rise against austerity in greece thousands rally against cuts feared to be targeting the country's most vulnerable even even the most sturdy hardened greeks incensed. euro words take their toll on the french with freshly elected president was what alarmed watching his ratings plummet blow by economic blow. russia turns eastward at the asia pacific summit economic and political ties with china growing ever stronger which could on the u.s. and its moves for influence in the region. plus a dead heat between republicans and democrats in the race for the white house with both candidates looking to set apart remarkably similar platforms.

with a look back at the past seven days top stories and the latest developments this is the weekly. first a restless night in greece's second largest city of thessaloniki with 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 by and large peaceful as a small army of police officers looked on these days is cancer especially painful to the country's most vulnerable including pensioners low income workers and dependents but not everyone is against the cuts e.u. and i.m.f. inspectors are enough to assess how your sturdy drive is going and decide whether the government deserves more bailout money. has more from thessaloniki. greek prime minister antonis samaras has said that he will do everything within his power to make sure the greece remains within the euro zone however he did

acknowledge that the cuts that is government were 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 they're important is in terms of the country men taining any credibility that it has left on the global financial stage and not credibility is said to be tested quite soon is all it 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 were 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's second city demonstrating against the way

that the current government are handling the financial crisis when the anger and the way the government is dealing with the crisis and 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's 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 festal on ikey protesting what they call the fascist organize a. should i have to say that this demonstration in thessaloniki far more peaceful than some we've seen in the past in greece that people are upset they're airing

their 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 and it's not the only increase where cuts are being met with a wall of public protest in portugal government slashes the social safety nets of being dubbed an act of war against the working class next door in spain angela merkel's visit sparked street protests with demonstrators demanding an end to berlin's meddling in drugs affairs thanks to the daunting financial storm clouds over the eurozone with the bloc central bank forced to roll out the artillery the c.b.c. says it will now begin buying up your own nation's debt to stabilize their borrowing costs something will doubtless believe will last. this is their last last throw really i should make the point that back in two thousand and ten the european central bank spent nearly seven hundred billion euros buying greek greek

borders which did push down the interest rates down for about a week. but 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 political problem with spain there's a huge problem of this and also the condition which the european central bank are seeking to impose of countries participating are such that. the very independence is under threat. it's anything but smooth sailing for the most stable european economies too in france the president's ratings are in freefall as waste war and economic weakness take their toll on the public and explains traditional means of dealing with stress just aren't 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 is that now with more reasons to be unhappy because the new record unemployment levels of 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 to the record high of seventy percent in two thousand and five shortly after jacques chirac was reelected for a second term but did manage to beat all other presidents in unpopularity after just one hundred days on the job sure i. came after nine years in government and bad ratings come after only four months. so it's catastrophic situation for 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. add insult to injury the state just threw

a life like to a struggling mortgage lender by guaranteeing its debts after a long and 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 regencies syria a former french colony a move that shortly followed a last promise to recognize a provisional government formed by the opposition an all too familiar style in french foreign policy that irks citizens like mattilda despite having voted for a law and what she calls france's intrusive behavior she says is all about securing for national interests. we can change president but the foreign policy doesn't change and both main political parties decided to go to war in my native 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 at a brother of three this is what she tells the kids they see the film and tell the kids to study hard improve their language skills and they must think of their future outside of france. and that this point the french have clearly lost patience does are still here are to paris. still ahead here this hour crossing the line fizzing new case policy toward syria could backfire as reports suggest british fighters are heading to the front line could bring violence back home. deadly shooting separatist post elect. party in canada's

francophone quick back highlighting the renewed tension in the province. you're watching the weekly here in r.t.e. the world shifted to the east this past week as heavyweight asia pacific nations gathered to decide how to prop up global growth that could and down whether the russian far east didn't chill the warmth between russia and china whose friendship is seen as a strong asset to economic recovery but it dmitri medvedev is in the city of lot of us don't. when the person was rounding up the results of the two thousand and twelve form which russia posted 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. 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 forum that it was and also 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 and 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 of and letting the person have 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 own 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 taunting i would say question that led. i was asked to comment on his recent stop the 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 percent of the crave the side to follow putin and the other 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. i must admit it's also the leaders fault the pilots fault the not all the koreans follow. if you fire is 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 are part of our population and the 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 dmitri medvedev there while on the sidelines of the apec summit moscow washington once again disagreed over the handling of the syrian crisis hillary clinton labeled the geneva peace plan which called for cease fire and political transition toothless russia insists that in june the initiative was accepted by most of the international community including the us 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 turn back an attack on a major military base in syria's largest city of aleppo the capital damascus has also been plagued with rebel incited violence with the latest fighting taking place in the southern districts of the city analyst and writer william engdahl says that recognizing armed 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 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 their 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 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 against washington or something like that it's just absurd but for the british prime minister the idea of interfering doesn't seem so bad david cameron once again called for president assad 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 lethal late forties or smith reports fighters from britain 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's evidence that britons all going to syria to fight for the opposition birmingham area m.p.

khalid mahmood 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 get people. and made work and other. rides saying that they're going to support the resistance some says mahmood of british syrian extraction others of 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 also radicalized as well and then they want to then continues on radicalization they want to bring more people on board and then perhaps 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 report into the seven seventh's bombings reveals the existence of rumors that two out 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 old thirty's 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. well 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 what ideologies necessarily how ideologies and viewpoints by change in syria these are the scenes that could greet them on their return and 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 who's 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 and then it's the tit for tat and that's why. i think we literally entering into a 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 this support for the syrian opposition laura smith. well there's no risk of bahrain either as the monarchy deals with daily protests that haven't stopped since the end of august demonstrators the fire government. authorized rallies despite heavy police in with tear gas and stun grenades jury peaceful rallies you can watch the full story in the next here on r.t. also in the mix turning enemies words into a weapon some in israel use rhetoric from taran as a means to justify aggressive settling outside the jewish state official borders. barack obama's captivating showing at the democratic national convention this week appears to be paying off new polls give him an edge over the republican rival mitt romney if only by the slimmest of margins with just two months to go till the

presidential vote both candidates will be working overtime to shine the other there are reports that maybe a challenge. in two thousand and eight for october my trying to us politics into something of a pop culture phenomenon we may be 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 value 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 expanding the coded fixation of what were

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 raise 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 struggle hold 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 court merino court ny r.t. new york. when you can follow this and many other stories online at the moment here's what else is there for you it's going to contain is in soldiers now in germany is working on the spy part that's burned in create a brand new intelligence network. and russian prosecutors target the more exotic forms of corruption sex bribes sparking debate over just where to draw the line on

illicit payments. you're watching the weekly here in r.t. to canada now where a divisive election in the francophone province of quebec has resulted in a narrow victory for the separatist party the federalists who have held on to power for decades have seen their position weakened by a seven month long standoff against the provinces students political rivals promised a meaningful resolution to the conflict over a proposed tuition fee hike but the president of the federation of university students hopes the new government will be friendlier to the movement's demands. we're now. going for. a year that will be very difficult been divided and we need to stick together to make sure that we can achieve big things in the province it is

a minority government it's already difficult and so i think we are expecting us to student friend is concerned there is allusion to the conflict that has been our finest seven months now so for sure but this isn't what we're expecting intuition furious that this is our main objective our main goal and so we'll have to see but i hope it doesn't affect the proposition. the dissolution if that's what i was proposing to resolve this crisis we need to make sure that for now how we actually address the issue. in treating greece and asked where it is the best of requests for causing variation from the rest will be actually making sure that our general assembly all right taking position on this particular issue now to some other world news in brief spate of attacks is hit eleven iraqi cities killing at least fourteen for a car bomb targeted police recruits landing up for a job at an oil company's office in the northern city of kirkuk sort of the capital

ten soldiers were killed in a dawn ambush of the car bombings hit cities from the southern port of boughs wrote to the northwest syria border no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks . the old city and its immediate surroundings have been hit by two tornadoes and severe weather pummels the u.s. atlantic coast the twisters caused power outages and property damage but no injuries were reported and storms caused flooding in areas of new england and the thousands without electricity in washington. the largest ever u.s. trade delegation has arrived in egypt the promise of fresh markets attracted representatives from such chances google coca-cola as well as defense powerhouses like lockheed martin the push for new markets comes as washington sweeten the deal with a proposed one billion dollars aid package for cairo egypt's foreign policy has been largely in line with that of the u.s. expressing sympathy for the uprising in syria and demonstrating support for

bahrain's ruling family political sociologist saeed sidique says that when it comes to foreign affairs mohamed morsi is just as convenient for the americans as hosni mubarak was egypt was serving the u.s. too much. is trying to continue the same policy but it was some rhetorical distance some symbolic acts that he is independent for example it was his first visit the first visit by egyptian leader to run for city years no egyptian leader went to iran so he went there but did he big or start any strategic alliance was really has no he went express to see him. on iranian policy on its policies on syria. and please the gulf states while big finances of the egyptian economy and also he pleased. nobody was showing anything is happening remember that our spin is all about

putting the house and all the internal situation that is not about foreign policy and i don't see any structural change in egyptian foreign policy since. the president is continuing the same old policy of mubarak but with the distance and some with some symbolism that. coming up in a few moments president vladimir putin tells our t. way he sees russia's future but first a brief recap of the week's top stories in just a few moments stay with us this is all the live in was going. to.

head to execution dates in believe me or just having one or two execution date is enough for anybody to go through your life and. no more than fifty percent of the people here if you didn't texas are not. why you know live in north darfur is like. this it's like you know we execute our convicted capital murder we have the highest execution rate in america we're not afraid to do it we do it well this becomes a point where death becomes. our revenue i hope. i

will get a letter your dad is going to be executed next week then as appears here in miami for you to know you can. hear one of the appearance at the in a manner of me saying that say it's time to go. and i would lead him into the to the death chamber. kind of stayed till after they were dating. well into the future of science technology innovation and all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered.