and broadcasting live right here from the heart of the russian capital moscow this is our t. and i sean thomas wish you a happy and prosperous year ahead from the heart of the russian capital where the party is in full swing and while moscow still has fireworks soaring across the city's skies over half the world has already rung in two thousand and twelve two thousand and twelve first arrived some fourteen hours ago now and in a new location this year it was at the independent state of samoa in the south pacific for the first time ever it used to be the last in line but switched time zones in order to get closer to new zealand this week it's skip to friday completely even the previous new year premier venue was better known as christmas island the next country to enter two thousand and twelve was new zealand closely followed by russia's far east and as the new year started its march across russia's vast territory australia japan the two koreas china and other countries

a lit up with fireworks and celebrations as midnight passed six hours ago they were ringing in the new year in thailand and vietnam with kazakhstan nepal and india following a little bit later right now the south pacific is starting a new day after the night of celebration while here parties are still rocking the moscow further west dozens of countries in europe through africa and then the americas are no doubt getting the champagne on ice and setting out the fireworks then completing the circle american samoa will be the last to leave two thousand and eleven behind some twenty five hours after the other half of the summer when island chain could the same and now let's take a look at the big events that shaped the past year in a nice amount is record. two thousand and eleven could easily go down as the most eventful year in years the killing of bin ladin after a decade long manhunt libya's good to afi after months of need obama. and the death

of north korea's kim jong il don't even begin to illustrate twenty eleven. time joe's the protester as person of the year and although there were different slogan signs and demands of solutions twenty eleven will ultimately be remembered as the year people came out onto the streets the arab spring bloomed into a european summer which harvested an american autumn from cairo to california moscow to madrid to where to occupy global rallies shared common themes but if one thing stood out in the middle east and north africa alone it was protests that lead down one road regime change. tunisia and egypt got rid of their dictators without war but libya was not so lucky

nato and allies began a humanitarian mission with a fierce bombing campaign the critics called it a mislabeled invasion to take down gadhafi for benefits the only reason they're interested in with libya is about the oil you hear anybody screaming and yelling about all those people last week that were killed in the ivory coast or whose sudan gadhafi was brutally killed in october as the world watched the graphic video go viral thousands of civilians were killed over months of bombing and that's twenty twelve neared syria found itself in a similar set up for intervention russia and china fearing a repeat of the situation in libya as civil war intensifies this is a direct effect that direct clash between the u.s. and nato on one side and russia and china on the what you know on the other side much more david was in libya protests continue in egypt libya syria and many more arab countries as the year ends. the battle to

save the drowning single currency left board rooms and banks in twenty eleven and flooded the streets of europe most commonly and violently in athens greek debt became the centerpiece of the euro crisis protests raged against desperate austerity cuts to qualify for i.m.f. bailout germany and france vying for influence in the debt ridden zone i think we will see an exit of greece given the situation in which the greek economy find itself has become really unavoidable draining the economy of big brother germany can't go on forever greece and italy are now led by on a lark to brussels back technocrat leaders who are trying to curb the crisis coming into a new year critics say twenty eleven that allowed or bust was the beginning of the end for the single european currency there's every chance the euro is going to crash. london burned for

days in the summer of twenty eleven what began as a peaceful protests demanding justice over the death of a twenty nine year old man who was shot by police turned into days of riots and left authorities helpless talks of possibly bringing out the military bars the shops were looted car set on fire and windows smashed across the u.k. the police the job center all the banks everything that's happening the recession you know there's a lot of anger about that social experts also through of felt multicultural program and racism into the mix you know stop and so. on a sense of place a certain institutional. appropriate institutionally racist as well as the riots faded but the problems are still passing some say only a spark is needed to set the public off again.

occupy wall street became a household name in the u.s. and around the world but when the protests began in september if you were talking about it the mainstream media stayed silent until seven hundred people were arrested on the brooklyn bridge and then truly based in the end of his fruits of american politics but it is easy so. they are disorganized they look funny when i protest nobody seems to know but negative coverage didn't stop us from spreading from small towns to huge ports occupied was not going anywhere rates on campus heavy handed police and burning pepper spray only helped occupy grow and spread their message of the need for economic equality and an end to corporate greet their slogan became we are the ninety nine percent and they the rich the one percent from

oakland to boston the more people occupied the more brutality became more evident by. what you do with your own. right our police forces have been militarized they are working more in cooperation with the pentagon they're buying and being given military surplus the quitman that has been kind of designed for use in war and this is something that. needs to treating the public as you would treat an enemy a public that has promised to come out in full force in twenty twelve. parliamentary elections were the push behind tens of thousands of people coming out onto the streets of moscow after allegations the december do one vote was raped five five five five the protest at least fifty thousand strong the largest in

recent history called for free and fair elections and remained peaceful ruling party united russia lost popularity in the vote with official results putting their numbers i don't most fifty percent but experts say a sixty percent drop from two thousand and seven should be taken as a warning i think a lot of people wanted to punish. russia for having power for so long and maybe not doing everything they could protest organized by vast groups of opposition members are set to continue in two thousand and twelve next year russia along with the u.s. and france hold presidential elections which makes it a safe bet people will be out on the streets in twenty twelve in europe america and around the world and you see now a party moscow. and now to the events that shaped two thousand and eleven and are expected to dominate the new year russia saw their year close amid protests

with demonstrations over the results of russia's parliamentary elections the people returned to the polls in march to vote for the country's next president parties care and tara change explains what's behind the protests in russia. happy new year to everybody very interesting first to say a very fond and very regulated new years here on red square everybody laughing yelling fireworks going off but more importantly with the protests this year in december amidst many many sort of claims of ballot box stuffing that coming in after the december fourth parliamentary elections where united russia did win two hundred and thirty eight of the four hundred fifty seats in parliament protesters took to the streets first on december tenth. ministry reporting twenty five thousand protesters of course the opposition counting somewhat fifty thousand protesters another sanction protests taking place on a socket of

a square there we saw about thirty thousand protesters the number is growing and opposition claiming one hundred twenty thousand were calling for fair and free elections the equivalent reaction in president prime minister putin was a very positive one they actually enforce the people and they want the people to come forward and express their right to voice their opinion so in that regard a very good reaction from the government also a lot of proposals have been put in place by president. really calling for a rebuilding so to speak with all of the electorial system sort of looking at the governor as the way the governors are like to russia at the moment they are like to buy the president president medvedev hopes so that he can change that he wants to bring it back to the way it was in the early ninety's and then it was done away with in the early two thousand is a system where the governors are elected by the people or by political parties it's

not yet known how that will play out with the but he does want to bring that vote sort of destabilize the power in russia also currently in order for political parties to register you need ten thousand votes he wants to drop down that number to something a five hundred. in order to run for presidency out and an independent candidate must find two million signatures in order to run for the presidency he would like that vote as well those signatures drop down to three hundred thousand so those reforms being put forth hopefully will be approved and those are the changes at the moment those are the reactions by the government to these massive protests overall a very good reaction. to the reporting for us there from moscow now you go. from the institute of world economy and international relations in moscow doubts elections could be falsified but the speculation that they have been has been politicized by thousands of russians to protest it's hard to imagine how it can

wriggle actions on a massive scale with paper system. and an army of over half a million observers monitoring the election every location all over russia so i think the problem is more social logical source here has risen up a new breed of people younger people. years ago. came into power first as prime minister and later the president russia was haunted by the legacy of the collapse of the soviet union it had all out war in the north caucuses and this war was spreading into russian mainland these problems have been solved during the years no new generation of people they care about absolute a different problem the magnitude of the problems have totally changed they care more about. ethical issues about authenticity and basically this is the fact that pushes people into the streets. and now to one

of the stories that has been making the headlines during the past year massive protests swept across greece where angry crowds clashed with police over government austerity measures the country remains under intense pressure from the european union and the international monetary fund to make savings cots to qualify for desperately needed bailout money correspondent sara furthur witnessed the worsening crisis in greece in two thousand and eleven and reports from athens on what's been a turbulent year with an uncertain want to head. well it's just been such a challenging year for the people here in the country because it's been all about that this year and the bailout that that very stiff it all starts with now in real terms of the people hit us that just because of that he cayless that tax hike it's really affected so many people here in the country every household felt the brunt of this we've seen a new class of shameless springing up here in the country even here this evening

the results that are very clear you can see lots of people out of the sea fleet they wrote on the streets tonight so many different people signed up to that discontent and so many young people who saw that he was speaking to a full team fifty it's a very nascent day to very well educated people that are happening to grapple with extremely big issues and they're you know doing their party turning out into the states and really making us who we evaluate the way we fools about the usa and in europe as a whole new prime minister lucas papademos says has said something of the years of them that we still face in the big challenges they still hold a candle and put all their arses into the main and within the year is that because the one thing i can tell you is that the people here in which they love thing that they're going to go in two thousand and twelve is going to the mall and the rhetoric because i'm pushing we see too much of that this year where rather than serious action in the situation just seeming to deteriorate to the time with the

world leaders that you're insane leaders always a few paces behind and as i said just real impact on people's lives to say we think food into the new year what people are going to want to be seeing is the real developments of two thousand and eleven has been the year of dissent that maybe we can hope for two thousand and twelve to be the year development because people here want to see some real changes as so well tonight people are going to be celebrating the new year and seeing that in celebrating with friends the family is getting. angry with me going to be what is going to be a very tough year was. there for us in athens and the first key event of two thousand and twelve for the debt stricken euro zone will become a new summit at the end of january to try to solve the euro's continuing problems e.u. leaders will be discussing a new treaty to ensure tough budget controls and a deeper fiscal union a process likely to have many political hurdles and the difficulties e.u.

competition law expert professor markus kerber believes the plans that won't solve the euro crisis because they fail to address its causes. going further to fiscal union to having far tighter fiscal controls mean that the nation states give up a fundamental part of democratic policy this is a fiscal policy taxes so they no longer decide about major param it is on the national sovereignty i think that would be great with systems apart from that that it will not solve the competitive cause of competitiveness problem of least. spade of perhaps italy so we have to find a totally new method a new approach to the problems of the occurrence here otherwise. we will have and lot of meetings in brussels which will be outdated with decisions being mixed with misunderstandings we need

a hundred markets the markets are expecting tough decisions for structural reform of the eurozone in order to melt this down to something which is homogeneous of to survive all of those things will not bring us a cure of the problems. and now we cross to the third top story that shapes two thousand and eleven time magazine has chosen an unknown protester as the person of the year just one of hundreds of thousands who hit the streets to demonstrate in countries across the globe and helped overthrow the regimes of three arab countries journalist and author as william says what happened in one of them libya is not about democracy but a way for nato to gain control in the middle east. but i think they can look forward to peer held. the opposition groups were given a promise by the french well before the. ouster of the cut off a government that they would get a chunk of the oil revenues and that was the incentive they were armed by the west

and now libya is being converted according to the latest information into a giant nato aircraft carrier if you will and the libyan oil is being used as a bargaining chip with japan and others hillary clinton has promised libyan oil reportedly in return for japanese reducing its intake of iranian oil and putting financial pressure on iran so we can see what what the game is in libya is not about democracy or libyan welfare it's about using that to militarize the entire eurasian land mass. u.s. president barack obama has signed the defense bill with a price tag of six hundred sixty two billion dollars despite serious reservations by critics over how terror suspects will be handled under its provisions the new law means any person can be detained without charge opponents also say the legislation it gives more authority to the military to detain and interrogate people denying them constitutional rights are also brought into force the latest

round of tough sanctions against iran targeting its central bank in an effort to have to take on the building to fund its nuclear enrichment program spotter and the radio host stephen leatherman says he believes the sanctions could bring war between iran and the u.s. closer. obama is a pure evil he targets dissidents he time gets whistleblowers he's extremely repressive and he's going after one country in the middle east and. i use of for a use is probably see is ravaging the world for one country one time serious and a spotlight now a return to absolutely years on the list and there are others obama simply can't wait to start another war and this could be a war against the rain and it means the entire region could become inflamed even russia and china the strategic interests in the region the main gate involved to

protect them in syria alone is you know russian dancers all the mediterranean based entirely syria it does not want to lose it it will do what it needs to to protect it so we're talking about a clash of titans in one more thing the real time good for america the real to targets for america oh russia because of its military strength china because of its growing economic strength and shatter. it's certainly no one as military but russia is the big one between russia and america they have ninety seven percent of the world's nuclear arsenal and sophisticated delivery systems just said to me we're russia is the number one target for that reason sooner or later that clash is coming. when the us has witnessed the biggest wave of protests since the vietnam

war during the outgoing year demonstrators have been united under the occupy umbrella as the movement became known which sprang up in wall street in new york more than five months ago economic analyst max fried wolf explained what's been driving the protests. the occupy wall street movement has mostly given voice to a sense of frustration and anger about unfairness as an and justices both real and perceived that a lot of people have about the economy i think it's an ambiguous that the u.s. economy doesn't work it doesn't work very well overall the g.d.p. growth is poor our present eight point six percent unemployment is probably under reporting and it's quite high the high level of college debt that people are coming out with young people in student loan debt and their inability is to get a jobs or be jobs that pay them enough to live and pay back their debt makes very clear that the united states has serious economic problems we haven't really seen anything like a suggestion about a different plan or a different way of organizing the economy come out of the or occupy wall street

movement yet you know it's also very young movement so that may evolve somewhere down the line but this looks like to me like the early stages of something with a lot more to calm most of the story yet to be written so to speak and i think what we're seeing is frost duration and anger people beginning to coalesce around that frustration and anger but i for one haven't seen real proposals on economic policy yet we may see a bit more of that this year as it's election time and policy issues i think authorities had hoped the movement would kind of fizzle out or go away and when it didn't want to back grew and got more and more attention and more and more out here and there was a little bit of a heavy handed over response by authorities that involved using force part of the reason it's a problem is because what it tends to do is bring out more protesters and raise public sympathy for the protesters the ham handed and overly marshall response to protest has actually helped to build the occupy wall street movement. england had a scorching august but it was nothing to do with the summer sun a wave of riots and looting seemingly sprang from nowhere gripping london for days

and spreading to other cities nationwide with buildings torch and streets trashed police struggled to contain the worst violence in decades laura smith who watched events said the unrest was unprecedented. blew up seemingly out of a very small vigil for a young black man who was allegedly shot by police in north london they grew from that vigil and it turned into a nationwide rising essentially out of control and that the violence was particularly in those first couple of days with an escalating all the time eventually it grew from london and in suburban the manchester all the cities but only in england interesting a note in scotland all into wales the police response was i think very slow certainly in the first couple of days the police literally didn't know what to do they turned up at a scene where people had set fire to cause all to shops along the street they would

charge it involves numbers and then not knowing what to do when they got there they would retreat as far to the government so much of the government was on holiday of course because they go on holiday noga say prime minister david cameron eventually came back from his holiday as did the him secretary and the mare of london boris johnson and essentially told people what naughty children they were being and how they had to go back to school and steal something the media blamed it on a sort of something for nothing mentality but eventually it's come out really the other people's stories is a symptom of deeper ills in society the fact that you services have been caught and that the relationship between young people young black people particularly and the police is very bad and i was talking to some people on the street has a nice actually he was saying that they didn't feel that anything had been done to address these problems a lot of rhetoric but not any actual action parties or smith in their force in london now investigative journalist a tony gosling says injustice in the u.k. has sparked the unrest. there was all sorts of problems at the time with the police

and of course it was the shooting of mark duggan that sparked it but the london school of economics and also the guardian have done a very comprehensive report actually interviewing lots of the rioters some of whom were convicted some of whom were convicted but it's absolutely clear one hundred percent that the reason behind this really was a treat for the police in this country which is goes right across many of the sink estates in the country they see i think most people see the police many of the rights to see the police as in forcing a kind of unjust system and a lack of justice there's a whole bunch of people in society who are disenfranchised right now including many of the middle classes but i think particularly young people feel utterly betrayed by our political hierarchy by our leadership here in britain particular these youngsters are not stupid they can see when you've got a crooked corrupt and rotten political class. and that's the way the news looks at

this hour for all of us here in two thousand and twelve to all of you in two thousand and eleven the future looks bright happy new year our moscow our show is right ahead for you but first i'll be back with headlines in just a. among

the least explored areas. pure and untouched by man. surrounded by steep long. cave paintings on display for thousands of years. eastern science and beyond the tiger. come on see. the close up gene has been to die you stuff birthplace to the most ambitious football club in the world. now

margy goes to the far east where the timber industry affects the legendary siberian tigers where the ancient native community loses its. in the modern world look and where the country's mineral wealth starts its way across the ocean. well come to the bar screecher russia close up. wealthy british style sun it's time to let go.

the market. has come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report. and we are four hours and thirty minutes into it two thousand and twelve here in moscow and for those of you who are still stuck in the past don't worry you'll catch up with gladness when you get here you are watching t.v. you can still hear the fireworks exploding and champagne glasses clinking here in moscow as the russian capital marks the arrival of two thousand and twelve russia the world's biggest country celebrates a new year nine times thanks to its nine time zones with the country's far east being the first with a champagne toast.