while most of us are getting ready for new year's celebrations negotiators for russia and ukraine are working hard to reach a deal on gas prices as quickly as possible more of this in business are you twenty . nine pm friday night here in moscow you're watching r t with me kevin oh in a very welcome now our top story than this hour two u.s. warships have entered an area that iran is using for a large scale naval war games further escalating tension between the nations the maneuvers are taking place in neutral waters close to the crucial strait of hormuz oil supply route which iran's threat to block washington says the vessels are on a routine mission that is going to teach a cannes been following the latest developments. day after day we see the degree of tension rising iranian and american warships kind of brushed shoulders earlier as

u.s. ships past the area where terror ron is holding a ten day military exercise the u.s. has said they crossed the strait of hormuz unhindered and that he was a routine passage iran's right in to cut off the strait of hormuz which is the major golf oil artery forty percent of the world's tanker shipped oil passes through that strait the u.s. said they would not tolerate any disruption of supplies which suggests that if you ran goes through with their threats we might see a full scale military showdown there but now based on the statements that we hear washington seems to think that iran is bluffing but right now you won't find itself in a situation where its main source of livelihood namely oil export is in danger because of the looming sanctions and the threats that are coming from iran indicate that it's ready to take action to protect its interests if attacked it's almost sure to retaliate right now were iran is flexing its muscle showing off its capabilities doing their naval military exercises and as part of the exercise on saturday

they'll fire long range missiles capable of reaching israel by the way a touching upon some of the latest decisions the u.s. congress passed a bill that would dramatically complicate transactions through iran's central bank european and asian nations import iranian oil and use its central bank for their transactions president obama has yet to sign the bill and that's going to be a severe blow to the uranium economy around eighty percent of its revenues depend on crude sales e.u. ministers say. a decision on whether or not to boycott iranian oil will be made in coming weeks the west says all the rand has to do to avoid sanctions is to give up their nuclear program iran says they are not doing anything wrong by pursuing a peaceful nuclear program for civilian purposes some experts believe cornering iran like that by sanctions creates a powder keg which could blow up at a slightest spark and the potential confrontation over the strait of hormuz can be

that spark. our correspondent in washington gonna teach you can there and we've got more comment to come throughout the night on this developing story artie's business said it has been assessing the market's reaction to the hormones standoff he says it's not see thinks like you did drive all prices very high for the moment but the situation could also benefit russia in the long term certainly in the worst case scenario prices would go ahead in leaps and bounds but at the moment the market is not really factoring that in you've seen so incremental rises where the risk seems to be getting a bit higher but they don't really believe this is going to lead to an all out escalation potentially a military conflict but there is one silver lining in this for russia because russia. is russia's world split and is a heavy sour blend and it's very similar to iranian blend so it tends to benefit when reading supplies putting questions so we've seen about actually a premium for russian oil at the moment. for small business had a sort of thoughts from you to a few taking the time to take

a look at our web site poll there were ask you today to share your opinions on this story tell us how you think the strait of hormuz deadlocks going to evolve this is what you've been telling us to take the use of data in fact other half of you who voted so far think the u.s. will use this standoff as a pretext to attack iran but a third of you say it won't have any immediate consequences you think being just the latest move in a long game as you put it twelve percent think iran will teach the west a lesson by cutting off vital supplies and six percent think it's around will achieve its end goal of preventing sanctions cast your vote if you get a minute dot com. coming up later in the program the final countdown. when these lines of police started with a link for it towards the starting shooting towards our direction started tear gassing my cameraman with tear gas i was injured that's when it will change the way our team brings you the view from inside the occupy movement as we show it from

a new up close and personal perspective. this is. to history in the making. testimony. ten stories that shapes two thousand and eleven on our t.v. . egyptian rights groups have accused military rulers of using what they describe as mubarak era tools of repression that serve to soldiers and police raided the offices of ten non-governmental organizations including some foreign ones at israel financial reports. thursday job carried out unprecedented armed raids on at least seventeen high profile human rights and pro-democracy organizations all across the country and it's been done in a very brutal and very unpleasant way policemen and soldiers swept into offices into a gated people didn't let anybody you know out didn't actually let the people make calls to their relatives and eventually seized computers and documents from the offices among those targeted organizations were the u.s.

government funded national democratic institute the international republican institute whose chairman is now republican senator john mccain and freedom house so as you can see and. sponsored from abroad especially for america have been targeted washington whose military aid to egypt amounts at one point three billion dollars has been very quick to react expressing its. disappointment with what happened in egypt on the thursday call it highly provocative and calling only dip to try to resolve it as soon as possible and to return the stuff that has been taken from the in jos employees the organizations themselves have also responded they've condemned the raids carried out in egypt. claiming it reminded them about tough times and egypt's former dictator hosni mubarak egypt is going through tough times of course these days clashes between demonstrators and police and soldiers still continued

all across the country to continue in claiming lives just last week it ended in the dust of cleaved at least fifteen people and these days a supreme council of military forces egypt's new authority is often criticized for being too slow and too undetermined in promise democratic reforms are struggling to cling to power very sensitive about any influence especially from abroad and very sensitive about control and they're trying to keep power and to control everything and of course as part of this paranoia military government might even suspect these organizations n.g.o.s sponsored from abroad of support and of sponsoring protesters all across egypt. foreign policy analyst talked at all shamu told me that he believes the military government is making sure it stays in power but the people are determined for democratic change this is part of the minute the supreme council of armed forces well making sure. this.

basically is molded to the to the type of government they want because that's those are the same generals by the way who worked for mubarak. but really the military has to step aside they will not give up the power that easily but i think the egyptian people and the arabs in general have lost their fear from corrupt government and they have restored of their dignity and they will not tolerate another military dictatorship in the country i think all the evidence indicate that despite the sacrifices. i will show most bigsby they are coming up at seven thirty pm g.m.t. the guess sonar cross talk show discussed how the egyptian revolution in february set a trend for similar movements across the globe. in the so-called east or the muslim world teaching us now new ways of protesting wisconsin have been less than

a month after tahrir square after the removal of mubarak was certainly very inspired by it i had people calling me from wisconsin asking me to put them in touch with the protesters in tahrir square so they could figure out how they did it all across the world it's about people taking back their countries and whether see the states or any other power there's only so much that foreign troops can do at the end of the day it's up to the people themselves. large scale and regime marches of being held across syria the sweet fresh reports of violent crackdowns against protesters today so she suggests that over one hundred people were killed by security forces since tuesday when the observers began their fact finding mission series flashpoints whether it's hard to verify the information coming from a country clashes began in march between government forces and protesters with both

sides being armed beirut based political analysts campbell was and he says the situation is being fueled things from the outside we heard today the american and interfere in the process and we heard that mr feldman the undersecretary of the state telling the monitors what to do and he said regardless what the conclusion of the model if it doesn't fall and the opposition then they have to go and take it to the international community obviously the. american trying to play. dirty guy in this operation they don't want to see a settlement for what is taking place in syria and they instigating in the media and actually calling in there so in their. supporter of the opposition which has been playing with the united states and the western powers to destabilize syria if what we heard from mr furze feldman is the verdict then i don't think we're going

to see good things coming out out of the end of the commission of the observer. don't forget our web sites also got more news comment and analysis for you twenty four seven a few stories there tonight you might be interested in getting together can see police in some petersburg reveal that they've seized almost two hundred kilos of caviar stored in this is the cat a morgue nice but you ain't seen nothing yet mystical creature from russia's wilderness comes to town to shine a light on the less fortunate find out more at r.t. dot com. fire crews have managed to put out a blaze on a nuclear submarine to the shipyard in northwest russia the military says it's no nuclear threat because the reactor had been shut down in that sub even before the fire started firefighters continue to cool down the submarines hold the water to make sure it doesn't reignite some of the crew are on board still as well to

monitor the bus systems nine were injured after scaffolding around the sub caught fire. spain's new conservative leadership has given its civil service employees a dismal new year gift by announcing a fresh package worth almost nine billion euros they joined them the greeks and italians who were hit by enormous cuts and tax hikes imposed by their governments this year and tony twelve promises the same two artesian really good reports on the gloomy prospects for the eurozone. the autumn in europe saw the fall of several european leaders spain greece italy all of these countries so a change in leadership across a two week period but who are these new faces that help of europe's most troubled nations and will they really make things better for the people. probably not greeks pride themselves on essentially inventing democracy back in however long ago that was too bad the man who is now being touted as the man with the plan is an

economist who was appointed to the greek people know gordon elections there well the greek prime minister was the greek finance minister at the time but greece joined the euro so he was responsible for cooking the books to get greece in for this ever expanding empire he was rewarded by going to work at the european central bank and as soon as i would mention the word referendum he was there and even if we skirt the whole issue of current governments being appointed by someone else from another country another question pops up will they be capable of doing anything different than before well the irony is of course that many of these technocrats from. the disastrous euro project in the first place so it really is pretty annoying that they're now in charge of all of these countries and that doesn't go down well with the economists who saw the eurozone disaster develop from the beginning this project is doomed to failure it was always tuned to failure and

moreover i would have them arraigned i would have a fiscal crimes tribunals i would like to see some of these people sent to prison so far cutting the public sector firing tens of thousands of people and telling everyone to brace themselves for tough times ahead in the midst of raging protests unruly unemployment and mind blowing deck numbers these have been the only steps so far undertaken by european governments both old and new to this capacity with the people who think that maria monti came to help italy out of the crisis or not only to help spain are totally mistaken that those who are in key positions in seats of power on represent the interests of goldman sachs and other major corporations by ease and there is always the chance the things could get even worse there is a real possibility. in the mediterranean countries that will see govern. months well. not even legitimate governments but we'll see governments overthrown i think there's also a big worry that we may well see the kind of nationalist political movements

springing out of this that we thought we said goodbye to back in ninety forty five if the technocrats filter is the right economies in italy greece and spain the nations wind up not only with a bleak future between the very little reason to call themselves democratic it in it goes go r.t. . elsewhere around the world tonight in southeast turkey thousands of mourners attended a funeral pay their last face of the victims of an air strike thirty five kurdish civilians were killed on wednesday after the turkish air force launched an attack on what was thought to be a group of rebels based in iraq but incident though stirred up anger among kurds in the region and a number of protests held in turkish and iraqi cities have ended in clashes. eleven people have died after side closed smashed into india's southeastern coast it brought heavy rain and wind speeds of up to one hundred forty kilometers an hour that up rooted trees and damaged homes the majority of fatalities of thoughts of

being caused by collapsible xm electric shocks the severe weather conditions and halted local train and air services. as twenty twelve creeps closer we continue to look back at the stories that dominated the past year this time it's the occupy movement we're looking at that exposed social and financial injustice in the most unexpected places. i remember at the start of the so-called so-called arab spring we saw so many mass movements from europe to the middle east people rising up taking to the streets protesting and the question we kept asking ourselves over and over again is why not here why not in the united states i mean for years we've covered stories that touched upon social inequality economic inequality the overdue undue influence

in fact that politics has been the money has in our financial system and i never thought that this kind of popular outrage would really come to the united states that it would really hit home. when the occupy wall street movement began my initial impression and i have to admit it was utter skepticism you know it sounded like some american protesters saw what was going on in the middle east and thought it would be i meet sort of symbolic way to emulate what they've seen for example into where square. one of the biggest things that really sort of woke me up as an individual was that that night in times square in october this was right after the supposed to be announced raid by the mayor where about three thousand if not more protesters had gathered around security park to to defend their space and they succeeded they weren't raided and

we saw literally thousands of people marching into times square which you know the physical contrast of the sort of a temple of consumerism which is times square in manhattan these flashing lights these logos these expressions of corporate power and from sooner culture in stark contrast to. literally thousands of people who have gotten together to speak to shouts to feel the physical presence of of other americans who are just no longer content to sit back and watch society unfold in the direction that it's taken. i was just feet away from the area where several police officers mountain of horseback sort of out into the crowd hurting some of the protesters seeing with my own eyes for the first time the excessive level of force. and the old gentleman who looked like he was probably in his sixty's slammed down to the ground his arms and

back women of all ages men of all ages carried away for doing what for sitting down on the ground and not moving or making a point quietly. standing there with my camera man with this line of police officers several hundred of them armed to the teeth you know what. sticks out a line of protesters behind me you know i thought i was there as this protected almost impartial observer there to tell the story but when these lines of police started moving at me started moving forward towards me starting shooting towards our direction started tear gassing my cameramen was tear gassed i was injured and that's when it really changed for me there are at least hundreds of the not two hundred three hundred police officers in full riot gear as you can see advancing behind us right now on the occupy oakland movement now one of the other interesting

experiences i think for me was sort of seeing the contrast between occupy wall street in new york and in oakland in oakland where there is such a radical history of active as and where the people there the protesters there were so much more outraged so much more ready for a radical fundamental change of this in this country. but at the same time. one of the experiences that really stands out to be in my mind was the day of the port shutdown on the member second you know there are thousands thousands or tens of thousands of people who were gathered who were marching around seventy to eighty is not a lot of police presence that there really felt that perhaps we had turned a new chapter in this country perhaps this was going to be an opportunity for these kinds of expressions of political discontent with the sort of crackdown that we've that we've seen in the past and what happened that evening really really shook me to the corner i have to say the contrast between these peaceful marches and.

seeing firsthand the streets of oakland turned into something i might have seen on the news and as you can see there are marching behind as fix their hands but around the hand i don't know if you can get any closer on that shot i think that really galvanized this country and really woke us up to reality. the reality is that there is a lot wrong and there's a lot that needs to be changed but instead of sitting here and inviting experts to go and talk about it we're seeing people physically participating in what democracy really should be all about. i'm an american citizen i feel that i am here to tell the stories and i have a right to tell the stories and that is part of what this country is fundamentally founded on and sort of experiencing firsthand the the loss of the the inability to do anything the feeling of powerlessness and smallness. that's something that i

think i'm not going to forget for quite a long time. hope you very much enjoyed that series of reports that was the final one of in fact on the personal reflections from our team of international correspondents on the events that shaped twenty eleven if you missed any of it as well they're all on our web site r t v dot com and i hope you can join us said to morrow evening as well looking ahead to twenty four hours from now we're bringing you special new year coverage here on this channel r.t. moscow.

what a new year it's been a wasn't it twenty eleven will be a red square moscow with my colleague in this an hour for a live special as we say goodbye to twenty eleven a welcome in twenty twelve tomorrow evening here on r t up and join us for at some point but the president in a few minutes r.t. invited you on an unforgettable underwater to earth to explore the wonders of the white sea beautiful place next though it's business to me to say. thanks kevin and maybe the holiday season but negotiators in moscow and kiev are still working hard to secure a deal on gas ukraine estimators pipeline system to be worth twenty billion dollars and was an annual nine billion dollar discount on the gas supplies if the two

countries created a sort of two transit gas mask is not outright rejecting the idea speaking to gas problems head prime minister putin says talks must go on but assures that if you go national i ask you to continue the negotiations as ukraine will remain a strategic partner for treating gas and considering the growing demand from european consumers and also the several countries to warn down nuclear energy ukraine's pipeline system will undoubtedly remain in demand. twenty eleven has been a testing year for investors as the world economy struggled for growth stock markets here in russia also suffered yet some sectors spectacularly bucked the trend than your bushel looks at the rollercoaster ride of the last twelve months or what to expect in the coming year. gold has been an exceptional investment it reached all time highs of over nineteen hundred dollars per ounce in september six hundred percent in a decade but since then the price has slid back and brokers no more going to put to

fall further in twenty twelve fearing the bubble will burst. the dollar euro remain risks switching your roubles into the greenback would have brought a small return but changing into the euro would have been lost this point and unemployment both in the states and the european union mean those currencies continue to be unstable. become much more reliable the credit crunch wiped out riskier lenders while the states brought in guarantees insuring all deposits up to seven hundred thousand rubles some banks now offer healthy return of over fourteen percent a year. most weeks merger of russia's stock exchanges has cut paul twenty eleven the more six slipped eighteen percent as political uncertainty worried investors but i'm missing best cafe expect a strong rebound in twenty twelve as the new government settles predicting

a return to previous years when markets were the world's best performing. our second town markets are fairing at the moment in the u.s. they're pretty much the only one still trading this year and the doubters the nasdaq are down on european worries as spain's new government bailed austerity measures and said it expects a twenty eleven budget gap of nearly eight percent. in the e.u. in europe it was a short session wolf in london and frankfurt and a positive one as germany's finance minister ruled out a euro zone breakup whereas russian stocks finished the final session of the year also a positive overall in line with the global trended this is lost around twenty one percent this year. more details. friday's energy shares were doing well financials were a bit weaker than the market but the outstanding gator was a lot it's up almost five percent as a veiled plans to boost passenger numbers twenty five percent. russia's enjoyed

a persistently strong oil price this year it's been good for the budgets but it's done little to propel domestic equities now this means there's some catching up to do as tom monday from a bank explains. the russian equities which is traded lower by twenty percent in two thousand and eleven from two thousand and ten they have a lot of way to go to catch up with where the oil price adjusts they should be given the fact that because of prices a relatively high russian sovereign risks are very low yields on russian government data contracts it actually in two thousand and eleven so again there's more catch up to do the risk is that the government doesn't do anything and doesn't listen to the issues that have been raised because of these protests in parliamentary election if they don't do anything materially in soon after the presidential election i think for investors are going to lose faith that there is actually a reform agenda they want to see very material changes being made. from the business team for now we will be back with an update in fifty five minutes time.

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the be. the but. the be. black from moscow you're watching r t it's nine thirty pm here now moscow time the top stories the gulf is on edge two u.s. warships close to a rainy a naval exercise right next to a crucial oil really looked around has been threatening to block. egypt's ruling generals are accused of tyranny is raids a staged against the offices of foreign human rights groups of the military says a stirring up trouble. and major opposition.