i. look back at the past seven days and the latest developments this is the weekly on . fresh clashes have broken out across syria with at least eleven government troops and civilians reported killed the violence rages on at the time when the arab league has decided to continue its observer mission in the country critics say the league's failing to oversee a peace plan under which the syrian regime agreed to end its crackdown on protesters hundreds of civilians have reportedly been killed by government troops since the first observers arrived last month on friday dozens died in a suicide bombing in the capital damascus which the regime is blaming on turns political analysts. told me earlier that she thinks the arab league is poised to make sense of the crisis but needs more time. the violence is two sided that there

are attacks against government troops these realities on the ground need to be reflected by the observers the arab league observers and unless they have time to really see both sides of the story we're not going to know how best to solve this conflict we're not going to know how best dialogue will happen and who to trust and who involved in this process syria also has to be careful to have reliable people come in and not those with political agenda seeking to destabilize or undermine the syrian regime of course there is also violence continuing in this must stop so the arab league needs to find a just way to end this crisis and not listen to the western pressure that's coming from europe and from america to intervene in syria and to get the united nations involved right now let the arab league try to do its job. iran says it is planning new military exercises near the strategic strait of hormuz following its ten day maneuvers in the persian gulf to iran also renewed its threat to close the strait that's one of the world's most important oil routes in response to u.s.

and european sanctions well last week new washington sanctions began targeting iran's financial and oil sectors to hamper its nuclear program france is calling for even tougher measures we want to quote him to write a newspaper iran has begun you rein him in richmond for peaceful purposes at a well protected underground facility near the city of qom the u.s. and its allies continue to accuse iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons a charge to iran to nice get it to the colbert report card affairs website says pressuring iran further would eventually lead to war in the region. i think it's quite remarkable to think that france and the u.s. and other countries would be willing to step up sanctions that have already had such a profound effect on the iranian people on the basis of their hunch that era to run is developing nuclear weapons as as france has basically put it it's quite remarkable because that really does is tantamount to an act of war and and really the i think the only logical outcome for this is another increase the military

tensions between the countries involved in that region that are already on the knife edge of military tension so it is quite an explosive thing to be talking about and i think of the escalation in recent weeks with the recent ten day military drill in in the straits of hormuz has to be weighing heavily on the minds of of the u.s. and others but but i think really the idea that iran would really close off the straits of hormuz or attempt to do so would only be an absolute last measure resort for a country that relies on the importation of refined gasoline and other things through the very straits that they would be sensibly sabotaging and planting mines in so it's it's quite remarkable to think that that iran would do that in any other situation other than they felt that the entire existence of their country was under threat so adding more sanctions to to the mix is is really just a recipe for military disaster i think. well still ahead this hour here on r.t. the fate of a dictator prosecutors in egypt over the death penalty for us did president mubarak

we hear why his execution could result in more violence for the whole region. plus europe is in for a rough ride this year as recession and economic instability creep closer towards that is heavyweights. those stories still to come but first in america the race for the presidency is in full swing with six republican hopefuls competing for the chance to challenge barack obama in november as vote front runner mitt romney's taking flak from his co republican rivals who dismissed him as a mere business manager but romney has a comfortable lead after the iowa caucus this week ahead of the first primary vote in new hampshire in just two days time voting will take place across the u.s. in the coming months before a single presidential candidate is in chosen is chosen at the republican party convention in august seasoned politician and fierce antiwar advocate ron paul is trailing far behind in the poll and for us in. ruben thinks that's because paul's

agenda is appealing but not to the members of his party but really. his foreign policy is very distinct from the other candidates in that he has a more isolationist viewpoint he wants the united states to retreat from international conflicts of international affairs in some areas that can be good he's opposed to military action with the ron who was opposed to the iraq war but the other candidates are all extremely hawkish on foreign policy very neo conservative and ron paul does stand out among them he makes voters want to support him but in this far as leading the party and getting other republicans on board to really change the agenda no he hasn't done that he's someone who says i am a free american and i can make it on my own and that's what ron paul really embodies but republicans also understand that that kind of positioning will not win the general election against president obama. and i see republicans slug it out for

the right to take on a bomb of the president himself is ratcheting up support for his reelection bid but with his approval rating down and the economy still on the ropes some of those who voted for the yes we can then in two thousand and eight say they made a mistake. four years ago one historic campaign turned u.s. politics into a pop culture phenomenon. for the democratic candidate achieved unprecedented support international fame and a record breaking six hundred fifty million dollars in donations. thousands of new yorkers celebrated the victory clutching an enormous american flag hand sewn by obama supporters but the winds have changed and the very same democratic symbol waved in honor of the president elect in no way each straight

from a straight has been donated to the movement that became a phenomenon in two thousand and eleven or thereabouts when people holding out david moved to organize the flag project after being inspired by obama rhetoric a dream shattered by the subsequent years of politics as usual curly what's inspiring as a result of us like that that's the thing that's inspiring you know like that's why i brought the fight so ws and the thing that inspired me about it is the fact that it's a grassroots movement. that had a like a very clear and transparent process artist shepard fairey seems similarly just and chanted releasing an updated version of his iconic hope poster replacing obama with his now clear support for occupy wall street with an economy still in crisis wall street largely unregulated social programs slashed and over forty five million citizens on food stamps it all starts with you making a decision to get involved obama's familiar prose may not be enough to win back his

familiar fan base who didn't produce what people wanted him to produce in two thousand and eight professor and author dr cornel west was one of obama's biggest supporters i think you get the beers you got the nooses. at the freshness taking part in more than one hundred campaign events but last april the prominent intellectual told r.t. that obama has failed he's the friendly face of the american empire abroad he's in the process actually of becoming very sadly a pawn of big finance and a puppet of big business and any politician here knows they're in trouble when the hollywood a listers start turning their backs are you happy with the way that obama has been running the country. you know. and i think i really think he misinterpreted his. his mandate yet the approval ratings

show voters are even more turned off with the alternatives leaving obama seemingly the lesser of two evils america's president clearly enters the twenty twelve race amid a growing band of disillusioned democrats most will still back barack obama over his republican rivals arguably with heavy hearts in two thousand and eight he was the unassailable candidate of choice this time mr obama is likely to stay in by default. artsy new york. well coming up this hour here on r.t. reaching for the sky. and the series meet a texan builder who shares his experience in creating new opportunities for business in modern russia. that start a company but first egyptian prosecutors this week demanded else to president hosni mubarak be hanged for allegedly ordering the killing of protesters during last year's uprising but also seeking the death sentence for the country's former interior minister and six other security chiefs moscow's expressed concern over the

possible death penalty and call for a more humane verdict wasn't eight hundred people died during the violence which forced mubarak out in february last year since his trial began in august the eighty three year old has appeared on a stretcher due to poor health international relations professor mark allman says an execution could bring more violence to the region. if. the. demonstrations. were present in street. one of the. groups to hear. why the rule. with the bar. so. high and straight. were shining.

afghan investigators have accused the u.s. army of abusing detainees at its main prison in the country saying inmates had reported being tortured and held without evidence inmates of the u.s. prison outside base north of kabul complained of freezing cold humiliating strip searches and being deprived of light well let's talk more on this with human she's co-founder of the. code pink joining us live there in washington so this is come as a bit of a surprise doesn't it in fact a big surprise to the americans why has president hamid karzai called for the u.s. to transfer full control over its military presence to local authorities within a month and not in the two years as originally planned and agreed well it looks like your own investigation has come out with allegations of abuse by the americans

who are running that prison now that shouldn't be much of a surprise because this goes all the way back to two thousand and two when the abuses first started coming out in fact there were two yes that includes near that lead to many stories about abuses that we have heard about those kind of stories for the last several years i guess the only thing that is a surprise is that current they are certainly taking it seriously but the u.s. embassy is acknowledging that there is clearly some concern about the way the prisoners are being handled but they say that all allegations of detainees abuse will be investigated interesting enough there's no reported physical evidence on the detainees body so it is perhaps a case of an independent investigation warranted here where both afghanistan and the u.s. are not involved. well i think afghan is going to stand government should be having the final authority about how prisoners are treated in its own country and i think

we should give the benefit of the doubt to afghan investigators and if afghanistan wants to take over the security of a prison that is in its territory it should have the right to do that clearly signs of tension over this but does it tell us about the current relations with the us and the home of karzai at the moment. well there have been terrible relations now for quite a long time and this is just one more in. i think the u.s. should really speed up its transfer of power in all its ramifications to the afghan government the obama administration is now having talks with the taliban the taliban want to set up a headquarters and cutter the obama administration after the troops leaving iraq is now talking much more about the troops leaving afghanistan and this has created more tensions but i think the solution for that is the u.s. to hand over the management of the background prison over to the afghan government

and to start developing to the afghan authorities in general so you're saying also what speed up that proposed troop withdrawal before twenty fourteen if that's the case is the country really ready in terms of security for the u.s. troops to completely withdraw. but what is ready mean i think unfortunately the obama administration is talking about leaving in twenty four entirely due here to find the scenes he's negotiating to have quite a significant number of troops stay beyond that date i don't think the american people want to see that and i think that there should be clear signs that the u.s. . is ready to leave afghanistan and turning over the background prison would be one of those signs and can explain a bit more to us clearly the conditions for that eventual troop withdrawal much of it is depend. on the status of those prisoners in bagram prison i mean just how key is this situation with this prison that. well i don't really know because there's

so much secrecy in terms of who is at the prison and who they were and. past examples of us holding prisoners whether it was that abu ghraib interact or in the case of guantanamo or even if you're in a prison in the united states we see many abuses when the u.s. is control in control of the prison so i don't think this is a made up story i think there probably are quite a lot of abuses going on in that background prison and i think that the afghan government has the right to take control now whether it will release people that the u.s. thinks are high level security risk well that that is something that the u.s. government should be talking to the afghan government about and do you really believe that if the prison is handed over to afghan control those inmates will actually be treated better and indeed the cause concern over whether them some of them are being held without

a proper court case without justice do you think that could be looked at and we would actually see releases. well i think it would be good to have international. cable to. the citizens because i don't think it be after so. it's just so international. it's over but there unfortunately we're just luckily we're at the end of this chat with you but we are losing the communication that's very difficult to hear what you have to say just at the end but i hope you can hear me thanking you for your time joining us live in the states but haven't you been there thank you. well let's update you now on some world news and briefly this hour first to nigeria where days of sectarian violence have killed at least forty four the latest attack occurred when the radical muslim sect book iran targeted the church service in the

country's northeast killing at least fifteen the violence comes after the group promised to kill christians living in nigeria's largely muslim north president goodluck jonathan has declared a state of emergency for areas affected saying the unrest is worse than the country's civil war which took place in the one nine hundred sixty s. the. sounds present amar bashir has offered to help disarm former libyan rebel fighters and integrate them into army and police forces in a state visit to tripoli the leader said the overthrow of colonel gadhafi was a gift to sudan the proposal from bashir who is wanted on war crimes charges in the hague sparked outrage from amnesty international libyan authorities have been struggling to disarm rebel groups which were formed to fight gadhafi during the country's. africa's oldest liberation movement celebrated its one hundredth anniversary today tens of thousands of south africans gathered to wave the green and gold colors of the african national congress. a n c is credited for ending white minority rule in the country almost eighteen years ago south africa's first

black president nelson mandela was absent from the celebration due to his frail condition well to russia's republic of chechnya where several security service officers have been wounded two reportedly killed in a shootout with militants reports suggest that two militants also died and artie's medina culture no one has the latest from the caucasus region. lisa conti terror operation is still going on between russian special forces and the terrorists in the south of the republic. when these terrorists were found they refused to surrender they opened fire and the police fired back the main hideout of terrorists was also packed with explosives and weapons according to the latest information there are from five to turn terrorists there are still on the run and at the moment russian special forces are surrounding this area russia's north caucasus still remains quite volatile and basically

a range of the most dangerous place in the country but still change in comparison to other regions that surround this area has seen the number of terror attacks decreased in of the last twelve months so really is this operation that we've been seeing today is such a big is a big thing for the whole republic but in other regions and own the contrary the number off attacks and terror raised increased in the last twelve months and according to russia's in tearing ministry over three hundred militants were killed in an tito race and among them was a chief al qaida operative in the north caucasus basically russian authorities have been repeatedly underlying the connection often militants there present here in the north caucasus with al qaida but despite a number of a successful anti terror raids and dozens of terror attacks that were prevented by

russian special forces still the problem terrorism remains here and search operations continue. it's been a rough start to the year for the eurozone with some of its countries believed to be in or heading into another wave of recession two of europe's in order economies italy and spain a facing a crucial investor confidence test next week as they race to raise public funding italian prime minister mario monti met french president nicolas. cosey in paris on friday to discuss the spiraling debt turmoil which threatens to engulf their economies he called on other member states to show more confidence in the single currency the meeting comes amid fears of the crisis knocking at the door of the heavyweights meanwhile greece has warned of a disorderly default in march if it cannot secure more bailout cash economic analyst overbuilt says that greece is exit from the euro zone is inevitable. the greek economy is going down like a stone. g.d.p. contracted by four percent in two thousand and ten by six percent in two thousand

and eleven and there is probably worse to come in two thousand and twelve and i think we are now at a point where everybody is research realizes that we cannot go on like this and. even an arche in the country is becoming so much of a threat that some drastic things need to be done and my reading of what the greek government is doing is that they are trying to that they are looking for an alibi to offer to their public by which they could say well it's not our fault it's the international community that pushes us towards the exit of the euro zone and i think also here in europe at the brussels that quarters of the european commission people start to realize they really are at the end of the road there is no other option left for them they're in a deadlock they cannot rewind the greek economy and so they are facing in a big black hole. when all throughout the week marty has been introducing foreign entrepreneur came to russia in search of success and found it it's time now for the

latest edition in our pathfinder series. in order to help an enterprise grow you need the right facilities and of course the right man well texan chris van riet thinks it's him he shares his experience of adapting to the russian way of doing business and explains his part in raising a modern moscow skyline. we have a vision which is we want to bring global business to the russian marketplace so we're extremely motivated by this and what that means is you know taking away the grand ideas you know we want to help global business to be more effective in achieving their business objectives in russia and we do that by providing them with financial capital in the form of real estate so we build factories distribution centers and production plants for global businesses who are serving in the russian

marketplace occurred to me that this is a very rich part of the world with stream lee intelligent people and they just get reorganized in this part of that reorganization they're going to be all sorts of opportunities so it was the idea of really observing and participating in as you can as a foreigner to the extent you can as a foreign rather in the rebuilding of the economy that drew me here i remember specifically coming out of sheet metal into i remember driving the city and seeing the ukraine hotel which was you know it's a beautiful building and you know it's that gothic style on a stick type of architecture and it's truly imposing is a beautiful day and i realized that i was in a different part of the world and it was intimidating and quite stimulating took me about a year to kind of come to grips with the differences and finally i summarise it for myself as following in the united states when i when i worked on wall street for anything we're working on there is basically a process you went through and that process was twenty six steps and you go a b. c. d. and you're just overcome every step of the process and you achieve the result you're

looking for what i realized in russia is that that approach didn't work and it would confuse the heck out of me because i said well wait a second we've got to get organized we all have the same goal how do we achieve that goal and what i realize that actually if you took a american approach to doing business in russia you could not be successful because the rules of the game were information certainly in the ninety's and so there was no be there was an a and there the end result and to get the result you had to kind of sort of moving to a straight line you had to sort of. an enormous amount of energy just to keep people on a common track towards the ultimate goal and you know sort of managing chaos and pushing it and nudging it to the desired result so once i learn that i realize that in order to be successful here it's stubbornness is extremely important where all the products of our upbringings and i was you know a child in a large family with you know wonderful loving parents and. you know wonderful

loving and energetic brothers one was two years older than me the other was four years older than me and for all of my childhood they were physically stronger than mean you know boys will be boys they will wrestle they will punch they will kick and if you get knocked down stand back up and you know maintain your composure and your integrity and things will work out well success has many fathers failure is an orphan and i feel that you know it's very hard for people. you know in this part of the world to accept failure and our mission is to you know continue to build out our existing projects in the south of moscow which is a globally relevant project in terms of size and then replicate to a smaller extent the same type of concept across the major markets in russia you know currently we have our major customer john deere we designed built inone their major factor in russia republic trucks is also an existing customer of ours we've done work for mcdonald's and we're negotiating relationships partnerships with kind

of the who's who of the fortune five hundred who are active in russia and looking to get more active so that's really our ambition is how do we help these you know great businesses to tap into the potential the russian marketplace and how do we save them from experiencing many of the frustrations that i experienced you know as an entrepreneur so our job is to help them see that it's a process to doing business in russia and it's not an unknown you know at the end of the day i do what i do because i enjoy knowing that i'm influencing things for the positive so when i go look at. our project and i look at the customers research and i talk to our customers and i see that they are quite happy with the results we've achieved for me that gives me enormous pleasure and that really is what drives me it's the ability to influence things it's not making money or you know being the boss or things like that it's now doing being successful by doing good and making money we want to be profitable but we want to really be doing something

that develops this country in a positive way. twenty eight minutes exactly past the hour here in the russian capital in a few moments we have a special report on the lethal force of avalanches and those who face them before that i'll be back with a summary of on the new story stay with us life here in moscow.

with snoop about spilling blood. just the war of barricades from one side and fears blockade from the other. in. visible border has cut people from the land for twelve years. the conflict that divided serbia into two hostile parts is still not over. wealthy british style it's not on the front of. the. markets find

scandal find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to name two crimes a report on our. thanks as news in the week's top stories this is the week here in our team there is no stop to the killings in syria as the arab league decided to continue its observer mission aimed at overseeing the implementation of a peace plan. iran promises to hold more navy drills in the persian gulf and threatens to block a key oil routes in the region as the west tighten sanctions targeting oil and financial sexes. plus six republican candidates race for the right to take on the president in november's election with the current administration's support waning across the u.s. .