defeat sunderland. to some sad news from the world of boxing muhammad ali's legendary coach angelo dunn day has passed away at the age of ninety he was best known for working with ali and helping him become the world an olympic champion the corner man also worked with fifteen other world champions including sugar ray leonard and george foreman he was inducted into the boxing hall of fame in one thousand nine hundred ninety two. moving to tennis and maria sharapova has held her first training session in moscow ahead of this weekend's fed cup quarter final with spain the twenty four year old has only ever played in three fed cup matches but after a couple of injury plagued years the world number three reached the australian open final last week of work told richard byrne portal eight she's hoping to continue her good early season form by helping russia points the fed cup semi. you know what it's always great to be in the finals of a grand slam that's what you know always going to be down to you and you know for me to be able to come to moscow in a few days obviously it's a tough transition going from the heat to the cold but it's like that for everyone

and you know i think we just have to make the quick adjustments but i'm happy that we have a home match a set of away and then i can actually be in my home country and it's sort of last time you played for a couple russia it's different. because you know last year you know it's it's a team effort and i think that's really how it happened on and i didn't have a good first day and then the next day you know the whole team kind of raise their level and one zero two so it's just it's such a different environment than what we're used to whereas when you lose a match and then you kind of out you know you lose a match you still have a chance and that's what makes it so special here. because i mean you're getting to be. helping to put what happened in two thousand and two thousand and eight behind you and just moving forward you want to get into her to kind of get to the stage of being in a final it's great and for me to have. an open where i haven't been a stage in the second week of a grand slam is a really good achievement for me and you know to be number three in the world is

great as well as one final question obviously a huge year for you with graeme so i'm trying to get on the ground sometimes. i mean this is part of a region where you're playing fed cup trying to get in the. gold mean to you for the olympics has meant so much for me since i was a young kid that was really what we always looked forward to and one day in tennis when i was young wasn't that big and it was always all the winter sports that i watched and i hope that one day i would be an olympian so you know i missed it in beijing with the shoulder surgery and. looking forward to going to fix everything which i'm. sixty extended their lead at the top of group j. with a home victory over italian side seven the host took the bull by the whole drive from the start winning the quarter twenty twelve continue to press in the second. increasing their advantage to sixteen points by halftime henry dhamma can top score for next with sixteen including this two pointer to make it forty two twenty two midway through the third period because untamed then took their foot off the gas

but firmly held on to their lead fifty nine forty for the final score there. meanwhile in group a olympiacos registered their first win over the top sixteen the greek speed on a dual fs of turkey at home eighty three sixty five. top scored for the hosts with eighteen points. now stand with basketball and in the n.b.a. indiana have beaten minnesota one hundred ninety nine the pacers scored more than one hundred points for only the second time this season it was a pretty close affair during the first two quarters were the visitors would start pulling away late in the third danny granger top scored with thirty six points including this three pointer to make it sixty fifty two in favor of the paces danny granger was then involved in an all to cation with kevin love. but the referees managed to calm the players and avoid a mass brawl. shined in the final period to having several crucial points

as indiana run out winners one hundred nine points to ninety nine. weeks. now to the chinese basketball league where j.r. smith put in a quite remarkable performance as the golden bowls but the quinto double stars by one hundred twenty two points to one hundred ten the former denver nuggets guard contributed sixty points in his team's victory by putting on a dramatic show with three pointers he managed to score fourteen out of his eighteen attempts from behind the arc so that he was the highest score in the game smith also contributed eight rebounds and six assists was quite a performance. now to women's figure skating where russia has never claimed a single olympic gold medal however with two years to go into the sochi winter games there's hope that run will soon end fifteen year old adelina sotnikova is a real medal prospect robert virginia and went to major. singles this is

the only discipline in which an olympic gold medal has eluded such a big figure skating nation like russia. is one of the few offering major hope for the long anticipated ladies' ground in the sport first of all in sochi twenty fourteen at the age of fifteen so to go has already claimed the russian domestic to idle three times having also won the world junior championships in twenty eleven. she has already proved a strong will to win she's a fighter and this is something you cannot teach that's given by god she's one of those who can compete and can achieve top results not a fact that will be genius of brad wish i was for it when my mom took me to skating skill nearby just to test my capability for skating with professional coaches all the kids around started crying when they fell down but i stood up and kept moving

forward step by step and the coaches looked at my mother and said with strongly recommend that you make her continue and that's how i started figure skating. according to the international skating union is rankings so nicole is currently the world's number seventeen but has plenty of time to fine tune her skills with her coach five ten years to search and bam million of a there is a lot. have you seen that come on you should have completed that element every single till and is destined to face tough competition absent down at the first ever youth winter olympics in is work back in january so that nicole was aged out by her teammate another russian hopeful elizabeth. i believe in being at the russian championships in innsbruck the outcome is opposite they always get compared to each other they compete against each other and that's ok it's just like they've been

pollution. in rivalry which only gave a boost to russian men's figure skating as for the girls only time will tell who's better they're both still growing. we have a good relationship i would say were friends ever usually picks an ins brick bullet together in the same apartment but when it comes to the ice rink it gets tough which is do battle for survival there is still a lot to be done for a delay in a certain to fulfill her huge potential but one thing has always been there in her mind agenda mentality you know actually i like to see chances and i always degrees of doing things which are difficult for me sometimes i mean i don't do well during a warm up and my coach tells me to leave some complicated elements out of my program but i always dare to do them i think to myself i'm strong i'm struve that i can do it. this is what nobody can teach and so to go a has it.

figured well known righty. now with one hundred twenty seven days left until the start of euro twenty twelve excitement is growing across the host countries the ukrainian city of castle which isn't even hosting any games has dedicated it's unreal i stressed at all to the tournament has takes place on ukraine and poland there are some a half inches several sculptures including famous football and trophies on players as football favor. sweeps across the country. this is a gathering there goes on every yeah they stand it's related to euro twenty twelve the theme for the cups heroes and everything related to the upcoming tunnel meant. for now you know we'll have more for you in just under two hours time join in that .

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british science. market. why not what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser report.

refuses to back the latest u.n. draft resolution on syria unless it's clearly ruled out military intervention and. one damascus. egypt is braced for more unrest with marches planned to protest the police failure to prevent a clash of fans at a football match the left dozens dead. plus german chancellor arrives in china hoping to secure support from its strategic economic partner in times of crisis to try and get beijing on board the western policy on iran.

is now at three pm here in moscow you watching r t with me wrong. russia says it will veto the latest u.n. security council resolution on syria unless the draft is changed while moscow admits that progress has been made it's yet to see a text that explicitly room. calls out of military intervention russia is also reluctant to stop selling equipment to damascus saying that would leave syria at the mercy of on recognized rebel forces and with weapons smuggled from abroad parties and i start here check reports russia says it won't accept even a hint of an embargo on arms embargo when it comes to syria and its reasoning for this is pretty simple it says firstly that the weapons and arms are that russia provides to syria cannot be used against demonstrators thus don't influence anything that goes on inside syria and when it comes to this conflict now secondly

russia says that it is only following its legal obligations it's following its international contracts with syria and it's not breaching any international laws at all and most importantly it says that the lessons of libya need to be large because when an arms embargo was put in place on libya what ended up happening was government forces were embargoed but the opposition groups continued to receive openly arms from abroad and this is something that they don't want to see in syria and russia says it's time for the west to stop pretending like armed groups don't exist over there. it would seem logical if there is a conflict let's not supply arms but we saw what happened in libya in an imperfect world this would have meant the following no weapons were the government the opposition point is could get them from anywhere that's what that would mean especially now our security council colleagues refuse even to admit the presence of armed groups they will not condemn them. being supplied with weapons then we say ok

we'll break all our contracts a longstanding relations with syria but they will start supplying even more to opposition groups just like they did in libya. the arab and western backed regime change resolution calls for the. syrian president to step down if this does not happen within fifteen days further measures could take place and russia says no thanks we've seen this similar scenario in libya in this particular case moscow says what's important is for talks for syria to exercise its sovereignty for the opposition and the government to sit down together moscow has offered russia as the center stage for these negotiations but it's important to see that russia still believes that a consensus can be found within the united nations security council it says that broad resolutions that are dangerous should not be put on the table that can split the council and really aggravate any sort of conflict and it continues to call for the important arab observers to remain working on the ground. and i thought here

chuck and i reporting right that one of the u.s. as well as its european and arab allies are committed to pushing president assad out of power but a political analyst of benjamin says forcing regime change is a bad idea that's already plunged other arab countries into turmoil. the case of libya the case of yemen and a number of other countries egypt also suggest that you have to be careful what you wish for the west is rather uncritical the recent insurgency is a good thing only to find that insurgency often means anarchy fractionalization splintering various groups up against one of them and the triumph over time of forces that are no more welcome to the west for the one for the displaced nobody i think did what will happen if assad is overthrown were killed or steps down and no one really knows what the outcome is likely to be the west is hoping it will be less supportive of hezbollah less supportive of iran and less support of abbas and

that could be the case no one really knows what it's going to look like so the fact is would you support insurgencies you're basically taking a very difficult bet on uncertainty you're watching on t.v. and still ahead for you this hour candidates versus the critics. when they ask me who's the president of. the stands and i'm going to say you know i don't know who you know find out why they have the comments of u.s. politicians could be costing america credibility on the international stage. egypt is mourning the victims of wednesday's a tragic football game where at least seventy four fans were killed in an after match clash it's not yet clear what caused the violence which also saw hundreds of people injured when it was claim of the police opened the gates dividing rival sides and stood by while the bloodbath raged some of the fans were armed with rocks

glass bottles and knives egypt's military rulers have a valve to investigate the incident and to punish the perpetrators of this last hour across live to cairo based a writer bel true and i thank you for coming on our to today so what actually happened in port side last night it's early days now but has a picture emerged as to what went wrong. well from what we can i stab eyewitness accounts it's very difficult to work out exactly what happened but essentially the security forces he usually acts as a barrier between the two sides and stepped aside and actually open the gates the pitch we should allowed to to find clubs to come on to the pitch and basically fight each other and in addition i read this is saying that the exits were blocked so they actually found who were the ones targeted i actually couldn't escape and therefore in the ensuing stampede many lost their lives and this instance is as nice as well we believe the portside founds or whoever they were making carrying

knives as well so obviously there are other contributing factors to this apparent way over seventy people were killed here but the seventy four deaths i should mention as an update there come against the backdrop of rising political tension in the country as we all know about our thousands of demonstrators demanding the military see power how has that played a part do you think in last night's disaster perhaps a venting of frustration on the football pitch. i didn't quite catch that actually but if you talk about the backdrop of the violence in the last few months we've definitely seen protesters asking for the military regime to step down recently there's been a vacuum of security since the twenty fifth of january anniversary celebrations you see almost no police or army on the streets which is quite unprecedented considering you had a million people in the streets on the twenty fifth in addition we've had an increase in kidnappings on a daily basis and in knife crime there's also been

a lot of attacks on banks so this is sort of back to. the backdrop to what happened yesterday so you you mention that the lack of police presence on the streets a lack of a military presence as well as we know that since since the ousting of mubarak though it's been this military junta in power at the time you say that their presence has disappeared from the streets and yet crime is up knife crime other types of crime is up on the streets of the egyptian capital do you think or do you think this is what a year of protest is what the people there have been asking for i'm sorry didn't catch that last question too i think was after a year of protests ousting the mubarak regime the military junta and now in power the muslim brotherhood now returning the most seats but as you say crime is up and is the was certainly off to this football pitch melee is this what the people of the main central city of cairo have been asking for for the past year it might appear to some their years revolution has not turned out all flowery at the end.

i'm sorry it's very distorted i'm not able to actually. listen i must say thank you very much for coming on r.t. today we've got a bit of a glitch here somewhere there's a mouse chewing on a cable live from cairo a freelance journalist thank you very much belcher. you with r.t. live from moscow now a german chancellor angela merkel has called on china the biggest buyer of iranian oil to use its influence to persuade to ron to renounce its possible nuclear weapons ambitions merkel is on her fifth visit to china where she's trying to change beijing stance on iran and get her to support a western resolution on syria also on the agenda seeking support for the eurozone merkel's to hold talks with chinese leaders to try to win investment in the ailing euro let's talk more on the visit with professor of international politics young junior jang of the university of bristol in the u.k. thanks for coming on r.t. today merkel will obviously try to convince the chinese to support the western

position on iran and not to undermine the use oil embargo do you think beijing will listen. well i think beijing has made it very clear you know he doesn't believe in this kind of electoral economic sanction in any way not only against iran but in general even in the case of north korea for example therefore i don't think he will energy biology duce kind of persuasion all age will be persuaded by your. arguments or visit so as you say angela merkel's angela merkel's visit to beijing will not sway china to support the west with its approach to iran let's talk about syria china has been against a resolution in the un is anything that germany can do to change china's position on syria do you think i have a family it's very interesting that there are some kind of arguments so whether.

germany swayed china security council member to change its position again i can't see any possibility of although i think it's important for the leaders of china and germany to exchange views on these kind of issues and tried to see where they can agree on some where specter of it i don't think there is any possibility that. you can actually change the chinese pollution syria as well so i can have a tough time trying to get beijing to side with the west when it comes to syria and as you said a few moments ago also about all of iran aside from foreign policy let's talk about geopolitics here and the u.s. has been enhancing its military presence in the asia pacific region and experts say it's to counter china's growing military strength is china now looking for more support perhaps with allies in europe. i don't think this particular visit.

invitation for and is a chinese is a counter measure against that particular move by the united states recently i do believe that china has see some strategic role that germany can play in terms of its leadership in the e.u. but not necessarily in this kind of strategic balance of power scenario china obviously has a big stake in the european economy and also partly because the e.u. is the largest trading partner of china china has been watching very closely obviously euro crisis and how the european union and particularly germany leading the effort do with the euro crisis therefore there is a huge stake over there in terms of european economy and therefore china is very keen to try to understand what next and how you is going

to do is deal prices next particularly what germany's think and so this is what i think the importance of. visit to china is really more in this kind of scenario rather than the strategic balance of power so aside from geo politics aside from foreign policy your say that the main issues are stake here are that of economics it's very curious how you bring up the issue as we all know germany is shouldering a huge amount of the eurozone debt now or come to china to try and get some sort of support on the flailing euro it's interesting to note on the issue of economies here china is the biggest holder of u.s. debt up to one trillion dollars and yet over the past two and a half three years china has been buying up huge reserves of gold so if it's trying to move away from the dollar as it's trading currency what does this mean for europe do you think beijing would want to invest. in the euro now some are calling

china already the piggy bank of the west. well i mean it depends on what you are only europe cities to be quite small i mean they would do there has been argument about buy europe forms of other euro bonds are not big enough to absorb large or the chinese and quickly accumulating subplots therefore i think it is no orders you are rather than by the american cherry bombs i mean as you mentioned gold is the only other alternative obviously if we have sufficient the euro bonds i don't see why china cannot if you will not. foreign currency into europe. i'm running a rather long time here forgive me for that please but one last question here we're going to go back to iran very briefly with the e.u. embargoes on iranian oil exports as we know that china is the number three biggest buyer of iranian oil is a massive market right there with the e.u.

putting embargoed on what is essentially a lot of china's oil could we see some sort of backlash on global markets or not and some other shape way or form from china. i'm not quite sure what you mean by a backlash from china well could china do something to retaliate as we know china is a third biggest economy in the world is certainly on the rise with india america already in place or oil of fundamental foundation to world economies this could make this could take a chunk out of china's economy if indeed the e.u. embargoes continue to restrict iranian exports of oil to china i don't see how the e.u. in bugger would china's import olds or you from your own. mr yong region is dying the professor of international politics at the university of bristol thank you for coming on and so it's a day. well you without your life in moscow you can always log on to our website r

t v dot com to give us your opinion on the possible results of chancellor merkel's visit to china let's bring up the numbers from our web site right now or so far this hour forty three percent of you think the visit will help china access new markets almost a third of it was believed beijing will extend a helping hand to a week in europe by now sixteen percent say that china will move closer to the western position on iran a minority of this hour believing the meeting will end with chinese support for u.n. security council resolution on syria to head over to dot com cast your vote but for now let's head over to the business of. coming out for you russia's prime minister has a voice. to take the russian economy from the position of one hundred twenty eight tons of the top of the business to the point not a matter of several. minutes time. in the business.

so i see that for now it is the final day of appeal that the british supreme court with the wiki leaks founder julian assange against his extradition to sweden he faces allegations of rape and sexual assault dating back to august two thousand and ten and says the claims are politically motivated let's cross live now to london to talk to these lawyers good to see you so when can we expect to hear the final decision on this ongoing saga. well not today is the answer to that this is the second day of a two day hearing here at the supreme court in london but according to documents the been issued by the cool we're not to expect judgement for what they're saying is a number of weeks which is far as i'm concerned it can mean anything between two and ten basically it gives them time to think about what they've been haring i suppose arrived this morning about an hour before proceeding started he looks relaxed again much as he did yesterday he had a quick word with his supporters to sort of thank them for being.