newly arrived immigrants in the u.k. must be less eligible for handouts as britons themselves. yet another dispute between russia and ukraine over gas prices appears fall from a quick resolution but a real war is unlikely as experts tell business more on this in twenty minutes. just after five pm here in moscow you're watching with me. russia is urging nato to look into reports of widespread civilian deaths in libya caused by the military alliance is seven months long bammy a bombing campaign there are the claims filed by rights groups contradict nato's assertion that twenty six thousands of strikes did not cause any civilian casualties and the killing has not ended just because gadhafi is dead and gone for

more rebels continue to take their stand on supporters of the toppled regime but you may find some of the images arcs are not boy because report disturbing. this is what it's like to look down in this case a group of men the young and old captured after the nato propped rebels overran get off his hometown of sirte there was behind a camera delivers a verdict meant to do work for gadhafi. and the captives didn't sound seems doubts about what's coming next. and it seems like these plano that possibly be as the rebels assisted by western powers to liberate the country from gadhafi are going lodgings 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. 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 have very elaborate in their rating good doctors for all cities here in hatred still reside in this neighborhood. obviously is a poor area and saw the tripoli where more margot had strong support base prior to his fleeing the district also had his name in the tourist prisons a scene of torture and arbitrary killings but while gadhafi is gone the human rights abuses still remain valid from this area are still disappearing without

a trace their families are too scared to talk about that. this is probably the only place in all the beer with families of a legit good office supporters can turn to for how mama to form peace 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 that this son or husband was with the khadafi 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. for how men and his friends have been taking photos of unidentified bodies that have been popping up across lee beer in recent months this naturists are probably the relatives the most realistic hope of finding closure but even after sifting

through them many managed to retain hope like this man whose brother disappeared on the front lines of banjo. 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 the whole dies last only bit it's still alive even if many people aren't. artsy. meantime activists in syria say the country has seen some of his fiercest fighting since on rest began with a two hundred people killed since monday the biggest number of casualties was reported in the syrian northwestern province over that's where government forces allegedly used heavy ammunition against anti regime fighters that's ahead of the arrival of an arab league advance team which is going to prepare a monitoring. and as sarah for reports there are hopes the observers can present a clear picture of what's really going on inside syria. and the team from the

arab league is expected to arrive in the country boy that's the head of the mission that's expected to hit at the end of the month and of course that mission comes with the seemingly as from both sides because they count as the death toll rising all the time in this instance the other day that the main opposition city where we see so much of the fighting place yeah we'll see what that says in parts of the city where the fighting is much more concentrated and we went to travel today suppose this is the key danger is that even the polls we were visiting what they were struggling on and you could hear the sounds of heavy gunfire breaking out across the city the government of course still maintaining that there is fighting and militant movement in the opposition saying that the government has been operating a crackdown policy on the protest is that i speak to the foreign ministry spokesman

the other day he was saying that what's needed now from house like countries is that no one should be adding fuel to this fire and again he moved the dialogue to be pushed in the situation if the outside warrant neighboring country. wants to help so they get out of the crisis what we need is to help and provide good offices to push the opposition was seeing north of the. to say yes to the you know we're going to come out on one thing but to discuss everything north of who's you know what you know what a discussion we had with the freedom of democracy now here in the capital damascus these are a lot of the shelter from the conflict that is the main besides the economic sanctions placed on the country by the have the money to. pay the money. to see. the kicking out. is the key to the

sanctions. around the city with a problem to pull the sanctions would put in place and not become much more frequent and. longer as well. so forth reporting right there now let's cross over to live pictures for you here we're. standing by it is a countdown to blastoff for three members one russian cosmonaut an american after an order member of the european space agency the three of them here inside the soyuz capsule in baikonur cosmodrome down there they are getting set to blast off to the international space station here we have a fantastic external shot for a nighttime orbital flight bound for the. more details to come here our live coverage for you in just a few minutes it should be actually in about eight or seven and a half minutes from now if you stay with us here we're not. championing the rights of benefit tourists of the e.u. targets britain's tough hand out policies saying the u.k.

is obliged to dole out billions to non-citizens something london believes will only encourage them not to work. with this is. history making. testimony. ten stories that shaped two thousand and eleven. nearly ten minutes past the hour now here in moscow russia's sixth state duma the lower house of parliament has just held its first session after heated debate a surrogate notice can from the ruling united russia party was chosen as the speaker it comes as protests continue against the elections two weeks ago sparked by allegations of vote rigging parties that you could regret over and the have been following the events. it was a very intense first session of the state do my heated debates and raised voices for sit at the voting the voting for a new duma speaker with two hundred thirty eight voices for and eighty eight

against a new speaker has been chosen and that's ruling united russia's candidate so given that each can a government shop full advance last week when mr gay and i wish can until recently kremlin chief of staff stepped down for a duma seat united russia put forward his candidacy as the new speaker but opposition parties disagreed and they have their own preferences their mandates however were not enough to hold way to united russia in the vote apart from that opposition will have a louder voice in the new duma with united russia failing to secure a constitutional majority is believe that the lower house of the russian parliament will again become a field of heated debates and now that united russia does not have a majority of the committees fourteen out of twenty nine committees are how it will be controlled by the three opposition parties it's also believed that the whole approach to lawmaking in russia will change however political analysts stress that

for the opposition parties that not only means a victory but also is a serious test of their readiness to take upon responsibility for crucial laws in the country the nature of the debate is changing because now the opposition gets about half of the elite is so they will control sorted commit itself to the way to the end and this is a significant victory for them at the same time a significant lesson because they will have to show that they're ready to share the responsibility for the fate of the gallery that they're able to provide for constructive criticism for the policy. new ideas so people will see how they still will function and how their position with the opposition is ready for the stars. on the tommy over to you know this numerous for such an it goes ahead against the backdrop of a lot of protests so what can you tell us about. well during the first plenary session of the newly elected lower house of the russian parliament members of the opposition gathered for an unsigned sions protest outside the stadium when

according to opposition bloggers over twenty people were arrested during its also today is well known for its harsh criticism of the russian government was released from custody where he spent the last fifteen days after he was arrested during opposition rallies which took place shortly after the parliamentary elections in the country which took place on the fourth of december there also been number of peaceful demonstrations including one in mosco when over twenty thousand people gathered on one of the city's main squares to do months in the naaman's of the results of the parliamentary elections claiming their results were falsified and a number of violations took place during the electoral process following doubts russian president dmitry medvedev ordered an investigation into the case and already fifty criminal cases were filed in that respect and at twenty one polling stations the voting results were announced however that does not change the outcome

of the parliamentary election the state do is going to stay in the way it was shades on the fourth of december and the ongoing investigation is not going to change that. they want you all to leave new conflict has erupted between britain and the e.u. this time over the u.k.'s treatment of so-called benefit tourists. expires. 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 that this country would 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 he doesn't need me i never thought it would be like this this is not a paradise. for foreign nationals are eligible for welfare once they've lived here for over three months but they must convince the or thirty'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 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 what foreigners must pass to claim benefits here is too tough and it's given the government until the end of this month to change that otherwise it will sue britain's refusing to budge otherwise it claims it will have to pay out two and a half billion pounds to those who won't put anything back in the pot the british welfare state exists 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 forty percent of migrants from eastern and central europe most of those aren't eligible for welfare already some are trying their luck and no doubt more will the u.k.'s force to sweeten the deal either bennett r.t. london. you're watching the let's go straight to live pictures right now with the latest soyuz rocket it is now setting its launch from the baikonur cosmodrome here we go with three members of the soyuz capsule a launch is now in effect off to the international space station where they are set to conduct forty scientific experiments in orbiting clued in at least one space walk the ice as crew rotation schedule was disrupted off and on progress cargo ship sailed back to the twenty fourth these a flight engineers were supposed to be taken to orbit in mid november but the crash

changed the plans of course it was pasta friday for the final time powered down the space shuttle discovery after more than twenty eight years of. most of the current and future missions for space exploration and of course live pictures here from baikonur cosmodrome off to the i assess another russian soyuz rocket the space exploration industry certainly saw its fair share of breakthroughs and failures for the year two thousand and eleven space politics consistently make it into the headlines but there were certainly some that didn't as we took a pause from these live pictures here for the crew had to be assessed now to peter all of with a look at the space achievements and failures of two thousand and eleven.

well one of the biggest landmarks that we saw this year was the fiftieth anniversary of eureka garant first space flight and 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 current 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 guarin first month set foot on the moon. of the 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 well this is just six guys in a shed and then when i actually went to where the the mocked up 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 for such a long time one year into their voyage the mars five hundred team currently simulating never to journey to earth however it will be another five months before this door can be opened and they can step back into 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 the first step towards the first step i think it was referred to by. the organizers towards going to mars and trying to send people to the red planet for real.

well looking back on twenty eleven one of the things that really stand out is the crash of that progress module now it wasn't just the module itself they've been using those since the late seventy's it was the fact that this was carried on a soyuz rocket the soyuz rocket is 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 reports look these guys go through extensive cosmonaut training they they know what they're doing they'll be fine. volkov who was actually the mission commander who was up there when he returned from his time in space he was telling me that yeah they were genuinely a little bit worried they were 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 these failures that we've seen this year didn't result in . any major problems on month spaceflight that's always the big concern. in the perseverance of these people who do risk their lives going into space or live well as a job they do it do it out of choice. so that was just the first report of our special series awaiting you every day until the chimes ring twelve on december thirty first so be sure not to miss the rest or otherwise you can always catch up twenty four seven on our website at www dot com and also just a miraculous escape here for a russian driver scary footage of the driver trying to get past a truck on it's right almost loses his life after

a jackknifing truck appears coming head on that footage. before we get to the business with dimitri let's check out some other international headlines for you this hour in afghanistan five makers soldiers from poland have been killed in a roadside bomb the troops were in a convoy heading to ganz province that's in the east of the country this is the biggest loss of life in a single attack for the polish military in the region poland is one of the major contributors to nato mission in afghanistan. activists in south korea have launched a giant balloons carrying tens of thousands of propaganda leaflets to its northern neighbor they contain slogans messages opposing the hereditary transfer of power in

pyongyang this comes of course after the death of the north. korean leader kim jong il was said exceeded by his youngest son today aussie's people of el uses his debate showed he lost his guests if the regime in the secretive communist state could now go through a type of transformation is a preview of what's coming your way at fifteen pm. the north koreans are worried that the outside world will try to take advantage of this transition period so they're going to be on the defensive and they're going to try to project strength and i don't think that is going to generate big changes in terms of their foreign policy to engage the u.s. or others i also think will be sort of the u.s. lost an opportunity here because of a policy of strategic patience we really weren't engaging north korea in the last year other than these most recent food talks so the young kim doesn't have a legacy that he can say look i'm following my father's legacy and we're going to go and do all this stuff with the international community kim jong il could do that

. i. want. to do stay with us here on r t to meet joins us next with the business. thanks for russia will become one of the world's five biggest economies of the government's objectives are cheats promise of the said it's all good of boosting the country's g.d.p. growth to seven percent here and significantly improve labor capacity he hopes to reach this spike changing the structure of russia's economy. our ambitious goals can only be achieved within the framework of a new model of economic growth instead of raw materials we should count on high tech production to change the structure of the economy we're going to create up to

twenty five million high tech jobs we will have to invest almost forty three trillion rubles in the next three years into the economy that roughly equals the country's g.d.p. twenty tent city in the hopes for a quick end to a long lasting gas conflict between ukraine and russia have vanished countries failed to reach an agreement during high profile overnight talks however they say this will not affect the transit of russian gas to europe and ukraine is struggling to persuade russia to cut the price for its energy supplies saying the burden is too big for the country's troubled economy here didn't even manage to pay the vendors bill itself and borat half a million dollars from russia's gazprom bank and nine hundred seamen all from russia's national energy security plan says another gas war is unlikely as the existing contract runs for another seven years. the general sounds and i was the last our last guess what we have no confidence in general sales of man it was the main reason for the new guess what now we have cornered it means that according to

the law we or i think we can award serious quantity that is why we can spend new year without any problems. arise take a look at the markets this hour we start with commodities where well is still positive however it's just that they are not at this hour third day of gains on signs that the u.s. economy could be spared a recession and amid growing pressure on around its nuclear program. adding fourteen cents per barrel this hour each. european stocks have reversed into the red the footsie is down point four percent and the dax is down by a third of a percent german stocks were higher early. in the session amid speculation central bank in europe has supported european banks and that she funding helping them whether the fallout from seoul for a debt crisis. and the russian markets also losing we are down by

almost two percent of my stocks one and a half to send us despite high oil prices second look at what's moving the my six the most blue chips downs burbank one of the biggest losers down point two point four percent its present given gas has just recently said that the privatization of the largest bank in russia may be continued the presidential elections in twenty twelve oil major roles nafta is also now on truck may could come as is above slightly better than the market down just point some percent the company plans to increase its sales by nine percent next year rubenstein i have seen metropole expects no significant movements in stocks and the end of this week russian market has underperformed global markets a significant of the past three weeks. by a large margin will probably continue to observe this political risk premium present and perhaps are increasing as we get closer to the weekend. and we have another manifestation scheduled to take place in moscow so i think many investors

will want to take. a wait and see approach anticipate of that so i don't expect significant moves in the russian market before the end of the week. coming up next i'll see the headlines with laurie. oakes.

in two thousand and ten especially konami exulted for industrial production was established in russia somalia region with a total area of six hundred sixty ect as. its investors are granted exclusive tax and customs benefits which includes a five year exemption from property land and transport taxes as well as an income tax reduction to fifteen point five percent. the special economic zone operates as a free customs zone which enables manufacturers to market their products in russia free of in for duties the same our region as he said is currently witnessing

a surge in infrastructure construction the somare region special economic zone promises exceptional opportunities for developing your business in russia welcome to the small region for more information log on to the top invest in some are of the. you. pm on wednesday here in moscow you're watching the headlines now twenty six thousand. civilian casualties. of a flawless libya intervention. former supporters. of freshly elected parliament. speaker the new convenes for the first time two weeks off. protests.