. >>> the president of belarus growing a list of people mocking russian president putin's latest showrsmanship. last week, there were pictures of him reeling in a pike which the kremlin weighed 46 pounds. some russians say something is fishy here, seasoned fishermen in the area posted pictures of their own fish which looked larger but weighed much less. one person posted online wonder who planted that fish for putin to catch. and yesterday, belarus president raised the stakes on putin's fish tale, claiming to have caught a 126 pound catfish. one of his deputies saying, quote, it was as long as i am tall. >>> despite worries the fix is in and worries of disappearing ink, people are flocking to polling stations. there's a serious challenge to a long time ruler. >> reporter: is this his last stand? the 89-year-old ruled zimbabwe for 33 years, corrupt, progressive, racist, he is up for re-election. a turnout is a sign people want change. started in the same place as nelson mandela. helped topple white run government, preaching reconciliation. then their paths diverged, helping them turn t

well unfortunately i've always argued that greece was never going to survive as long as it was in belarus mode because the difficulty is that you know through involved at alcoholics just tends to make them more alcoholic and it doesn't affect them and improve their overall condition really what greece has always needed to do was to leave the euro and declare bankruptcy it's the only way that it can feasibly restructure what's going on instead what we have is this absolutely mainly awkward situation where in order to manage to stay in the euro we have a series of political forces in western europe who are desperate not to see their lawyers the political experiment failed and therefore greece has been left just like cyprus just like other countries that have received bailouts like ireland they are being sacrificed the altar of a ludicrous national political statement or supra national political statement. now more money is coming the government's way is cold comfort for the manny thousands of greeks left sleeping rough having lost their jobs homes and families in the past few years increasi

had united the nations of ancient russia president putin is set to meet the leaders of ukraine and belarus starting the festivities artie's a regular school looks at the historical twists and turns between moscow and kiev. ukraine again seems to be facing a choice either siding with moscow with which its political cultural and economic ties go back for centuries or to turn its back on his old relations and trying to make its way towards the european union relations which in moscow and kiev haven't been exactly seamless as of late specially over the past several years of course there was the orange revolution the recent gazprom flicks yet the robberies is inside the country and say ukraine would be a much better off staying on friendly terms with russia rather than playing a back seat role for europe. ukraine is distance destroying for favorable relations with russia for thousands of reasons posted to say that every third ukrainian has close relatives living in russia and although more than half of the country prefer to choose a moscow friendly course the league is moving in the opposite di

the russians are fading fast in second or third place together with the belarus people. the rates of the incarceration are five, six, seven, eight times than most in other societies, europe and elsewhere, though their rates of nonviolent crime and drug use are not that much different than ours. so if another country were to lock up its own people at the rate that we do, and if our rates of incarceration were more normative to the rest of the world, we would regard with that other country was doing as a massive violation of human rights. that's the way we would look at it. now, the other point here is what we're doing is not even consistent with american history. i mean, we had 500,000 people behind bars in 1980 and now we have 2.3 million, 2.4 million people behind bars and almost have 5,000 people behind bars just for a drug violation. there are as many people behind bars for a drug violation than we had for everything in 1980. it's not consistent with global standards and not consistent with our own history. it's costing a vast amount of money and i think what you see

that everyone no one cannot deny the fact that one off a very strong actions that famine did was in belarus and i think that if you wish those images you can see that there are no morals at all so there are a lot of criticism from people who try to criticise women and the first thing what they try to find is that oh but they look all young and they all are seeing and that's we are promoting again. static aesthetic standards you know i would say that definitely we are facing a lot we are fighting a lot was this. brutal media world that sometimes can cut our posters for example showing only women's breasts even atlanta to be fair to the media the world is not so brutal to you because journalists get invited to almost every protests that here have and they cover you quite substantially so after all of you have been darlings of the media about media definitely i would say that it's kind of a work from two sides they use us we use them at the same time i always say that it's really more important for famine actions to have five cameras around during the action than fifty people around in the str

russian potash producer is dismantling one of the world's largest potash partnerships by pulling out of belarus. that might lead to a global drop of the fertilizer ingredient and cantor fitzgerald tells husband clients that just blocked the earnings. sue, back to you. >> wow, some really big percentage hits there today, josh. thank you. >>> apple is another big stock to watch. today it's on the upside. the tech giant having its best month since february of 2012. it's trading above the $450 mark for the first time since early june. right now it's at 456.15. seema mody is following that story for us over at nasdaq. hi, seema? >> does seem like apple shares are in california back mode posting its best monthly performance. since february 2012 up 15%. there are three factors helping shares of apple. first, stronger than expected iphone sales in the third quarter. that was a big surprise. second, it continues to buy its own stock, $16 billion last quarter which, of course, is encouraging to shareholders and the stock is still trading at a percentage of the benchmark, and it's hard to find stocks inex

thirdly, unlike maduro, the venezuelan, he was stopping off in neighboring belarus, he was flying back with one revealing stop. there was a kind of perfect storm of escape for someone like snowden who's currently powerless to travel a direct flight, no need for a visa. friendly country not far from america. it was all, i would say, too good not to be true and that's what fueled, i believe, the rumors and the subsequent incident. it's still really unclear how portugal, france, italy and spain all got wind of it. >> we have all of these different leaders in the area for the energy forum that you referenced. what more do we know about snowden's current whereabouts and also the abundant amount of asylum requests that are out there, which ones have been verified and which ones have been denied? >> right. we can spend probably an hour analyzing and parsing that. the consensus is that he's still stuck inside the airport transit zone. he's not able to board a flight mainly because he has no travel documents, i.e.,, no u.s. passport or a russian visa so he can't enter russian soil. i believe he

it pulled out of its ven closure in belarus.billion a ton in the second half. >> lock at that. >> down 26%. ing a griium down so%. the mosaic company down 29%. lots and lots of red ink. >> you could say holy hit did you because it's -- shidzu. >>> topping the brands in china, kfc, you can die if you eat it. millward bloun, different in a positive way. and top of the mind ahead of others. 13 brand on the list were americans, eight in the top ten, including pamperin. crest, apple, mcdonald's, and coca-col coca-cola. >> i get it. >> i get it, too. i'm back to my smithfield foods thing, if they can get an american brand over there. food safety needs to be worked on. it's paramount. >> they were saying people have been going for baby food infant and stuff. they have been going-on-out and bring it all back in. >> you are trying to feed a million, a billion, 300 million people, you don't have -- >> you are a free trader. >> you got problems. >> should we sell them our biggest pork producer? >> yes. >> we can't buy there. >> well, i'm n

because they have huge mark-ups and potash is on a plunge after breaking up with their partners in belarus. thank you, judd, for joining us. now it is time for "squawk on the street." >>> good tuesday morning and welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with kelly evans and david faber, jim cramer with the day off. the case-shiller home index is out, and up on the composite, and some cities saw all-time highs going back to the crisis. we will talk to robert shiller in a few moments. meanwhile, retail mers the green, and we sift through merck and fpfizer and getting ready fr the two-day meeting and waiting for the president to make a new proposal on tax reduction. and we will wait for the two components merck and pfizer. are patent problems looming. >> after posting weak sales in north america and announcing two executives leaving the company. >>> and you heard it here first, two firms buying hmas. >> and watch the fertilizer stock, because they are down after one of the potash companies drops. >> slight sli above forecast and the revenues are shy of census, and fpfizer plans

neighbors are watching them and we are confronting many of the same issues, whether it be in the ukraine, belarusazerbaijan, and when the united states doesn't stand up at the u.n. to and quickly to turn to the issue of climate change. a really wonderful new initiative at the u.n. surrounding the issue of short- lived climate pollutants and fast-acting climate pollutants, specifically working with other nations to try to engage in best practices for the capture of inmethane coming out ofand inlandfills, to work that the au.n. has been doing for years on building a new type of cookstove to downgrade the amount of black carbon escaping andinto the atmosphere. andthere is technology and best practices out there today with andrespect to non-carbon dioxide inemissions.and inwe're going to have a big fight over a new international and aglobal warming treaty, but inthere are some relatively simple things that you can do andwhen it comes to justis a and inmanaging landfills better, ora trying to get $15 cookstoves in the hands of more indians and chinese. i think the answer to my question as to whether y