mujahideen that were using the forests for cover the soviets destroyed some of the force to prevent that second of all you have the afghans themselves harvested the forests and stockpiled the wood because they feared that they'd be taken away during the collective isolation process. and third you had land mines were put in agricultural areas by putting the land mines that are cultural areas that forced people to find other areas to grow

food and the most obvious where the forests and woodlands in the country so those three factors have led to virtual one hundred percent deforestation in some areas this photo that was taken during a field study for the united nations environment program holes in the soil indicate were trees have been uprooted to plant crops. after three decades of war only the smallest patches of forest remain in northern afghanistan barely detectable by satellite and the reason we don't see some of these woodlands and forests regenerating is also complex at the moment if a seedling happens to take root and start growing you actually have grazing of goats and sheep over virtually the entire landscape and those codes and sheep obviously simply eat anything that comes up so what we saw you know in a number of different sample areas was not a single seedling had taken root. when you have such fragile soils and you have

such heavy grazing on them you really amplify and cause soil of ocean to the point where recovery is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible. but. it was fun to actually started with my farber when i was probably ten years old he was a marine. who had fought in the bottle of water canal in the solomon islands on world war two and i heard the stories of his experiences of storming the beaches running out of supplies and. sword fighting with the japanese soldiers on the islands just for. they saw their supply ship people want to buy japanese aircraft to try to explain that feeling of of seeing their food and their

source of self-defense just completely destroyed from their eyes. i was doing some research on oil spills in general off the australian coast and that that story came back to me and i thought well his ship is still there and i but the oil still aboard. there nearly four thousand world war two ship wrecks in the south so if it right now and over three hundred of those are oil tankers. if no measures are taken on this these ships will collapse they will release their oil. one side oil answers the marine environment will be very difficult to remove it. the pacific's highest concentration of world war two wrecks can be found in the federated states of micronesia troops look good service forward to anchor it for the japanese imperial fleet until an air attack by american forces sank sixty ships and more than two hundred planes the way that the reefs are

struggling around the world to the core of leeching global warming over fishery and dynamite fishery added to those stresses a massive oil spill would just be the last nail in the coffin for these waves that would not be able to regenerate and. to think that a war that we have. in the last century could still be destroying our future is really pretty shocking. and it's this tracking things that current warfare is set by our business units across many not a percent of the victims of wolf a cowardly ass opinions and this is a real turnaround sharon about one hundred kilo say yes a guy at the status of the last century when it was hit that there was that ten percent in the terms of force against and about ninety percent military and that it's a opposite. and what's in creasing making a certain set particularly since he is that sadly using more and more me nations to

get a say in military afaik the invasion of kuwait by iraq and the cleanup of kuwait after the one nine hundred ninety one gulf war is a very good example of the problems and the challenges of cleaning up the battlefield. after the war there was an enormous amount of refugees from the battles that took place these were trucks tanks aircraft all sorts of ordnance a lot of it unexploded and what happened was the allied troops came in and they basically picked up all this metal debris and piled it in giant piles the size of a football field in various parts of the kuwaiti desert and left it there i feel that. i've gotten old and so from time to time these piles go up in flames and from time to time they explode here and there and no one really knows what to what to do with unexploded ordnance what we call you expose in

a case like that. among the most enduring legacy is of modern warfare is unexploded ordinance you x o three grenades shells and bombs that fail to detonate during combat you xo remains on the battlefield long after the battle often hidden by vegetation or covered by soil as weapons continue to grow more lethal the casualties of war are no longer confined to combatants north of if you're ration of armed conflict one example is the cluster bomb a hollow shell where the jets multiple smaller sub missions called bomb b. use or bomb let's. up to a third of these bombs can fail to detonate on impact effectively becoming land mines american.