a very warm welcome to you this is our sea life from moscow a more bodies have been discovered in the freezing waters off russ's far east coast where an oil rig capsized and sank on sunday taking the number of dead to sixteen while a life raft was life raft rather was spotted which was initially thought be carrying the fifteen people but it turned out to be empty fourteen that will pull the life from the sea shortly after the rig collapse but several dozen others are still missing jacob greaves is in used as a hole in the coastal region where the disaster happened. attention really on the time issue here over twenty four hours of past since this all recurred capsized and sank i mean they've been exposed to the elements for a significant amount of time deal with minus twenty degrees celsius in terms of air

temperature and freezing conditions in the water there rescue efforts at present maybe hindered somewhat with the old set of night which means that no more aerial sorties can be launched to try scan the sea for signs of life of those survivors taking yes they fourteen in total before the world mediately airlifted to hospital to face treatments and to be assessed doctors today have concluded that they're actually in good health and free to go now when it comes to the remaining ten while they're actually still residing on the ships that pluck them out of the water and should return to port within two days as for the are going to the how or why this occurred there are a number still being discussed one of them that already itself flooded with water which led to it capsizing sinking very quickly in an estimated twenty minutes has

been a criminal investigation already launched the president of it was called for a full of thorough investigation in this case and that criminal investigation is looking into why exactly this alric was being towed in the stormy weather and bad conditions. giving a regular updates on what's happening in russia's far east on his twitter feed of course in his later tweens he says will soon be able to show you more of how the rescue is progressing from both the air and in the sea and we'll hear from relatives desperate for information about their loved ones.

japan is voicing fears of a possible military escalation in the korean peninsula following the death of the north's leader kim jong il the warning follows a state of emergency a military declared by south korea or china in turn has expressed its condolences but is also reported to have sent ships to its border with the reclusive state it's all being driven by here's a possible succession conflict as the late son kim jong il has to see a power the country's declared a period of mourning with state t.v. showing outpourings of emotion from across the country and he said now it our ports and the man who personified north korea's call me the stage. a mystery to the world what now for north korea with its leader kim jong il gone this massive military parade was held in two thousand and eight to mark north korea's

sixtieth anniversary to kim jong il wasn't there to greet the crowd reports suggested he suffered a stroke in two thousand and three reports claimed died of diabetes and had been replaced in public by stand ins hired to. obviously 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 thousand 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 nine hundred ninety four he succeeded his father kim il

sung keeping korea close to the world kim 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 one of the you know in our father the general kim jong il thank you so much others 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 the south a modern democracy and innovative success story north korea has caused global outrage in recent years testing patience by carrying out underground nuclear test

and short range missile launches leading to u.s. and 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 for . she has tried to be a mediator for peace on the peninsula by pushing for negotiations. in the asia pacific region is serious potential for conflict and there's no alternative but to set up dialogue and improve understanding between the soils in twenty ten new pas 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 line to take over for his father oversaw tensions reached its highest point in decades after the north launched an artillery strike that left four dead south korea continue to hold large scale you war games with the u.s. and japan and want to conflict would break out if another attack was launched now

came john on a young and inexperienced leader is at the helm and will either open the door or continue to keep it shot. this roadway station was built in two thousand and two with hopes of connecting seoul and killing yang but the north korean regime backed out at the last minute making this the last stop train heading back into the south now with kim jong il that there knew that perhaps soon we would see a train heading in. that it might not the most secretive end of. the world and he's now our team korea. all with korea preparing to take its first steps on the new leadership the world is waiting to see what the culture is primary move for joining me now is the editor of the japan based news website called that report dot com and james called to quit many to join us here on our say the south korean media is reporting that the north has just test fired up a listed missile if that is true what sort of message do you think is being sent

here. well if it's true that nature abhors a vacuum it must be especially true when it comes to nuclear armed states when we talk about global geopolitics so this is obviously an extremely tense situation in a lot of ways and i think that any new regime in north korea is looking to assert its power into to show that it is obviously still exists on the world stage and that and that this is not going to destabilize the country so it might just be saber rattling for the sake of saber rattling at this point but it is a quite as tense situation and of course we see asian currencies reacting with the weakening of asian currencies across the board in the wake of this destabilization so it's quite a tense situation and one would imagine that the diplomats of every stripe from all the corners especially that the parties of the now defunct six six party talks would be interested in getting their fingers in this pine and trying to stabilize the relations now with especially because of course we know north korea is

a nuclear armed country with international ballistic missiles and of course stability is the key word it's what we're hearing from all corners that's what people want on that korean peninsula why do you think the north is seemingly wanting to isolate itself from the well at this critical point. well i think the north has always been the sort of mad woman in the attic when it comes to east asian politics and it serves i think a useful function for a number of parties in the region not only as a sort of proxy for china which has been really propping up the regime internationally by giving it its support on the international ski stage which can then use the menace of north korea and be seen to be keeping north korea in line but it also serves a sort of strange function on stage for for example the united states which one would think would be interested in disarming north korea but in fact in every single stage of north korea's nuclear armament even united states has been deeply

involved with that not only the arming of the north korean regime with two light water reactors back in the one nine hundred ninety s. under clinton but the fact that that that deal was processed by a company called a.b.b. who just happened to have on its board at the time that that deal went through with none other than former u.s. secretary of defense donald rumsfeld and then the other vector by which north korea supposedly became a nuclear armed nation was through the a.q. khan network which we now know through a series of whistleblowers and courtroom document revelations and leaked documents that that a.q. khan network was infested from top to bottom with cia and other assets of the american intelligence so it's in a strange way america has been deeply involved with the nuclear arming of north korea and it it plays an very interesting counterpoint to the hysteria that we see going on over the possibility that iran among one day develop a nuclear weapon well here we have a nuclear armed state that's been a law being missiles over our head here in japan for years now and threatening the

entire region and yet they've just walked away from those talks for the last two years so it plays a very strange role in the stage in relation to right now well just returning see it so and need to know what's happened i mean official reaction from washington is that it is committed to stability on the korean peninsula. and to the freedom and security of its allies i says it is closely monitoring the situation on the peninsula but it is tense there is he was saying south korea is on high alert to pan's warning of conflict and china is sending its change into the border with the north why do you think that these countries see danger in the power succession in the career at this point well it might be based on the false premise that kim jong il really held any of the power in the day to day functioning of north korea which of course is just a military regime and kim jong il was really just window dressing for that regime and in fact as that report that we just listened to on our team mentioned there are

rumors that he's been dead for a number of years now and of course we did have that strange succession ceremony last year where his son was officially appointed the successor back in september and we had mainstream media even the london telegraph at the time reporting that in fact it's already dead so so to say to a certain extent i think that this this change in leadership is really just a change in window dressing but it could be used by a number of different parties including the military dictatorship in power to two. i guess is a wildcard due to shake up relations and of course until we have some sort of normalization of the situation it will remain a very very tense situation here for word the foreseeable future so that's why i think there are so many very very interested parties in this at the moment trying to see if there is how things will play out and of course if it if these reports of missiles being launched are true then obviously this this could be a very very very potentially deadly and escalating situation so we have to keep our

eyes on it ok james corbett as the japan based news website colbert report dot com thank you for they still. still ahead for you here on r.t. the former business bodies now battling over billions of late is on the run clash between two russian billionaires you made on imaginable fortunes in the ninety's as a slug it out in london for their reputations and rejects. also internet users sound the alarm over a u.s. piracy act the good strangle freedom of speech on the world wide web. israel plans to build over a thousand new homes in east jerusalem and the west bank it's part of the speeding up of the settlement construction following palestine's accession into an escrow well the move was planned by palestinians who say peace negotiations are impossible while settlement expansion continues his policy is following developments. what

we're hearing is that the israeli government has announced it will be building more than a thousand housing units across the green line on palestinian land now the purpose of the housing units is to try and help alleviate the shortage of accommodation particularly among young israeli couples in the jerusalem area but no doubt this announcement will draw the anger of the international community as indeed have similar announcements in the past so it does not bode well for any kind of resumption of peace talks between the israelis and the palestinians it seems out a strong message that the netanyahu government is not interested in sitting down and talking with the palestinians while at the same time continuing to build settlements on palestinian land while we're talking palestinians in the west bank are celebrating and this is because of the release last night sunday of five hundred and fifty palestinian prisoners from israeli jails this was the second phase of an israeli prisoner exchange swap that was carried out back in october you

remember there that the first phase of this prisoner exchange deal started that will ultimately see more than a thousand palestinian prisoners released for one israeli soldier gilad shalit who has already returned to israel now it was a time when clashes broke out shortly before the exchange last night took place these clashes were between israeli soldiers and families who were waiting for prisoners to come back the soldiers were firing tear gas and rubber bullets the palestinians were throwing rocks and burning tires so you do have this policy which seems quite strange to some observers on the one hand israel that hearing to a prisoner exchange deal and seemingly one thousand. and create some kind of of negotiations with the palestinians but on the other hand we do have this flare up in violence and we also have this continuation in settlement building by the netanyahu government welty dot com has the world wrapped up with news continuing coverage of the meeting from festivities to follow it was indeed. did state turns

deadly encounter with angry mob burning buildings as the industrial action. pieces of the hummer is furnishing from michael jackson's final home which is something. the u.s. government bangs the drum louder the most when it comes to free speech but it's a reputation some believe isn't entirely deserved internet users fear the proposed stop online piracy act in a new web censorship can looks at why the plan is being branded a case of double standards. 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 any site 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 to find out whether it's illegal or not and as you know copyright laws are 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 facebook are furious over the pending stop online piracy act google co-founder sergey brin compared the bill to censorship in china

and you ran imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from the mother but the united states legendary computer scientist vin 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 critic. 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 swarthmore 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 emails under this bill they could shut the entire site down 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 shot 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 iran and to the wall that the home it might soon pass

legislation that gives the government sweeping powers to stifle web sources i'm going to check our reporting from washington our team. one of the biggest civil trials in british legal history is entering its final stages which. is it is in the spotlight but is that as he wants more than six billion dollars to helping a swell of the wealth of roman i move it the man best known for his multimillion investments in his chelsea football club a move which is neuer will start giving his final statement on monday following the case for us 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 it's out over the small matter of six and a half billion dollars around every move which. used to be close just how close is what this case rides on is to claims they were business partners equals in 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 which 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 berezovsky 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 and remove it 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 he's 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 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 prime minister vladimir putin has recently acknowledged 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. ok let's check on what else is happening around the world this hour now and syria signed an agreement there being in arab league observers to monitor how the regime is dealing with the rest of the country beleaguered threaten to ask the u.n. security council to take action unless damascus agreed the arab groups already suspended syria's membership for refusing to comply with a peace plan to get president assad to withdraw troops and start dialogue with the opposition. the total number of people killed in egypt since violence erupted in the country's capital on friday has reached fourteen according to medical sources

seven hundred are said to have been injured in a fierce clashes that followed the protest against the current leadership control over here squares who back and forth between rises and their forty's with security forces using tear gas and live ammunition. ok all those businesses all the way next with you here don't go away. thanks allison very welcome to the program russia's prime minister vladimir putin is calling for a corruption probe at state owned power companies inspections will take place in the next two months and will include companies such as gas from the bank and bank business archies dutch on the recorder has the details. the government meeting devoted to the power sector surprised many it started in a routine way with large him or putin announcing new investments in the sector but

none of that was done the prime minister devoted half an hour to naming people in the industry suspected of corruption he highlighted how top managers used offshore a company is and i feel it will siphon off money and he called these schemes a legacy of wild mind his and said russia has to make sure to check sectors worked in a transparent way. if we want to good investment climate we cannot accept offshore schemes any longer especially in the infrastructure sector those who want to keep profits here in russia you're welcome it's in full compliance with the war but withdrawing money from the country through free companies cannot be accepted we need to pull the plug on the legacy of the arab world capitalism. what's different this time is that it appears to be more than a grand words officials and managers have been put on not as clear up your act all software as the consequences that you are going to call a business are to siberia. well for more on the story i'm joined by our business

editor nick pool hello we've had to corruption measures before what's different this time and why now i think it's clear to anybody who's watched russian politics over the last couple of months that things here have definitely changed particularly as in the run up to the previous election when the ruling party picked up the moniker the party of crooks and thieves and then there's been some quite widespread protests since then and what people seem to be demanding is more transparency more honesty from those in charge and this is perhaps all the putin has not conceded this but in response to that sort of criticism particularly in the run up to the presidential election now there is also a very strong business motive for cracking down on the corruption in offshore companies which is the. russian writes about one hundred forty one hundred forty eight in the transparency international and corruption index and it's a bit like trying to drive the car with the handbrake on for the economy i mean

it's just a brake on everything and putin himself conceded that many foreign companies are spoken to him so they've got to come and do business here except they don't know who they're dealing with or they don't know who the final beneficiary is and that they might be legally liable if that company turns out to be an illegal company. right ok thank you very much business news that is in the fall thanks a lot for your analysis and would still have time to have a quick check on the markets. right we can see that the russian markets mixed this some of the r.t.s. is what all the while the my six is losing a quarter of a percent. let's have a look at some of the individual share moves on the might stick some energy mages in the red bull investment speech and of producer hydro is losing over three percent after russian prime minister said the company will reduce its consumer prices by twelve and a health center next year and gas monopoly gas problem is also retreating. precious

metal mind that. the company plans to increase production by as much as twenty percent twenty twelve and expect the gold price to rebound two thousand dollars an ounce. and finally european stock markets have recovered from the losses mostly high of the solid stocks in france fell the most in morning trade on news that trading is revised the country's outlook to negative on the rise with jazz a one point seven percent in paris and. going up one percent and point eight percent respectively in frankfurt. that's all we have time for now join me in about fifty five minutes for another business update here on archie and get more from the website r.t. dot com slash this. year

in bygone days sleds were vital to get around. but today they're more leisure than life line. one drives people to quit their modern lives and settle in remote woods. one finds them up to survive in the freezing cold. beginning in russia's nose discover the arctic circle on our t.v.

. it's awful thing our hair a mosque a this is awesome thanks pay to finding more survivors have all the fun in the cold waters off process. coast with rescuers fading to locate the missing her it's. just. as the death of north korean leader kim jong il leaves neighbors on edge with growing fears of violent conflict could follow his to minds. not israel pushes for more settlements that.