russia demands an investigation into civilian deaths from nato bombings in levy a while locals say atrocities are still being committed in the country with former gadhafi loyalists the target. these are live pictures you're looking outside russia's newly elected parliament and bart's upon its work two weeks after the polls that sparked mass protest against alleged vote rigging and calls for a recount. and disagreements between the u.k. and the e.u. bro with a battlefront down the welfare rules the blocking says that britain pays billions to non-citizens something london's as will spawn benefit tourism.

this is r.t. coming to you live from moscow i'm marina jascha welcome to the program now russia is demanding a probe into civilian casualties in libya caused by nato bombing stats their reaction to a report by human rights groups which claims dozens were killed in air strikes the spy the airline saying its operation was almost flawless while the conflict is over and the man who stood in the way of western style democracy dead atrocities against his loyalists continue now you may find some of the images in the sun aboard this report disturbing. this is what it's like to look down in the face a group of men the young and old captured after the nadir propped rebels overran get off his hometown of sirte there was behind a camera delivers a verdict would you work for gadhafi. and the captives themselves seemed that

certain about what's coming next. seems like these claims know that possibly be as the rebels assisted by western powers so to liberate the country from gadhafi i've been longines about he said district tendencies grow more and more outlandish by the day and that seems to justify any sort of treatment for his perceived loyalists in some places the violence is quite bad the town we looked out in was called where god and the militias from the neighboring town of misrata are terrorizing the people of to where they accuse them of having fought for qaddafi of having committed atrocities in his name this is one of the liberated tripoli's new landmarks a prison where moammar gadhafi was set to hold his political opponents with no access to lawyers and no chance for a fair trial. but while the

prisons new guards had very elaborate in their rating ferocity is here in hatred still reside in this neighborhood. obviously is a poor area in southern tripoli where more margot duffy had strong support base prior to his fleeing the district also and his name to the tourists present a scene of torture and arbitrary killings but while gadhafi is gone the human rights abuses still remain rather from this area still disappearing without a trace where families are too scared to talk about. this is probably the only place in all the beer with families of a logic get out his supporters can turn to for how mohammed formed and your earlier this year it investigated the fate of those who disappeared in good office prisons he is now primarily dealing with people who went missing under libya's new leadership it's usually mothers who come here and at first they're scared to tell

me this son or husband was with pick a daffy forces they usually say he was a civilian court in the crossfire but i tell them that i don't care which side he was on all i need is accurate information so that we can start searching. mohamed and his friends have been taking photos of unidentified bodies that have been popping up across lee bear in recent months this naturists are probably their relatives most realistic hope of finding closure but even after sifting through them many managed to retain hope like this man his brother disappeared on the front lines of banter about. i hope he's in tunisia maybe his in hospital maybe he's lost his memory or has no way of contacting us. they say hope dies last only bit it's still alive people think even if many people aren't going to wake up artsy tripoli. let's hear it syria could also face foreign intervention with

unpredictable consequences the country's opposition is split over whether they need military help from outside in their fight against the government the vision came as a country witnesses some of the fiercest battles in its nine month old crisis dozens of troops and a reason for tasker's are reported to have been killed in the latest series of clashes across the country the syrian authorities have agreed to wow in an observer's mission which it's hoped might help to and the conflict are to sarah first reports from damascus because the arab league council is expected to send an advance team hit to syria in the next couple of days ahead of the observers mission that will that be entering now that was agreed upon on monday when the syrian government signed the proposal that they've been the tools for those observers to then into the country now that decisions receive a mixed response from the opposition days outside the country the syrian national

council that's the main body outside of syria said that they don't think that that decision is going to be as efficient as the syrian government is trying to make out if they could it a ploy and have still called the international intervention now very very widely with the opposition group within syria is saying the national quoted nation council here within the country said that they welcomed me they hoped that it would be implemented properly but they said that absolutely their stance is still very much against international intervention in their words they said that that could lead to the destruction of the country is something big they do not want to see happening we went to the city of homs the other day that's one of the main conflict there is now well we weren't allowed to enter any of the hotspots where the conflict with continuing we were allowed to see some of the parts of the city speak to some of the people that this is the city this being described as being on the. brink of

civil war. to be honest the situation here in homes is very difficult there have been kidnappings which make us feel intimidated because of the situation there have also been problems with. certainly the situation there and the civilians who are still living within it here in a very very extreme situation and those who through most of the people living there to resolve that is soon as possible. a u.s. space intelligence gathering firm has found most of the claims by the syrian opposition about the seriousness of the country's crisis are untrue the company called strapped for says protestors are exaggerating to win outside support from powers like the us dr paul craig roberts a former reagan administration official told r.t. he believes washington is not just backing the rebels diplomatically. the united states is involved in stirring up the opposition and in arming it they use the

cover of the arab spring arab protests as they did in libya so these are not a spontaneous protest and certainly authoritarian state and i like their syria you wouldn't find people in opposition able to readily supply themselves with arms with military weapons that makes no sense for the syrians to themselves opportunity for the country to be destroyed like libya or iraq or afghanistan or those who got saved and live what's involved here is the russians have the naming base in syria. and the americans don't want a russian naval presence in the mediterranean just as in libya or the problem was the chinese all investments in syria goes the iran is in the target sites and and lemon arms and so there will be knocking all of these countries one by

one while they stand there and don't unite in fact they can't unite and that's why they're so the honorable. also i have read this hour the u.k. is getting increasingly unhappy it was evening meddling in its affairs. it's simply outrageous but an elected officials in brussels can prevent us from bringing about the reforms that we said we were going to do when you have a tube into office and we look into the controversy surrounding the news attempts to make britain reconsider its welfare roles for nonresidents. and r t starts the countdown to twenty twelve with a special series of firsts and our boards on the landmark events of trance that shaped the past year. this is. history in the making. testimony. ten stories

that shapes two thousand and eleven. now russia's six state duma the lower house of parliament begins its first session on wednesday it comes more than two weeks after elections have sparked mass protests over alleged fraud article joins us now live from the parliament building well to cut to reno so this duma is different from the previous one could you tell us how the scenes are spread and what can we actually expect from its work it definitely is different marina and obviously opposition will have a much louder voice in the new do much with united russia failing to secure the much needed constitutional majority it's expected that the lower house of the russian parliament will again become a field of heated debates two hundred thirty eight seats for united russia out of four hundred fifty one that is center for palm tree vote but it lost performs much worse than in the previous vote four years ago and lost almost one hundred seats

now the main interest today's around who will be the new duma speaker and these job shuffles started advanced last week off to cram in chief of staff sergei an irishman left his job for the state duma united russia put forward his candidacy but opposition has a different take on that and they have their own preference was and their own opinion about who should be the new speaker it will be most probably decided today during the vote during the first in a session which just minutes ago started here while ruling united russia has also received nine hundred twenty six comedian last week has been was mostly about distributing those committees are the three parties fourteen committees it's still not clear who will be running the crucial crucial foreign policy committee the liberal democrats and united russia trying to decide it between themselves also.

since the election day being too to great. this first session to my has been tarnished by recent mass protests in the streets of moscow sappers work and the city's those protests protest is a plea to the vote was not there and the way the votes were counted it wasn't either and estimated from twenty five to thirty thousand people went into the streets and most two weeks ago in december tenth and nutriment that it will be in that order to the best occasion as a result of that beav to criminal cases have been already filed for alleged. fraud and the results of twenty one polling stations across the country were canceled but of course we have to understand that heard to ninety thousand polling stations in different regions are probably. not enough to council the results of the vote and this is why state duma session takes place today and is to it's worth mentioning as

well that there has been a number of an authorized illegal rallies taking place same particularly in moscow those protesters disrupted traffic that resulted in arrests hold on for hold for violence an example of that is blogger i like seeing the violently who has spent fifteen day soon a detention center in moscow and was freed just recently. because when i thanks very much indeed for bringing us this update on russia's six state duma first session and during your report we showed our viewers some of the live pictures from the session thanks very much indeed for bringing us up to speed on this. now new year is just tan days away al we are starting our own countdown with ten special reports on events that shaped twenty eleven where looking back at major stories through the eyes of our to correspondents who witnessed them and we started with an

area that saw a fair share of both breakthroughs and failures space projects consistently made it into the had lives but there was much more that did espie all over now reveals. one of the biggest landmarks the resort this year was the fiftieth anniversary of your first spaceflight just before one of the nasa astronauts went up there i was having to chat with him about what it actually meant to have that first flight by you daryn fifty years ago and he was saying really it changed us as a species we stopped being limited to our own planet we were able to go out and explore further of course a few years after the first month set foot on the moon. of mars five hundred project which came to an end this year was really something quite exciting it was great to be able to go in and have

a look at it where they were when i'd seen it on television i was thinking wow this is six guys in a shed and then when i actually went to where the spacecraft was i realized it was six guys in a very very small shed for five hundred twenty days i mean doing them a bit of a disservice saying that there is a show in the shed but when you see the pictures of the wood paneling and everything very small confined space that they were in such a long time worn year. five hundred currently simulating never. however it will be another five months before this can be opened and they can step back to normality it was nice on the day i remember the day when they came out. the look on their faces when the door opened the look on the very very pale faces of course you have to realize these guys haven't seen sunlight for such a long time. they were ecstatic to have come out of there. and it really was

i mean whether scientifically it ends up being the building block or the first step towards the first step i think it was referred to by the organizers towards going to. trying to send people to the. well looking back on twenty eleven one of the things that really stand out is the crash of that progress now it wasn't just the module itself they've been using since the late seventy's it was the fact that this was carried on. the only way we have now getting people into space. the progress module that was launched at the end of august was carrying valuable food and supplies for the international space station at the time we were hearing from and from the guys on the space station those food and supplies have been for saying no this is fine it's ok i remember saying in my report look these guys go through extensive training they know what they're doing

they'll be fine. who is actually the mission commander who is up there when he returned from his time in space he was telling me that yeah they were genuinely a little bit worried they would generally scared at times they were going to run out of food they didn't know if they were going to be able to be brought back down to earth before that ran out in the beginning of twenty twelve. pressures that these people put themselves through evidence thankfully that these failures that we've seen today seen this year that we've seen that didn't result in. any major problems on month spaceflight that's always the big. show in the perseverance of these people who risk their lives going into space well as a job they do it out of choice. here oliver pour it in there and this was just the first record in our special series on

events that shaped twenty something that's the rest will be bringing you a new story every day until this year you can always find out on our web site which is our dot com where you can also. chapter out plenty more news stories commons and analysis so let's take a look at what's there right now. a manmade madness at dutch team of scientists of engineering a deadly virus that predicts a dog and a destructive old bio weapon and terrorist threat also. ouster approve protection a new ride shield said to be introduced in the u.s. can stop by demonstrators from breathing more energy dot com.

britain may be forced to pay out more than two billion pounds in welfare benefits to non-citizens and that's if the european union has its way but with london's new spirit of non-cooperation the decision might not be so easy to impose our desire for a ban it has more. homeless and jobless this man's too embarrassed to be identified he came to britain from poland five years ago hoping to live a dream but the realities been a nightmare he claims the u.k.'s welfare state hasn't been fair on him. i'm a citizen of the european union five years ago i decided to discount it will be my home i didn't come here to claim benefits i came here to work. david's what the government fears is a benefit tourist here to take and not to give back english is still a struggle and the state says he doesn't qualify for its handouts a serious accident eighteen months ago put him out of work and he soon went

bankrupt he's been living on the street ever since but still won't go back to poland. i thought this was a friendly country but only if it needs you and you work for it becomes he could give me something but it doesn't need me i never thought it would be like this this is not a paradise. foreign nationals are eligible for welfare once they've lived here for over three months but they must convince the or forty's they are here to work and support themselves but the e.u. is ordering britain to relax those rules claiming they discriminate unfairly it wants to allow foreign nationals to get state handouts as soon as they arrive in the u.k. it's extraordinary for the european union to say that in britain where north are able to do an eligibility test before handing someone benefit you know first of all it's our money secondly it was in our manifesto that we were going to bring in these sorts of changes it's simply outrageous that an elected officials in brussels

can prevent us from bringing about the reforms that we said we were going to do when we were voted into office the e.u. commission is refusing to speak to us but it hasn't been shy in issuing britain with an ultimatum. it says the right to reside test foreigners must pass to claim benefits is too tough and has given the government until the end of this month to change that otherwise it will see britain's refusing to budge otherwise it claims it will have to pay out two and a half billion pounds to those who work but anything back in the pubs the british welfare state exist to benefit british people. this was very clear in the original welfare state back in the one thousand forces which had contributed principal you contributed and you benefited if you didn't contribute you weren't eligible for which it was sent to migrants from eastern and central europe most of those eligible for welfare already some are trying their luck and no doubt more will the

u.k. is forced to sweeten the deal on the bennett london brief look now at other stories making news around the world and the number of killed in last week's massive flash flooding in the philippines. one thousand people that number is expected to grow with the authorities continuing to find bodies most of the dead are women and children who drowned last friday when water gushed into their homes while they slept a state of national calamity has been declared. female supporters of the pro muslim party in pakistan have held in and say nato rally in response to a recent airstrike that killed twenty four people hundreds of women chanting slogans denouncing the u.s. and nato and the also carried banners demanding that was draw a line forces from afghanistan at the last month to tap pakistan to lead it immediately by closing its afghan border crossings to nato supplies and brings us

up to date here on r.t. this is next. hello and welcome to the business program how is there a quick end to the long lasting gas conflict between ukraine and russia have vanished the countries fell to reach agreement during a high profile overnight talks however they say this will not affect the transit of russian gas to europe ukraine is struggling to persuade russia to cut the price for his energy supplies saying the burden is too big for the country's troubled economy didn't manage to pay and embers bill itself from bars half a billion dollars from russia says gazprom bike discuss the topic i'm joined by constantine seaman off out of russia's national energy security files. and see how close all fall of the country is to signing an agreement right now you know i'm a little bit simplistic i don't seeing that it would be possible to reach agreement

until the end of this year and you know it's not only because a lot of contradictions i think there is one simple psychological problem in this studio last time i was when i was last on this story we spoke about our quantities billows and you know that the last day of our work on that was bill it was thirty then of this year but ukraine our quantities until two thousand and nineteen so we have seven years more and that is why i mean from psychological point of view for russia there is no need to accelerate though a negotiation that is why with a very simple position if you want to achieve goodness you must give us maybe fifty percent or maybe more in these in this trunk i mean in the spy plane which is going from russia to europe to ukraine so that is where we have time to eat ok you know what are the chances are of another gas war that's what people want to know how will the european consumers be affected and it's an excellent question because as i

said you were speaking about law and you were speaking about as. we have a legal contract until two thousand and nineteen so that is why from this point of view there is no chance to see another guess war between russia and ukraine so it's good news for consumers in europe but the main problem is of course the behavior of ukraine because you know that according to the if you solution of ukraine ukraine cannot say now because now the price is approximately four hundred dollars and you know in budget next year budget the price the forecast of price is four hundred sixteen dollars it's impossible for the majority of ukrainian consumers to pay this price for us and that so that is why if for example let's imagine that there will be no money to pay ukraine can stop the transit and ukraine can begin. this robbery of guests we can see in these gates in this case it's possible to see another guess what but i think possibilities i hope it isn't more than ten and fifteen percent

because i hope that ukraine is still like legal states we should behave in legal frames ok and since the launch of the note straight has this become the ace in the hole. russia of course the launch of three was one of the most important the winds during this year and of course with the help of mostly we can show to ukraine that soon we will hear fifty five billion cubic meters or direct transit to germany without any help all for ukraine though if you're russia but you know that of course now we've finished on the construction of the first bible and saw and this by you know it's from technical point of view you need some time. like to prepare for the fall for that duration of this pipeline so that is what we can see that ukraine can seeing that now. will not work you know as

a whole system and there is a way ukraine i mean that of course we want to see him. that doesn't mean that we can transfer all our goods to europe result ukraine so we still will need ukraine because ukraine is a serious strains of country but of course now we should do graeme that maybe we'll begin the construction of some most through bluff so i was through with the help of this. it's possible to avoid ukraine as a transit country ok thank you very much. thank you that was the head of russia's national energy security fund constantine seen went off thank you very much in days about we do have time for the markets let's have a quick look shall wait all is gaining for the day as investors are optimistic that shrinking stockpiles in the u.s. combined with signs of an economic recovery will mean that demand for fuel will increase but sweet is currently trading at ninety eight dollars per barrel while brant is above one hundred and seven dollars eight in markets all posting strong gains as investors upside the risk is also being fueled by the new office in ism of

the state of the global economy and the comedy shows and technology firms they are among the main game is in japan honda is up two percent sony is enjoying two and three courses of a game that we welcome all this evening socks are on the rise in hong kong following news that chinese coal liquefied natural gas imports hit record levels. and also european stocks they are carrying on from tuesday's rally both the dax in the footsie are more than one percent find some resource stocks are losing games on the russian markets are higher following gains in the us and asia the r.t.s. is up one point zero one per cent how to look how those individual shanley's on them i said screw chips are mixes our own major ross nafta's flats a negative. bank is adding more than one percent on truck make a cow mass is also gaining the company plans to increase its cells by nine percent

next year. and so for now i'll be back in about fifty five minutes for another business update. more news today violence is once again flared up for the for these.