ukraine's president says any talks on a deal with the e.u. must involve russia as the european rallies are continuing to disrupt the government and worsening the already crippled economy. the honeymoon is over. the country's first law allowing same sex marriages. in less than a week. we've been married and we've been on marriage. stated it's back same sex relationships people in croatia vote in a referendum for good we look at setbacks for gay rights in different countries. going. reportedly being held in solitary confinement after being accused

of a series of hacking attack. from a studio center here in moscow was just ten ten pm this is the international president has refuted from the opposition to dismiss the government at round table talks in kiev to calls from the european parliament for a snap election to appease the crisis he's pulled scott has the details for us now from. president viktor yushchenko which had a round table meeting today with opposition leaders three of the opposition leaders and the announcements come after that discussion where the opposition reiterated a number of their demands including a snap election now the president has refused to dissolve government but he has made a number of concessions including an amnesty on all protesters who have been arrested

throughout the course of these demonstrations and he also says the authorities will not use force on these protesters around me was the implications on any possible a huge deal of being assessed by government now he has promised that there is no alternative to closer e.u. integration but does say for this to happen that they'll need close cooperation from russia now as you can see around me the protesters remain defiant as ever as we head into the course of the weekend and over the weekend we are expecting numbers here at independence square to swell not only the opposition. more and more people to come down to support the movement and we are also expecting a pro-government rally to take place over the course of the weekend we're hearing that up to two hundred thousand pro president you know a covert supporters could be descending on europe pisky square which is just around one hundred yards to my left hand side around one hundred yards away from where we are right now in the heart of the opposition movement and these protesters they've been here now for over three weeks on the demonstrations the protests that have

suffocated this part of kiev a beginning to take their toll on the economy as well as my colleague. now reports the. key of protest have ended its fourth week with no sign it will die down the recent attempt by police to clear the streets proved fruitless and i'm only hard into people's resolve it took the protesters only several hours to rebuild the barricades which the police had taken down in a matter of minutes and now that even bigger than before the blockade has existed for almost two weeks now and not only creates something of a traffic nightmare for the locals but also as the government. it cripples the country's economy because of governmental buildings being under siege ukraine's prime minister says the country is still without said budget for next year it could also just forget it was drafting the budget for next year and the parliament should have an opportunity to work on it the protests are destruction many social projects like road construction in metro atlanta that lead needs the economic impact is

being felt far from the rallies in the capital one of the country's leading winemakers factories a thousand kilometers away from the scenes playing out in kiev times are tough but mom what's going on in here is complete chaos and it's causing serious economic damage to state enterprises like a vineyard our export license has expired because work in the public offices in the capital was disrupted by the protest we were unable to export five trucks of wine to russia and lost two hundred fifty thousand euros and now our contract with russian importers for the next is up in the air because they doubt our reliability . and that's happening to a country already on the verge of economic collapse with an external debt of one hundred thirty six billion dollars and what is widely seen by economists as a pre default level standard and poor's have recently warned if the violence continues they will need to lower ukraine's credit rating even further unless the country gets a large injection of cash from somebody over the next six months at the latest

maybe even sooner than they will default fearing ukraine's economy would not survive the unrest ukrainians rushed to the banks buying foreign currency and closing their accounts in november foreign currency reserves experienced a deficit of almost eight hundred million euro the second highest figure in the country's history there is a queen for a second in line for foreign currency because definitely does not happen to financial stability of the contrary foreign exchange reserves are. to disappear very quickly and mean that i mean. my value speech will basically trying to close the bad deposits this commercial man's. also significant risks on the commercial banking system in the country. the revolution down with the government to prison that's what we've been hearing at

the key of protests for weeks but a possible default or economic collapse is not the top of the town behind the barricades let's you assess the artsy reports from kiev ukraine well the european parliament has also called for mediation at the highest levels to ensure ukraine's association with the e.u. rayna rob the editor in chief of the german you gevalt newspaper says this is simply fueling the divide even further. only a tactic to further increase the tensions and because i fear. the e.u. and behind it need to have tasted blood and they want the whole thing i think they want to ukraine back in the western food as it was after the oldest revolution with european government agreed to any snap election did we have snap elections in greece in spain in you know ireland where hundreds of thousands of people went on

the streets demonstrating against. the taxpayers' money being squandered on banks there's no we don't they these demonstrations played down in our media and. they were tear gassed and club. the high court in australia has overturned the country's first law allowing same sex couples to marry. and since less than a week after it came into force earlier this month india uphold its colonial era legislation criminalizing homosexuality while croatians overwhelmingly voted against same sex marriage in a national referendum on he's got a mix into why some countries refuse to give the rainbow a green light. most western countries already

recognize in some form the right of the couples to get married in adult children but in other parts of the world there is the opposite trend in less than a week. we've been married and we've been on there it's in australia just days after the nation's capital allowed same sex couples to get married the high court there struck down that decision saying regional authority said no right to decide the matter if you live in a relationship with loves and trusts to any seven australian couples then saw their marriage annulled days australia's high court ruled that gay marriage was illegal because the marriage act only recognizes marriage between a man and a woman and only the parliament can change the legislation the most recent attempt to change the law in the australian parliament failed last year polls in the country show support for gay marriage stands at fifty three percent. i'm all for that absolutely i'm saying that at the top in our history written jumping

through hoops to try to make sure that every tree on the planet has its natural environment start from far east that we would be challenging the definition of marriage which creates exactly that environment for a child requiring that it's between a man or woman in india the supreme court has just made gay sex illegal again since the nineteenth century india has had a ten year sentence on the statute books for quote court only into course against the order of nature four years ago a lower court found it on constitutional the supreme court just brought the law back into force by making a similar argument as the australian judges only the nation's parliament has the right to change it but with the overwhelming majority of indians against same sex marriage and with a conservative nationalist group leading in the upcoming elections in legislative change in the next few years is highly unlikely but you have a lot of old. he just said. that all the communities of this country.

vents at each of the main sort if thing europe is seeing something similar this december coalitions mody in a referendum to outlaw same sex marriage two thirds of the mostly catholic population there approved changes in the constitution in the tug of war between those who are and those who are not allowed to say i do the conservative view on marriage seems at least at the moment to be prevailing in many parts of the world going to shut down our team. in july same sex marriage is the royal stamp of approval in england and wales but by pushing the legislation through prime minister david cameron only deepened the rifts within his own party conservative commentator ben harris quiney i spoke to him earlier he says also being what people think is the only way it should have been done is that she did the same sex marriage as a station that was the straw that broke the camel's back at the concert because she remains divided and same sex marriage is one of the root causes of not so what i

would have liked to see these first let's have a debate about in the conservative policy work out how to get the legislation right perhaps a system like france where. religious institutions and hotels or whatever then you won't want to hold. weddings so well you can do so and then the state simply on the right so you need between two people in the interest it really will form that union takes extending civil partnerships all that would've been a better way to do it and i think a referendum would have been very important as well because it removes the controversy is a question for david cameron is can he convince the conservative that he's actually conservative enough to bring this legislation forward. party international live in moscow with the twenty four hours a day still to come in the program this hour mexico opens the floodgates seventy five years of all the gas nationalization and coming to an end with western companies lining up to sweep in and reap the benefits all the details in a few minutes. the first is being claimed the co-founder of the infamous for

sharing website the pirate bay is reportedly being held in solitary confinement in denmark on his patrol of a takes up the story supporters and family members of twenty nine year old got freed while he was one of the founders of the bit torrent site pirate bay have been expressing their concern over the conditions he's being held in in a danish prison now in june of this year he was sentenced to two years in jail in denmark for computer hacking now the charges that were brought against him related to alleged hacking into the the computer network of a computer systems company as well as the danish driving license database the head of the data police force the national police commissioner of denmark said that the operation that was being run by mr watt had been incredibly sophisticated now he has drawn supporters from across the world including the likes of julian assange

should actually called for him to be to be released or at least have his his is conditions in which he's being held in improved but these aren't the first legal problems that he's had he was part of the group that founded pirate bay which was used to share bit torrent surround the world now that was the subject of a very high profile case regarding copyright infringements hump a isn't supporters come out and say well the conditions in which he's being kept have well certainly overstepped the boundaries for the crime that he's committed. the mother of the detained computer specialist christina fox home says that she has no idea who's decided to keep her some in solitary confinement his lawyer as far as i can get it she hasn't really found and the legal reasons for this because the court when they decided about him being put into this arrest place they

never made a decision about the solitary thing and the prosecutor according to what the prosecutor said to media. week ago she said that i never made such a decision so it's difficult to find out who made this decision and since you don't know who made the decision you can't complain properly about it they have suspicions to it's him now. he has told me that this is specialists that the danish police claim that he is innocent that the claims they make them not public yet but he has told me about them and he says that innocent and says he has told me that i must believe him and definitely his lawyer louise hoy's says the conditions her clients have to endure and normally

only reserve a violent criminals and terrorists. i don't understand what's going on to be honest and i've been both a prosecutor many years ago and i've been employed with the ministry of justice and to be honest these days i'm bit embarrassed that they treat him this way i don't understand why i got fleet has been in denmark for sixteen days now and the restrictions were put upon him from day one and two weeks ago i asked for a formal decision from the prison service so that i could actually tell my client what's going on and i received what was yeah three four sentences just stating that you know referring to this section in the danish legislation he is to be put under special restrictions and it was a big surprise to me because normal normally these restrictions are only used if people are very well violent towards other inmates and i have also i know one case where it's been used against someone who was charged of terrorism but for me it was

a big surprise that this was that they used these restrictions on got that. it. wasn't only about grief and tributes. to international south africa's immigrant population has plenty of reason to worry about the future. investigates why there are just a few minutes stories. down in the final. and the rest. will be.

a pleasure to have you with us today. it was supposed to celebrate a new beginning but matter of seconds turned into a disaster according to medical sources at least seventeen members of

a wedding procession in yemen were killed by what officials claimed was a u.s. drone strike they say the missiles are part of the group which could be mistaken. many of the. washington uses drones as a key tool to wipe out the terrorists in the region but they do not comment on individual strikes and you work to mr medea benjamin says incidents like yours only play into the militants hands. every time there's a drone strike that's the best recruiting tool for al qaeda and killing people in a wedding party i am sure that this will lead to not tens but probably a hundred people joining al qaeda and this guarantees the cycle of violence will go on in perpetual war the drone strikes actually are a support to al qaeda it doesn't get rid of al qaeda. every month more innocent lives are being lost in what the american administration insists a precision attacks a manned aircraft in pakistan yemen and somalia for to have killed more than one

thousand civilians in just over a decade but that figure doesn't include afghanistan and iraq where drone attacks happen on a regular basis but no casualties to six are available despite america's operations all qaeda remains active in the arabian peninsula but drone activists live bolger believes the drawing strikes will go on anyway. this is just another example in a long list of despicable illegal and immoral combat drone strikes on the part of the government of the united states that it could be prevented if there's just no reason for this to continue and the world needs to rise up and point the finger at the united states for causing this. necessary damage and death you know they say that they're very precise they're surgical and we can we see over and over and over again and there are many many examples of civilians women children old people being killed by these drones and even if the drones attack people that the cia intends to

attack until they've been proven to do something that's against the law these are extrajudicial assassinations and they're absolutely a foreign and illegal. in his lifetime nelson mandela managed to break down societies divisions and smash apartheid in south africa he stood with open arms welcoming refugees from far and wide who saw him as a father figure without him to protect them many fear they'll no longer be welcome paula slit reports. don't lean software fijian south africa from the congo because of one man nelson. mandela causes the one while out of the do nothing. had came but now he's gone and only means afraid she and other foreigners like her will be kicked out i think that they will just well thought in the eyes because they don't one foot in the area complaining that's put in there that taking their jobs millions of africans have fled their troubled countries in search of

a better life in south africa but more often than not they've swapped one harbor for another with no money work or prospects a handful have made this place a methodist church in downtown johannesburg home if you're a green or you for your german or if you're fringe and you come into this country you were in to experience what's experienced here one of the things apart it did for instance was that it divorced us from the rest of africa where failed is struggling to support his wife and five children in a brutal attack she was beaten so badly she miscarried he was left for dead the crime being foreigners in a strange land i think we could be unfair. and why her life i think i should call her that i do work in south africa prejudices run deep not only are african foreigners accused of taking jobs away from locals they're also held

responsible for accelerating crime so if you do is suing them are they going to do the work to you in britain. where we have to deal with somebody going home though is not an option political instability acute poverty and violence awaits them. for twelve long months has been too afraid to step foot outside this church and now with mandela gone she's more free than ever listless there's something about the flood and. no one will talk about the thirteenth as night falls the stores close providing refuge to people seeking sanctuary in a country that doesn't want them here r.t. johannesburg south africa. there's uproar in mexico over the government's decision to open the country's oil and gas sector to private investment for the first time in seventy five years some fear it means selling the nation's riches to foreigners

well the law will allow western companies to tap into mexico's fossil fuel deposits and pocket the profits the country's oil and gas output has been waning in recent years and authorities say the move is designed to revitalize the industry vast reserves are believed to lie in the gulf of mexico which the government cannot afford to develop but the opposition is accusing the president of giving in to american pressure as artie's nicholas such as donovan reports. we have to say it was one of the most chaotic moments ever seen in the history of mexican politics outside the barricade to build in hundreds of protesters rallied against the reform and inside the picture wasn't really so much different now the p r d and the modern no movement both left wing movements have called for massive rally on sunday regarded the content of the reform well it basically means that the government is now allowed to give private companies contracts and licenses to explore and drill

the oil and gas in mexico deals and till now it will obviously work prohibited under mexico's constitution opponents to the reform say they fear that that big corporations especially from the us will we have complete domination over mexico's natural resources and the truth is that it can be a big a very big deal actually for the u.s. we can't forget that mexico remains one of the top five crude exporters to there not know the northern neighbors chip in over a million barrels a day this energy reform also modifies three points of the mexican constitution therefore it now has to be approved by a minimum of seventeen local governments this this is step is really only a formality and groups on the left think that the measure is so big that should have been subjected to a national referendum. on the web site of the moment signs of mediæval style strife

at the helm of north korea. could lead to death within hours after pyongyang ordered his execution and online for why the nation's second most powerful man was given the death sentence along with other clues to this case. and you don't often see them on the streets of jerusalem but less than two weeks before christmas mother nature completely changed the face of the holy city and gave locals plenty to cheer about see for itself right now at r.t. dot com slash bishan. and breaking news now here on r.t. international al-qaeda linked rebels in syria have a one hundred twenty kurds in a village near the border with turkey now this news has just been reported by the syrian observatory for human rights the group said that all the captives including at least six women have been taken to an unknown location carda linked groups have been terrorizing the kurdish enclaves in syria with several reports putting the number of those killed in the hundreds of the some of the free syrian army said

that al qaeda is planning to announce an islamist state in syria's northeast breaking news here in r.t. international we'll bring you more developments as soon as we get them. now in just a few minutes from now so if you have an answer asks a space exploration expert when we'll finally be able to buy a ticket to mars that's after a short break more news in half an hour. as you all know the holidays are a great time for families to get together and sometimes on the l. call gets flowing they're also a great time for us to argue about everything from politics to religion with the ones we love but if you happen to be an n.s.a. agent and the government has an official list of talking points that way you could win those family arguments for sure yeah that's right the government is now giving n.s.a. agents lists of very corny talking points going to firedoglake so that way they can

convince their relatives over the holidays of just how awesome effective and necessary the national security agency truly is despite all those little revelation thinks of mass spying by snowden trust me talking points exist for a reason political social and religious organizations and use them so that when their members who may not be the best debaters on the planet can defend the positions of the organization and i would have no problem with the if they gave this list to ages they could answer questions from journalists but when the government wants you to propagandize your friends and family over christmas and thanksgiving it all seems kind of cultish to me that's just my opinion.

helen wilkinson says the. fish are not sent space has always been a frightening guess at the same time and your reasons to believe are for him. billions of dollars have been spent on space exploration numerous missions have left to earth's heading towards the stars now among the latest emission this is the exploration and colonization of mars but why would people want to go there will it ever be possible and is it worth it that's today's topic. traveling even higher conquering space leaving an imprint on other planets. cosmic adventure has always appealed to people's romantic side so what is the next

extraterrestrial step so look towards mars and hope the first human settlers will arrive there within our lifetimes how realistic is don fisher who will these pioneers be will the hardships be surmountable and will the martian winds be merciful to the first trial. or it's our guest today is robert zubrin ira space engineer author and very outspoken advocate of human colonization of mars it's quite heavy here on our t.v. robert thanks for inviting me right to the people had been to the moon for the past forty years and last time they won their their lunar expedition didn't really lean much of the consequences didn't really bring much of their fat why do you think that mars will actually have more effect well mars is a much more interesting place than the cape the moons of rock mars is a world mars had oceans on it in the past it had rivers there dried up now but

mars had liquid water on it for a billion years which is five times as long as it took life to appear on earth after there was liquid water here and so it's possible that life could have on mars and if we go to mars and find traces of past life or even surviving present life it would prove that the development of life from can. history is a general phenomenon in the universe and furthermore mars is a planet that has the resources not just to support life but technological civilization for our generation mars is the new world but from what we know right now if you can breathe in mars can it because there's no atmosphere right there on mars there are sandstorms. i mean the place is pretty pretty inhospitable. you know mars while it has a thin atmosphere not no one can agree no.