latest news in the week's top stories polling stations in venezuela waiting the last voters to cast their ballots with anticipation rising to see if longstanding leader wrote chavez or his democratic opponent and retake up religious will take the helm in pro rockets. border shelling between syria and turkey as fresh violence hits damascus with a car bomb exploding outside police headquarters. and italians fury over mounting cuts descends into clashes while civil servants or marching for their jobs in spain.

six am in moscow i'm at treasure bring you today's top stories and a look back at the week's news here on r t polling stations in venezuela closing one by one but preliminary exit polls put the opposition candidate and rekick a prelim ahead of incumbent leader who go to chavez no incidents have been reporting during the during the election day as the nation chooses which candidate is going to run the country for the next six years the election campaign has been a fierce battle between the two with both vowing to respect the outcome u.s. media coverage of the race in venezuela has been criticized by some as being biased against chavez asia times correspondent pepe escobar says washington would like a willing partner in caracas not an intractable leader. it is the will of the election which is shows these will i guess flush which it was the united states

didn't love to have the drawing stage and that's where the electorate was to be sure this before destroy us it but. the trouble is it's amazing because i thought if you follow the mainstream media india way it's in the western europe and even the most of south america big private groups are all cells of america even is well in brazil and argentina for instance to show this is the most deadly night head of state in modern times even more than said that was saying. out of. the image that you made it it's amazing. these private groups most of them they are allied with washington just like the situation that you see inside of it as well so always the job is that just as a communist or even a fascist or even a mix of tools like a communist chess it's completely absurd. arky correspond lucy catherine of is in venezuela and hosting all the latest news and photos from caracas for us follow her

twitter feed for the latest updates on the country's election results and stay tuned for her live report coming your way in the next hour. a car bomb has exploded near police headquarters in syria's capital damascus killing at least one person state t.v. is calling it a terrorist act the blast the latest in a series of attacks aimed at security personnel and government institutions with damascus in particular becoming a frequent target this as syria and turkey strange another round of artillery shells across the border our middle east correspondent policy clear has the latest . stuff straight day tickets i tell you he has fired into syria this coming just minutes off to a more ted landed in turkey treat a fired from syria we understand that at least eight mortars were fired from to key into syria now according to the mayor of the take border town where this shell landed he says that there was very little damage other than damage to a grain depôt but other than that it landed in an empty field and there were no

reports of injuries it is the same board of an age when five members of the same family was killed nineteen wins. that was two women and three children when i'm mortified from syria landed in always a danger building at the same time we're hearing continuing words from the turkish prime minister that he will not allow these kind of events to go unprovoked he says that if pushed he will declare war and that has been quite a strong message from him now that it's going to be soon that this instability and on the turkish syrian border will result in regional instability there's also concern by numerous critics who have put forward the argument that they believe that the shells that are being fired from the syrian side of being fired liberty in each remember that this rewarding area on the syrian side between syria and turkey is an area that is controlled by the rebels and as such it is possible that they're firing these these rounds deliberately to provoke turkey to go to nato and cool so far into range and of course this is something that many people are increasingly

concerned about the situation and so you have to eighteen months of fighting is showing no lacing up they continues to be almost daily blasts in the capital city of damascus and they're particularly cost suicide bombings have become almost the norm the same situation is happening in the leftover the commercial hub of the country in the north and they we're hearing of continuous heavy fighting and also in recent days in recent weeks we've witnessed a rise in prices start families there were also receiving a twitter feed from the shah had none not he is a sunni muslim preacher and this salafist leader has become almost a symbol of the rebels feinstein and syria he says that they have captured the cousin of the syrian president bashar assad we have no information on that at this stage and no way of actually being able to independently prove it russia continues to play a mediating role they are expecting that the e.u. in nato envoy to syria could be in russia later this month and as such will be

there for talks but russia is edging calm and saying that this kind of escalation in tensions along the turkish syrian border is completely unacceptable in any kind of cross border operations are to be found upon political analyst sharmeen or what he thinks the action could be turkey's under the radar approach to intervention in syria. turkey's declared war on syria long time ago this is aragon endeavor to lose war they supplied weapons and they've supplied training assistance they have harbored you know gunmen in jihad just on their territory so so you know turkey's at a situation now crossroads where they cannot seem to get the international system thing need to sort of you know do a last question against the federal game they cannot get a u.n. security council resolution to authorize these things and this may be you know setting the groundwork a pretext for a backdoor into military intervention because of course turkey then caught it can

call on its nato allies to to assist and it's essential to the nato allies who would anyways do you know a military confrontation with the assad regime if there was a u.n. security council resolution and there are questions about this is this the false why you know operation to to sort of set the grounds for military intervention there's been many false narratives over syria i think this is just another one. bahrain is cracking up is keeping up brother its crackdown on parole form protests causing more fierce clashes between police and demonstrators friday tear gas and water cannons were used to disperse crowds violence started after the funeral of a young protester who died in custody. shia activists are demanding equal rights from the sunni a monarchy and the release of political prisoners one of them probably a human rights defender nibiru job has gone on a hunger strike he was briefly released to attend his mother's funeral but not allowed to mourn further with his family where job is serving

a three year jail term for participating in illegal gatherings meanwhile former c.n.n. reporter amber water and things her documentary on what's happening there was censored by that. rain is paying c.n.n. to create content that shows bahrain in a favorable light even though c.n.n. says this contents you know is editorially independent it doesn't see it can affect that what we've seen that with this documentary not airing and also with the constant struggle i had at c.n.n. to get coverage accurate bahrain coverage of the human rights abuses on air while i was there what c.n.n. is doing is they're essentially creating what some people have termed infomercials for dictators and that's this sponsored content that they're airing on c.n.n. international that's actually being paid for by regimes and governments and this violates every principle of journalistic ethics because we're supposed to be watchdogs on these governments we're not supposed to allow them to be paying

customers who are able to kind of dodge our minders and sneak into some of the villages and actually see these atrocities patients who have run out of the hospitals that were shot up with birdshot and as we were heading back out of these villages we were violently detained by security forces and buffering and luckily my female producer and i were able to hide some disks in our broad some are able to actually get out of the country with this content so you can imagine. surprise when we got back to the us and this content was airing on c.n.n. and right after that is when the phone calls started coming into the network complaining about me and trying to get my coverage off the air. violence and unrest returns to tunisia this time a clash over trash at least thirteen thousand angry residents take to the streets setting cars on fire over the reopening of a rubbish dump more details online. washington becomes the latest american city to display and. we look at whether it may actually

be provoking more hatred towards the muslim world this and more a click away at our team dot com. the pakistani military has blocks an anti us motorcade route heading toward the country's tribal hub along the afghan border the protest was led by cricket legend turned politician imraan khan it attracted thousands a large number of civilians have died in u.s. drone strikes khan is calling for an end to the killings robert naiman an activist an analyst pushing for changes to u.s. foreign policy says civilians have become the main victims from drone attacks not high level militant leaders as washington claims it's been a president obama the counterterrorism advisor has claimed that civilian deaths from drone strikes are exceedingly rare well we know that the bureau of investigative journalism in the u.k. has counted somewhere between four hundred eight hundred. civilian deaths since two

thousand and four from u.s. drone strike so in fact far from being exceedingly rare the civilian deaths are normal that's a regular thing and in fact there are seven to fifteen times as many as the deaths of these so-called top level terrorist leaders so the actual policy is something completely different from the story that's being told united states the stories being told united states is this all about targeting top level terrorists. leaders and it's not killing civilians the reality is the total opposite of that the un special rapporteur tour on extradition and execution has said that you know if these reports are true about what the u.s. is doing they would constitute war crimes. u.s. involvement in neighboring afghanistan has also seen thousands of casualties among civilians as well as nato troops later on a look at the legacy of nato action there are eleven years on and its consequences . so with korea's side an agreement with the u.s.

which allows it to possess missiles capable of reaching any part of north korea a previous arms pact with washington restricted souls' ability to develop or deploy long range rockets leaving many targets in the reclusive communist state out of reach but tim beal an asia specialist from london thinks the real go behind the deal could be to threaten china. this new range will take them into china that i think has been the sticking point. solutions in the americas and now increased to it. sooner so it was the american election everything to do with elections for the south korea's point of view they want to build in capability for their next. in december which conceivably might have been more peaceful government i think this. signing has not been very much to do with that satellite test is just the problem of long discussions and both sides thinking

this is it time for electoral reasons to come to an agreement to to extend a ballistic missile range there is a certain reason call for concern i mean more missiles around them there is a danger of things that they think is who don't really think it makes any any difference in the balance of the balance of power in east asia on me in america's favor is our greatest failure north korea is a very weak in terms real military terms and we have to see this within the context of all american strategy to contain china and here austerity anger mounting any europe and civil servants take to the streets for a second day in madrid trade unions gathered thousands to demand an end to cutbacks in public sector and the privatization of public services into lee has also seen its fair share of action this week led by the country students who clashed with

police. thousands marched in major cities calling for the government to save schools not banks in iran but to six policemen were injured as students rolled stones and tried to rush a police van meanwhile in venice independence supporters marched on saturday to demand the region go it alone from rome yet arrest is prompting investment of a. iser patrick young to see the e.u. could be headed toward collapse. the european union constantly believes it knows what's best for all of its client states therefore it pushed countries like ireland to be allied in order to basically appease french and german borrowers there are absolutely no positive results from what the e.u. has done over the course of the last five or ten years indeed basically the history of the euro is not horribly soiled exercise it effectively breaching the people and trying to destroy economies the european union has several fundamental problems ultimately it is a very rich area with

a great deal of resources the difficulty is it's very difficult to start a business it's very difficult to run a business if you're successful in the business they're going to touch you to death and in the meantime they're all running absolutely ridiculous communist era sized socialist states the truth is western europe is bankrupt it cannot afford to have the government be the major economic actor in the system and therefore just as we saw russian communism collapsed so too we are seeing the death of western european socialism u.k. prime minister david cameron warns he would veto the use new budget if necessary he suggested europe should have two separate budgets one for countries that use the euro currency and another one for those who don't later this hour economics professor robert skidelsky tells r.t. that london is used to blaming others for its economic troubles. sad fact is that the british economy has been shrinking slowly almost for a year now rather like

a very slow balloon and the government of been trying in one or two small ways to give it a bit of a stimulus one thing is that they're blaming everyone but themselves. it was a it was the euro crisis then it was the high high commodity. a rise in commodity prices and so they claim that the policy of a sterile should bring about the recovery but the speed derailed by that x. shocks but the policy of a sterrett is basically wrong when there is a lack of private sector demond when banks lending when businesses don't want to borrow when people are cutting down their spending because they want to reduce their debt when the government then adds to that sort of downward pressure on spending then it's no surprise that the economy isn't growing.

october seventh eleven years ago the u.s. led war in afghanistan began more than three thousand alliance troops have died in the conflict most of them americans far more afghan civilians have also lost their lives international affairs commentator rick rose off from the group stop nato thinks the alliance has fostered discontent among the afghan people. precious little has been accomplished on the positive sense of course for the the western military intervention an occupation in afghanistan. most of you know arguably the only accomplishment dubious as it is that opium production of skyrocketed under the watch of the u.s. and nato in afghanistan you know evidently the afghan people are not on developing foreign boots on the ground and no particularly after such a prolonged period of the so-called green on blue attacks are an indication that the rank and file of the the afghan population would like to see us in their nato

allies or the us in their nato allies vacate the country this quickly as possible and that none of this. debacle would have occurred in the first place out of not been for the card in the reagan administration's fear of the war which you know the exacerbated ethnic and regional and other tensions inside the country and there's an in essence led to thirty four year war in afghanistan and we have to place the blame where it belongs you know this is the result of u.s. intervention going back to the late ninety's up in these turning out of some other stories making global headlines libya's a recently elected prime minister has been forced to stand down after a no confidence hope from parliament stuff i wish it were a has failed to win a spell for a second time to get lawmaker approval for a new cabinet initial cabinet lineup was rejected thursday protesters stormed the building and called for the prime minister's resignation bush a grove as the country's first leader i like data after last year's overthrow of the khadafi regime. and alleged

palestinian militant was killed nine others injured by an israeli airstrike in gaza aircraft targeted to motorcyclists who israel claims were jihadi he's planning a terror attack against troops and civilians witnesses identified one is a member of a palestinian militant group three children were among the injured. that as president has ordered land in the river border crossings with south sudan reopened this after the two countries president's last month signed deals on security and cooperation hailed by experts as a signal of the end of the long running tension between the two countries the nations broke apart in july last year after decades of civil war. a private california based company space x. has successfully launched the maiden flight of its dragon cargo ship is the first mission of twelve planned under a one point six billion dollars contract with nasa space x.

is working on transforming the unmanned dragon vessel into a space ship that could carry american astronauts up to the international space station for more on the future of u.s. private companies involvement in space exploration i'm joined live by brian we will secure world foundation thank you for joining us so today a state funded programs have a monopoly on space exploration but how strong of a competition do you think private companies can provide i think in certain areas for example for via the base of transportation to and from the space station these commercial private companies can provide the competition but there are other areas you know long term exploration of the moon and mars and beyond where for the time being you're probably just still see a lot of state run companies or state run programs what does this mean for the u.s. space exploration programs in particular well i think in particular it means that you know there's a chance that nasa can perhaps you know contract for these basic services to and

from the inner space station and these private companies which would then allow nasa to focus its money and its efforts on some of the other aspects exploration such as routes going back to the moon now currently the russian cosmodrome by connor is the only complex sending any astronauts to the international space station space x. is working on developing the unmanned drone ship in order to send other astronauts into space how do you think this could affect russia's space program they do get a bit of money obviously from the from the other foreign. cosmonauts they said oh sure i think for the time being it's not to have an effect at all space x. still has a long ways to go before it can prove that it can carry humans safely to and from the our sister station. but in the long term you know over the next few years or longer it could prove to be some interesting competition and the company hopes their spacecraft will significantly reduce the cost of launching satellites into

orbit and potentially people too i mean de la liberte the founder of cirque du soleil flew into space for thirty five million dollars that was three years ago do you think that could be brought down significantly there's there's plenty of hopes that it could be brought down and some people think it can but i think we still have a ways to go before we can really see for certain right now the space x. and their dragon capsule they've now had a second successful launch we'll see how the first mission of the twelve that you mentioned are going to go and and how they're going to be able to human rate their spacecraft the next couple years if all of that goes according to plan and then there's probably a good chance that it could bring that cost down but there's a lot of uncertainty at the moment now this cargo ship is to return to earth at the end of the month and it's going to be bringing with it science projects including capsules filled with blood and urine samples part of medical studies what kind of contribute contribution do you think that could make for modern science what they're looking to do is they're looking to analyze those samples and try and get

a better understanding of what the effects of long term stay on my gravity are the human body and it's hope that those studies will help figure out how to enable humans to live in space for much longer periods of time and mitigate some of the ill effects and that will really help boost chances of long term exploration what do you see as being the future of space travel. while it that's a really interesting question because face travel is not a cheap endeavor and as we've seen you know the world's going through some tough economic times i think for the time being you're going to see a renewed effort to try and get more use out of the international space station through the rest of its life time and then i think you're probably going to. see some international some cooperative missions that look at what the next step is for how do they get gas that will probably be back to the moon all right very good brian weeden from the secure world foundation thanks very much for your insight

you're welcome. a misunderstanding as of the young russian men badly beaten in a hospital bed the student who'd been detained on charges later dropped is now facing a lengthy and uncertain recovery after being beaten by inmates at a canadian juvenile detention center his family and friends say the country's authorities are doing everything to help our cause polly boycott reports. a trip to study english in canada gone horribly wrong twenty four year old denise teller cough arrived in calgary in june eager to learn about the country and make new friends it was at this language school those friends would quickly turn to enemies with a misunderstanding over a girl she was charged with making threats and placed in calgary's remand center i believe we're going to face to face like she was just barely. you know larry you know a cool place now that you know what not to buy or. something i mean. i don't know

why it was just a big misunderstanding while his family in moscow tried to scrape together the bail money things took a turn for the worse cellmates brutally attacked him jumping on his head repeatedly little after months on a life support machine denise recently retained consciousness doc to say he's in a vegetative state his adoring family is devastated the lane go no eating on his own you have been there already and you grieving today do you. feel your arias go our way or i think you know very slowly or very the charges that denise faced have now been dropped which in turn meant the detention center was no longer responsible for his medical. bills leaving his family facing a financial nightmare on top of the emotional one local media campaigning to raise funds for denise's ballooning medical bills. will watch action.

or. did you call him to call it bull or in. general. all we were or what we all hope all warm and. denise isn't the only victim to emerge from this facility last month another man christopher kirk suffragette a lacerated spleen and a broken nose after a similar attack while in custody. very often in sharpening all we were and it didn't do not a lot but. you know when we were dating. in the war i mean. the young man so eager to find out about life in canada studying english like he didn't initially set out is now a distant prospect fast he'll once again have to learn the basics how to walk feed

himself and speak his native russian denise's family can only hope that the country where this brutal attack took place provides him with the help that we so desperately needs. moderates we speak with an award winning economist and a story and for his take on how to mend britain's economy that's after a short break. culture is that so much of an oldish because it is a minute mark when when is the end really the end of the strategy of the u.s. led mission in afghanistan is in a shambles green on blue attacks against coalition. while. the california desert offers an air show and an on a mission museum was

a matter you. most of the residents never profited from the performance notion of coming to our signature trip there when you look up and there's one captain on you he's the alpha beta gamma he was always the final twin tree and he's let me go with out there know what's going on they can pinpoint. the dirt right now. those shells become income mortal danger and a piece of art is still a campaign based directive in making some temporary. bombs and. on our team. is steve.

soon which brightened. you. don't. today i'm talking to dogs robert skidelsky he's a professor of political economy and also the biography of john maynard keynes widely considered to be the most influential economist of the twentieth century we'll be talking about what keynes could bring.