breaking news this hour of bodies pretty soft skin loses his multibillion dollar claim against that armand. in the london courtroom clash of the russian oligarchs billed as one of the most expensive ever seen. turkey pushes for foreign nations to intervene in syria to protect civilians as britain refuses to rule out taking action beyond the u.n. security council. syria is one of the topics in julian assange his latest

interview he was a blower promises more wiki leaks revelations and claims the media's been manipulated for what's happening there. and romney's rumble to the u.s. republican candidate promises to showed russia more palatable if he wins the election but faces criticism himself for flip flopping on key issues. hello and thank you for joining our t.v. this friday with me karen tara we go now to breaking news and bodies because of ski has had his multibillion dollar claim against fellow russian oligarch on monochrome all that dismissed by a london court the trial which heard allegations of threats blackmail and corrupt business deals is being billed as one of the most expensive legal battles in

history smith brings us all the details from london. the court decision found against. that means essentially that not a cent of the more than five billion dollars in retribution that he was asking for will be paid to him by mortgage but it's also arrived at the court this morning looking pretty upbeat and promote himself with not this case has been a huge amount of fun really the spectator this opened up this kind of seedy underworld of of formerly of russia's mega rich to talked about what went on in the dark days of ninety's russia in what we used to call the wild east so it was all about vos sums of money changing hands off shore bank accounts illicit payments made under the table. five star hotels ski resorts and deals enormous deals involving enormous sums of money done just on

a handshake with no documentation whatsoever and it's brought these two squabbling billionaires with all that that involves that is their vastly expensive lawyers menacing looking bodyguard. each accusing the other of lying corruption and greed but it's not. that he lost billions of dollars when back in the day intimidated him into selling off stakes in oil and metals companies in russia for a fraction of what they were actually worth he says but our gram of it says that him but it's never partners in the true sense of the word he says that he took a modern payments that he made to but as for political protection or creature. which means ruth in russian as it's come to be called which is a word that is now as a result of this case really bandied about in legal circles here in the u.k. . but imo it admits that he made these regular undocumented payments to bits of

people often in huge cash thumbs up to five million dollars hundred in cash at times and totaling several hundred million. dollars he says that he paid for that is also key to travel in a private jets he bought him a friend chateau and he also bought him jewelry for his girlfriend but is also wanted in excess of five billion dollars to make up for all that on top of the one point two billion that he originally received for what he says was the stake in these orders and metals companies of course he's lost but this has been one of the biggest civil trials in british legal history with as i say massive amounts of money involved parties crew was in the court as the verdict was delivered and posted updates on our twitter feed our correspondent say the judge rejected the claim that the church once dishonest and that is off he looked disappointed and nervous at the outcome you can log on to our london bureau page to find out more.

for more analysis and insight i'm now joined by john flood professor of law at westminster and westminster university excuse me thank you john for joining us today now tell us just how normal is it for two russian businessmen to clash in a london court. well it's not normal it's the first of its current but it's the first of a series of cases which are not going to be heard in the commercial court we've got a show in a and they're coming up next and you're going there as also you're going to be appearing again so i think those ones that are running are starting to become normal now the months long trial is costing millions of pounds in legal fees so do you think that just as the british justice system is should be interested in promoting clashes like this on u.k. soil. in fact the minister of justice thanks bob has been going around the world saying how great the british judicial system is and really trying to promote it and it's very strong on a lot of the policies and the commercial call in london all foreigners they're not

all british that's right and i do want to mention that the russian community is among the wealthiest in the british capital just how influential is this group. they're very influential in fact they we have what's now known as the russian premium on fees the top q.c.'s who are in these cases are committing anywhere between eight hundred to fifteen hundred pounds an hour and the cops who work for them becoming very skilled at negotiating with the with the russians now the judge on this case did have to look into how business was done in russia in the one nine hundred ninety s. how difficult is it to deal with evidence from a place and period like the nineties in russia is extremely difficult you're talking about the wild west the cowboy period of russian capitalism what it all are and really your relying on people's honesty there was much in the way their normal kind of evidence is not much in writing its or. you're really looking to the integrity and honesty and reliability of the witnesses and now i think it is safe

to say that it is off ski appeared quite upset and he did lose quite badly do you think he had any chance of winning an appeal. well he would appear to line imagine i mean the sums are so great we're talking five billion dollars or more it's worth while he was appealing i'm not quite sure startlement talk i mean the job we do with the russian curious is is that there's no there's no move to a circle and there's a deeply entrenched you know polar opposite positions that they just want to fight you know this money took them towards thinking in terms of settlement powers all right thank you very much john flawed professor of law at westminster minster university thank you for your time. turkey wants the u.n. security council to set up a safe zone within syria to protect citizens fleeing war a move that would effectively require military intervention given russia and china's opposition to an armed involvement in syria's affairs britain made it clear

foreign nations could bypass the council to implement the idea western powers are already discussing the future of syria without its current leadership. brings us all the details from new york well the security council remains very much divided over how to deal with the syrian crisis the high level meeting that was taking place in new york focused on the humanitarian circumstances in syria right now and how they continue to exacerbate according to u.n. officials at least two hundred twenty nine thousand syrians have fled the country in the past eighteen months spilling over to neighboring countries turkey has asked the security council to consider setting up refugee camps inside of syria that are outside countries would safeguard if this is a suggestion that the syrian government say they are very much against russia and china also opposed it saying that it could only create more conflict and violence

so clearly you have a very complicated situation here but we did hear western countries address the security council their representatives calling once again for syrian president bashar al assad to. step down britain and france the foreign ministers of those countries today made i new call encouraging for more i defections within the syrian government and the syrian military the russian baths are today of nations vitaly churkin i did address the security council and raised the issue of the fact that the unilateral sanctions that western countries including the us britain and france those sanctions that they've placed on syria are only hurting the syrians. the sanctions imposed by passing the u.n. security council have nothing to do with actual efforts to settle the syrian crisis they complicate the lives of average citizens and do not allow them to meet their elementary needs or fully enjoy basic human rights this is not only our conclusion

but also that of an independent commission in syria we call upon nations who impose sanctions against syria to immediately lift them we see the efforts of certain states to use humanitarian reasons to justify financial technical and logistical support to illegally armed groups as unacceptable. but the u.s. and its western allies have underscored as late as this eat this meeting taking place security council that they will continue supporting the syrian opposition and continue providing them with a quick meant for more on the situation around syria we spoke to professor paul sheldon foote of california state university who specializes in middle eastern affairs affairs rather he believes that the u.s. and its allies are using the humanitarian situation in syria to pursue their own agenda in the region. it's a pretext it's still another way to divide and take over the country using the united nations as your vehicle it is unfortunately

a repetition of what happened in libya or the united nations being used to promote war instead of promote case that playbook worked in libya they were drawn to the same playbook and all of those work anymore where is the desire. of the west nato to have been negotiated settle with the old with the purpose of this exercise is to make sure that there is no competition in the middle east were played well in searches by way of syria you wrote in other places all these other things are excuses there to claim that they care one bit about humanitarian concerns as it is a gross war and wiki leaks is planning to plunge into the syrian debate with julian assange promising millions of related emails will be published and a rare interview the whistleblower gave to a pan latin american t.v. network he also pointed to a clear manipulation of the media over the syrian conflict and songe also defended the wiki leaks activities saying that unlike u.s. actions in afghanistan and iraq no one was hurt as

a result of the websites publications he said he has never bought or sold information and insisted everything has website ever revealed was the truth assad also touched upon surveillance via the internet suggesting the u.s. maintains a stride network through google whistleblower admitted he may have to spend from six months to a year holed up in ecuador's munden and assange until there's a diplomatic solution or sweden chops the case against him. still ahead for you on r.t. this hour germany brings out the guns. deutsche marks still in the paid bank are being used to cover some of the german economy's shortfalls. and in the business bulletin later this hour china suggests boosting bilateral trade. with russia by incorporating deals in the national currencies this story and more in less than ten minutes. all right we head to the u.s.

now where the republican candidate for the presidency mitt romney has been laying out his case for health he had some strong views which could worry some on the king nations but he's now got such a reputation for changing his stance on issues it's hard to know exactly where he stands on really anything so if he's going to she's here to tell us more while mitt romney is now officially barack obama's opponent for the white house and he's talking tough throwing rocks small verbal rocks not only the president but also of nations at the republican convention where he accepted his nomination mr romney did not fail to once again highlight his animosity towards russia he criticized the president for not being hard enough in his view on russia when it comes to missile defense mitt romney says under his administration quote mr putin will see less flexibility and more backbone end of quote and of course that adds up to his earlier statements that russia is america's number one geopolitical enemy that they

need to reset the reset that's actually what he says on his website as part of mitt romney's foreign policy agenda so yes a lot of tough talk i heard experts say that's how mitt romney makes up for lack of charisma what's interesting about the backbone comment is that mitt romney himself is often characterized as lacking the backbone as he has flip flopped on so many issues like abortion he was for abortion before he was against it or immigration when he was for giving them legal status then he was for deporting them mitt romney's flip flops have been widely discussed it's been an endless source of inspiration for comedians and this is from the tonight show for example with jay leno actually mitt romney and hurricane isaac. i have something in common they can both change directions at any moment there goes another comedian he says. he goes

like obama was like you can be whatever you want to be while watching me was like i can be whatever you want me to be there are tons of jokes about mitt romney and his backbone issues apparently one way of showing some backbone for him is this kind of tough talk you know full of threats we'll see how far it will take him in this november election while both candidates have been keen to mention american supremacy and its responsibilities and the world in their campaigns but is the country still the greatest power in the world or is that just election rhetoric that's the topic of the heated discussion in today's crosstalk and it's coming up on our team in the next hour. let's take a look at a very well known clip from h.b.o.'s program newsroom. just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day there's some things you should know and one of them is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world we're seventeen literacy twenty seventh and twenty second in science

forty nine life expectancy one hundred seventy eight to infant mortality thirty eight median household income number four and labor force the number four in our exports we lead the world in only three categories number of incarcerated citizens per capita number of adults who believe in angels are real and depends upon a lot of the facts mentioned there are correct ok they're easy to find and didn't have been known for a long time now is america's number one there's a there's a gradual decline john quincy adams said when he was secretary of state in one thousand twenty one before i was president that we could be dictators of the world what our was policy would then shift from a policy of liberty and freedom to a policy of domination and control and now we are a country that's lost its way and it's not because we may not be number one in the amount of arms we sell you know we sell that about three quarters of all the arms abroad or have the greatest. terry power but because we lost our moral stature and values of who we are as a people. while

at the arizona seeking a financial savior europe's biggest header angle america has turned to the german chancellor is in china clutching billions in contracts to be signed in beijing and hans quote me from the airplane council on foreign relations believes china is a country worth spending some time with to make friends the big hope in europe is that the chinese would invest in some of the new vehicles that have been crazy like the european stability mechanism but the chinese. offer lots of words of support today and yesterday but not much in the way of concrete promises to buy bonds in any case the chinese don't tend to make their bond purchases public so we don't

know for example how much the chinese invested in european bones in the last two years since the euro crisis began and anyway we probably won't know so there's a lot of there's a lot of uncertainty about in the case of a boss that we see this is a european company and so it will benefit not just germany but also france and other countries in europe but lots of the deals that have been signed. off by german companies are open to european companies and so to do in that sense there is a competition going on between germany and other european countries and i would generally seems to be winning that competition. one other way germany differs from the rest of the union has its own currency the deutsche mark it's not only credible but it's still in use here oliver has the details of problems on that score savings for a rainy day. here in germany the deutsche mark is still very much alive and kicking in fact in the store in central berlin the good old they market is still accepted

as legal tender when it comes to purchases with an exchange rate of around two dollars each marks to the euro store's manager says that there's still enough of the old currency around to warrant them taking it was under name have three the reason we accept which marks is there are still plenty of people with the old currency we get quite a few people wanting to spend them in our store for it's not just in shops that they're accepted if you find a few demarche coins down the back of the sofa germany's public telephones will happily take them off your hands germany officially drop the old money for the euro over ten years ago in two thousand and eleven alone though over eight million dollars each marks were brought to the bundesbank to be changed into crisp new currency but where is that cash coming from. that he had that is not only one of my ugly relatives gave me the school and as a gift so i decided to turn them into something it could spend on television. we've

had them lying around the house for ages we've only just got around to getting democrats changed or there are those though who say they won't part with their marks as a minister. i keep them as a souvenir i'm not going to change them into europe and according to the blunders bank there's still more than thirteen billion dollars each marks in circulation they say they get returns from as far away as brazil and new zealand so unlike some eurozone members the bank won't place a time limit on accepting old my. so we will continue to take them as long as people keep bringing them it's something of a tradition here that currency from years and years ago will always be exchanged for legal tender there are conspiracy theorists though who say that in the banks bolts are trillions of marks being stockpiled should the euro crisis deepen only

only rumors so if the cash that's returned isn't being kept for a rainy day what happens to it and once the exchanges completes those deutschmarks the shredded and in their days as very expensive confetti feature all of a r.t. . well you can find plenty more of our stories on our website r.t. dot com here's a taste of what we've got for you right now. bloody misdirection not a protest find out why the russian punk band is being linked to a grisly double murder. support results a cake recipe or maybe the latest updates on the u.s. military drone attacks vailable with a new i phone out. here with our two time now for

a look at some other stories making headlines around the globe two hundred seventy south african miners have been charged with the murder of thirty four of their colleagues despite the fact it was the police that shot them national prosecutors say officers only opened fire because they were under attack by armed protesters more than one hundred fifty of the miners being held claimed to have been beaten up in custody killings at a strike earlier this month became the bloodiest incident since the fall of the apartheid regime. the pentagon is threatening legal action over a book describing the details of the seal raid that killed osama bin laden in may last year the department of defense says the author who is a former u.s. navy officer had violated agreements not to divulge military secrets a book published next week apparently called for addicts the official account of what happened to the. cabin staff or german airline new fans or have begun

a strike at the country's busiest airport in frankfurt the eight hour industrial action has already caused the cancellation of more than one hundred fifty flights staff want improved pay and working conditions and guarantees jobs won't be. outsourced. all right time now for business with natasha so it turns out that russia's most promising energy project has not been put on hold what's that all about well the partners of gals problems flying ship offshore project stockman are issuing conflicting reports french oil major took tall as denying early reports that the project has been suspended indefinitely frenched a total is denying it the firm says the partners in that in addition to gazprom include norway's stock to oil are pursuing technical studies to come up with an economically viable solution on thursday gazprom said the project was put on hold as the development cost of the shock one way too high considering that gas prices

are falling. and less now check out the equity markets will start with what's going on in the euro and what we're seeing there is a pretty upbeat picture higher metal prices help the miners on the footsie and germany the banking sector is outperforming on the dax the u.s. futures point to a higher opening on wall street in a few hours so that adds to the general optimism the traders anxiously anticipate the speech by the fed reserve chairman ben bernanke later in the day for the molds for part of the markets are not expecting any monetary easing but they are looking for some clarifications one of european union's few growth stories poland that is feeling the squeeze of the downturn the country's second growth eased to two point four percent the lowest in about three years and significantly below the

forecast poland's g.d.p. kept expanding over the past two years while much of the e.u. showed negative growth but a series of gloomy economic indicators show that the so-called economic miracle is coming to an ad. now checking out the. russian acqua the markets so far so good pretty i'll be the r.t.s. is gaining more than three quarters of a percent some of the main movers on the my sex include car maker off to basel its shares are pretty albi to fact gaining around one and three quarters of for sound as of plans to issue a new version of its popular reno logan our next year flagship carrier air flight is down its passenger traffic rose by a border in the first seven months of the year partly not enough harvesters and bank is gaining actually pretty hefty like sixty percent on the rumors that financial corp is eyeing it as

a potential acquisition target now crude is recovering from a two week low it reached on thursday and it's actually demonstrating pretty have to gains moving on to the currency market the euro is stronger to the dollar at this hour the russian ruble is strengthening to the currency of us kept added the privatization of russia's state assets could go online the state has agreed to terms of selling its properties through electronic auctions analysts say this would definitely make the privatisation process easier and more transparent but online sales don't exclude privatizing through the more traditional me. and staying with a high tech sector russia's largest free email service mail dot ru has bought out its ukrainian namesake mail dot a the company's didn't disclose the financial details of their deal but analysts estimate that it's around a half

a billion dollars the move should boost melgar use position in ukraine where it's already pretty popular. china wants to boost the cross border trade with its partners by doing it and it's not. currency the yuan it's already doing so with hong kong which has the hong kong dollars and also singapore but it now hopes that latin america and the middle east could be next meanwhile russia has long been in favor of moving away from the dollar and trading in the national currencies hong kong's financial secretary john tsang explains to business r t how it could work out. what is happening now is a great deal of trace. in the national currency so in terms of for example between russia and china they would be doing a lot of settlement in un or in ruble this way you can weigh reduce the currency

risk that may incur and that is already happening i think we should expect to see a lot more of that as these two currencies become a. currency for for the rest of the world. and that's all the latest from the business team here karen my colleague dimitri medvedev and co will bring in our data in about fifteen minutes all right we look forward to thank you natasha and i'll be back with our top stories in just a couple of minutes to stay with us.