from behind bars to berlin former russian tycoon mikhail khodorkovsky is in germany looking forward to being reality with his family following his pardon i'm released from prison. defense as a price eight and a half trillion dollars goes on a kind and for less than two decades as part of the effort to keep the pentagon running. and friday prayers turned violent in egypt as police just supporters of president he was protesting against the law restricting demonstrations.

are welcome it's nice to have you company you watching. international just hours after being released from prison mikhail khodorkovsky is back in the lap of luxury for more oil tycoon was one of russia's richest men before being jailed a decade ago but following his presidential pardon he jumped on a private jet flew to bird lane and is now in a five star hotel all correspondents are following the story in russia randi let's cross live peter oliver and lindsey france first to you paint he's in you're outside the five star hotel where he's believed to be staying right now who is picking up the bill for this extravagant taste of freedom. well as it stands we don't actually know who's paying the bill for the the room in the other lot hotel where we believe he's saying he's staying here where mikhail khodorkovsky spent his first night of freedom the most recent pictures of me because he appeared to show him in a hotel room. with

a friend now it's believed that that is a hotel room in the eidolon hotel just behind me now the reason that we don't exactly know if he's there for show or not is because well he is in the as a lawn it's a hotel that prides itself on its its discretion and it does have several entrances which you can't you can't see people coming and going the reason we believe is because. of the former foreign minister of germany who met the airport and gave him. that allows him to to be here in germany well he was seen leaving the front of the hotel to go and deliver an interview to german television . on friday evening now he was with me. we believe that he must still be in sight now. to touch on who is and what he's done as part of this well he is the former foreign minister of germany he was the foreign minister in

the the eighty's and ninety's and he has been instrumental it seems in securing this. prison in russia and come here to berlin he sought out the private jet in which he flew he also sorted out his visa. he has also delivered this interview to german television in which he said speaking on behalf of his daughter koskie that he was grateful to the mercy of russian president vladimir putin for releasing pardoning. on these humanitarian grounds which saw him set free from jail now. in terms of he was russia's richest man one of russia's richest men. in the past we don't know anything about it called ski's current wealth however he clearly still has friends in very high places in order to allow him to travel in such a way and stay where he is but if he does come out of here we are expecting him to at some point in the coming hours that we'll be bringing you right here in our ok

thank you please let's cross to live in france who's in moscow for us who are family are expected and they join him in berlin shortly yes indeed they are in fact german media is reporting that marina. had been burned when which was a reason that khodorkovsky had wanted to fly there soon as possible in fact she has as far as we know at this point is still at her home just outside of moscow now she had recently sought cancer treatment in germany and in fact her failing health was one reason that president putin cited in considering this clemency now we spoke with her earlier today about her travel plans. i don't know when we're on which flights i still don't have the tickets i just got up i hope we will meet today you. know his daughter anastasio

had also spoken to the media expressing her surprise she says in the last ten years i got used to living in a reality where my dad is in prison to realize and accept that i'll be able to see him every day is unreal so the family including the son who was just recently residing in new york the family has all sort of converging on berlin on that hotel where all the journalists are camped out and in very rapid succession russia's most famous former tycoon went from being in prison to being released landing on german soil and facing his first family reunion in a decade or thank you lucy france and moscow then also before that it was peter all of us in berlin thank you both well mikhail khodorkovsky said he was hoping to be able to spend the christmas holidays with his whole family but

political commentary to eric margolis believes in terms of his plans for the future it will be hard for him to launch a political career. what i wonder is he might be a little chase by his lip and not started rants against google career for a while but it'll be off to cutting out for ten years in prison will he be mandela or will he turn out and really star last thing we crown the core of the globe's. track to a brilliant man but he really is of no not a rouse and he simply i don't think that russia is certainly not in the west. no none of them saw it in a part or there was little. love lost on the russian oligarchs most people felt they should have been in jail and had their money confiscated so he's lovely really got away with some money and were boarded no longer jail sentence.

while the pardon to hold off ski states the decision was guided by the principles of humanity however there has been much speculation in the western media that their release was an attempt to boost russia's image ahead of the winter olympics in sochi but legal expert and blogger alexander mccourt it's believed it was first and foremost because of play for clemency. i don't think it got anything to do with nobody was going to stay away from sochi because of bristol holder god being imprisoned i think the first point to make is that he is guilty and i i want to say that because this constant attempts to say that he was a political prisoner there's been six or seven decisions by the european court of human rights are i've lost count how many there are which is said unequivocally that mr holder koskie is guilty of massive tax evasion on a simply enormous scale now he has been punished he's been in prison for that for ten years what what has changed the situation and has led to his release is that mr

holder koskie did what he had previously consistently said he would not do and that is that he wrote a letter to mr putin asking for a pardon so i don't personally see that there's any compelling reason to keep him in prison longer. throughout the day we are closely following the latest developments in this story these are live pictures from outside hold a hotel where stationed there we're still waiting to see if he might emerge into the daylight and of course we'll bring you the latest updates as and when we get them. now eight and a half trillion dollars that's the figure handed by the u.s. congress to the defense department since nine hundred ninety six and it's remained unaccounted for ever since despite the organization having some of the most sophisticated military hardware in the world it still relies on antiquated and error prone accounting completed computers it's even lead to active duty personnel

and more veterans being underpaid. investigates the pentagon is almost certainly the biggest source of waste in the u.s. government over reuters investigation says since one thousand nine hundred ninety six the pentagon has spent eight point five trillion dollars in taxpayer money that has never been accounted for and nobody can say for sure how many billions of that amount were wasted on goods and services that were never delivered on over payments to contractors and many other things what does congress do about it nothing and national security expert steve miles serious here with me to help us crunch the these numbers even a tree lead dollars on it can only be for a lot of money this is the kind of thing that you would think would bring capitol hill to a screeching halt they would be hearings kind of almost daily you know various committees looking into it none of that just leads to massive waste and there can be all sorts of fraud that you don't know about just one example when the inspector

general looked at iraq which was you know a lot of money but in the grand scheme just a portion of the money the u.s. spends what they found was about fifty billion dollars of the money the u.s. spent there was wasted about six billion dollars was completely lost they had no idea where it was completely unaccounted for but put that in perspective that's about the amount of money that other countries would spend on their defense in the year total and that's just the least pocket change that we lost in the culture one thing i found very interesting in the report is that the pentagon apparently using a standard operating procedure to enter false numbers were so-called blogs to cover a loss. they're missing information in their accounting in order to submit a balanced budget to treasury so they can write a new a thing in this probably the most shocking part of this is that they get to the end of the day and they say oh there's money missing what do we do who just put a number in there that says it's there and we'll sort it out later i mean again this is this is the type of operating practice that if you did it in your own

business if you try to do it with your own taxes for the government they haul you off to jail what contributes to the massive waste is the fact that for two decades the pentagon has dodged an audit means nobody checked if the numbers in their accounting make sense congress has just passed the budget that allocates around six hundred thirty billion dollars to the pentagon roughly the same amount as last year how much of that will be wasted taxpayers will never know in washington i'm going to check on our team. we also talked to retired u.s. army colonel douglas macgregor on the pentagon's fadia to keep track of its money he things given the seriousness of the issue the government doesn't seem anywhere near concerned enough i have actually been in this position where i was the director joint operations that shape headquarters for reasons that i did understand my pay was suddenly reduced and it took a year old to really straight to doubt it then subsequently i was paid money that i had actually earned but for reasons that no one could explain had not paid to me my

point is that you're dealing with billions of people and a lot of instability a lot of movement and it's a difficult system to to work effectively. this is an enormous problem and this is something that absolutely must be addressed and addressed in a forthright manner at the moment no one on capitol hill seems terribly concerned. senior editor for the veterans today newspaper gordon duff police fast expenditure goes on funds for defense projects that never come to life. no we have so many defense entities that have gained so much power in washington over the past ten years certainly the. i consider the phony war on terror as been an opportunity for the defense industry to buy congress the pentagon it works much like the federal reserve we have overt and covert policies we have so many black budget

a budget projects including nuclear weapons development projects that when dark is earliest one nine hundred ninety one we have heard of none of the advances we know that were achieved during the strategic defense initiative in the eighty's and ninety's the have all gone dark but they're continuing to eat funds and we're watching much of the military budget used for sustaining a top heavy military and air force for every third person in our air force is a general. not try any every inch of the festive spirit and i think the glass. gurudas. with the holiday season getting underway special days patrols get going in the scottish capital to take care of the ice if i would when we've got the story coming.

you know his secret laboratory in the kirby was able to build windmills most sophisticated robots which on fortunately doesn't give a dog. and about anything mission to teach me the creation of why you should care about humans and. this is why you should care only. speak your language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on. reporting from the world's hot spots that vo ip interviews intriguing

story are you. trying. to find out more visit our big. dog called. egyptian police in cairo and take gas on a series of protests clashes started when crowds of supporters of the deposed president mohamed morsi took to the streets after friday prayers as. the brutal police crackdown through the eyes of the egyptian people. mohamed buckra waits at home for the return of his fifteen year old son headed jailed for taking a pro morsy ruler to school teachers notify the authorities when they saw the four think it symbol which commemorates the bloody august dispersal of sit ins in support of egypt's ousted president. the first time in my life that

a child is locked up in the military prison for having a ruler there is even and their arrest warrants out for me for inciting my son to take the ruler to class but even if they look my son up we're ready to keep fighting islamist supporters of morsi like mohammed say they are in hiding fearful of showing any allegiance to the ousted muslim brotherhood president. since they cleared the sit in some men started shaving their beards and the women to go off their new cabs anyone who is against the coup does not sleep in their own homes they spend nights at friends or even in barns they're not even arresting activists but normal people the checkpoints because they look like islamists with a beard even the simplest expression of support for mohamed morsi like a piece of stationery puts people in danger both from the communities and the state hundreds of morsy supporters have been arrested and many face trial after tonight's overthrow by the military security forces say the crackdown is necessary to secure

the country but human rights organizations say it's part of a wider clampdown on for i the military backed government is determined to enforce new legislation banning protests without police permits so now leading secular activists are on trial to jailed under the new normal. again and that the crackdown on political activists is normal and natural because it's easy to accuse them of working for a foreign agency and charge them with treason attacking people even killing them is part of a political game played by the state. the government insists on restricting and controlling demos to keep the peace. egypt's dissidents are determined to keep protesting no matter the consequences. for r.t. after a shake. this is a photo of her as it was taken in his classroom apparently on a mobile phone if you look more closely you can see he's making a four finger salute here and that at this stage is enough to land you in jail in

egypt no matter what your age or gender well alan mohammed chairperson of the british gyptian for democracy group says the detention of the fifteen year old is far from an isolated case so this fifteen year old child along with many many children are now placed in prison just because they have things simple symbol it's a symbol was for fingers on a yellow background and he's actually placed in an adult facility alongside subs and rapists and criminals and in fact this is actually outrageous what we're seeing is the military regime. going absolutely mad because a child is reminding it of its atrocities and the clear violations of human rights are taking place and it is as you know at the moment there are many many children as well some of them we know about some we don't know anything about because i was

there in prison if you don't get access to a lawyer or medical attention. you get a chance to take a look at our website there's plenty there too including another blow to gay rights this time in uganda by the parliament has ratified a bill that could land homosexuals in jail for a lifetime for more details on this tough measure log on to r.t. dot com also there is reading private e-mails and eavesdropping on phone calls wasn't enough more leak revelations show the n.s.a. paid millions to a leading software security firm to leave a backdoor open in its products so companies could be spied on with more details on this story they are just that. a click away. right to see. her story. and i would think that you're. on a reporter's. we've

got some news just in freed for more oil tycoon mikhail khodorkovsky has met his son in berlin his spokesperson the said the son is thought of arrived from new york to meet his father released on pardon after a decade behind bars the former prisoners lawyer says his parents are expected to arrive in berlin later today. despite the vigorous attempts of whistleblowers to expose government wrongdoing it's often difficult for them to find media outlets willing to publicize the truth media stand is the recent road movie shot by wiki leaks team of journalists who were involved on a trip across central asia and highlights the difficulties they faced there will be showing the film here on r.t. next hour but you can always watch it any time on our website r.t.

dot com. st augustine. strategic. undercover team of journalists trying to release wiki leaks documents. it's great. media more. counter to your ignorance and pressure. the country blocks the way to information freedom. media stuff. now let's have a quick look at some other stories from around the world and the capital of the central african republic a fresh outbreak of sectarian violence has left at least thirty seven people dead red cross official claimed most of the victims were either shot or to death with machetes this comes after france which already has more than sixteen hundred troops

on the ground the paled to its european allies to help pilots between muslims and christians is left around a thousand people dead this month alone. i know it's well violence erupted in the greek capital as hundreds of farmers took to the streets in protest at a new property tax they were confronted by riot police who they pelted with through before attacking them with sticks the clashes broke out ahead of a vote by m.p.'s in a number of popular bill needed to qualify for more international bailout money. dozens of writers have attacked a police station in the german city of hamburg after a demonstration over the threatened eviction of the large water protests is police cars and windows while a number of arrests were made refugees and their supporters are expected to gather on saturday front of the growth of floor squads to demand open spaces and refugee rights about four thousand plagues

a set to be deployed. mexican president peña nieto has signed a controversial fuel law it allows foreign companies to drill for oil for the first time since the sector was nationalized seventy five years ago protests across the country denounced it as an act of betrayal by the government but the president says it will help attract investment falling apart. maybe the height of the party season but some people will always celebrate won't make just that little bit more than others but in the scottish capital edinburgh blues patrols are taking to the streets so the festive mood doesn't spill out of control r.t. sarah firth joined one. in the streets and pumps of edinburgh and the festive spirit is alive and well. and with the city's bars that hotels filling up the holiday season provides

a much needed boost to the local economy i was. i think. the better way. to scottish new year is natives hogmanay and the celebrations held in the city every now and around the world the big ticket the old ways just its way but basically we have the tradition is that you're go right to the houses and you take your ticket but glass of whisky and some cold cold to keep you warm and whisky too to have a drink and i think new year's eve was invented by the scots but it's not all calls for celebration ambulance and police stuff it's a busy period and in edinburgh this year the number of schemes to be pissin place to try and provide support for the people he posted a little team every safety sayings and t. say could these buses will be an operation to try to take the strain off the local

services the scottish ambulance service says the buses will be there to treat ses he suffered a minor injury people have simply aver in those which. the city gears up for a busy holiday season and does that midnight countdown is party goes here it is imbra us to try and enjoy the spirit of the event just easy on the spirit. of. edinburgh was. no news for me in about half an hour's time before that though finance and economics get a closer look in on the money while for those watching in the u.k. prepare to orbit the world with george galloway.

they're calling obama's happy smiling sophie photo with the danish and british prime ministers at. mandela funeral an international incident but before we rail on obama for doing something stupid a funeral we need to clear one thing up the washington post says that this action occurred at the memorial service after the funeral was over and trust me after about three hours of serious lectures at a conference or some sort of super long wedding most of us would just be banging our heads against the wall out of boredom and i'd probably check my email about seven times obama's place know i said most of us but the president isn't supposed to be like most of us because he represents all of us it's one thing when you're fourteen and too stupid to realize that selfie photos at the wake after grandpa's funeral is a bad idea but it's another thing entirely when one of the most photographed and powerful people on the planet takes a selfie at the memorial service of someone he claims to respect although i might sound annoyed this sophie is pretty much irrelevant this is just a big error of etiquette there are plenty of real concrete things with real

consequences to be bad at obama over like our being religious wacko rebels in syria or citing into law the n.b.a. i wish with all my heart that we only had to be angry with obama over some minor etiquette errors but sadly they're just a drop in the obama bucket but that's just my opinion. largest consumer sees and i see it with me in the country is the federal government to simply say it's probably. going to. see the united states but it was something has to realize it can't just by. just throw it away this is

a problem for instance belongs to the united states and we're going to produce nations i found as one of them saying here this is the future in some ways. producers of these later on i think should be able to collect these i believe that they should be responsible for their products from cradle to grave. paid off to mexico department of mental health property will sell to america and cooperative but also belongs to the washington metro transit authority properties of a dentist aids page and trademark office. welcome to on the money with the business of russia is business i'm people of well as the russian economy and as the year president vladimir putin has made it abundantly clear the government can do much more to stimulate growth and attract

foreign investment russia does exist in a real world but there is still much to be done at home to expand the economy. to discuss this and more i'm joined by my guest chris weaver he is the senior partner with macro advisory and we also have been heiress to use the editor in chief of business new europe all right ben if i go to you i think you're on the first program of this year if not the second one in a nutshell in a few words how is the russian economy ending this year or this year i think it's been rushes. in so much is it's been the worst year was in a crisis year for the last decade and a half and so we're puttering out of the year slowly with very disappointing results across the board and everyone is looking forward to next year because can't be worse than this one always can be worse if you will and a few words a few sentences how would you describe russia's economy as we're ending the year i

would actually agree with ben there compared to where we were the start of the year looking for three three and a half percent growth or think of the optimistic and now we're now ending the year according to the world bank's forecast maybe about one point three percent so very disappointing compared to what had been expected and that is come as a result of a big drop in investment and much lower level of consumption than we've seen in previous years ok gentlemen i don't know if you agree with what i mean or vitamin agrees with you but let's listen what he had to say about the state of russia's economy. that and you know of course we are feeling the affects of the global economic crisis but let's be frank the main reasons for the slowdown in our economy are internal rather than external in nature in terms of the size of its g.d.p. russia is doing well and counts among the world's five biggest economies but in key indicators such as labor.