around the clock around the world this is our life in moscow the u.n. says that four hundred people have been killed in syria since arab league observers arrived to assess the implementation of a peace plan late last month the news comes after the president delivered his first public address since june claiming he still has the people support bashar assad said the fight is against foreign funded terrorism he promised to crush mercenaries and saboteurs saying they do not represent the syrian people repeated his claim no orders were ever given to far on the peaceful protesters rating his commitment to democratic reform he said a referendum on a new constitution will take place by march the arab league was also criticized by sat for being biased russian foreign minister confirmed moscow support for the arab league monitors but said they must observe all sides in the conflict international consultant low values thinks there is an element of selfish foreign involvement in

syria. now assad is clearly not what you would call a democratic leader but within the context he is certainly not the worst one on the country now i'm a dad i believe he's doing i mean who does the arab league represent bahrain the united arab emirates saudi arabia you. do a deal few do none of peace so he is writing c nedney are not the ones that should point a finger and whether there is an international conspiracy where there are elements that point out to me did if there is a part of it i think it's it's more complex than just that there is also genuine popular belief all but it is absolutely sure that there are elements from outside who are taking abusing whatever there is living among the syrian people for their own purposes that is absolutely. one of the main questions on people's minds right now is how much longer. will president assad's regime hold if you've an opinion

voice don't hold it in just head to our website take part in our ongoing live poll that's a look at the results so far and scream right now we're asking has assad done enough to hold on to power around half of all voters think it really doesn't even matter what he says because the west will intervene in syria soon less than a quarter reckon the president only delayed the inevitable and his time is running out about the same number of voters think assad's doing his job world by spreading out how reforms will proceed and we can see there at the moment barely any agree that he's bought himself more time for negotiations while that poll is just a few clicks away head to r.t. dot com have your vote if you haven't done so already. coming up in the program using your cash to provide for their own comfort. with your money and as my mother you know we're much more careful with the second than with the first the trouble is that here in brussels it's all somebody else's money and now technocrats in

brussels want more of it as we report despite the whole of europe struggling the e.u. is budget is only growing. also the unclear future libya raises fears over the fate of colonel gadhafi is jailed son failing to provide the hague with information regarding his status. all that still to come for you here in r.t. this in the meantime the u.s. has called iran's enrichment of uranium at an underground site a violation of u.n. resolutions however tehran insists its for peaceful purposes russia has expressed concern about the launch of the enrichment facility and all parties to avoid any hasty moves present mahmoud ahmadinejad currently on a tour of south america said it was a joke to believe iran was making bombs and windage out had received strong backing from the venezuelan leader who defended iran's nuclear program he said there was no sound proof that duran was developing atomic weapons and i didn't but also visit make a regular cuba and ecuador. this plan tool comes off to washington applied tough

sanctions targeting iran the central bank and its finance industry with the e.u. expected to follow suit. weapons company joel rubin says iran is trying to gain more support to prevent the penalties. it is looking for friends wherever he can find them he needs votes he needs the united nations to block future sanctions he also sees potential markets for commerce when the rest of the world looks to be moving towards a more sanctions oriented position towards iran so if he can get votes and if you can get commerce in this trip to latin america which is a key one for him and for the united states since it's in our backyard that would be a success for him and he needs to break out of the isolation that the rest of the world is trying to put him and iran into the most analysts do not believe that iran is capable of maintaining a blockade of the straits of hormuz for any significant period of time if they were to do this it could also be counterproductive blocking all oil coming out of their

own country or going back and forth would both hurt their own revenue source and also harm their allies in china and other countries around the world. one is when you're alone with a role in is known being an avid mt washington critic but despite being put trade as an enemy in the u.s. but where does president hugo chavez has found a way to warm the hearts of america's poorest people are an appointment with this winter morning in the south bronx new york city outdoors the temperature is near freezing indoors. seventy seven year old alice many otis is bundled up brewing a 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 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 the. right there about 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 poor americans living in low income neighborhoods and shelters throughout the country president overall chavez often demonized by washington helped launch 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 differently and the whole 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 restricting human rights and taking right now a stab. at the product value so the venezuelan leader didn't mince words while perspire ending directly to his u.s. counterpart you know what obama i feel sorry for you you just asked the black communities in your country what you mean to them you are the greatest disappointment of recent years go ask 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 here we have children that are graduating from

college with eighty ninety one hundred thousand dollars that they have to pay back its to p. it's looming now just sit and they can't get a job a struggle getting that much harder in the land of opportunity arena porton i am r.t. new york. live here in moscow this is all a t.v. set i have for you this hour searching for a scent wire busy moscow with relying on a new breed of four legged friends to sniff out explosives and fight crime. but first a race against the clock is well and truly underway in europe the leaders of the single currencies two most powerful countries are doing everything in their power to try and prevent a meltdown and the collapse of all they've worked for the german chancellor is today meeting the french head of the i.m.f. in berlin hoping to find a way forward despite a growing call for more action and less words among the angle of merkel and nicolas sarkozy also called on greece to move forward with promised structural changes or

risk losing the next installment of badly needed bailout money athens wore last week that default was a possibility which could result in it leaving the euro europe is now working to hammer out a new treaty agreed at a summit in december they need to toughen. fiscal control and making budget rule breakers directly to the e.u. but many years skeptics say putting more trust in brussels will be an era of. reports. when times are this hard every cent counts for the seventieth year in a row the european court of auditors refused to give the e.u. accounting books a queen 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 we need to be fair

brussels gets criticized because persons you criticize. that said though it should forgive them for having that error rate there is a feeling that it's not unjustified that in europe. brussels the commission these situations have not taken the really hard look at their budgets and done the hard cutting batt a lot of 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 slightly smaller 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 we're much more careful with the second than with the first the 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 piece and 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 and the creation of a new one the total cost one hundred twenty five million euros fifteen million of which will come up from the budget. critics cried foul but 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 show's needs while working or we have this responsibility to do legislation for five hundred million people in a proper way again there is an argument for this the institutions 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 it with receives when they have one when they have spent my experience base for this of course it hurts them in fact some say the allure of being a euro crowd to me also be hurting poor member states losing their best and brightest to brussels i just people in those countries the entrepreneurs the people who could have done so much making things inventing things selling things creating businesses in their home states because nothing can compete with the advantages of being on the e.u. payroll they all start gravitating towards by the directly the 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 just our silly r r t brussels. libya

has been given an extension by the international criminal court to a general the tenth deadline to provide information about safe the most prominent son of the country's late leader colonel gaddafi is being held in the western town is in town and is charged by the hague with crimes against humanity the president of the lawyers association told me earlier that he thinks it's important for libyans not to surrender gadhafi son. the government does not have control of their safe feet he's in the hands of the. ins and i think the libyans are not really interested in handing him over to the international court i think because as far as that concerned they think that they can trust they can sets five year requirement of their people to try him one on the basis that they are getting the people are getting their own rights from him rather than the foreigners and secondly the government would want to show its people that essentially independent of the

western powers and countries that they have taken action against libya don't forget it's the western powers that destroyed libya it's the western powers and nato that was actually punting that man from the air they were going to kill him so suddenly they become all that concerned about his human rights is a little bit of tongue in cheek talk i don't think it is serious but i don't think the courts in libya will be able to deliver justice to him. time now to update you with some news from around the world in our world update in first to north western pakistan's khyber region of bomb blast targeting taliban militia the local market has left at least thirty five dead and dozens injured it's the deadliest attack in the country in recent months and local is the most insurgents have been blamed militants with links to al qaeda have carried out hundreds of bombings in pakistan over the past few years in the meantime in neighboring afghanistan ten were killed in a taliban attack on a government building. to nigeria now where roadblocks have been set alight during

the country's second day of strikes against soaring fuel costs police are using tear gas and firing into the air to disperse demonstrators unions in the city of qana of council protests after five people were killed the nationwide strike began after the government ended the popular fuel subsidy leading to a rising gas and transportation costs throughout the country. north korea is announce it will issue special pardons for convicts to mark the birthdays of to late leaders of state use agency said the amnesty will begin on the first of february in honor of kim jung il who died last month and his father kim il soon it's unknown what kind of crimes will be pardoned or how many inmates will be released u.n. estimates the country holds around two hundred thousand people in political prisoner camps. this just in a tsunami warning has been issued after a strong earthquake hit waters off western indonesia the u.s.

geological survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of seven point three percent to thirty kilometers beneath the ocean floor more on that as soon as we get it here on r.t. . voting in the key primary the u.s. election season has begun a new hampshire where candidates for the republican presidential nomination a vying for victory hoping to take on barack obama in november as race for the white house former massachusetts governor mitt romney has been well ahead in the opinion polls with congressman ron paul and former senator rick santorum in some way behind the head of the vote candidates continued the political point scoring and nothing was off limits romney was mocked by rivals during a debate after saying he enjoyed firing people here political comedian dean obeidallah told r.t. that by addressing issues like guns gays and abortion republicans are just fighting for ratings. they're trying to find something that sensational that's what the 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 it's not an easy thing to have an answer they don't have an answer unemployment's gone down and picked october two thousand and nine a 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 talk about the social issues the heart issues the ones that make you go out and vote make you make phone calls get people to come out to the polls they scare you worked many times of for they're just trying 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 what is president obama versus mitt romney and that the 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 to the big battle the super bowl if you will that's we're going to hear the real issues we want to hear about. america's in the middle of deciding its future both on its own so on and abroad as we report online on our website president obama's plan to cut back on troops in asia but increase a number of bases provokes the wrath of china all about that online also on the web site of the moment. possible reasons behind the failure of russia's first interplanetary mission in the years are revealed find out why. a special breed of canine is helping one of moscow's busiest airports tackle tara one of the best snouts in the dog world these four legged friends plan their days

sniffing out explosives. paid the ferry crime fighters a visit and put their noses to the test. legged friends on the front line in the fight against terror these dogs are a special breed part ascii part jackal and it's their sense of smell which makes them perfect for sniffing out explosives in airports or when it turns out that of all the canines it's the jackal that has the best sense of smell to call to use that to improve the sense of smell in dogs basically are grafted or won't be sense of smell on to a domesticated animal of what they husky her 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 both of their. 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. that you get a buddhist sort of. this early 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 the best way and that ever working with these dogs among passengers makes people feel more secure in the airports this way passengers see if it's aeroflot to give special attention to security as for accuracy of even detected gunpowder residue on the clothes of hunter was 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 be there has to be trust between

the two of them the dog should feel absolutely free and shouldn't be pressured by excessive discipline the handlers have to be extremely attentive and they should notice and immediately respond to the dogs every motion and reaction you know this is the protection you might share. a false alarm is detected unless the north point five percent of searches making the dogs far more reliable than the best man made the texan 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. well 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 but 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 chair near to the 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 florida tries to track me down. for i guess it's 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 and sure enough she finds me trying to check in for a flight. well it's all good but no matter how hard you try to hide if you have explosives these amazing animals will find you. r.t. moscow. that brings up to the moment daniel's next for the latest news from the world of finance.

walking to business traders are closely monitoring the escalating tensions between iran and the west if the worst case scenario comes to pass some analysts say oil could jump to two hundred dollars a barrel but nick parsons from national australia bank explains why that's on likely. i think the 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 find 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 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 if it were based purely on that then we'd be looking today at 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 of the russia story edged into the red in the last hour of trade as investors custom healthy gains for the day. just all negative ground but now the biggest movers on the more six oil majors were on the rois as expected supported by that strong crude price luko was up over one of the percent truck make it come as was also gave the reported two percent increase in sales for twenty livered retailers several continents little most of the team has said reports its parent company will avoid back its shares at a record low price. today even despite recent put it in the past couple of trading days to do some market going higher and most chips went up by one point five to five per cent actually so since burbank and pretty big driving the market by almost

three point four percent higher a single asked from being as high as one point five percent of black process in the . five percent search of the market is is on the positive right now. everyone is really inspired by a positive mark created from the united states and people expect that probably this new year rather which we didn't observe in the in the last trading weeks of the last year will continue right now. but to other news british luxury car maker rolls royce has reported record sales for last year the company sold more the for the whole thousand calls the highest in its hundred seven year history group particularly first in germany and russia where they more than double . that's all the business news to stay with for the headlines.

wealthy british style. that's not on the title of. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for

a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report. now it's not about spilling blood. it's the war of the barricades from one side and fears blockade from the other. invisible border it has cut people from the land for twelve years. the conflict that divided serbia into two hostile parts is still not over.

the earth of the. news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images cold world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operation to rule the day.

life there most of this is that you and i may new stories at huff post the hour in the russian capital syria's president says he still has the people support and blames the unrest on foreign forces promising to root out so-called terrorists were shot assad also criticised the arab league for being biased moscow says the league's observers in syria should monitor all sides of the conflict. iran dismisses washington's criticism about its nuclear program as ludicrous to the u.s. imposes tough economic sanctions meanwhile president ahmadinejad's received strong backing from the venezuelan leader hugo.