and our top story in business this hour the country's two stock exchanges complete their merger today it's an essential part of the government's plan to go other international financial center join me for more on that album by the time. world news twenty four hours a day you're watching r.t. north korea's a veteran leader kim jong il has died at the age of sixty nine state media announced he passed away on saturday after suffering a heart attack kim jong il's youngest son kim jong un has reportedly been named his successor meanwhile as the news broke young's longstanding enemy south korea put its armed forces on high alert for the government has declared the situation an emergency kim jong il's body is lying in state in the most of them in the capital

before funeral service on december twenty eighth until then a period of mourning has been declared in the country and this and now it takes a look back at the life of a man who became a symbol of the inclusive state. a mystery to the world what now for north korea with its leader kim jong il dong this massive military parade was held in two thousand and eight to mark north korea's sixtieth anniversary general can john wasn't there to greet the crowd reports suggested he suffered a stroke in two thousand and three reports claimed kim jong il died of diabetes and had been replaced in public by stand ins hired previously as a security measure he never spoke to the media had a profound fear of flying and ate with special chopsticks which could detect poison rumors have surrounded the so-called supreme leader throughout his life beginning with birth according to one source he was born in the soviet union in one nine

hundred forty one during his father's exile all kim jong il's official biography claims his birth was heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow. our people take pride in the fact that they are blessed with great leaders from generation to generation. the leader of the democratic people's republic of korea since one thousand nine hundred ninety four he succeeded his father kim il sung keeping korea close to the world kim jong il was also named supreme commander of the people's army one of the largest in the world with one million active troops and over four million reservist it's believed enormous funds allocated to its military might ate up north korea's resources needed to fight famine and other social problems but kim jong il and his regime tried to put on a different show when allowing the globe a glimpse inside four hundred you know in our thought or the general came john thank you so much you know after the korean war the demilitarized zone was drawn up

sending north and south korea into very different directions. decades on the north remains a closed communist state this is a modern democracy and innovative success story north korea has caused global outrage in recent years has two patients by carrying out underground nuclear test and short range missile launches leading to us in un financial and military sanctions it is now not a matter of the united states and north korea it is really a matter of the region saying to north korea that it has to change its behavior russia has tried to be a mediator for peace on the peninsula by pushing for negotiations or in the asia pacific region this serious potential for conflict and there's no alternative but to set up dialogue and improve understanding between the soils in twenty ten new cars blew up around the north with talk of the possible next leader that's when kim

john on became a four star general and first moved into mind to take over for his father november saw tensions reach its highest point in decades after the north launched an artillery strike that left four dead south korea continues to hold large scale war games with the u.s. and japan and want to conflict would break out if another attack was launched now kim john on a young and inexperienced leader is up a helm and will either open the door or continue to keep it shot this were a way station was built in two thousand and two with hopes of connecting seoul and palin yang but the north korean regime backed out at the last minute making this the last stop trains heading back into the south now with kim jong il that there is new hope that perhaps soon we would see a train heading in that. setting light on the most secretive and reply. in the world and he's now artsy korea. news just in rescuers have

found a raft containing around fifteen people in the freezing waters off russia's far east coast but already. capsized on sunday it's not clear they're still alive sixteen people are now confirmed dead after more bodies were found in the freezing waters off russia's far east coast where an oil rig capsized thirty seven people are still missing more than a day since the tragedy happened fourteen people have been rescued so far and more in this we will be speaking to artistic agrees in just a couple minutes. now fifteen people have been confirmed dead and about a hundred others injured following a weekend of massive violence in western kazakhstan the situation in the central asian republics remains volatile after deadly clashes between striking oil workers and police sparked more unrest across the region on t.v. what was going off is in kazakhstan. it seems that the authorities resort to order

in these parts of the country were these were this violence erupted we've heard reports from the town of walked out on sunday in the west of the country where for over four hundred protesters gathered for a rally in front of the local building of the administration about forging new that went on peacefully but the other rallies didn't go in the same fashion unfortunately for example on saturday a group of protesters blocked really station and had to actually train into over three hundred people on board and also in the west of the country and when police came in to disperse the crowd they see around fifty people or hooligans as they're called now by the authorities showed fierce resistance and they set a locomotive on fire they were throwing around malt of cocktails both at trains and at the police some of them moved to a nearby village setting things on fire there as well the violence erupted in the

city of hours and also in the west of the country where on friday protests rally combined with the celebrations of twenty years of independence turned into a very ugly picture where the broadest setting buildings on fire including state facilities authorities say that forty six buildings have been down there east first they started firing warning shots into the air that didn't help to calm the crowd down they have deployed a state of emergency in this town i was in i was in and you know that over sixty people have been detained after that including three russian journalists who've now been then released we will be of course monitoring the situation as it continues here in gaza. back to one of our breaking news stories here on r t

sixteen people now confirmed dead after more bodies were found in a freezing waters off russian's far eastern oil rig capsized now jake aggrieved is there for us now john can you tell us what we understand there to a life raft that has been found what's the latest situation on that yes we are receiving reports at present that's a life raft has been found with about fifteen people on board we don't know what condition they're in present boat and whether or not any of them are even alive this comes after a day every fruitless searching when it comes first the five years they found many lifeboats but no one on board they have her been pulling more bodies from the water now it is growing in concern today because time is passing over twenty four hours since it's already capsized and sank and these people are facing extreme conditions if they're to survive freezing temperatures and also just above freezing it's very

important that they do find them quite soon particularly because here in sakhalin night is setting in and that means that they can no longer use air support to help find people and search for anyone in the area jacob do know anything about the condition of those who have definitely been rescued from the freezing waters oh yes here we're talking about fourteen in total and that's occurred yesterday now four of them were mediately airlifted out so hospital and sakhalin to face further treatment and after being diagnosed by doctors they said that she in a fit and stable condition and as for the other ten more they were in such an ok condition that they actually stayed on the vessels which picked them out of the water and they are expected to arrive important about two days time it's more than twenty four hours now since this happened are we any clearer as to why the rig went down in the first place. well no we're still dealing with guesswork the self has

actually sunk so with it probably quite a lot of evidence but from eyewitness reports that some of those at the scene where same as at the moment it looks like the oregon self was flooded autor that led to a sinking such a quick time it's estimated about twenty minutes has been a full investigation launched into this criminal proceedings have already been opened and one area they're looking into is why exactly this whole route was towed in the first place because there were such high winds and highways and such bad weather at the time so why was that undertaken in those circumstances. ok keep us updated the date of dreams reporting from there so when regent thank you. in the us the uproar surrounding the controversial stop online piracy act is gathering pace with the judiciary committee vote sheffield for later this week is

a growing up and or aimed at fighting copyright infringement but ultimately lead to censorship and stifling of freedom of speech what is going to take an expense. as the obama team travels around the globe preaching virtues of internet freedom but i am a big believer in technology and i'm a big believer in openness and it is vitally important to every nation represented and every nation in the world namely internet freedom u.s. lawmakers may soon pass legislation that would make taking down a website as easy as a walk in the park the government would be able to shut down eighty sites suspected of hosting copyright material no court warrant needed the government doesn't just take down the infringing material it takes on the site entirely and it does it without even a trial the find out whether it's illegal or not and as you know copyright laws extremely complicated there are lots of things that look like copyright

infringement the turn out to be licensed in one way or another even a site like you tube which has a mix of different kinds of content under this bill the entire site could get shut down companies like google yahoo or face it will girth furious over the pending stop online piracy act google co-founder sergey brin compared the bill to censorship in china and iran imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from the other but the united states legendary computer scientist vince serve widely hailed as one of the founders of the internet itself said the legislation has the potential of bringing about unprecedented censorship of the web by using copyright as a wedge issue suddenly we're able to put this power in the hands of the government and then once they have it it can be expanded and expanded to deal with a whole range of other things program aaron swartz was under investigation for sharing united states federal court documents on the web in july he was arrested for downloading roughly four million academic articles from

a protected computer he says the laws would make it very easy to silence internet whistleblowers any time a news organization or activist group or critics. tries to put up some internal documents that were leaked or things like that all those documents are copyrighted for example we found e-mails from the people who made voting machines and a group at sports or college put them up on their website showing that the people who made these voting machines knew they were flawed and people could hack into the voting machines those emails were all copyrighted and the company alleged it was covering infringement to share those e-mails under this bill they could shut the entire site down and prevent anyone from reading these e-mails of incredible public importance but not only could it affect freedom of speech but also businesses by potentially giving companies easy tools to drive competitors out of business they would have every opportunity to take action to disappear competitors and made heated debates congress postponed the vote the websites of the congressmen

themselves could potentially be shut down under the proposed legislation because all of them post content that was borrowed from somewhere else like t.v. news clips what's even more ironic is that as the u.s. preaches freedom of internet to the wall that home it might soon pass legislation that gives the government's sweeping powers to stifle web sources i'm going to check our reporting from washington our team. well anger also continues to be felt on the streets of the u.s. as the occupy movement marks the three month anniversary of its right against injustice head online to watch dot com to read about dozens of protesters who painted on trying to set up camp on a church property a month after all she's a victim of the publication also. the i.m.s. financial popal euro crisis that explored in. rexburg analysis on the debt in the twelve years and.

one of the biggest civil trials in british legal history is entering its final stage with two russian tycoons in the spotlight. suing his former business partner the chelsea football club mount up a move which claiming more than six billion dollars in damages on monday afternoon which is lawyer will start giving his final statement of a bet it is the case in london. russia has a history of epic tales and the one playing out in here is up there with the best of them with no shortage of intrigue mystery and menace to former friends now foes as long as out over the small matter of six and a half billion dollars around every move it. used to be close just how close is what this case rides on to the various claims they were business partners equals

and what became an enormous empire built on oil. and ill gotten gains he wants a bigger slice than the one point two million dollars he received back in two thousand and two is to add remove it meets cash payments were made to his former mentor but says this was just protection money a necessary business expense at the time to benefit from mr bures or ski's political capital in trying to prove their stories both men have disclosed damaging details of their own as a way of trying to humiliate their rival even more mr adam overage even passed off one payment to bures or ski as an artificial transaction freely admitting he was a way around the money laundering regulations as for barry he claims his stake in sydney their company was twenty five percent but has been forced to come clean on how for several years he took much more than that sometimes even more than the company's own profits is this sense of lawlessness that his lawyer will emphasize

in the closing statement of his defense he's already like a ninety's russia to medieval england and that's the get out clause both are using for their previous misdeeds the difference is every moment is using it also to show that legitimate business simply didn't exist at that time the prime minister vladimir putin has recently acknowledge that fact even in his recent televised q. and a where he said this trial should be held in russia because that's where the money was stolen and that's where it should be divided. things are brutality continued over the weekend in cairo as egyptian troops clashed with protesters and demonstrators have been demanding that the ruling military hand over power to a subordinate station soldiers were seen in protest that exist around ten people have been killed and more than four hundred injured in the latest round of violence better in the middle east experts terry county says the army is provoking more to hold demonstrators violence. it's an old tradition in their country to deny it all

we are all watching it the whole of egypt just watching it there was one young woman in particular being dragged off you could see her. being dragged by police when there are other images coming out of egypt of soldiers urine eating from the rooftop of the parliament building onto demonstrators below and this really takes one back to the colonial period in history and the history of their region when they were occupied by the british empire that is what they were told to do and the fact that the military is now turning on its own people. under the your wonders of your screen of weak and the egyptian ruling elite is a sign that things are in a very serious. serious situation developing in egypt and those whom the sooner by were is transferred to

a civilian government an elected government the better whatever that government may be and these just gusting things that are being done to demonstrators in terry square normally it's rangers by our own to create a great deal of anger people are now asking in egypt so what's changed i think the army is just never really provoking this anger in order to create the impression that the violence is coming not from them they're being defensive and that egypt really has to be run by the military indefinitely and if that is their image it's not going to work. well chatter on the internet is raging over the beatings of protesters in cairo we're going to r.t. dot com for more reaction and background to the unrest. elsewhere around the world a rescue operation is now underway in the southern philippines after floods killed more than six hundred people and left nearly a thousand more missing the typhoon hit on friday night causing a month's worth of rain to fall in just twelve hours tens of thousands have been

forced from their homes by the deluge the rescue is currently being hampered by widespread power outages and flooded roads the philippines suffers about twenty times in storms each year. a landmark israeli hamas prisoner swap has been completed remaining five hundred fifty palestinians were least under the egyptian brokered deal israel agreed to exchange one thousand palestinian prisoners for israeli sergeant that charlotte was captured five years ago the first phase of this what took place in the toper and shall return home in israel one hundred prisoners. iran's state t.v. has released a video of the man it claims was a cia spy trying to gain access to the country secret service iran's intelligence ministry identified. marty that i met field in afghanistan agents kept track of him as he entered the country newcrest arrested him and tried to carry out his mission

. rescuers have battled high waves on sunday as they search for two hundred people feared dead after the overcrowded ship sank of indonesia's main island of java survivors say they were in the water for five hours before being spotted it was packed with two hundred fifty people fleeing economic and political hardship in afghanistan iraq iran and turkey the ship was heading to australia when it ran into a proper storm. and the recap now of our breaking news this hour rescuers have found a raft containing around fifteen people in the freezing waters off russia's far east coast where an oil rig capsized on sunday it's not clear there if they're alive sixteen people have so far been confirmed dead two more bodies were found in the sea thirty seven people are still missing more than a day since the tragedy happened we have more on this throughout the day here in the tea. time now for business update with carrie.

thank you carrie hello and welcome to business here in our tip this hour it's been cold the deal of the year by russian business magazine company the country's two stock exchanges have completed their merger of the r.t.s. and my xix will continue to trade as separate and this is what the trading platforms clearing systems and data centers will be integrated the new exchanges expected to go for a public listing in two thousand and thirteen aiming to raise its least three hundred million dollars the merger is an essential part of the government's plan to promote moscow as an international financial center. let's have a look at the market was lower for fourth day straight day with the pressure coming from stronger dollar and concerns about you again debt light sweet is trading at ninety three dollars per barrel while brant blend is that over one hundred and two dollars per barrel. and asian markets extend losses up to reports north korean

leader kim jong il died become sequences for joe political stability strike equity markets already dampened by concerns about europe's debt crisis south korea's cost to drop four percent japan's nikkei is giving up over one of the quarter of a percent and hong kong is losing one point three percent the sell. here in russia markets dropped at the start of the trading session pricing in the european dell be use energy stocks weighing only the season the price of oil goes down that's not a look at some individual shareholders otherwise it's our banking stocks among the top losers with largest lender dropping over two percent energy majors are also in the red with. one percent down and food retailer holding heading lower might be needed is dropping two point three percent in soccer. now with little sign of christmas rally trading volumes are beginning to drop towards the end of the

year eager prior thought. that the coming week is unlikely to deliver an early yuletide gift global picture again is very uncertain and many already took positions till the year and so i don't expect much activity but i still think that there is some hope for the rally if we don't see any serious bad news from europe and i think the credit to you to greece will be kind of released that will be will be taken very positively by by you would be an global investors and yes i don't think they will give any negative surprises so the environment will be good as for russia we remain very cheap but the only thing we need to the international investors and unfortunately we haven't seen them for a whole year i don't expect them to come in beast two weeks time but again i repeat we're very cheap so the change in sentiment global sentiment will bring these investors back the latest turmoil on the markets has put the russian economy under

pressure capital outflow reached around ten billion dollars last month the country's budget has also suffered from election costs increase social spending however the long term prospects for the russia's fight for russia's finances looks more promising our metals guess. all of this will be in very big from here to two thousand and twenty because according to all for. the world growing. will grow by three billion people in these people. this population will need more cars will need more food we'll need more gears all of what russia is producing or is part of like the components. for the automobile concert where he's a so reliable sources. for us from here to two thousand and

twenty rather and up to him for the russian economy but there could be bumps on the road. russia has agreed to grant bellerose a discount on oil supplies increasing oil purchases to one hundred fifty seven million barrels from next year but it will pay one billion dollars less than the current price in exchange for this it is allowed russian companies to use well i was refineries to process fifty percent of oil by supply the products could be sold in belarus and russia or go for export earlier moscow home of the price of gas supplies from minsk president lukashenko says energy discount will allow the country to save four billion dollars a year and russia's all major tat nafta has agreed to develop the rich oil fields and iran in a deal worth one billion dollars now it will work in partnership with a state run petroleum and injuring an engineering development company iran's oil minister says that the field is expected to produce around twenty million barrels

a year that's close to touch annual output to seek a more joint ventures in iran and western companies curb their investments as part of economic sanctions against the country's nuclear activities. and russian tycoon dmitri live has bought the most expensive home in the history of manhattan real estate the new york observer says he's paid eighty eight million dollars for a ten room penthouse measuring six thousand seven hundred forty four square foot. runs the world's biggest potash producer and his wealth puts him in the top one hundred richest people on the planet according to forbes magazine. well that's it for now i'll be back with more in less than one hour journey that.

sure is that so much for your call his wife wanted to answer here it is like the police the phoenix rising from the ashes newt gingrich again shows himself to be a major figure in american politics does he represent the republican party.

loyalty. you're watching r t well crossing live from the russian capital the headlights now rescuers found the raft with around fifteen people in the freezing waters off russia's hardest coast osme capsized it's not clear they're alive while the search goes on for a dozen still missing since the tragedy happened on sunday. from north korea's longstanding leader kim jong il dies a heart failure of the age of six tonight his death sending shock waves across the reclusive country on the home region his youngest son kim jong un named his successor.