rise against austerity in greece thousands rally and cuts targeting some of the most vulnerable even the most crisis hardened greeks incensed. euro woes take their toll on the french with freshly elected president francois hollande watching his ratings plummet by economic blood. pressure turns east would be asia pacific summit economic and political ties with china growing ever stronger which could on the u.s. and its news for influence in the region. plus it's almost a dead heat between the republicans and democrats in the race for the white house both candidates looking to set apart their remarkably similar platform.

with a look back at the past seven days top stories in the latest developments this is the weekly on. 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 in a new flag the event was by and large peaceful as a small army of police officers looked on these latest counts are especially painful for to the country's most vulnerable to pensioners low income workers and dependents but not everyone is against the cuts e.u. and i.m.f. and debt inspectors are in athens to assess how this thirty drive is going and decide whether the government deserves more bailout money peter all of it has more from salonica. 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 there are 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 that is from the so-called troika arrive 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 received 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 governments are handling the financial crisis when 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 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 testimony protesting what they call the fascist organization. i have to say though this demonstration 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 what is peter over there and it's not only in greece where 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 meddling in madrid's affairs. the financial storm clouds over the euro zone. central bank forced to roll out the artillery and he says it will now begin buying up your own nation's debts to stabilize their own costs and that's something n.e.p. will darkness will be affective. is the last last throw really i should make the point that back in two thousand and ten the your prince 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 but there is a huge problem with spain there's a huge problem with this one and also the conditions which the european central bank are seeking to impose on countries participating are such that. the very independence is under threat it's anything but smooth sailing for the larger more 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 the artist has recently explained 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 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 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. after only four months. 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. francis began 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 in 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 for now. show interest about the we can change president but the foreign policy

doesn't change 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 is either false out there to tell the kids to study hard improve their language skills and they must think of their future outside of france your call force and at this point the french have clearly lost patience does or still you are to paris. still have you this hour crossing the line fares policy to syria could backfire just british fighters are heading to the front line and could bring violence back home. and canada's

francophone quebec elects a new separatist government and brings new hope for the provinces battle hardened student protesters. the world shifted to the east this week because heavyweight asia pacific nations gather to decide how to prop up global growth to cool and damp weather of the russian far east until the walls between russia and china whose friendship is seen as a strong asset to economic recovery but is dmitri medvedev is in the city of a lot of stock. when the 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. china plays an extremely important role as

a driver of global economic growth actually in an exclusive interview that the president gave r t 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 not only in russia's eyes but also in the eyes of the whole world nor what makes this rather special however is that russia and china are neighbors and our special relations took thousands of years to evolve to where they are. over the coming years we are bound to achieve a one hundred billion 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 them 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 integration was asked as to what is happening between

russia and europe is the trade war he answered that the situation is far from a called trade war and the fact that your commission is there right now looking into gas problems 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 rather peculiar and one thing i would say question that let. i 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 percent of the crave the sighted to follow putin and the other decided to go somewhere else and this is what he had to say not all the creams fallujah mediately only the we

don't. i must admit it's also the leaders fault the pilots fault for not all the koreans fallujah mediately 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 i mean should be taken care of as much as possible. and i was listening to that. international press center here and the answer was followed by a standing ovation between bit of anger there were along 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. 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 may well 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 district of the city and innocent 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 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 or building 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 sent to resign to make way for a new government formed by the syrian opposition and that the u.k. insists its support for the rebels is limited to lethal aid smith reports fighters from britain already on the frontline. 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 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 who signed the support and made work and other. broad saying that they're going to support the resistance some says mahmud 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 they're 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 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 attackers space seven 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. 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 ark 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. ideologies necessarily how ideologies and viewpoints might 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 the tit for tat and that's where. you know 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 the support for the syrian opposition laura smith r t london . well there's no rest for bahrain either as the monarchy deals with daily protests that haven't stopped since the end of august demonstrators defying government ban on an authorized rallies despite heavy policing with tear gas and stun grenades used during peaceful rallies you can watch the full story next hour. also in the next hour here on r.t. turning and in his words into a weapon some in israel use rhetoric from to run as a means to justify grest of settling outside the jewish state's official borders. the first 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 only by the slimmest of margins and with just two months to go till the presidential vote both candidates will be working overtime to shine the other.

reports that may be a challenge. in two thousand and eight the rock obama turned us politics into something of a pop culture phenomenon we may be at 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 valley 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 their total 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 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 obama should 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 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 coin marina port ny r.t. new york. well you can follow this and many other stories we're showing you on the screen online here's what else is there free at the moment on our web site let's go to taylor's in seoul just now germany is working on the spy part as berlin creates a brand new intelligence network. and prosecutors target the more exotic forms of corruption sex bribes blocking debate over just where to draw the line on illicit

payments. to canada now in. a divisive election in the francophone province of quebec has resulted in a narrow victory for the separatists party the federalists who have held on to power for decades has seen that position we can buy a seven month long standoff against the provinces students at the arrivals promised a meaningful resolution to the conflict over a proposed two wishing fee hike. president of the federation of university students hopes the new government will be friendly and to the movement's demands. we're now . going for. a year that will be very difficult been divided and we need to stay together to make sure that we can achieve big things in the province it is a minority government it's already difficult and so and we are expecting us this

today and will bring this concern there is allusion to the conflict that has been acquired by this seven months now so for sure for the student movement we're expecting intuition if you criticize this is our main objective our main goal and so have to see but i hope it doesn't affect the proposition are. the this solution that in fact if i was proposing to resolve this crisis we need to make sure that for now how we actually address the issue of the tuition fee increase and afterward if the best people why is proposing a separation from the rest will be actually making sure that our general assembly are taking position on this particularly issue. now to some other world news in brief a spate of attacks levon in cities killing at least sixty four a car bomb targeted police recruits lining up job at an oil company's office in the northern city of kirkuk outside of the capital ten soldiers were killed in a dawn ambush on the car bombings hit cities from the southern port and. syria

border no one has claimed responsibility for the tax. meanwhile iraq's vice president has been given the death sentence after a court ruled he was running death squads against the country's security forces and shias. how she me was not in court though he fled to turkey as soon as the charges against him emerged in december ok sparked a political crisis in iraq with other sony politicians branding the prime minister has issued the warrant for a dictator. city and its immediate surroundings have been hit by two tornadoes the severe weather pummeled the u.s. atlantic coast twisters cause power outages and property damage but no injuries reported the storms caused flooding in areas of new england and left thousands without electricity in washington traveling bizzare sprung up in cairo the stalls are manned by some of the biggest american corporations including google coca-cola and lockheed martin it's the largest u.s.

trade delegation ever to travel to the arab world the push for new markets comes as washington sweetened 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 room. political sociologist sayed said he says that when it comes to foreign affairs mohamed morsi is just as convenient for the americans as barack was . egypt was serving us too much most 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 any egyptian leader of. course thirty years no egyptian leader went so he went there but did he big or start any strategic alliance was iranians know he went there and express the same. iranian policy on its

policies on syria. and then please the gulf states big finances of the egyptian economy and also he pleases the americans and the israelis and nobody was showing that anything is happening remember that all of spain is all about putting the whole of the house and all the internal situation that is not about foreign policy and i don't see any a structural change in egyptian foreign policy since the spring the president is continuing the same old policy of mubarak but with this tense and some we're told and some symbolism that you've been watching the weekly here and i'll be back with this week's headlines in just a few moments from now stay with us live here in moscow.

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 have been getting worse and no doctor has been able to help me please know that i'll finally be at peace and with no more pain i wish i could have had a life with it was a bit 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 warned about its rare side effects serious life changing side effects.