and in the business ball russia's first official work day twenty twelve brings plenty of optimism to the local equity markets the details in twenty minutes. eleven am and the russian capital you're watching r.t.i. marina joshing europe's top power couple have called on the euro zone to boost growth to stop the debt crisis from spreading and ensure the very survival of the region's single currency at a meeting in berlin angle of merkel and nicolas sarkozy said it was just as urgent to reach a fast agreement with greece's private creditors before more bailout money can be handed over athens has insisted it faces the fault and could have to abandon the euro if it doesn't get more cash by spring the e.u. now needs to iron out

a treaty agreed upon last month which includes the threat of sanctions tougher surveillance and makes budget rule breakers answerable directly to brussels but many euro skeptics say putting more trust in brussels would be an error as r.t.s. tests are so you now report. when times are this hard every cent counts for the seventeenth year in a row the european court of auditors refused to give the e.u. accounting books a clean a bill of health the court found that in two thousand and ten three point seven percent of the e.u.'s budget was spent in error that's four point five billion euros essentially wasted juta mistakes like ineligible or incorrect calculation of costs claim to e.u. co finance projects or breaches of public procurement rules to be fair brussels gets criticized because you criticize. that said though it should forgive them for having that air raid there is a feeling that it's not unjustified that in europe. brussels the commission

institutions have not taken the really hard look at their budgets and done the hard cutting that eleven member states have in fact the e.u. commission and parliament wanted to have some one hundred thirty three billion euros to spend next year but settled on one hundred twenty nine after tough negotiations with member states well that's still an increase of two percent because the e.u. budget uniquely continues to grow it only ever goes in one direction what they call a cut him means a slight you small increase and they would have wanted in an ideal world there are two kinds of money in the world there's your money and there's my money you know what we're much more careful with the second than with the first trouble is that here in brussels it's all somebody else's money mostly their money. which is why criticism rose with the budgets committee approved thirty eight million euros for the purchase of three buildings to increase office space for any of their staff and the area behind me is

a property that will be acquired by the european parliament the project for seize the demolition of an existing building a big ration i would know what the total cost one hundred twenty five million euros fifteen million of which will come up from the budget. critics cry foul of the project supporters stand their ground when there is a new member states you need new space it is ridiculous to say that we don't need more space when we have more stuff but if you say that you mean to say that stuff is sitting on the shows needs while working and where we have this responsibility to do legislation for five hundred million people in a proper way again there is an argument for this institution do need facilities the timing is just horrible and because the austerity measures impose a lot of member states the fact that brussels is ploughing on with grand plans for you know these beautiful new buildings just smells bad yet it's not just about new

buildings for your kratz that raises eyebrows. how hard is it to just come up with with receipts when they have one and they have experience base for this sort of course of hers in fact some say the allure of being a euro kratom also be hurting poor member states losing their best and brightest to brussels or just people in those countries the entrepreneurs the people who could have done so much making things inventing things selling things creating businesses in the states because nothing can compete with the advantages of being on the e.u. payroll they all start gravitating towards by that directly to brussels bureaucracy or in direct as the saying goes if you can't beat them join them. but that's clearly not a win win solution for everyone. to serve our team brussels. merkel and sarkozy have locked horns over a tax on transactions made by financial institutions france wants it in place as

early as possible but germany says the charge should only come into force one all states agreed to it leaders are now working to eliminate the most divisive issues before the next summit at the end of the month but financial advisor patrick young says the meetings are basically a waste of time. the only thing that's growing at the moment i suspect is going to be the waistlines of all the civil servants and ministers who are so meting all over the place and eating endless numbers of creme bones and delicacies in each of the different locales they visit the truth is that absolutely nothing has been done in order to try and actually fundamentally of the problem and again what we've seen is a sticking plaster of clyde to all of the different problems that are going on mrs merkel saying but we'd like to keep everybody in the euro and we hope to keep everything together and we'll work very hard to do that but you know what the problem is it doesn't matter how much you talk about something it's actions that are coming to the moment all we have is words of the euro actually breaks up which

is unfortunately quite possible at the moment i'm not saying it's probable and i'm not saying it's definite but it's possible if the eurozone breaks up that's going to give on certainty uncertainty means people don't know whether to order things for their company it also means that individuals don't know whether to spend money at the shops it means ultimately that all of that little grease the oils the wheels of commerce critics start and that's the real problem here what may happen is alternately we may see the i.m.f. the international monetary fund ultimately trying to come in and stipple together some sort of a solution whatever happens there's a lot of uncertainty ahead and that's got to be worrying because uncertainty spelled recession and recession is not going to be good for anybody in the world who needs to work for a living. well so have three of us now here on r t political wrestling it's a fight for voters and ratings for the republican candidates in new hampshire as the parade each other is policies and top gays and danza had of a key primary. and front line and the war against terror we'll look at the

new species of terrifying dogs bred specifically to sniff out explosives in the most extreme conditions the details are just ahead. and meantime the u.s. has slammed they're wrong for beginning to enrich uranium at a new on the ground facility southwest of the capital tehran the state department called it a further escalation and iran's violation of un resolutions the u.s. and its allies believe iran is building nuclear weapons something to iran denies america's ally france has warned of a response more intense and severe than anything previously a u.s. general also said washington would be prepared to wipe out iran's nuclear facilities and other battlefront between the two is the strait of hormuz and the persian gulf to iran's threaten to close it if the west blocks runs well exports as laid out in recent sanctions the pentagon says it could use force to reopen it iran plans to hold

a fresh round of naval drills in the area but some experts say iran isn't to blame for the escalation. iran hasn't attacked any other nation for hundreds of years the united states has for one attacking another nation every couple of years. i think we know who's provoking this latest the united states and exporter of oil apparently for sixty years so presumably they're enjoying the oil prices spike with every new threat for united states makes against the masses of ordinary men women and children in other countries as to what it thinks about its service men and women who. care about them one must remember the. the former head of the cia and secretary of defense is a lawyer for you as a green avengers and i'm not saying that i'm really repeating the former house speaker nancy pelosi we know that. is involvement in torture of the

democratic colleagues in congress also called him a liar and so. on this the united states seemingly just wondering are all prices well the same time. people. are developing world the rest of the world the major super bowl. in the world the united states is saying that's over the united nations. says something to really open it around us foreign policies and whether the united states really can go on to play the war with iran. i really don't think so at the moment i mean threats from the us iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad has turned to south america and made venezuela the first stop of the story of the continent an ardent critic of washington as well and leader which august defended ahmadinejad he said there was no proof that iran is trying to develop atomic weapons and that it's the u.s. that proposes a global poses rather

a global threat and the iranian president said to iran and caracas should resist that mean and arrogant united states both leaders also joke that their relationship shouldn't cause any concern ronald venezuela are a long time trading partners but in the job will also visit nicaragua cuba and ecuador. along with my would have been a jogger chavis is a leader washington likes to paint as an anime of america but there are thousands in the us who have a lot of warm feelings for the flamboyant as well and leader explains. winter morning in the south bronx in new york city outdoors the temperature is near freezing indoors. seventy seven year old alice many otis is bundled up brewing up pot of coffee and raising the heat just enough good to take the chill out of the air the retired grandmother of seven lives alone on

a fixed income and each winter as federal programs continue to be slashed for the struggle to afford comfort gets harder. and waving i mean all they do was raise raise raise raise and i mean it's the same dollar you get and so how far can you push it one hundred gallons of oil one hundred fifty gallons of oil is about right now about the close to six hundred dollars however venezuela has been stepping in to make alice's life a bit easier by delivering one hundred gallons of free heating oil each winter she is a four year beneficiary of the citgo venezuela heating oil program which provides free heating oil to five hundred thousand more americans living in low income neighborhoods and shelters throughout the country president chavez often demonized by washington about helping march the program in two thousand and five following hurricanes katrina and rita all i know is that he was caught and he was crying to

the people of the united states and i'm sure he he he ruled differently like obama wrong does differently and who were we to tell these people how they should live or how i mean are they good invading our country with their not being generous to give us what comes out of their earth at no charge so could you really have ill feelings against them. i'm thankful for it. i really am in an interview with the venezuelan newspaper el universal america's leader well sort of expressing similar sentiments of gratitude president obama recently accused the chavez government were strict thing human rights and taking frightening steps. democratic values so the venezuelan leader didn't mince words walter spondon directly to his u.s. counterpart you know was a boma i feel sorry for you you just toss the black communities in your country

what you mean to them you are the greatest disappointment of recent years the poor people of your country you're a great disappointment to them it's time that we stopped minding everybody else's business and took care of business we have children that are graduating from college with eighty ninety one hundred thousand dollars that they have to pay back its to p.t. it's looming them just and they can't get a job a struggle getting that much harder in the land of opportunity. r.t. new york. syria's president bashar al assad is expected to make a speech about the crisis and golfing the nation on tuesday even as activists claim government forces are continuing a brutal crackdown on protesters the country's opposition denounced the arab league observer mission currently in syria saying monitors are doing little to resolve the conflict with hundreds of border killed since they arrived in late december the government's opponents called on the un to help and the ten months of violence

president bashar asad is also coming under increasing pressure from neighboring states turkey says it feels threatened by the conflict and could take a leading role in dealing with it azerbaijan sharp says the syrian opposition should stop calls for outside military ference because it never leads to democracy . i think. you know the area and through the engine is a very dangerous. it is the be and some syrians have been doing that that's very unfortunate because that will not help that we're not being a democracy that will be a victory by the outside ok for. assuming you get rid of the old regime then the new regime will be heavily influenced by the powers that intervene the u.s. threats or who have areas that they will have a major say or have a government happened in this part of the syrian people and what you think should

be the u.s. government should not be intervening military in the name of it so i was going to barghouti because if it doesn't work and they can serve their objective. i can see the full interview with author next hour here on r.t. . the republican presidential candidates in the u.s. haven't been tearing political chunks off each other had out of a key primary in new hampshire on tuesday front runner mitt romney has been mocked by his fellow republicans after he said he enjoyed firing people but the former massachusetts governor is still well i had an opinion polls with congressman ron paul and social conservative rick santorum some way behind in two t.v. debates ahead of the voting candidates kept away from the economy or on a beach boy midway's political comedian dean told our to do that by addressing issues like guns gays and abortion republicans are just fighting for ratings so

it's good they're trying to find something that sensational that's what media does that's their job if it was a boring debate about economics how many people are going to watch it let's be honest it becomes bland and boring it's a lot of numbers most people including myself would struggle to understand what is going on but everyone understands abortion and gay marriage and contraception so those are the easy issues it makes it easier for us to talk about them let's be honest let's talk about jobs. let's talk about the economy i have to think the reality is that these republican candidates and it's not an easy thing to have an answer they don't have an answer unemployment's gone down and picked up two or two thousand and ten point one percent it's down now in december to eight point five percent maybe obama's policies contribute maybe they don't maybe it's cyclical in any event the economy is improving and these republicans don't have answers so they want to tell what the social issues the heart issues and ones that make you go out and vote because you make them make phone calls and get people to come out to the polls they scare you it works before it works many times of four they just try to

use the same play from the old republican playbook but i think we're going to get back to the economy that's what americans want to hear when is president obama versus mitt romney and the beat that will be the issue it has to be that's the one we all want to hear about so i think for now this is a game they're running for republican nomination until the republican issues then we get the big battle the super bowl if you will that's we're going to hear the real issues we want to hear about. at ardsley dot com our web site there's more news and analysis on the u.s. election so here's what you can find there at the moment. texas congressman anti-war advocate ron paul turns up the heat in new hampshire and pulls away from his rivals to become the only alternative to republican favorite mitt romney also online. and see this public prosecutor holding a news briefing with journalists he's an interrupted and asks everyone to leave the room and this is what they saw when they came back to find out why shot himself at r t v dot com. i'll take

a look at some of the stories from around the world at least twenty people are believed to have been killed and dozens injured by a bomb blast at a market in northwestern pakistan most of those who died were passengers on a nearby boss the explosion was in the region close to afghanistan which is dominated by tribes and has a strong militant presence the motive behind this attack is unclear. north korea has announced a prisoner amnesty to celebrate the birthdays of late leader kim yon and his father will come into effect on the first of february but it's not known how many prisoners will be released died on december the seventeenth leaving the nation under control of his youngest son kim yon own. the international criminal court is still waiting for information from levy on the status of colonel gadhafi son saif islam despite a deadline being set for tuesday the most prominent son of the late leader was

captured in the vampyr while trying to flee libya site has been charged by the hague with crimes against humanity and is waiting to find out whether he will be handed over. the stern of a stricken cargo ship off the coast of new zealand has sunk after being broken apart by a storm over the weekend the main section of the vessel still remains wedged on a reef the greek own vessel ran aground in october and has since leaked tons of oil killing hundreds of sea birds in what has become the country's worst maritime disaster. i want of moscow's busiest airports there is a new breed of crime fighter on duty they're able to work in extreme hot or freezing cold to sniff out explosives wherever they are are displayed all over want to see what they can do. among those four legged friends on the front line in the fight against terror these dogs are special breed part husky part jackal and it's

their cute sense of smell which makes them perfect for sniffing out explosives in an airport or when it turns out that of all the canines it's the jackal that has the best sense of smell so it was logical to use that to improve the sense of smell and dogs basically i grafted a wild beast sense of smell into a domesticated animal of what their husky heritage means that they can handle temperatures as low as minus seventy degrees centigrade while the jackal side of the family provides them with equally impressive abilities in the heat they're. jackals or some tropical animal that's used to high temperatures as an experiment we took these hybrids to the united arab emirates where they were able to work equal to two degrees centigrade they could walk on sand which was heated by the sun to sixty degrees ordinary dogs wouldn't be able to handle that to get a buddhist sort of. the silly most dogs have two hundred and twenty million smell

receptors forty four times more than a human this allows them to detect even trace amounts of explosive material making them invaluable for airports looking to put passengers at their ease but they are not ever working with these dogs among passengers makes people feel more secure in their poor it's this way passengers see that aeroflot give special attention to security as for accuracy they've even detected gun powder residue on the clothes of hunters returning home. with the animals having to work in an environment filled with distracting sights sounds and smells it's important that the dogs and their handlers have a close relationship police gave they needed to there has to be trust between the two the dog should feel absolutely free and shouldn't be pressured by excessive discipline the handlers. have to be extremely attentive they should notice and immediately respond to the dogs every motion and reaction you know this is the british and you might wish. the false alarm is detected in less than north point

five percent of searches making the dogs far more reliable than the best manmade detection device much of that is down to the breeding but a lot of training is required before they are ready to work amongst the public so while it doesn't take the dog long to find what was hidden underneath my seat but it's all well and good doing it here on the training ground how will they fare in the busy atmosphere of an international airport on an average day over one hundred thousand people pass through this terminal a cherry mitzvah airport plenty of distractions making it the perfect place to conduct a test this bike here contains around three grams of plastic explosive i'm going to go and hide somewhere here in the terminal while fratta tries to track me down. for august sets about sniffing me out finally to know searching every nook and

cranny in which a potentially dangerous package could be hidden when you see these hybrid dogs in action it's clear why they're so well suited to working in the airport some passengers don't even notice that they're part of their investigation. sure enough she finds me trying to check in for a flight but. well it's all good. no matter how hard you try to hide if you have explosives these amazing animals will find you peter all over r.t. moscow. well i bring this up today here on r.t. at it's time to see what's happening in business that is here with us. it's twenty four minutes past the hour you're watching business on r.t.e. escalating tensions between iran and the west remain firmly in the sights of investors some analysts speculate oil could jump to two hundred dollars a barrel if the war scenario takes place but nick parsons from national australia

bank says a price spike is unlikely. i think though very very close relationship between the external value of the u.s. dollar and oil has begun to slip over the course of the last few months if we remind ourselves of where we were three summers ago the oil price eight hundred forty seven dollars per barrel exactly on the day when the euro dollar exchange rate one sixty so we had a very weak u.s. dollar we had a very high oil price that relationship has held good over a long period of time now if it were based purely on that then we'd be looking today it's an oil price or around seventy or seventy five dollars so that suggests to me that a lot of the potential disruption that we hear talked about is already in the price and i doubt very much that we're going to see the sort of spike that some of the wilder analysts are talking about i think a lot of it is already in the price. now see how well is performing at the moment

it's gaining value on tuesday due to not only tensions with iran but also upbeat consumer credit data from the united states light sweet as that more than one hundred two dollars a barrel brant is topping one hundred thirteen dollars and now on to equities in asia they're in positive territory in tokyo the nikkei is up a third of a percent and hong kong the hang seng has been gaining momentum it's up more than three quarters of a percent the sour monday's meeting between german chancellor angela merkel and french president nicolas sarkozy want as most investors expected which is in itself good news. and the markets here in moscow are quite upbeat in the second hour of trading both the r.t.s. and m i six are putting on almost one percent this hour. and did the biggest movers on the why is sex while majors are on the rise by strong crude oil is up around

point eight percent financials are also gaining with us. those biggest blunders barabanki more than one percent of them won and the retailer seven continent is among the main serves following reports that its parent company plans to buy back twenty five percent of its shares at a record low price. last year was turbulent for the russian stock markets they lost around twenty percent of their value some experts fear this year could be just as bad or even worse i look up the costs of from b. to b. capital describe some of the major risk factors for that to happen obviously if your price would have to force significantly and for that to happen obviously things have to go pear shaped in the in europe and the u.s. which actually might happen a lot of analysts are predicting the recession and then in europe and obviously if you do the numbers don't pick up and. maybe a little bit below consensus growth in asia which is which it has been the last one

in them two thousand i was obviously there will be some room for disappointment right now thirty percent of sons are given that the well prices sticking. to the high levels. and in other news british luxury car maker rules royce has reported record sales and twenty eleven the company sold more than three and a half thousand cars the highest in its one hundred seven year history sales group particularly fast in germany and russia where they want them doubled and that's all the latest from the business team i'll be back in about fifteen minutes but you can always find a lot more stories on our site r.t. dot com slash.

welcome back here with our team here is a look at the top stories that you stop to race to ensure your a survival calling for a boost to grose to stop the debt contagion from spreading and what merkel and nicolas sarkozy also want to push states for. under the brussels of bell but critics say it could be leaky with cash flowing to satisfy an elected technocrats. iran begins uranium enrichment at a secure underground facility move the west has as provocative iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and is threatening.