john's so-called support for democracy here in the middle east and washington wants to stop it always the situation as much as possible in order to guarantee its interests they don't care about democracy meanwhile even those on the streets protesting against car share the council's concerns about the engineers motives the usa has had a hand into its policy making for years but the whole n.t. and your campaign has become the first serious disagreement between america and the countries of your storage space cairo wanted to send washington and message that it's no longer the silent dog it was under mubarak but an independent state which will last for the rate of any outside interference some doubts though they really minute the end to military movement growing have a bigger you can see it over there this is in council of the armed forces so scoff now running egypt is in a very vulnerable position and this nationalistic pronouncement may just be a nationalist show put on to calm the people down and to win back

a shred of credibility. here if you know. cairo. remember we always have more stories news and comment on our website r.t. dot com online all the time and there right now for a. tourist anonymous great hacks oakland city officials and publishes their personal data online in retaliation for what it calls the violent crackdown on occupy protests. in the cold snap ukraine enjoys its harshest winter in recent history with over one hundred people dead because of drastically subzero temperatures a correspondence account from freezing give is online for you right now at r.t. dot com. the u.k. government may consider the development of chemical weapons for domestic law

enforcement that's according to the national academy of sciences a group of experts ask you care fischer's to clarify their intentions for these substances the nerve gas is being discussed were banned from military use nearly twenty years ago wolf more on this i'm now joined by mark berg felt he's from the education network in the britain so the chemical agents being discussed are being banned from use in warfare as i just mentioned why would the u.k. government imagine them to be suitable for domestic use. what we have seen over the last one and a half years is mass resistance taking it to the streets with the students' movement at first with the continued strike movement and trade union movement coming to the streets as well as the riots in august and what we have seen is that the police time and time again has lost control of the streets and thus it doesn't come as a surprise in the context of global revolutions and revolt that now the u.k. is trying is starting to use the same measures as countries as mubarak has done in

egypt or even the greek government has done to its very own citizens over the general strike but just how dangerous all these chemicals supposed to be want to think could they have only. income past. nerve gas as it is as it is called has been used against protesters in the june general strike in greece and amnesty international condemned the use of that tear gas in normal language it's called choking gas and has said that the greek government has waged a chemical warfare upon its very own citizens now you can actually die from the from the gas is being used against protesters against larger crowds is there evidence of that people have actually died as a result of that. well in the in the general strike in greece what we have seen is that one of the communist trade unionists who was on the streets for several hours on that day actually had

a long asphyxiation due to the chemicals being used on greek streets and so it wouldn't surprise me if similar cases were if if chemical if these chemicals are being used on british streets that similar experiences would happen how should the police then keep control you said a little earlier that the police have lost control in the past and we're seeing more and more protests and demonstrations isn't some use of some sort of gas saw or a way of stopping protests or. apprehending people justified under those circumstances after all in britain a little earlier last year we saw serious damage a lot of violence and it had to be controlled somehow didn't it. we need to ask ourselves the question of why the police has ultimately lost control of the street the conditions for the mass revolt and for the strike movement as well as students movement orange due to some criminal energies of the of youth but ultimately are the are the product of harsh austerity measures whether it is here in britain

ireland in greece and thus we need to say as citizens that the curtailing of our civil liberties and the curtailing of the right to protest in this country should should be ultimately condemned but we need to say is that the police have overextended the use of force on previous demonstrations so far they have curtailed the right to protest by threatening students to use rubber bullets and water cannons and the latest announcement actually makes very clear the intentions of the police to further curtail our right to protest so i don't believe we need to be talking about the side of protestors but rather of the side of what the police is aiming to do do you think the police really can achieve those intentions human rights groups who are wary of this also there are legal aspects about this is well do you think really that these chemicals will be used legally after all the main news story here is that the government may sanction these nerve agent gases but is it really likely to happen. yeah i have never implied that it is. likely to

happen at this point in time what i'm referring to is the study released yesterday and the article in the independent which clearly states that the military as well is starting to develop those kinds of those kinds of chemicals and we know that these are being used on the greek protesters as well as egyptian protesters as we speak and so what i'm trying to trying to convey is the very fact that we will need to we will need to make sure that the military doesn't use its money and that the british state doesn't use its money on developing further chemical weapons but rather invest into education interested in your point of view thanks very much indeed for sharing your points and your fill there from the u.k. well i'll be back with a recap of our top stories very shortly in the meantime we have the latest business with katie.

thanks phil hello welcome to the business program the south wall to announce scientists futurists have been as are in moscow discussing the russian economy and its prospects of the coming of global financial hub most of them believe russia has the results is to succeed as marina calls her of a report not without reform. the auditorium was jam packed with business owners and experts hungry to get an outside view on russia's investment climate a walk can be done to improve it all the foreign specialists agreed on the one thing and that is that russia has a lot of potential but the problem is how to realize it more investors are online emerging economies like russia right now because they're seen as the best place to support cash given the economic uncertainty in europe and the u.s. at the moment of russia locks the global competitive edge and many of the russian experts here today said that the country has many internal problems which need to

be fixed and some believe the government should join forces with the business elite to make the changes required that believe that it's important to convince local businessmen to invest in russia rather than the broad and keep specialists in the country as well as create an atmosphere where on supreme yours are appreciated another one of the main points they will see in the vacation russian state companies have significantly increased investments in wards that's the foreign specialists here say that russia has all the potential to produce the next generation of entrepreneurs and become the next silicon valley but it needs to act fast and start implements in the changes required now. thank you marina let's have a look at the markets now is change rates for the year is high against both a dollar on the ruble investors all keeping an eye on the great debt talks on the ruble a volatile. seven in five months against the dollar on the back of strong oil prices

. u.s. markets got off in the black but it's been a day of traders those greek negotiations also weighing on investor sentiment across the pond as you can see the dow jones is just a fraction in the red on the nasdaq is a fraction in the back. european markets finished the day's trading down there's been reports that german charles i'm government is getting ready to hold a parliament vote on a bat package for grace as soon as this week while greek political leaders struggle for consensus on terms of the aid as you can see both the thirty and the dax are indeed down. the russian markets closed in all that of territory so it's a different story here moscow the my six finished a third of percent up while the r.t.s. was point six percent up so let's see how the individual who's got on bank managed to gain almost two percent finished higher supported by strong crude

bucking the trend food retailer seven continents the company made an offer to buy back shares at a discount to the market price it corporate higher from troika dialog says investors are on high alert had a release of chinese inflation figures. investors are expecting quite important news from china which will be released this night this is p.p.i. and c.p.i. a number you for we see that inflation is slowing down. that's will create very good sentiment many will be with will be thinking that central bank of china. lending rules and we can see more liquidity from china. and that's all the business of for today the business team will be back tomorrow in the meantime get on the website is r.t. to slash business.

the closer she has been to the hub arabs. were the country's mineral wealth starts its way across the ocean. now archie goes to the area. looking to a different character to represent itself. for local businesses are striving to

build the aviation capital of russia. for the four by fours are made and can be tested to the limit. welcome to the streets of. russia close up on our. flight from moscow this is top stories now to. an end to the bloodshed in syria will only be found if both the government and opposition forces lay down their arms and that's why western and gulf countries keep up regime change rhetoric and recall their ambassadors from damascus. few in the u.k. is on a tourist terror suspect the spiritual leader in europe. and allowed back onto the streets of london. court of human rights block says deportation. for signs of

a rift between the u.s. and post mubarak egypt says washington's threats to halt military aid change its position on the so-called crackdown on western n.g.o.s. be back with more of those stories more news and live analysis concerning the syrian situation in the next hour in the meantime peter lavelle and his guests discuss the internet sensation of the world biggest social networking site facebook and its upcoming stock market flotation crosstalk is next week here on r.t. . well see british scientists. because. markets. can find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to cause a report on r.t.

. and you can see. below in a welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle facebook's initial public offering is being called a very big deal and many hope the i.p.o. will lift the entire tech sector but is the i.p.o. a good one will public ownership of facebook negatively impact the company's success and is it a profitable investment. to. start . to cross-talk facebook's i.p.o. i'm joined by jay ritter in gainesville he's a professor of finance at the university of florida and in toronto we cross to peter leeds he's a financial analyst and publisher of the peter leeds newsletter or

a gentleman cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i really very much encourage it if i could go to peter leeds in toronto on the face of it is this going to be a good party good i.p.o. will be successful and is it a good long term investment. this for me on the show peter i think first the price is going to go up i think to be successful i.p.o. on first glance but then you're going to have to look at the valuation ratios you know it's going to one hundred times earnings twenty five times revenues that's way too high we think a lot of people are going to jump into it just because it is facebook and we think it's going to either price further and at the end of the day this over time will start coming back down jay what do you think about that i mean more hype than a common sense being. made here and we look at this i.p.o. i mean obviously facebook is very very popular but is the its popularity reflected in its valuation. i think peter's scenario is very plausible

with the huge brand name recognition it's possible that investors are going to drive up the price especially since a relatively small percentage of the company is being sold at the valuations that people are talking about one hundred times sales twenty five hundred times earnings twenty five times sales the long run upside for investors that is a limited ok if i go back to peter in toronto i mean last year facebook generated i don't want three point seven billion dollars eighty eight percent up from the year before those kind of numbers are not sustainable are they. well what's going on in north america you have to divide it between developed nations and developing nations development north america for example europe they've pretty much got critical mass there they're not going to get a lot more people anybody who's on facebook is going to be on facebook is already there there's a lot of room for growth all the growth is coming from developing nations now

russia india china but the problem with that is that they're not able to convert that into the same degree of revenues from the advertisements it's in tory's for not driving as much advertisement spending of retirement dollars and so a lot of the growth may be behind facebook and going forward it might have a little bit of trouble getting to the next level ok james look who's going to buy this stock i mean you can see institutional investors i mean pensions i mean individuals who do you think it's most attractive to it because you know institutions are not really represented on facebook i mean people are ok is it the people that are on facebook to be interested in the stock do you think. this is some of them with over eight hundred million users it doesn't take a bit very big percentage of them to be interested but the reality is institutional investors if they are going to buy buy a lot more shares an individual might buy one hundred two hundred even five hundred

shares but an institution might be buying a million shares five million shares and a lot of institutions are going to be buying ok peter i mean is there some precedence out there we look at the tech sector and the what the most well known ones are google and america online which way what president do you think facebook might follow or will it be just unique. it's going to be unique but they are going to have a lot of competition from google plus google's decided to get into the social media space and they're going to do that pretty aggressively and overseas they've got a lot of competition too from brazil and china india you know these are these are nations where they have a platform there that they're going to start leveraging their platform to tension we to users away from facebook facebook tori's problems trying to get into china at all so you're going to have a lot of people who more choice going forward haven't had

a lot of competition yet with those days are ahead of them and now they're going to see you know we have to see how they're going to react to that it's interesting you point out in russia facebook is not particularly popular it's here but there's a russian version that many people are very attracted to jail if we could if we can look at the emerging markets one of the interesting things is and we advertising dollars is a big part of the future of any company like facebook in emerging markets people do not necessarily are attracted to the to the ads because they're there they're spending ability is much more limited than let's say in north america or the english speaking world i mean is this something that's being played into it you can grow the numbers but you're not going to get any revenue from them. well there's both the issue of how many users and then the revenue per user the per capita income growth in certain emerging markets. result in a lot of long term upside potential. lower middle income

consumers rise to be middle income and higher middle income consumers the bullish case for facebook is actually based upon the google model where google has demonstrated that a lot of money can be made on targeted search it's a very efficient form of advertising and google has been able to grow its revenue per user very substantially facebook has a lot of that upside potential as well but things could go wrong. while america online had a very large market share fifteen years ago and largely faded research in motion with blackberry had a very big market share a couple of years ago and they've run into some tough times so with facebook

they they've got a wired and growing potential market a case can be made that they're going to be as successful as google generating profits. of nine point seven four billion dollars just thirteen years after being founded but on the other hand they could fall off of that growth path as well and that's the problem with the very high valuation that people are talking about that that it's a bad optimistic growth path built into the price and it doesn't. possibility that they're going to fall off of that growth path targeting advertising is very interesting peter because on facebook particularly there's the privacy issue in people getting more and more sensitive to that issue and targeted advertising is the contradict is

a antithetical to privacy is this something that investors should be worried about and thinking about because the the users of facebook want their privacy or at least most of them do and of course the advertisers want to know as much as possible about these people and you know that facebook is going to have to make a decision maybe even make a compromise which could also hurt its image and maybe its popularity. that's an excellent point peter what's going on right now think of it like a seesaw where on one side you've got google or facebook trying to maximize their advertising targeting by watching everything you do on the other side of the teeter totter you've got people who are tired and weary of all their actions being tracked and most recently you've had all sorts of backlash in terms of privacy issues with the issues and with the google problems and now you've got you know facebook's tried to address this by having you know twenty or twenty years of audit's with the f.c.c. for privacy they've also change their privacy laws but at the end of the day people don't trust the internet when they go on there and when they're going around on

facebook it's tracking what books you like what videos you watch who you are who your friends are and it's going to be a little bit too much i think and people are starting to have a little bit of a backlash against it when you think about that jamming it's the flavor of the month right now as we go down i mean people are going to invest in this company because they want to make money not just because they like facebook maybe there's an overlap of the two but people get to go in there and they don't want to be very aggressive because i want this company to perform in the valuations are very high they want the valuation to meet expectations do you think that you know this is facebook's going to have a real challenge in dealing with the privacy issue and with sales because there's high expectations here like we haven't seen for a while. well with the privacy issue. there's kind of an anonymous lack of privacy in terms of it doesn't bother me if. google or facebook or linked in. able

to tell some advertiser i'm one of forty seven thousand and nine and this ip addresses that have some of the following characteristics in terms of my age a rough guess for my income level and the fact that i subscribe to several business magazines and do a lot of international traveling. you know if it's not identifying me by name does it bother me that some targeted ads get sent my way and that i don't get that i have absolutely no interest in. you know in terms of that and an image just a number that doesn't bother me. the other hand if you've got some government that is demanding. we want the names behind the ip addresses that's another issue ok peter jay told me before the program he's not

going to i'm on facebook and you're on facebook i mean do you check any of the ads you click on any of the ads on facebook. i never have i never had to say the dress your guests last point in. and the fact that you know you could be on facebook and it's tracking what you like and what you do at work somebody walks by and sees you want facebook on your monitor and on the side is a whole bunch of ads that are going to be related to what you like you might not want that person to know that you are interested in overseas vacations or whatever it may be and so there's a bit of a privacy breach there i think because it's going to put ads that are appropriate to what you've been looking at on your facebook page for people to walk by and see ok gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on facebook stay with our.

the fuse. box. it's.

you can see it's just some of the few. posts. come across talk i can hold on to mind you we're talking about facebook's i.p.o. slower. and slower. and now we're joined by its very in philadelphia he's founder of market tamer dot com if i can go to you first gary thing and now philadelphia thank you for joining us here one of the things we're talking about earlier in the program is the

facebook's ability to expand one thing that's very interesting about the eight hundred forty million forty five million users that half of them go for use the facebook from mobile instruments you know. an i pad or something like that and facebook gets zero revenue from that if people are accessing it from their telephone is this going to be have to be the next major breakthrough for us for facebook and other social networking because i'm not going to pay for advertising on my telephone i don't know anyone who will. well i think what's interesting about facebook is they can actually generate money even if people are not clicking so they can generate from brand awareness just by impressions being placed on phones so if you're looking for example at the numbers four hundred million plus mobile users that set to increase. the rate they're generating returns from the regular platform which is about five dollars close to five dollars per user if they can figure out how to monetize that channel that's potentially another

four hundred million times five that's two billion dollars in returns and revenues to the top line that they can generate which would increase their revenues from current levels by almost fifty percent you know that would be very good news peter if i go to you you know and we look at the business model that facebook has right now and it's been very profitable very successful but as we mentioned earlier in the program it's not sustainable because you're not going to have you need a lot more users that you know a multiple of or have a much more and add generation when it comes to revenue is is facebook i have to find another breakthrough in social networking to really match the expectations people have for this i.p.o. and further down the line i think that they will i mean right now eighty five percent of their revenue comes from advertisements. like you said you know that right now there's four hundred million people who are using facebook through their mobile phones and their.