a controversial trial in russia prosecutors want a band aid version of the main book of the hari krishna movement here for being extremists i'll have more on how the trial that sparked outrage here in india in just a few seconds. was international news and comments twenty four hours a day you're watching r.t. tens of thousands of north koreans have taken to the capital snow covered streets to pay their last respects to their late leader a farewell ceremony that will last for two days it started with a funeral procession led by kim jong il's youngest son and successor longstanding the year of the world's most prestigious a country guy days ago the heart attack knowledge of his hair came. shrouded in mystery some are hoping his best to make himself open country but especially dr tim

being all things it's not entirely up to the successor to turning north korea's future. it's the textiles we know it was educated in switzerland monks you can have an effect but i think it's grossly overestimate its freedom of action. of the north korean system but also. in respect of the outside world and in respect to the americans so it's not north korea since don't want to open up and see americans who want to be. constrained. from what. they want to contain china a different differently but it's all part of the same like the same package so what kim jong un can do is in many respects fairly limited. we will again we'll have to see but i don't really depends very much on the americans. well journalist

and war correspondent eric margolis shares the view that there's little ground for change in north korea due to the excessive influence of the military there's good speculation that is his uncle is than some other members of the family are kind of pulling his strings but i think more important is the one point one million man north korean army for the father announced kim jong il forty guidant well over a year ago now says the new policy of militarized north korea as it was insufficiently militarized. the whole country is it's really as the quote frederick the great it's an army disguised as a country. and that's what's happened to this great and the some military rule which to me says that it's unlikely there will be major western style reforms because this means cutting spending on the military military so powerful it's well fed it has all the prerequisites and good position so does the communist party so

that they will be a force against change rather than for. well live coverage of kim jong il was a funeral service just a click away at our website r.t. dot com. now the new post a revolution in egypt is heading abroad temped to mend its relations with other countries and as part of that economy foreign minister is talking to his counterpart in moscow but with the situation at home is still very tense with african nations have to prove it's going to be a stable partner. this can offer has more on this now go what can we expect from this visit. the meeting has actually already started at the foreign ministry's state in central moscow region busy behind me but actually it was supposed to be held around a week ago but was forced forms due to the arab league's meetings on syria the organization sent its observers to the country its headquarters are in cairo so

egypt is directly involved it is expected that syria will be one of the key issues at these talks in moscow with russia and egypt strongly criticizing the violence in syria but standing against any foreign military intervention egypt is also a very important regional player when it comes to the middle east peace process that's expected to be discussed as well but the situation in egypt itself is quite complicated also with the ongoing violent protests and the country being in the middle of four problem actions with several islamist oriented political parties aiming to take power including the muslim brotherhood and the first round of the election showed that all these parties combined managed to gather around seventy percent of the vaults and the second round is expected shortly and this is that the new problem and will start working by the end of january so lots of issues are on

the table here in moscow and of course we'll be reporting on all of the developments. live from moscow thank you. well the ongoing situation in this syria looks set to dominate those talks in moscow and the latest development tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of syria's largest city of homs demanding international protection it happened after the arab league's monitoring team is that in the area it was a mission is to assess the situation in the country and shore president assad's compliance regional plan to a new project but as asia times journalist escobar says there are doubts in missions. they have to investigate the activities of the free syrian army these are mercenaries in the shakhtar it's all are armed by outside powers and these outside borrowers are basically from qatar and the emirates and we

all the arab league which is now called troll why did she see the gulf cooperation council interested gate themselves in this case we still don't know or are they going to investigate the need to call truly call and senator said up in the or near the border between turkey and syria in the skin there room which is very across the border basically from aleppo let's say in two hours are you going to investigate that you are really going to convert the sticking point shipment smuggling weapons via the jordanian syrian border we still don't look good it's a tall order for the arab league go caesar in that these are not exactly democracies they are investigating one of their all but they're also implicated in the whole big picture. he was still coming to a head in the program. you know the president of iran is. the brother. of the music you know that name. for itself. with the u.s.

presidential election looming ahead we find out how much americans know about the building blocks of the country's policies at home and abroad also. trying to reports eventually to take us to a sort of a became baseball time and sort of mid sentence just thinking oh my god i just can't breathe anymore. while proponents person reflections from greece it's all he looks back at twenty seconds. witnesses. to history in the making. testimony. ten stories that shapes two thousand and eleven. russian court is to decide if russian translation of the main book of the hari krishna movement should be banned for being extremist the case followed by the state prosecutors has caused

a storm on religious followers living in the country as well as the political elite in india well correspondents in delhi and moscow are following the trial and the reaction to it. siberian court is considering banning a russian translation of the odds as it is which is considered to be the bible for the hari krishna movement now the translation is being accused of sparking religious and racial hatred during the ninety's the movement's was seen as a religious sect its members were roaming around to wear in bright clothes listening to rock amusing and allegedly taking drugs they were spreading the book as well many teenagers were leaving their homes to join the movement and people were donating money to it so by many was seen as a threat now the case was filed after prosecutors looked into the recent activity over the movements in siberia however the russian foreign ministry insists that it's this particular translation of the book that the case is filed against not so

their regional text over its that is sacred for hindu cookies and it is clear from the available materials that criticism from law enforcement officials is not so much aimed at the text of the book itself which suffers from semitic distortions but at the comments of the author which can be regarded as falling under article thirteen of the russian law on countering extremist activity it was. people here in russia. political elite both have been asking to stop the case calling it absurd it has been the top news on all the major news channels and all the top newspapers here in india there have been mass protests a lot of the russian consulates all over the country and even the indian parliament was actually stalled for a few hours on monday some of india's a lead politicians were saying that this was an insult to the lord krishna one thing that's important to note that natalie also pointed out is that this is a ban is actually for the book called that as it is which is

a comment edition that was printed in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight by the international society for krishna consciousness which is otherwise known as the hari krishna movement now that's a different version of the book than the actual which is a very sacred in spiritual tax for the hindu people and obviously this is brought together hindu people from around the world have video flew. through the body of the verdict. but also you know that because of the. you know. the extremist which is that is. you can see. that it's absurd and while all of this is going on the book itself the bug is actually flying off the bookshelves here in india but with a lot of sort of the outrage and the mass hysteria there is a lot of

a little bit as well a little bit of misinformation regarding what exactly is going on in russia. but don't forget our web site has plenty more stories news and looting in the sky all of europe i think wants to know so why don't you see the. star spaceship. song. when i was. also on line lights camera and plenty of action the sex scandal surrounding the former head of international monetary fund don't need. to make a big screen who's been tipped to play the lead down to dot com. britain is reportedly working on an emergency plan to shore up its economic defenses in case of a euro do state u.k. treasury is said to want to avoid an influx of economic refugees plans include evacuating british ex-pats from affected countries and even attempt a closure of borders financial analyst says attempts by your opinion is to avoid

a worst case scenario making it more likely. leaders are trying to shore up the eurozone by having greater degrees of centralization and more having countries like france and germany have the final say in a sense over the budgets of those e.u. member states that have excessive budget deficits but that really isn't the answer to the problems wilts really needed as either a massive injection of cash into countries like greece and italy to shore up their economies course another option would of course to recognize that the single currency has hurt competitiveness in many nations of the eurozone and has damaged economic growth meaning that the economies can't grow their way out of the debt crisis that they're in and they're just in this debt spiral of having people austerity measures forced upon them which then means they still cannot pay back the money that so to various financial institutions around the globe particularly

french and german banks so really there's a number of options either to transfer funds from the north to the struggling south or of course have an orderly break up of the eurozone. or greece still remains in the eye of the european financial storm and as a twenty seven draws to a close our team has been looking back at what's been a year of despair and discontent for austerity greeks or correspondent sara firth witnessed their anger reach boiling point as she covered the protests in the country. ok i think in two thousand and eleven we really sort of felt the world shift on its axis slightly we saw people's protest movement sort of spread around the world and greece is certainly for me very much on the front line of that fight and it became really the sort of place to child the financial crisis it turned into

a political crisis to became a social crisis and you know this there's a saying that if you're a hammer everything looks like if you push people into a corner then they're going to come out fighting and i think increased that was exactly what happened. the first time in the reporting and they had a protest planned there remember in the morning our hotel was just off the corner this entire very very close to central square as the usa in crisis rumbles on greece's once again found itself the focus of international attention and it seems like everyone had an opinion about it that you might honor him and going off and finishing doing my first live shows and coming back and getting a phone call to say that we needed to do another one and at that exact moment we could hit the noises that we just you hear like popping sounds it's a take us going off on the other corner syntagma. almost immediately

you just get a huge surge of people coming policy i mean you can barely me. this is a really intense experience and you sort of when you're right in the center of it i can't tell you what it's like to be around people. that angry that angry that they feel to a point where they're having to turn out and these sort of clashes abroad i mean it's really scary because it's not just. a small hall cool. these people you know old people young people completely normal families that are turning up that have just reached the point where they don't know what to do anymore. we literally found ourselves in the center. just side of one of the streets as all the riot police started pushing back late at the anarchists these guys just when backing down you know the people sort of running at them and

throwing rocks and metal and just it was absolutely i was five is going off in different parts in time everyone was just sort of running around thinking very very lowest and we were just stunned to be honest i mean it just going from north to one hundred in the space of sort of twenty minutes and we found ourselves right in the sense of and i remember just saying just keep filming this just keep filming it in the main street was very hard for. people to pick up if it was either a difficult to find out about it but it. was. as we. the people.

who were trying to reports and eventually to take us they sort of a became both of us arm and sort of mid-sentence just thinking oh my god i just can't breathe anymore. and i remember seeing the fishes in the car my getting caught in the middle of the take us and just thinking oh it's just. this thing coughing and and spluttering. do you remember being quite in virus the bout but then we realized that it obviously that clip caught a lot of people's attention each year and i think it actually felt good that it was striking a chord with a lot of people because at that time still there was very much a sense in europe in the way it was being reported in is a problem that greece is having is a great problem and we were all sort of witnessing what was going on and i think when we were increased we realized very very quickly that it wasn't just

a greek problem and this is something that was going to fade everyone. right from the very beginning we wanted to. get a good story from a different angle we were much more interested in getting the social side of what was going on i hope for everybody to become and. try to get out of the crisis if that was what was always important to us is getting. the people in greece getting their opinion across to the kids i think a lot of their voices really have got lost in the whole political economic talk kind of forget what it's all about which is about you know the people who are there and you talking to. him that's amazing people i mean every single time i've gone back they just say welcoming. and we'll continue to bring you personal reflections from our correspondents worldwide on the headlines of two thousand and if you missed any there but able to watch

right now r.t. dot com. if you look at albany from around the world or begin garza where a series of air strikes have killed three and injured nearly a dozen israel's air force carried out new songs targeting militants before the israeli border strike killed one man after a rocket hit his motorcycle the second airstrike hit a mass police vehicle air attacks have been relatively rare since the end of a three week israeli war three years ago. a former u.s. marine accused of trying to infiltrate iran's intelligence service went on trial on tuesday tehran contends that. marty received special cia training and served military bases in iraq and afghanistan before heading to run for his intelligence mission marty admits to having ties to the cia with claims he had no intention of

harming iran says the death penalty if convicted. a u.s. presidential candidates tell the nation how they plan to lead it into the future some of been exposed for the basic knowledge of foreign affairs but it seems the general public is following suit as it is and it's a situation to discover it. it's three agencies of government when i get there that are gone commerce education and the what's the third one there let's see he's looking to to actually fire tens of thousands of federal workers and eliminate an entire cabinet level position he can even remember its name asked me who is the president of you beki beki beki beki stan stan i'm going to say you know i don't know do you know it's not the fact that he doesn't know it's the fact that he doesn't think he should look it up so you agree with president obama live you. should be your. basic knowledge of those attempting to spearhead

a country can leave much to be desired would be this leave americans choosing their politicians and their countries potential future let's find out. for some reason i don't know anything about libya do you know what is the pakistanis know i do not know what a bikie stand is backing for. do you know the us is an airbase there. nor do we know about libya. you know dispel libya yes yes do you know the united states was involved in a war with libya. ok. you know why. i know absolutely nothing about. what about new mexico is that a state or a country what is that. i or any time you think i don't know you know.

it's the old me under bush. while i actually. come on it was not that long ago you know you cheney was the vice president of the us. you know i have no idea i know it's. the right time to. cheney. so would secretary of state police or rice that we would be fools and nice to ignore their purpose and their plan some countries are at the top of politicians list to attack her belief am literally but how much do people really know about those faraway places. with her. was a brother. you know the president of iran is no capital capitol of iran do you know the capital city of iran. negative do you guys know what iran is oh yes yes yes what's the capital of iraq. was the president.

the president he just died but the capital of the capital yes i do what is it you're asking me i can't tell you that either top secret come. now libya or. anything. if the president of iraq iran iraq way all right you know his name but a jet a giraffe or so when it comes to picking a future for the you want choosing what comes next may be tough without the knowledge of what has gone on in the past and even the very present situation at fourteen. with you. thanks kerry farewell welcome to the program a new era is beginning for the russian economy the country fast apply for

membership of the world trade organization but. finally that long negotiation is over and russia has been formally invited to join richard danka looks at the changes this will bring. becoming a member of the world trade organization is both a political and economic milestone the fact that for such a long time russia now a top ten global economy was outside the trading club that unites ninety eight percent of the world's population sounds pretty ridiculous under w. zero rules the average duty on imports of goods will be reduced to seven point eight percent for agriculture it will be lowered to ten point eight from thirteen point two percent and as for manufactured goods the decline will be to seven point three percent from the current nine and a half the parliament in russia still needs to ratify russia's exception to the w t

o but obviously these changes will not happen in one day only a third of newly set in produce are expected to come straight after the ratification basically those which will not do any harm medicine for example will become cheaper gradually over three years to give local producers time to adapt to new market conditions and when it comes to the weakest or sensitive sectors like cars imports will be cut inch by inch over the next seven years for years the government protected farmers and car makers and will continue to do so through subsidies although the funds will drop significantly over time and perhaps the definite winner in this whole situation is the consumer has regulations become more transparent and tariffs are slashed more companies will be coming to russia's market and competition will force producers to reduce prices the economic development ministry therefore expects to see an average reduction of around ten percent the world bank believes that that the total effect will amount to an extra

four point three percent of the gross domestic product as spending will grow seven percent but yet again this whole process may take quite a while and in the end russia is expected to finally improve the disproportional two percent of global trade volumes that it accounts for at the moment. let's have a look at the markets now it boyle is flat top to seeing gains in the previous sessions on concerns tension in iran might miss my disruptions under now the driver is the improving u.s. consumer confidence the w. is trades and i suppose one hundred one dollars per barrel while the brunt blanche is at one hundred nine dollars per barrel. now on through at which is asia has a mostly week of pulling mild losses on wall street the nikkei was lower point two percent up to you that's housing prices and japanese try out for dropped that sign palace and cited that slower growth in china and europe sovereign debt crisis will dump companies are needs offset better than this time estimated u.s.

consumer confidence condon russia the markets are mixed while tries process all providing some support for energy majors though trading is to end by year end holidays and next to the moment news out of the u.s. and europe. that's it cannot bring you more market analysis in about fifteen minutes here on r t.

it's. the. first six. wealthy british style. that's not on the title.

market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. let's take a look at the headlines now paradoxically egypt is working to shape its post-revolutionary future by reestablishing relations abroad the country's foreign minister heads to moscow. tens of thousands of grieving north koreans have packed into the capital to pay their last respects to the late leader kim jong il he's being laid to rest on them days of national unity. britain considers measures to.