a two hundred percent bonus annual salary is too little for britain it seems which rejects a new plans to executive pay. from the battlefield to the ballot box the taliban could launch a political debate in afghanistan this despite thousands of lives and billions of dollars. to remove them from power. china's reins of power to new leaders who are set to defend beijing's military might amid a longstanding battle for influence with the u.s. . and also reporting that the vicious attack on the artistic director for the renowned bolshoi ballet company is closer to being resolved as police arrest their first suspect here in moscow.

around the world on the screen online international news and comment line from the new center here in moscow this is. a bank. can never be too big that's the view of the u.k. authorities who oppose the plans for curbs britain's finance minister has given a resolute note to the blocks planned to prevent bankers from receiving bonuses bigger than that base salaries. reports now from london on the reaction. this is a measure that's likely to be quite popular with a lot of the general public because a lot of very hard working people that find it very hard just to get by on their every day wages if we compare the figures in two thousand and two the overall bonuses paid out to bank is in the u.k. were seven billion pounds whereas most recently that figure has gone up to the scene billion pounds and that's something that quite a great swathe of the general public place very hard to stomach at a time when wages are forming and the price of the centuries are going after all of

the time because of inflation so while george osborne says that this is a way to really save the financial services industry and it would be crippling for britain to have this cap imposed a lot of critics would say that this is the chancellor just trying to protect the bankers that would ultimately then vote for the conservative party at the next general election what many people here in the u.k. are also saying is that this could really be the tipping point for the e.u. and britain that this could be an issue that could really force the britain to think about other potential ways of isolating themselves father and perhaps even a british exit from the european union well let's discuss this further with brooks newmark is a conservative m.p. and joins me now live from london so why are you the u.k. . opposed to these plans. well i think probably on two levels first of

all it's impractical it doesn't make sense. i think that a lot of this is obviously this is a huge outrage out there with the public. they don't understand the banks they certainly see telephone numbers in terms of bankers' bonuses and many ordinary people are struggling out there so the sense of outrage that they as taxpayers have had to bear allowed the banks and then are seeing multi-million pound or dollar or euro bonuses does create a sense of outrage with them but there is a practical problem which is that the people who are in banks and banks themselves are very mobile so they can go anywhere in the world they don't need to be in london or paris or frankfurt or even zurich for that matter they can go anywhere and do their business because most business is done online so or on

a telephone or can be done abroad so i think the reality is something practical to impose is very difficult but surely you can understand that happen ok or just tell me the second point i want to come back to you on the people's outrage of tom well it well is that this is then it's the point the charts are made which is that then people pay themselves huge salaries up front so there isn't a bonus system and so you'll find people will game the system they will pay themselves options or capital instead of cash bonuses which will have the sort of same impact as a bonus i think what we need to deal with which is the real problem which was the risk element in people understanding risk within the banks in dealing with that rather than dealing with the rewards if people you know make a lot of money for their business so if they're going to start you want to actually get it to our hala so you know hold on a second hold on. what i want you to understand is do you mean it's not a government leo now. you're talking about rates surely bonuses do actually promote

that element of risk because bankers are going to take reckless decisions because they could earn a lot of money from it and that's why people are angry and they see it more at a time of. well that's an interesting analysis of it in fact usually what happens with risk is there is a risk management team who decide how much capital can be put at risk at any institution so it's not the individual traders the individual traders are told what the limits of risk that they have but actually it's the risk managers themselves within these institutions that decide how much can be risked or not so to do it on the individuals individuals will obviously. deal with what they can within a reasonable risk profile that they're given if the problem was this was that there was very little understanding i think of the sort of derivatives and risk that was be played with by even the people who were some of the decision makers so i don't

know that you surely i know you have a background in finance and what you say sounds very convincing but of course as i said already at a time of austerity people are angry with the bankers your party can you politically be seen now to be supporting this initiative when people are struggling with you doing this just because you want the city in your pocket as it were as you heading towards the twenty fifteen election because of obviously the city of london does support the conservative party yeah but i think to be honest in terms of our target seats which is where we do need to win i don't think whether we keep fifteen hundred or two thousand or two in our thousand bankers happy with their bonuses going to make any difference to the. result in terms of keeping them happy i think we'll have to do exactly what it does have to do with is that the. it's a hugely important center for us in terms of our expertise it contributes a huge amount to the exchequer and if we damage that by trying to penalize those

who actually you know do do a good job within their banking institutions we're going to drive that business away i do not want to see the business driven away and a lot of this decision making is being done by those countries that do not have as large a financial center as we've got so all right and i know it's a lot of an impact of course london is the largest financial center in the e.u. but what's this going to do politically with its relationship with the e.u. because it looks actually as if the e.u. will go ahead and do this even though george osborne in your party going to be against it so what does that do about the relationship will anyone notice a moment. i noticed there was sort of an olive branch handed out by the by the german finance minister who said that he wouldn't want to this to be implemented by effectively qualified majority voting which of course they're entitled to do i think they want to bring some sort of consensus to this as certainly with the

language that the chancellor here has that i think he wants to have some sort of consensus agreed upon on this issue we're well aware of the toxicity of this issue and we're well aware of the insensitivity of many bankers some of the big banks in terms of the way they have of border themselves given these times of austerity i am someone who is very focused on rewarding people through options schemes that vest over time in terms of giving them shares that vest over time i think these very large cash bonuses do create you're right a sort of a disincentive to behave well and what has happened traditionally in the city is people the right swung for the fences if they've made a lot of my. they've got a big bonus if they haven't they've been sacked and rehired by somebody else who's paid them even more money that has been the stupidity of the city at least through two thousand and eight i'm hoping says two thousand and eight there's been

a step change in that sort of culture you might really get good to get your point of view on this thank you very much for joining us live thanks your time here on r.t. conservative m.p. live from london. thank you. what with the afghan presidential election approaching next year the taliban says it's seriously considering entering politics former official in the militia said the group could launch a political party but that doesn't necessarily mean an end to the insurgency of course one of the original goals of the u.s. led war in afghanistan was to remove the taliban from power so let's have a look at what this has cost both countries well since the launch of the military operation in two thousand and one more than two thousand u.s. soldiers have been killed total coalition losses have topped three thousand lives the number of americans injured in the line of duty exceeds seventeen thousand and the death toll among afghan civilians is staggering more than thirty thousand lives lost in the war and from the human factor to financial burden of the war but as far

as america's concerned the price tag of the decade long effort is a massive seven hundred billion dollars now if the taliban return to power all the sacrifices can turn out to be in vain and a taliban victory could easily become reality according to former afghan m.p. valued sultanzoy. this government has so much so many problems that western world have lost their credibility and this government has no credibility so in that sort of a situation that taliban and had been smart they would have scored big in the political front but i think the taliban can take advantage of this void in fill that vacuum it is up to the taliban to show their real face not the face that is pushed by the british intelligence are the facts on the intelligence the west is is confused the west is looking for an exit a very speedy exit and there i'm afraid that they will probably do whatever is

possible whatever is convenient to put up a very very tedious. and very temporary fix and they're leave and then things will go back to where i had started that's the problem in the region has to realize that we have to find sustainable fixes for this problem not a temporary face saving thing for the nato to leave and then leave a big problem for afghanistan for the neighborhood. and of course we're always interested in your views on the stories we cover and today we're asking you to vote on whether you believe the afghan taliban can transform itself from an armed insurgency into a credible credible political force and common take part in the on line poll right now. it's.

maybe one of the world's most reclusive states but it seems the power of the web is slowly lifting the veil of secrecy on north korea instagram and twitter and now in north korea and the even claims that even pirate bay was preparing to drop anchor that. i spoke to my colleague lucy kavanagh of about this. started with a tweet by the bureau chief of the associated press in korea ms jane leavy who on february twenty fifth tweeted that this is my first tweet using career links new mobile internet service hello world from center in pyongyang this tweet has gone to like millions of retreats but definite did open the floodgates in some way that

after that we've seen instagram pictures facebook tags check ins all coming from one of the world's most closed countries and definitely this is a breakthrough and nothing we have experienced before well certainly exciting stuff but i mean this is actually translate to the locals the people on the ground are they running around posting instagram photos and tweets well the korea link of the only internet provider in korea you know a phrase like that would have been unthinkable three years ago yeah it launched this service the mobile internet service but now for now it's only available to visiting guests it's not available to the local population but they can already send text messages to each other and even make a video calls to each other which is already a breakthrough for a country where having curtains and windows is outlawed because then it would mean you have something to hide so which is not something i heard about before and i'm curious is this something to you personally would have ever imagined seeing in north korea i mean you've been to the country what's it been like when you visited well i saw the curtains part i saw all windows were open when i was there some

seven years ago to change in about there in a way when i came there i was shocked because my cell phone was confiscated at passport control and the only one time i could use internet i could go online was from a russian embassy because they had a contract with a chinese satellite provider and i was the only way i could actually go online to do to post something to post and pictures from inside the north korean country so definitely the situation has changed now compared to what it was like seven years ago when i was there then piers of course it's hard for us just speculate as to why these changes are happening since it's a fairly closed country but do you believe that this has something to do with a change in leadership by a younger you no more. energetic man who is perhaps more aware of things like three g. for example absolutely when kim jong il the late korean leader said that the country needs to embrace the new high tech technology the new high tech era probably his son who is now in charge of the country took these words very seriously recently saw a visit of one of the google stop executives to the country something unthinkable

you know which is crazy if you think about it three four years ago then we saw visit over from boy in the n.b.a. player former n.b.a. player dennis rodman who actually said kim jong un his friend for life so all this shows that that north korea wants to open up to the world the question is certainly to what extent the country will open itself of course and i'm really curious how you say this whole pirate bay story what exactly is going on there as. well first we heard a statement published on pirate base website that i quote today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of korea to fight our battles from the network it is ironic in many ways because pirate bay as we know has always been prosecuted globally and north korea is also in a very difficult situation let's put it this way. they even changed their logo for a short period of time the typical pirate ship was replaced with a ship having north korean flags on it later we contacted people from the pirate

bay who said this was a joke which was aimed at directing attention to their problems that they are being prosecuted but certainly as we know all jokes have some truth behind them. china's prime minister has opened the national people's congress in beijing the event is especially significant this year due to a handover of power to a new generation of communist party leaders which only occurs once a decade among the rhames as a double digit boost to defense spending something which may worry china's main rival the us where recent spending cuts have meant a big blow for the military first as steve seeing from the university of nottingham says that washington so-called pivot to asia prompted beijing's defensive stance the new chinese president xi jinping is a much more self-confident confident assertive and nationalistic person it and therefore we are likely to see a china much more assertive in the next ten years in terms of what is described as the american pivot back to asia the chinese see these as

a major change in american policy that is directed against china as a less than friendly act and therefore the chinese are trying to. undermine american rebalancing and it is also the reasons for the double digit increase in chartres military spending. for but sexy no longer than a few minutes for. the. city's soul is being stolen plus. stark domestic opposition to. appear not to be enough to really think of joining the euro zone and twenty fourth in the program could prove. stay with us this is all to.

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russian police are questioning a suspect in the acid attack that nearly blinded the artistic director of the bolshoi ballet. the suspect is the first to be detained in the case the put the spotlight on infighting at one of the world's biggest and best theaters and he has the details. he's one of the two men the police are saying have actually carried out to the attack on a feeling in the middle of january that they haven't disclosed whether or not they have arrested the other guy who is also supposed to be responsible for the attack but they do say they know who he is and police are saying that they actually know who actually ordered the attack to be executed the details of the attack are truly horrendous it's

a good feeling was on his way home from work late at night he stepped out of his car and that's when a masked and unknown masked individual splashed his face with sulphuric acid severely burning of course his face and his eyes he had to go to undergo more than ten surgeries we were told today in order to save his eyesight but it does seem like he is on his way to recovery right now in a clinic in germany as an artistic director sergei filin essentially had a chance to make or break any ballet dancers career inside the theater and of course there were rumors and information coming from the artist from the ballet dancers themselves they're saying that there is a tremendous amount of infighting going on behind the scenes everybody is fighting for that one prime part or a certain position there also have been reports of dresses being cut of glass being stocked in the shoes in the dancing shoes there's also been a scandal just a couple of years ago when a man who a lot of people are saying is. probably going to become the next director of the

bolshoi theatre pornographic images of him were leaked onto the internet essentially ending his career so for all the beauty that we have on the outside there's actually quite a bit of rather unsightly goings on inside the bolshoi theatre let fear has set its sights on joining the eurozone in twenty fourteen that's despite the currency block shakeel luke with a sturdy collapse and gaping holes in the country's budgets the decision also clashes with public opinion in libya where two thirds are against euro membership we spoke to one member of the european parliament who believes the timing couldn't be worse. lead if you want to be a member of nato or of the e.u. of the eurozone so want to be a member of a bigger bloc no need to i can imagine the e.u. i can't imagine the eurozone at the moment is not the right club to join in because lead view came out of the crisis in two thousand and ten and the economic recovery started shortly after that actually led to the doing quite well so one could wonder

why latvia want to enter the eurozone if have an economic crisis would come back to latvia latvia indeed you cannot believe that you will have to stay in the light because greece is doing now and greece is go towards a lot of suffering and that is the economic downside to perhaps the political advantage to have member of a bigger club a deep delve into the finances of the eurozone and elsewhere across the world in the latest edition of our team's kaiser report now here's a preview of the program coming your way about five minutes from now. stock brokers on drugs why the stock brokers start so much cocaine why do the brokers the bankers at j.p. morgan and government sachs and barclays royal bank of scotland why do they sniff their weight and coke every morning just to get started to begin their day rampaging through the markets stealing people's wealth because they're being treated like rats by the pharmaceutical companies to get them into

a state of perpetual larceny and it's working. because a report coming away very shortly here on the remains of the german capital's notorious landmark the berlin wall could soon make way for a fourteen story luxury apartment block and it seems the trend for reshaping burning is gaining momentum with more new buildings emerging as fast as the real estate prices keep growing peter one of the reports on how this is affecting the lives of the city's life long residence. who are both sexy that men lovingly described his city. now some berliners feel this way of life is coming under threat it isn't here if you keep your inquiries work we've seen big changes over the past ten years more and more apartment buildings have been built in areas where people traditionally used to rent what we're seeing is people being forced from their homes real estate prices in berlin have shot up by thirty two

percent since two thousand and seven well ahead of the german average this is resulted in some tenants being a victim as their rented flat says sold from underneath them prompting anger and demonstrations from those who see the city's identity being sold to the highest bidder isn't. our problem here is that berlin is turning into a city split between the haves and have nots rising prices of forced people who have lived here for years to move out and those who have come makes. this year has seen an increase in the amount of protests against the gentrification of lynn as well as growing resentment towards other germans and foreigners moving into the city for the most part the public image of this still poor but sexy however times are changing the new emerging face of perlin is certainly stylish however it's also

becoming increasingly an affordable due to the demand from people wanting to live in a desirable location economically viable and politically secure the lynas becoming the place of choice for southern europeans to invest in during turbulent times in their own countries. can't turn sales and rents property to italians. one of the main reasons our customers are buying here is that there is no trust in their tail in economy or at. banks people see an apartment in berlin as a good way to preserve the value of their savings. what about the claims that the real estate boom is stealing in sold as the great god this is progress berlin is developing sure it presents some challenges but this is just the same as when the wall came down and people moved into new areas if anything this creates them all to cause and that makes for a what it is this new housing developments being built all around the city to try

and accommodate demand however with rental prices having risen by ninety percent in the last decade it does seem that the writing is on the wall for the dream of an affordable life in the german capital peter all of a. belin. well that's all from us for this i'll be back with the news team but with more in about thirty five minutes from now the mean time max keiser and stacy have it with the latest edition of the cons report as i just published. john kerry made his first major verbal gaffe as secretary of state by mixing the nonexistent country of courage to stand in one of his speeches of course it is funny when politicians misspeak george bush was pretty good at that but i can say

that we all make mistakes and i speak trust me it is very easy to butcher the pronunciation of someplace on earth like course to low voltage or walla walla washington the thing is that he didn't just misspeak his speech was written correctly and if you look at his eyes as he said it he wasn't really looking at notes or something he was reading it off of a teleprompter right now i am reading off a teleprompter but i put every word there myself which is probably why john kerry is spelled with a q but my question is would kerry and prompter master obama just read anything put in front of them so they even really know the realities of the tiriel they're reading in their speeches and who are deeply versed on some subject and you should need to read word for word from the teleprompter to give a speech just try writing some notes and speaking with your brain and maybe your heart like in the good old days but that's just my opinion.

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