piece of material and so easy to handle. qualities of primary importance in our business she lets you think of intentionally messed it up so you'll fall out of the sky. never absolutely not great job yelena very well done just lynch. the company repairs the existing believes as well as making new ones that receive several damaged envelopes a month this part of the balloon is subjected to wear and tear more often than others after the envelope is repaired and the new one is ready to test start. mikheil nigel is the main believe tester of the to law in office factory none of the balloons made by the company will be launched unless he gives the go ahead. are going to include us federal our best gets match european standards they were not as good in the old days but now they're russia's best. guess is true i can't

afford to pay the price but. well i would buy one if they were not so expensive that. michelle knight golf is a veteran russian air and all that he's been involved with aviation for fifty four years is a boom designed by training he's built seven of them with his own hands. first to go ballooning when he was fifty three years old he looks forward to celebrating his seventy fifth birthday in flight the contest balloons at any time under any conditions one hundred flights a year is a minimum. if you could shoot a flying is always a blissful whatever the conditions. were for move a lot of nerve always in normal position. the balloon is in working order as it should be. is that hopefully we'll get no complaints from the guys in about us.

to look at the ils this is not what i call flying. in general i don't see being tethered is the definition of florida only would there out there who while we truly flying. a hot air balloon can only be in free flight during the daytime it's a common role for all balloonists in the world the basket has to touch down before sunset. unlike balloons in free flight tethered balloons are allowed to be launched even in the dark in that case the burner illuminates the balloon from the inside. pilot's refer to this phenomenon as the good organizers of the path to go with festival of balloonists came up with the idea for the spectacle to attract tourists

. current simpatico such that early morning is the best time for taking to the skies the convoy of balloonists normally starts out at five o'clock in the morning to head towards the starting line. the success of the flight primarily depends on the wind no matter how skillful the pilot might be balloonists good weather forecasts and reports about the force and direction of the wind from ground control safety services but then there is a simpler way of determining the winds direction the whole crew takes part in preparations for a flight normally it includes four people a technician carries out checks to satisfy himself for the balloon is in working

order. have a good flight. balloons are raised into the sky by the pilot and the navigator but whether the crew will get home depends on those who stay on the ground. once a balloon lands the crew has to be retrieved from the spot. sometimes inexperienced teams responsible for retrieval can't find crews landing at dusk therefore those unfortunate balloonists have to spend

a night out in the open. is another ex air force pilot. during competitions he is often charged with the task of ensuring the crew safe return to earth his job is retrieving crews of balloonists from wherever they might land. rainbow pick up his calling do you read pickup i can hear you. wonderful. has had special training to learn how to get his bearings in different conditions whether in the woods or mountains but tracking a balloon through the streets of a town is a skill in its own right the. problem with tracking a balloon flying over a city or another population center is that there is a mass of people. you need to have a good knowledge of the city's top dog are free and the floods. what invariably ends up happening. is you get stuck in traffic. which is just great.

you know and i mean. this is a very convenient place. from here we can see where balloons are going from where they are likely to touch down. of the prophet. can you see our balloon rising over this town it's over by the hill. how far a balloon can fly depends on the wind what's most important is to make sure that it lands in such ways to make it easy for the retrieval truck to get a. rainbow rainbow pick up calling are you coming in times working for you for. that pickup head down right away ok we're coming. to.

pick up can you see us we can see you very well. a. couple of the. nile loses three or four kilograms of weight in a week of intense retrievals the crew puts the billing together and takes it apart several times the envelope weighs one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty kilograms . i think about what we entrust our very lives to this envelope higher than what we make sure that no stones get in the way back up which might damage it with the authorities during. each gas tank weighs fifty kilograms if you add that to the burner in the basket the retrieval people will be hard put to collect it all. pylon could see my lawn at thirty six.

m. now we're all. on face value ballooning is a simple affair behind the scenes it is a vigorous combination of efforts by a crew an escort truck and those who help build. these people to find rain snow bitter cold and scorching heat truly they're afraid of only one thing missing the ability to take to the skies. the sky is not misunderstand the sky just don't judge the sky very simply it's.

science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered.

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plenty. the arab league to pray tell to bring stability back to syria as pressure on the regime with speculation western states could be propping up al-qaeda through their support of the opposition. crowds gather outside the greek parliament which is separate vote or more public cards faced with a tough choice between an impoverished population or a bankrupt country. and iran promises to reveal major advances in its nuclear program which it insists is for peaceful energy purposes despite the long list of western sanctions imposed against it our top stories this hour.

with a look back at the past seven days and the latest developments this is the weekly on. the arab league is mulling over what further action to take on the crisis in syria with reports of escalating violence meanwhile the head of the group's observer mission has resigned just as a proposal is being considered to again send monitors from the league and the u.n. to the country and in english to reports from colorado where the pan arab body convenes the violence in syria has been escalating there are claims by the by the opposition who are saying is that more than a hundred more than one hundred people have been killed just over this past week there where the claims from the opposition from the rebel fighters come that majority of the people that there is a massacre going on in the city of homs the syrian officials beg to differ and

those people who are who have been killed are people who support the government. people who were kidnapped by the armed groups and they were massacred on the. evening after the. order due to the exact time of the meeting of the security council in new york syrian authorities are also saying that the military support and financial support for their bills is coming of from abroad from various other states there have been reports that could start any u.k. special forces are fighting on the sides of the rebel and also what with the with the recent announcement by the head of al qaeda who has said who called on all arab muslims and muslims worldwide to support syrian rebels those claims from the syrian opposition may not be untrue moskos very persistent and are continuing to press for the fact that it's that it's up to syrians themselves in order for the series

themselves must be able to solve the current crisis of course the support of the arab league in its endeavors to try and stop the bloodshed in the country however russia's envoy to the united nations. did it to say even in an interview to our teeth that perhaps the arab league isn't quite as effective at the moment as it should be as the monitoring mission of that i believe was there and as the situation was evolving everybody saw that the government troops were pulling out of certain towns or certain quarters in the city is that territory was taken over by armed rebel groups that would mean that the the armed confrontation will continue and escalate there is also a washington which increasingly which increasingly that makes its rhetoric a little bit sharper than before that they're trying to rally countries in order to press on the syrian government for the president to step down of course with the

recent developments with the support from al qaeda this is becoming more and more to be situation with every moment of while the violence continues people here including the arab league in cairo trying to figure out what exactly they can do in order to stop the violence. political analyst dr adel says the u.s. and al qaeda have similar goals in syria many branches of a car that are in fact related to the directly and mainly if you know that have been created or originally by the united states i mean. accordingly i think that it is behind a car that in syria it was behind the car there in libya it is the same by the way and that's why you know i think it's harder still trying to manipulate the people that is there is it because it is in the compromise between. the dream we have to put in mind also that the fundamentalists in general are only

a very good relationship. regarding you know the issue of capitalism that capitalism and fundamentally. allies if you like from and it did you can point view and also it is. regarding their interests that's why the both of them are fighting the same in which is you know the syrian regime and especially and largely if you like the arab nationalism but ongoing violence reports of growing casualties in syria very hard to verify with even the u.n. stopping trying to estimate the body count but there are those who believe the figures are being manipulated to push a regime change agenda that is either bennett has more. the syrian observatory for human rights syrian observatory for human rights the syrian observatory for human rights it's one of the most widely quoted sources of syrian casualty figures it is not always telling the truth of an issue or hours the syrian observatory for human rights has left several media outlets quoting if people see one nation as two

rivals fight the same name in an op the original group was hijacked by opposition activists in two postings militate it is to be alongside civilian one that's both sites claim they're the official observatory this is the original site in arabic with an english version on facebook and this is the fake site launched in the center and mostly in english several foreign news outlets have assume they are one and the same thing quoting the fake sites casualty figures the consequence a very different perspective of the crisis the original sites latest figures showed just over five thousand one hundred civilian deaths against almost two thousand military casualties the rival site claims well over six and a half thousand civilians have been killed and barely six hundred troops a difference many claim suggests this is a lot more than just a numbers game i don't think even the people using these figures are have any objectivity really they have an agenda

a clear agenda is there just the fire by any means possible that assad regime is a brutal massacring regime and it needs to fall a soon as possible and we can see the united nations security council when that human rights strategy for regime change doesn't work how annoyed western governments are how got arab league monitor the original observatory strictly opposes military intervention the man who hijacked it's name disagrees. used to translate at the real observatory he was fired after falsely claiming to be an official spokesman and using a live interview to call for a no fly zone. since then he's launched a smear campaign against the original group claiming they're the impostors as are we and these figures have been quoted by the b.b.c. c.n.n. and a.b.c. australia the other groups say they tried to pass some political views so far by calling for no fly zone for international intervention and we made it clear i sit

on their victory for human rights. original organization is that we are i guess an interventional we are against the no fly zone all we need is to stop the bloodshed in that is going on in syria as always and his group refused to speak on camera stating i cannot waste my time talking about this is the moment whilst people are dying in homs they're my priority right now he did refer us to another opposition group based in london and they too refused to comment on the ownership of the observatory but they did confirm that reporting military deaths was not in their interest it's not our position to report. it is of. government troops the b.b.c. and the guardian had to withdraw material after falsely quoting as always the human rights observatory the un stopped counting the death toll claiming it's too difficult to keep track of but its human rights chief also said five thousand

civilian deaths should be enough to provoke international action the real observatory still documents the deaths civilian or otherwise but it may be too late for the numbers to matter either bennett. thousands are out on the streets of greece once again as the parliament is set to choose between tough new cuts or an imminent default the country's prime minister has warned that failing to get more bailout cash would be catastrophic we can now bring you live pictures from athens where we can see foreign smoke and the crowds there and we're getting reports there bill. here gas canisters being fired at protesters by the police as the demonstrators are outside parliament at the moment live pictures there from athens and the e.u. creditors want an unpopular new austerity bill passed in return for the one hundred thirty billion euro rescue package the cabinet has cleared the plan but lost six

ministers or deputies in the process some coalition m.p.'s have threatened to vote against it goes ahead fifteen thousand civil servants will lose their jobs and the minimum wage will be slashed. thousands of greeks have been protesting against the deal throughout the week and as we can see that the protests continue today as those clashes with police can be seen taking place in athens live pictures here on r.t. and the financial analyst max kaiser he says the greek government is not acting in the best interests of its people. all of the toxic debt that has been accumulated on banks' balance sheets around the world and germany and the u.k. and the u.s. have been put onto the balance sheet of greece and now the government of greece wants the people of greece to pay for this toxic debt the debt in greece did not originate in greece it originated in these other countries that have used greece as a toxic debt don't don't their debt now they want the greeks to pay the debt the

greeks of course will be on able to pay the debt the greek government is in place by the bankers the previous greek government was put there by the bankers he was trained in chicago the same place christine legarde was trained the greeks have not representational government in quite some time they need to take a page out of the arab spring they need to stage a revolution they need to become self-sufficient and regain their sovereignty again by staging some kind of coup. max keiser then we can return to those live pictures there coming from the center of athens thousands of protesters gathered outside the greek parliament it follows a week of demonstrations we can see them demonstrating right now the parliament the moment debating more deep cuts streaming the events in greece life for you at the moment on our website just go to our teeth dot com for more on that.

well still ahead here on r.t. a year since the toppling of mubarak stead of celebrations across egypt a general strike as people feel betrayed by the military rulers and want change that still hasn't come on. the group of political activists russians take the matter of election transparency into their own hands but organizing a vote is leak. story still to come in the weekly but first iran says it will soon reveal some major advances in its nuclear program speaking on the thirty third anniversary of the islamic revolution president ahmadinejad's said tehran would never stop enriching uranium iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes but united states and its allies the e.u. and israel suspect iran could be pursuing nuclear weapons have been piling up sanctions against iran but from a dinner jihad warns that europe's planned oil embargo will backfire spain one of

the biggest consumers of iranian oil says the sanctions would hurt it more than any other european state based journalist we go on your manado believes the embargo has been forced upon europe. what we're seeing here is not a decision that comes actually from european countries to spain never wanted to go to to put in place this is something that comes externally from the united states pressure on the european union so it calls into question spain's tanami foreign policy decisions and he's not just to spain and italy also greece imports lots of oil from iran it could be hard hit in a way that would bring them bankrupt in the coming future that would be a complete disaster for the european union and for the euro and that can happen because of the political move and union actually had a very good relationship in terms of the economy and trade with iran it was. the

last twenty years the connections that have been lost after the iranian revolution and the situation was improving until we came to these new tension that has been in my view to a great extent artificially created. on the first anniversary of the ousting of former president hosni mubarak egypt activists who call for a general strike to ramp up the pressure against the ruling military council they want the council to step down immediately saying they are blocking reforms the military said it won't accept any ultimatum and will transfer power in june when the presidential elections show july that many people fear they will remain in power beyond this date based journalist bill truces egyptians have every right not to trust the military. people are unsure about whether they'll actually transfer. and so far the military really minute you count so has yet to fulfill any of its promises that said since it came into power also just generally on the streets we're seeing massive human rights violations towards protesters people expressing

their freedom of speech and we're seeing excessive use of tear gas and cartouche they call it here which is birdshot and maiming protesters has been absolutely no reform of the police was fired by the. disaster a few weeks ago which saw over seventy four people die so essentially we've seen very little reform since the barak stepped down and people are basically anxious that nothing will change and it will just slip into a new new dictatorship i think most people here would posit would say they do say that the revolution never ended but it's called the continuous or the ongoing revolution really since january even after mubarak stepped down this time last year they've been continuous sit ins and protests and violent clashes with egypt's security forces pushing for protestors pushing for change they haven't seen yes. the crackdown on western funded pro-democracy groups in cairo has been discussed by the u.s. is top general with egypt's marshal to tally over four dozen foreigners have been

arrested and now facing trial for funding unrest in the country but as more if an ocean reports it's the timing of the clamp down that is raising questions egypt's new government crackdown on n.g.o.s has raised many questions and they may want to is right now the groups many we funded by washington have been on the ground here for a while at the vanguard of the uprising against the baraka that eventually brought the supreme council. to power last february and no one has ever seems to care about their sources of income that is until they don't have that their criticism to the new military leadership. for the slow pace of reform some of them are used by this . they are quoting people they are working. they are the ones that evolution they have. won the radicals who live there this is very much a dangerous world the rhetoric this is especially led to prosecutors really

seventeen offices of advocacy groups forty three activists including americans germans and egyptians are now facing trial for illegally using foreign finds to promote unrest in the post mubarak country activists how one would claim they are the victim of scarves reluctance to give up power with dreaming the people about with their brights but the scaf looking for enjoy. some agent against the regime and all the mind the round up of activists has also netted the son of you asterisk protection secretary ray la hood further fueling tension between cairo in washington. isn't simply because. of them in a sort of plans for. i don't think that he has leading at all in the thing at all so this is a game and the record was military aid to egypt reaches one point three billion dollars annually has been very serious.