no. rise against austerity in greece. cuts targeting some of the most vulnerable leaving even the most crisis hard greeks incensed. euro worries take their toll of the french with freshly elected president francois. watching his ratings plummet blowpipe economic blood. russia turns eastward at the asia pacific summit economic and political ties with china growing ever stronger which put on the u.s. and its moves for influence in the region. plus it's almost dead heat between the republicans and democrats in the race for the white house but both candidates are looking to set apart that remarkably similar platforms.

with a note back in the past seven days top stories and the latest developments this is the weekly on. a restless night in greece is 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 latest cuts are especially painful to the country's most vulnerable pensioners low income workers and dependents but not everyone is against the cuts e.u. and i.m.f. that inspectors are in athens to assess how the a sturdy drive is going and decide whether the government deserves more bailout money to the people of a has more from personal. 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 meant taining any credibility that it has left on the global financial stage and not credibility is set 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 the second city demonstrating against the

way that the current governments are handling the financial crisis and anger and the way the government is dealing with the crisis but what they're doing is wrong it's not just in terms of protest the greek people are airing 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 fifth 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 organizing. 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

airing their views but they're certainly not of the violence a that we've seen in cities like nothings as people demonstrate against the handling of the financial crisis. 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 net works have been dubbed an act of war against the working class and next door in spain anger merkel's visit sparked street protests with demonstrators demanding an end to meddling in madrid's affairs thanks to the daunting financial storm clouds over the eurozone across central bank has been forced to roll out the artillery the z.b. says it all out begin buying up your own nation's debt to stabilize their borrowing costs the financial advisor market a poly believes this isn't the solution. they refuse to deal with the issues it's it's very simple that you would feel for fiscal integration which means that the germans have to sign for everybody else's debt and you get your right.

shared library for the debt and further fiscal it should you have a split of the euro there's no two ways about it in the meantime what you can do is keep printing money which is what everybody is hoping for is mr druggy to keep printing it to actually help the situation until the politics can catch up with the politics has been lacking and they've had lots and lots of meetings but we're still no closer to two. for the eurozone. it's anything but smooth sailing for the larger more stable european economies too in france 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 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 sure i. came after nine years in government and. bad ratings come 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 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. francis began sending direct aid to anti assad regions in syria a former french colony a move that shortly followed along problem. it's 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 national interests. 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 mother of three this is what she tells the kids they see the film they tell the kids to study hard improve their language skills and then 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 well french foreign policy is being mocked as far away as syria damascus paris made treatment for schizophrenia and the angry rhetoric of the country for supporting rebels. kosovo closes the foreign run committee supervising its

government hailing it as a historic move this white thousands of nato forces are still being in its territory. all that story come first the world shifted to the east this week as heavyweight asia pacific nations gathered to decide how to prop up global growth the coon and 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 wanted to reclaim evident there is in the city of a lot of our stock. 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 that in effect in the. china

plays an extremely important role as a driver of global economic growth actually in an exclusive interview that the president gave prior to the 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 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 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. i was asked to comment on his recent stop the he made prior to the apec summit and that was your model in russia siberia 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 craves the sighted to follow putin and the others decided to go somewhere

else and this is what he had to say not all the cream. only the weak ones don't come from it was going to i must admit it's also the leaders fault the pilots phoned the not all the koreans fallujah mediately if you fly 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'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. russia's turn to the east could come in the expense of its trade links with the west but the u.s. and europe only have themselves to blame says banaras 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 with the bric nations has gone from a marketing an acronym to actually

a political organization the 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. 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 five. america is only talking about trade with russia sense of the seeds of the deputy and so clearly building what putin has been calling. union has gone to the top of the russian policy agenda and that's russia asia led by china of course and that's where all the effort is going. to be absent from the summit in vladivostok was barack obama with the u.s. presidential election race and for heat he opted to stay on the campaign trail at home and it's paying off with recent polls putting a bomb a slightly ahead of his republican rival mitt romney there was reports when you look at the two parties platforms it sometimes seems there's little to separate

them. in two thousand me for aco bomb i turned us politics into something of a pop culture phenomenon we made 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 valuing 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 obama. 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 porte monnaie r.t. new york. kevin zeese director of come home america believes both candidates are there to serve corporate rather than public interest. mitt romney i think is a great example of what's wrong with america that he's obviously he's highly his taxes for the american people as was not the truth about his plans is he sending money or sure he became wealthy by destroying u.s. businesses and create more jobs overseas he's exactly what's wrong with this

country on the economic side it's a he's a one percenter and he's the one percenter deep in his heart so he's really what's wrong with president obama the same time you know he's supported by wall street he supported by the health insurance industry puts in place policies that supported gender so neither of these kids really represent the people they resent the big business moneyed interests and not the people. either romney or obama will confront these issues and that you will you know he was gushing about breaking up the big banks you want your own discussion about amending being u.s. empire having the military budget you watch in the weekly here in arctic coming up a little later this hour turning and then these words into a weapon. his rhetoric from tehran as a means to justify settling outside the jewish state's official borders. so bahrain deals with protests that have hit the country daily since the end of august and demonstrators defy government and authorized rallies despite police brutality.

and the breakaway serbian region of kosovo has amended its constitution to get rid of western lead over syria's who had the power to follow government officials and reject laws the international civilian office was set up to ensure the minority in kosovo is protected because of as prime minister says closing it down is a very special and historic move the historian says it's more of a cosmetic change. the i think tensions are have been constantly in a state of escalation since last since last year since the attempt of the forty's to assert control of the northern part of the province and the foreign supervision as i said it's not so much the decreasing as it's changing venues now all of the contact is going to be directly between nato and the sponsors of this so-called independent state of course so and the so-called government there the i.c.a.o. is simply an office whose. which was supposed to give

a pretense of legitimacy to the whole process. and you can follow this and many other stories online here's what else is there for you at the moment to containers and soldiers now germany is working on the spy part of 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. this week canada expelled all iranian diplomats and closed its embassy in tehran declared iran a state sponsor of terrorism and slammed its nuclear program and stance on syria this pushed relations to crisis point to iran promised retaliation. horn of the

u.s. meanwhile in israel the rhetoric being used by sworn enemy iran is actually proving useful to some trying to justify a relentless push for a new settlement. went to one of the israeli enclaves to explain i the call to prayer religious jews walk past a mosque in judaism's second holiest city the scene speaks volumes about the gap between two peoples living cheek by jowl forty five years ago the part of hebron the largest city in the west bank was returned to jewish control since then around six hundred jewish families have lived in a small enclave outnumbered vastly by palestinians they vow they will never be driven out despite the fact that jewish settlement in hebron is widely considered illegal under international law and so they justify their presence in part by looking for an enemy the fact that. there is a distinct target to get the jews out of her own is not

a and and in and of itself it's a means to an end that being that they don't want to use in her own they don't want trees in jerusalem but even more than that they don't want use in tel aviv or in haifa or anywhere else and lately instead of pointing fingers of palestinians the secular movement has begun championing the claims of iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad he strikes fear and uncertainty in the hearts of most israelis is their rhetoric their lot of all of them in the future this is a should not exist and that they don't. remember saying it or and over again but the hostile talk from tehran is having unintended consequences the settler movement is mocking ahmadinejad's comments inadvertently putting him in the camp when israel's most widely circulated daily newspaper recently listed the safest cities to live in a time of emergency most israelis didn't notice that listed among the so-called

cities of refuge or civil settlement alongside residential centers within israel proper. is doing for the settlers what they've been struggling to do alone and that is give them legitimacy by terrifying ordinary israelis so they forget to distinguish between israel proper and the settlements but a growing chorus of anti settlement protesters is calling on the government to cool down and stop buying into the politics of fear it's obvious that the government is talking about iran as a diversion diversion from the no peace with the palestinians with the with what's going on with the settlements with the amount of money that there's reading on the settlements nonetheless the settler movement is moving full steam ahead behind me is palestinian have run permission to drive through this boom comes from the israeli army that sits here just outside palestinian have run inside. run this is the perfect example of how israeli settlements and palestinian villages and cities

exist on top of each other and for as long as the settlers can play on israeli fear and convince israelis that muslims want to kill them wherever they are they'll continue building their settlements and ordinary israelis will remain focused on the threat outside their borders rather than look at what is happening in the own backyard. r.t. hebron syria has refused to be a punch bag for western nations lashing out at france for backing the rebels seeking to alst president assad the muskets went as far as saying paris is suffering from schizophrenia that's after washington intensified calls to provide weapons to armed groups have been desperately trying to seize guns also ukase david cameron called again for assad to resign to make way for a new government formed by the opposition the president of the arab lawyers association thinks that western nations a sacrifice in the syrian people for political goals. western powers have gone

where you beyond what was acceptable even under the questionable matter of trying to. interfere in internal affairs of countries and the pretext of human rights protection of civilians the western powers are stopping the civilian population stopping the revolution from actually coming to terms with the government at the end of the day the western powers want to change the existing regimes because that . is the only one that is left that is not. only britain. and the countries assisting are willing to sacrifice the population of syria in order to achieve their objective of changing the regime. the rain is another country witnessing daily protests and violence though this time incited by the police security officers resorted to tear gas and stun grenades to deal with scores of peaceful demonstrators who defied a government. activist the streets demanding democratic change in the release of

political prisoners from the ruling family is ignoring their calls on tuesday bahrain's court decided to uphold the guilty verdict for opposition activists accused of plotting to overthrow the government and so he's a geo political analyst for the website thinks the protest isn't just gaining momentum. but the problem in bahrain is this is an actual democratic reform movement this is a real arab spring movement this isn't like the kind of fake arab spring that you saw in egypt this has been brewing and boiling over for over one year now but yet it's been more or less not commented on at all in the global mainstream corporate media and some of the state run media organizations like the b.b.c. they're in a very difficult position the opposition movement because as a result of this ruling some of the potential sentences for protesting gets the government could be as much life in prison. what's happening in their sort of

constructing sort of program. to quell any just that whatsoever. you've been watching the weekly or not to recap of our top stories coming your way in just three minutes from now stay with us life salty in the sky. there cloudless childhood was overshadowed by this tragedy. they still feel the

fear they faced. and remember every second of the slightness. it will remain in their memories and hearts forever. the town of anderson so. innocent victims. of middling scholem's. british.

take three. three three. three.