rise against austerity in greece at least fifteen thousand. targets some of the country's most. freshly elected president. watching his ratings plummet the economic. pressure of the asia pacific summit economic and political ties with china are growing ever stronger which could on the u.s. and its move influence in the region. plus it's a dead heat between the republicans and democrats in the race for the white house with. similar.

headlines to the news this week and this is the weekly here on our with the top stories of the past seven days first a restless night in greece's second largest city of. some fifteen thousand protesters taking a stand against a new wave of punishing budget cuts waving banners chanting slogans and even burning an e.u. flag the event was peaceful as a small army of police officers looked on these latest cuts are especially painful though to the country's most vulnerable including pensioners low income workers and dependence but not everyone is against the cuts. to get inspectors are right now in athens to assess how the austerity drive is go and to decide whether the government

disserves more bailout money or reporting from thessalonica. tony said he will do everything within his power to make sure the greece remains within the euro's. however he did acknowledge that the cuts it is government to are making were both unfair and painful for the greek people but as unfair and painful as they are he says that the necessary as without being in the eurozone greece would die as a nation now he also says there are important is in terms of the country men taining any credibility that it has left on the global financial stage and my credibility is said to be tested quite soon is all that is from the so-called troika arrives in greece to see whether they've fulfilled their part of the bargain when it comes to making the cuts that they are asked to do on whether they receive the next round of bailout money a massive thirty one billion euros worth of assistance whether those cuts are

necessary they're certainly not popular here in thessaloniki we've seen thousands of people out on the streets of greece the second city demonstrating against the way that the current government are handling the financial crisis anger and the way the government is dealing with the crisis what they're doing is wrong it's not just in terms of protest the greek people are airing their their grievances with the current government if you look at the latest political polls we're seeing that some are ases government lies in second place behind a a opposition party that anti bailout money was perhaps more worrying though is if you see that in third place is the ultra rightist party golden dawn party that has a far right agenda some of called neo nazi and fire they certainly have a seemingly growing popularity here in greece which is concerning many people many

people i've seen out in the streets here in thessaloniki protesting what they call the fascist organization i have to say that this demonstration thessaloniki far more peaceful and some we've seen in the past in greece could people are upset they're airing the. views but they're certainly not of the violence a that we've seen in cities like athens as people demonstrate against the handling of the financial crisis. reporting right there well it's not only in greece where the cuts are being met with a wall of public protest in portugal government slashes to social safety nets have been dubbed an act of war against the working class and next door in spain angela merkel's visit sparked street protests with demonstrators demanding an end to berlin and meddling in madrid's affairs thanks to the daunting financial storm clouds over the eurozone with the blocks central bank forced to roll out the artillery and the e.c.b. says it will now begin buying up euro nations to stabilize their borrowing costs something that m.e.p. william dartmouth doesn't believe will last. this is their last last throw

really i should make the point that back in two thousand and ten the your prince central bank spent nearly seventeen billion euros buying greek greek war which did push down the interest rates down for about a week. didn't didn't work thereafter and my prediction for what it's worth is that it won't work in the medium or long term this time either i mean they have a bill is a huge problem with spain there's a huge problem of this and also the condition which the european central bank are seeking to impose on countries participating are such that. the very independence is under threat. bolleter anything but smooth sailing for the larger and more stable european economies as well in france the president's ratings

are in a state of freefall as waste war and economic weaknesses take their toll on the public and as artists are reports traditional means of dealing with the stress just start cutting it anymore. france may have lost its title as the country with the highest per capita consumption of antidepressants but the french certainly have at last a peasant as of now with more reasons to be unhappy because the new record unemployment levels an economy that's just not growing and we prospects all around and when they look to their new president they don't expect much of a future either so much so that sixty eight percent of french people are fearful for their future close with a record high of seventy percent in two thousand and five shortly after jacques chirac was reelected for a second term but france did manage to beat all other presidents in unpopularity after just one hundred days on the job. ratings came after nine years in government and bad ratings come after only four months. so it's

catastrophic situation for you when you vote for change and you relate as the president doesn't have even a plan to deliver. the reforms you vaguely promised i mean of course you. are adding salt to injury the state just threw a life like to a struggling mortgage lender by guaranteeing its debts after launch explicitly declared the world of finance as his enemy during the election campaign this craziness has to stop i think this financial sector is spending on the other side billions for things which are not a priority for us. france has begun sending direct aid to anti assad regions in syria a former french colony a move that shortly followed along as promised to recognize a provisional government formed by the opposition an all too familiar style and

french foreign policy that irks citizens like mathilde despite having voted for a law and what she calls france's intrusive behavior she says is all about securing finish. show interest. we can change president but the foreign policy doesn't change both main political parties decided to go to war in my need of country to send the french army to go and kill people and i rico today it is syrian money abroad they were trying to get just like what happened with libya the french have a superiority complex to a point where they imagine that they are the one saving others but they don't know is there we see other people for their money. a teacher at a local school and a mother of three this is what she tells the kids. they tell their kids to study hard improve their language skills and they must think of their future outside of france your confidence and at this point the french have clearly lost patience

does or sylvia r.t. paris. and i we are coming to you live from the heart of moscow still ahead for you in this hour that are crossing the line for fear you case a policy towards syria could backfire as reports suggest british fighters are heading to the front line and may possibly bring violence back home. in a deadly shooting at bars a separatist a post-election party in canada as a francophone of quebec highlighting the renewed tension in the province. are a ten minutes past the hour moscow time the world shifted to the east this week as heavyweight asia pacific nations gathered to decide how to prop up global growth other cool and damp weather of the russian far east the chill the war between russia and china friendship are seen as a strong asset to economic recovery. the reports now from the city of light of our stock. when the other person was rounding up the results of the two thousand and

twelve form which russia for the first time he basically again praised the fact that apec is extremely important as a region and as an organization it accounts for around fifty percent of the global economic output and global trade and therefore the shift is happening globally towards this region and russia is no exception and that in effect and has said that china plays an extremely important role as a driver of global economic growth actually in an exclusive interview that the president gave prior to this war and that it was and also still stated the importance of russian chinese relations china is indeed becoming a global economic and political hub china has taken up this new leading role by not only in russia's eyes but also in the always of the whole world nor what makes this rather special however is that russia and china are neighbors you know social relations took thousands of years to evolve to where they are. over the coming

years we are bound to achieve a one hundred million dollar turnover rate for that exclusive interview is of course available on our you tube channel you can catch it there but also what was i think more important was the q. and a session which followed that round up of the four and letting the person had a chance to comment on this state of russian and european relations of course the euro zone is now in a crisis and therefore that in a question was asked as to what is happening between russia and europe is there a trade war he answered the situation is far from a called trade war and the fact that your commission is new right now looking into gas problems a so-called monopoly position on the eastern european markets is based on the economic problems in the region and that basically europe now wants to transfer some of this economic burden onto russia and a rather peculiar and one thing i would say question that let. and was asked to

comment on his recent stop that he made prior to the apec summit and that was your model in russia to teach a flock of cranes to fly south he was using a hang glider and the journalist said that basically it's created a whole wave of internet jokes and a comparison also was made to russia's electoral race that only sixty three percent of the krays the site had to pull the curtain and the others decided to go somewhere else and this is what he had to say not all the queen's fallujah mediately only the weak ones don't. of it i must admit it's also the leaders fault the pilots phoned the not all the koreans fallujah mediately if you finds too fast and too high he can't keep up there are also birds who don't fly in a flock even if they aren't part of the flock they're part of our population and they should be taken care of as much as possible. and i was listening to that q.

and a at the international press center here and the answer was followed by a standing ovation and he said to me to rethink over reporting there from a lot of our stock and i rushers i turn to the east could come at the expense of us trade links with the west but the us and europe only have themselves to blame that's according to ben our editor in chief of the business new europe magazine. the idea is the you know the fast growing economies of the world are increasing linking up i mean they formalized politically the bric nations has gone from a marketing an acronym actually a political organization change in politics starting from about two thousand and four going up to putin's famous speech in two thousand and seven where he called the west to account and said cooperate turn our back on you and i think this conference actually marks the point where they begin to turn their back they're talking about increasing trade the russians with asia fivefold. america is only talking about trade with russia since it has ceded to the w t o and so clearly the

building. konami union has gone to the top of the russian policy agenda and russia asia led by china of course and that's where all the effort is going. now on the sidelines of the apec summit moscow and washington once again disagreed over the handling of the syrian crisis hillary clinton labeled the geneva peace plan which called for a cease fire and political transition toothless russia insists that in june the initiative was accepted by most of the international community including the u.s. and it should be approved by the security council meanwhile washington intensified calls for arming rebels who have been desperately trying to seize more weapons on saturday government troops turned back an attack on a major military base in syria's largest city of aleppo and the capital damascus has also been plagued with a rebel incited violence for the latest fighting taking place in the southern district of the city list and right of william recognizing opposition as

a legitimate political power would be ridiculous. their long term agenda is introducing a. taliban like fanatical. islamic sharia law in syria and ending in the tolerance of different religions which has been the trademark of syrian life for decades and there are reports of from journalists inside syria over the last months of these so-called opposition in many cases there are al qaeda or mujahideen that they have beheaded civilians and blame the atrocities on the on the assad government i don't know what you could call the equivalent of the obvious recognition of a government in exile really a new government in exile perhaps if the russian government were to recognize the ku klux klan as a government in exile in america and provided heavy artillery so that they could go to washington or something like that it's just absurd. but for the british prime

minister the idea of a defense doesn't seem so bad david cameron once again called for president to resign to make way for a new government formed by the syrian opposition and although the u.k. insists its support for the rebels is limited to non lethal aid laura smith reports fighters from britain are already on the front line. to most britons going about their everyday lives the war in syria seems worlds away but for a few it's a struggle they feel personally involved in as the u.k. government portrays president assad as an evil dictator there is evidence that britons are going to syria to fight for the opposition area m.p. khaled mahmoud says some in his community have already gone there is a particular individual who's actually gone back to baghdad at the moment and is going back in a few weeks time who's been engaged in fundraising supporting people and putting

people together to go back to their people who say that. they made work and other. broad saying that they're going to support the resistance some says mahmoud of british syrian extraction others a british muslims who feel their faith makes this their struggle but whatever their reasons for going the fear is what they'll be when they return they're trained in the art of warfare but they also radicalized as well and then they want to then continues on credit causation they want to bring more people on board and then perhaps the looks to try to. resolve some of the gripes they have here that's blowback the u.k. has already seen from another conflict here in london on the seventh of july two thousand and five the official reports into the seven seventh's bombings reveals the existence of that two house of the four bombers had been to afghanistan for so-called violent jihad back in the u.k.

mohammed sidique khan and says that town with together killed fourteen people in combined suicide attack specific and seven bombers were only vaguely known to the authorities and that could be the case for fighters returning from syria too it's all very well to notify the u.k. borders agency but in reality there's very. little they can do people that may leave here to fight in syria will not go directly to syria they may stop in turkey or lebanon or arc so the government will not be able to really know the. nation there's no real way of telling whether they're actually going to end up in syria there is no way to know. who when they enter syria who they'll be liaising with. ideology is necessarily how the ologies and view points by change in syria these are the scenes that could greet them on their return and see islamist organization the english defense league is unlikely to take further radicalization

of british muslims lying down creating more bad feeling and deeper fissures in an already divided society full western whose british freedom party is allied to the e.t.l. says militant groups are preparing for a confrontation we're going to get further and further into this horrible situation of them and us and them and us and then you have small scale violence that starts. the tit for tat and it's work. and i think we literally entering into religious civil war scenario so far the government's given the syrian opposition eight million dollars for non-lethal equipment including communications but ordinary britons could find themselves paying the far higher price of unrest and insecurity at home for they support for the syrian opposition laura smith r.t. london. just getting to twenty minutes past the hour here in moscow it's good to have you with us today still to come. dealing with protests since the end of the

demonstrators defy a government. authorized by ongoing police brutality. turning an enemy's words into a weapon something israel use rhetoric from tehran as a means to justify aggressive settling outside the jewish state's official. now barack obama's captivating showing at the democratic national convention this week appears to be paying off new polls give him an edge over republican rival mitt romney if only by the slimmest of margins and with just two months to go until the presidential vote both candidates will be working overtime to outshine the other they want his money for not reports that may be a challenge. in two thousand and eight for aco bomb i turned us politics into something of a pop culture phenomenon we made and one of those defining moments. a moment when

our nation is at war our economy is in turmoil the democratic presidential candidate accepted his party's nomination valiant to rebuild america's moral standing and break from the policies of his predecessor the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in washington and the failed policies of george w. bush four years after change occupied the white house america is still at war twenty three million citizens are unemployed and most of the national security policies cemented by george w. bush continue unabated or have been expanded the code of fixation of what we're illicit abuses under bush imprisonment without trial spying without warrants we've now replaced imprisonment and torture largely with assassination which is actually not a moral improvement under obama's leadership guantanamo bay remains open the patriot act has been renewed warrantless wiretapping extended but cia black sites have

closed targeted killings have been justified drone strikes publicly acknowledged military commissions codified however enhanced interrogation like waterboarding has been banned critics say obama has not only double down on bush's policies he's also raised the stakes signing the national defense authorization act made him the first us president to assert the right to assassinate anyone anywhere without any legal sanction if there is a war cries out there we can the war crimes iraq. tops the list this made many of those who voted for him hoping for change left disillusioned in fact what they appear to have voted for was more of the same obama's ratings are now the lowest of any incumbent president since the one nine hundred eighty s. the two major parties are very this are very much the same on all the important issues when it comes to spending more money than we have. engaging in foreign

conflicts that we can't afford the cost of america's overseas military campaigns have contributed to a u.s. national debt that topped sixteen trillion dollars this week while obama's america is running on empty critics say wall street continues to play largely by the same rules that led to the global financial crisis there hasn't been regulation of the banks in a sufficient way and that the main crisis affecting the united states which is to say the financial clutch on the global economy and the corporate stranglehold on the political system hasn't changed at all because president obama comes from a coalition that led to that in the first place since obama has stepped into the white house america has seen an unprecedented rise in grassroots movements like the tea party and occupy wall street though both very different one thing uniting them is the claim that the people of america are being ignored by their own government the two major us political parties have historically gone to great lengths and have

spent hundreds of millions of dollars to highlight their differences yet following obama's first term in office the biggest change may be that more voters are likely to see a democrat and a republican as two sides of the same coin marina port ny r.t. new york. of course you can follow this and many other stories online let's have a look and see what is a stand by for you now at our t.v. dot com russian prosecutors target the more exotic forms of corruption sex bright sparking debate over just where to draw the line on implicit payments. i think ology gives life a better chance u.s. researchers successfully test robotic prosthetics driven by the power of the user's mind.

thanks for joining us here on r.t. today to canada now where a separatist victory in a divisive election in the french speaking province of quebec was marred by a deadly shooting of a newly elected premier's victory party had to be cut short when a man trying to get into the building where the rally was being held shot one person dead and injured another as a police led him away he shouted anti french slogans independent journalist robert r. and they believe the shooting reflects the deep divisions between quebec and the rest of canada. it would be nice to believe that the man is just a lunatic it's pretty clear he may be a lunatic but he's motivated by the divisions in canada one has to remember the divisions go both ways. because the english canadians under the british empire always ruled the roost the french canadians began to become very bitter about this

and inevitably over time that has caused many problems and they want autonomy so it is going to revive passions of the right way to put it that's putting it just a little bit emotional obviously it will and some english canadians feel very strongly about this i know that's of course to some french canadians well clearly the people who feel passionately that quebec should remain part of a canadian nation and never going to trust her because she belongs to a party which believes in the maximum amount of autonomy so quebec. or into the arty world up there we go and i will start with a rock where at least a spate of an. eleven iraqi cities at least eleven iraqi cities killing at least forty for a car bomb targeted police recruits are lining up for a job at an oil company's office in the northern city of protocols outside of the capital ten soldiers were killed in a dawn ambush and other car bombings hit cities from the southern port of basra to

the northwest syria border at this point no one's claimed responsibility for great turks. new york city and its immediate surroundings have been hit by two tornadoes a severe weather pummels the u.s. atlantic coast and the twisters caused power outages and property damage but no injuries were reported and the storms caused flooding in areas of new england and left thousands without electricity. now our interview with the russian president vladimir putin that's coming up in just a few minutes here on r.t. before that though a recap of the week's top headlines. dear

mom i'm sorry that i had to do this i've been in so much pain in the past year that i can't take it anymore the stomach and chest pains of being getting worse and no doctor has been able to help me please know that i'll finally be at peace with no more pain i wish i could have had a life with elizabeth always pictured her being my wife and mother to my kids i love you all see you all in heaven when your time comes i'm going to meet jesus christ. thousands of u.s. troops in iraq received one of these drugs a drug called lariam and it may have prevented many soldiers from getting sick the

question tonight is whether or not soldiers were adequately war. and about its rare side effects serious life changing side effects. wealthy british scientists on. the time it was free. markets why not canada. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max conjure for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew.