is looking north korea. tens of thousands of grieving north korea packed into the capital as kim jong il is folly to rest. egypt is working to shape its post-revolutionary future reestablishing relations abroad country's foreign minister heads to moscow. britain considers measures to protect itself from the potential demise of the answer or to be disputing cash even. a controversial trial in russia prosecutors want to ban a version of the main book of the hari krishna movement here for being extremists

i'll have more on how the trial has outraged here in india and china if you. know their world news around the clock you're without me tens of thousands of north koreans have taken to the capital snow covered streets to pay their last respects to their late leader the fan well ceremony that will last for two days dotted with a funeral procession led by kim jong il's youngest son and successor the long standing leader of the world's most reclusive country died eleven days ago before the attack of age of kim jong un shrouded in mystery some are hoping his western education may see open country and especially stone age to take deal thinks it's not entirely up to the successor to the terminal screws future. as we know.

in switzerland dogs do that's going to have an effect but i think that's crazy to me it's a freedom of action. part of the north korean system but also you know maybe if you get outside of the world in any respect to the americans so it's not north korea and since don't want to not that scenario because we want to. constrain. somewhat like they want to contain china rather different you do differently because it's all part of the same the same package so what one 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 or journalist or correspondent eric margolis shares the view there is little chance of changing north korea to the excessive efforts of the military but it's good speculation that is his uncle is and some other members of

the family are kind of pulling his strings but i think more than one point one million man north korean army. for other announced can draw forty guys well or you go now it's the new policy of militarized korea as it was once a christian 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 son military rule which to me says that it's unlikely there will be major western style forms your business 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's funeral service is just a click away at our website r.t.

dot com. the new post revolution egypt is heading abroad in the attempt to mend its relations with other countries and as part of that cairo's foreign minister is talking to his counterpart in moscow but with the situation at home still very tense both african nation will have to prove it's going to be a stable partner not easy go piskun off as more. meeting has actually already started at the foreign ministry's state in central moscow and you can see behind me but actually it was supposed to be held around a week ago but it was postponed due to the arab league's meetings on syria the organization said it's observer city country its headquarters are in cairo so egypt is directly involved or 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 with standing against any foreign military intervention egypt is also 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 for a problem entry lections 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 votes the second round is expected. that the new parliament 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. on the ongoing situation in syria looks set to dominate those talks in moscow and latest development tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of sirius the city of homs demanding international protection it happened after the arab league's monitoring team visited the area his mission is to assess the situation in the country show

president assad's compliance with the original plan to end the bloodshed but as asia times journalist pepe escobar says there are doubts over the mission's impartiality. they have to investigate the activities of the free syrian army these are mercenaries in the sector as all are. arm by outside powers and these outside powers are basically from qatar and the emirates will the arab league which is now called true why did she see the gulf cooperation council exists to get themselves in this case we still don't know are they going to investigate the need to call truly call and center set up in the uk near the border between turkey and syria in the skin there room which is very across the border basically from aleppo let's say two hours are you going to investigate that you are really going to hurt us to get into shipment smuggling weapons via did your day in syria

more you still don't look good it's a tall order for the arab league season that these are not exactly democracies they're investigating one of their all but they're also implicated in the whole big picture. well you know with r.t. still coming ahead in the program. you know the president of iran is now the president. you know a name not a jet a gaffe i thought the. u.s. presidential election looming we find out how much americans now about the building blocks of that country's policies at home and abroad also. who is trying to pull its eventually to take aspects of a became base but time and sort of mid-sentence just thinking oh my god i just can't breathe anymore. just a few moments we bring you our correspondents personal reflections from greece to expect at twenty seven's main headlines. britain is reportedly working

on an emergency plan to shore up its economic defenses case of a euro deems day u.k. treasuries said to want to avoid an influx of economic refugees but plans include evacuating british ex-pats with affected countries and even attempt we close our borders a financial analyst says attempts by european leaders to avoid the worst case scenario making it more likely. you opinion leaders are trying to shore up the eurozone by having greater degree 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 deficit but that really isn't the answer to the problems milt's 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 so really there's

a number of options either to transfer funds from the north to the struggling south or course have an orderly break up of the eurozone. for greece still remains in the eye of the european financial storm those twenty seven draws to a close r.t. has been looking back at what's been a year of despair and discontent for austerity hit greeks our correspondent sara firth witnessed their anger reach boiling point she cover the protests in the country. you know i think in two thousand and eleven we really sort of felt the world shift on its way we saw people's protest movement sort of spread around the world and greece is certainly for me very much on the frontline fight and it became really the sort of pace to child the financial crisis it turned into

a political crisis became a social crisis and yeah this is a saying that if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail 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. reporting and they had a protest planned i remember in the morning. it was just the coup in a very very close to central square as the european thing crisis rumbles on greece is once again found itself the focus of international attention and it seems like everyone had an opinion about it that you might. going off and finishing to. getting a phone call to say that we need to do another one at that exact moment we could hit the noises that would just like popping sounds it's a take us going off on the other corner sometimes. 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 they feel to a point where they're having to turn outs and these sort of clashes abrupt 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 on the. side of one of the streets as all the riot police. and these guys are backing down you know the people

sort of running at them and throwing vaults and metal and it was just it was absolutely. going off in different parts in time everyone was just sort of running around very very lowest and we were just stunned to be honest i mean it just going from one hundred in the space of sort of twenty minutes and we found ourselves right in the century and i remember just saying just keep filming this just keep filming it and i made it very hard to even to pretend that it wasn't even a difficult time that i had to. be cut. as the. people.

they're. trying to reports and eventually to take us to a sort of a became sort of mid sentence just thinking oh my god i just can't breathe anymore . and i remember seeing the fishes in the car and getting caught in the middle of the take us and just thinking oh that's just. thing coughing and spluttering in. remember being quite in virus the bout. then we realized that it only see that clip caught a lot of people's attention. 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 that you know this is a problem that greece is having its 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. something

that was going to fade everyone. and absolutely you know he he felt when you were reporting that you witness thing people passing their breaking point they were just so angry that they can't get back very quickly else intactness. in the crowd we're not sure exactly what that thing off but everyone's just trying to get out of the way you could see people being just backed by the riot police that. almost you left all of the national t.v. and maybe tomorrow. right from the very beginning we wanted to see. the story from a different angle we were much more interested in getting the same side of what was going on i hope for everybody to become and. try to get out of the crisis was what was always important to us is getting. the people increase 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 were there and you talking to. the lucky and that's amazing people i mean every single time i've gone back they just say welcoming. well we'll continue to bring you person reflections from our correspondents worldwide on the headlines of twenty of them and if you've missed anything available to watch. the russian court has to decide if a russian translation of the main book of the hard christian movement should be banned from stream ist the case followed by state prosecutors has caused a storm among religious followers living in the country that's what is the political elite india correspondent in delhi and. are following the trial and

the reaction to it siberian court is considering banning a russian translation of god as it is which is considered to be the bible for the hari krishna movement now this installation 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 wearing bright clothes listening to rock music 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 it was seen as a threat now that the case was filed after prosecutors looked into the recent activity over the movements in siberia how the russian foreign ministry insists that it's this particular translation of the book that the case is filed against not so there is no text. it's that is sacred for him 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 semantic 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. oh hindu people here in russia and indian political elites both have been asking to stop the case calling it absurd while there is obviously massive outrage here this is 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 elite 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 bug which is a very sacred and spiritual tax for the hindu people and obviously this is brought together hindu people from around the world have video flew. with the body divert they don't want to bend the bug but also you know that because of the. you know. the extremist which is that is. you can see it's senseless and it's absurd and while all of this is going on the book itself the bug that gave that is actually flying off the bookshelves here in india with a lot of sort of the outrage and the mass hysteria there is all lot a little bit as well a little bit of misinformation regarding what exactly is going on in russia. we forget our web site has plenty more stories news and comments including santa in

the sky all over europe have been baffled by a mysterious flying object on christmas eve a shooting star a space ship or a magical sleigh. find out what you know christmas conundrum webs. lights camera and plenty of action the sex scandal surrounding the former head of the international monetary fund dominique strauss kahn set to make it to the big screen and discover who's been tipped to play the lead at r.t. dot com. as u.s. presidential candidates tell the nation how they plan to lead it into the future some of them expose for the basic knowledge of foreign affairs it seems the general public is following suit its arteries and says it's going 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 if he's looking to to actually fire tens of thousands of federal workers and eliminate any 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. 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 country's potential future let's find out. borat for some reason i don't know anything about libya do you know what is the pakistanis know i do not know what the pakistan is backing for now. do you know the us is an airbase there. or do we know about libya and i want you to spell

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 that new mexico is that a state or a country what is that card anytime you think don't you know. it's all been under bush. actually. come on it was not that long ago you vote cheney who is the vice president of the us. you know i have no idea i know it's. the might. cheney soberly. material things i'm really surprised that we would be fools enemies to ignore their purpose and their plan some countries are at the top of politicians with to attack verbal weak am literally but how much do people really know about

the faraway places. with a brother. you know the president of iran is no capital capital of iran do you know the capital city of iran. negative do you guys know what iran is oh yeah what's the capital of iraq. was the president. president he just died what about the capital of the capital yes i do but if you're asking me i can't tell you that either top secret come. now libya or pakistan or anything. if the president of iraq iran iraq all right you know his name but a jet a giraffe or so when it comes to picking

a future for the us choosing what comes next may be tough without the knowledge of what has gone on in the past and even the very present situation are pretty. well look at other news from around the world now we begin in gaza where a series of strikes have killed three and injured many that doesn't move people israel's air force carried out this souls claiming it was targeting militants to prevent an attack on parts of these maybe border initial strike killed one man after a rocket hit his motorcycle second strike into peaceful air attacks have been relatively rare since the end of a three week as many war against gaza three years ago. the trial of egyptian express. hosni mubarak is set to resume after three today but faces the death penalty if he is proud to have been behind the killings of some eight hundred fifty people dream protests that overthrew every trolls postponed for dollars are

asked that the judge be replaced requests that the since been to no life. is the first opportunity during the so-called arab spring uprisings to appear before a court. but the back to recap the headlines a few minutes before that the latest business news for you the book. everyone welcome to the program and era is beginning for the russian economy the country fast apply for membership of the world trade organization but conniving to ninety three and finally that long negotiation is over and russia has been formally invited to join richard engel 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 import duties 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 of the us 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 how the markets not be forming this our oil is flat off just seeing gains in the previous sessions on concerns tension in iran might cause supply disruptions had another driver is improving u.s. consumer confidence the w.

is trading above one hundred one dollars a barrel while the brunt land is at one hundred nine dollars per barrel. now on to act which is asia as a mostly weak of falling mild losses of wall street the nikkei was lower point two percent off to us housing prices fell and japanese factory output dropped that is saying. that slower growth in china and europe sovereign debt crisis will company earnings offset better than estimates at u.s. consumer confidence. and european stocks are trading mixed this hour as most traders are back from christmas holidays the footsie is adding a quarter of percent while the german dax is down four point three percent. funded in russia the markets some mix trading is threatened by year end holidays and makes to economic news out of the few outs and europe let's now have a look at some of the individual share moves in the might so it's high oil prices are lending some support to energy shares crossed nafta is gaining more than one hundred percent gas bromance does more well though the company has been fined for

fixing manifolds monopolistic lists or high prices for the. metals and mining sector is under pressure on the my six that is leading the decline losing one to one percent. that's it for me from normal market analysis involved five minutes here on r t so do stay with us.

i'm finding. it's getting bad out here. not saying. you know what's going on here. on. british soil.