syria's battles creep closer to president abbas's doorstep the foreign pressure mounts while russia and other mediators push for peace through diplomacy. france looks left president of on social a steal a march in round one of the parliamentary election giving up powerful boost to his reform mandate. for the whole again some political activists threaten to mar the euro two thousand and twelve championships in poland and ukraine just four days into the tournament. this is already coming to you live from moscow i'm marina josh and welcome to the

program now as u.n. observer struggle to make a difference in conflict or in syria international calls for military intervention are growing louder with israel now joining in damascus is on the defensive as nationwide fighting rolls into the city while state media claims that terrorists are preparing new plots to provoke regime change or even action has the latest from the syrian capital. news we've been receiving in the last few days indicate that the rebels are gaining on the syrian regime we've been hearing here in damascus explosions and gunfire between oppositions and governmental forces and it's been much much more frequent than ever before but violence has not only is collated here in the capital but everywhere across the country over the weekend the local media have also been reporting that the rebels are now in perception of chemical weapons and smuggled in from libya and they're planning chemical weapon and terror attack to blame it on damascus well we've seen indeed the rebels been recently aggressive

and active recently and of course these accusations may sound groundless but we've all seen just recently how the rebels may have framed people just last week a from the british journalist alex thompson from channel four has said that while working here in syria he and his crew were set up by the rebels to be killed by the syrian army he said that they were deliberately led into a death trap and he thinks that he opposition wanted them to be killed by the governmental forces to blame it on damascus meanwhile the u.n. monitors are working here on the ground to try to trying to do their best to investigate what's going on. right now they're trying to establish exactly what happened during last week's massacre in the central province some province of how much how many people were killed and who's to blame but this is extremely hard to do and the details of very hard to very far. because there is

a lot of confusion and the main reason is that the many many sides been involved in this conflict here in syria not just governmental forces all. of rebels rebel fighters but the result of the police third part. it may include. the jihad is whose goal is to topple the regime here in syria and all these toys involved in this conflict may be responsible for the killing and that also could be a provocation so it makes. the world call for u.n. . mission here on the ground extremely complicated we've also recently been hearing another lot mean indicate the syrian national council the turkey based opposition group has elected a new leader and he kurds curried the largest ethnic minority here in

syria and they haven't been anyhow involved in this crisis here in the country we haven't heard any problem from the area in north east of the country where the leaves so these nomination fears are growing that the rebels are trying to involve as. people as possible and even involve these groups and that may lead to even more violence and more violence escalations here in syria for international reporting there now the syrian national council has been at odds with some opposition groups inside syria and the new as and pledging rapprochement but asia times correspondent pepe escobar says the man and the council are two disconnected from the front line. sida hookups afterburner bar homegirl yan is a very shady character he has very good kurdish connections of course so many connections as well but he is also trying to play to the christian ends of the

although i say look if there is. the government or rejean or we're not going to touch it nobody believes him incites you know in fact did jim braless the opposition umbrella is disgruntled matter in fact you know they don't get along with each other in the air if you read it on the ground by people who are actually doing a lot of these killings in fact and these people they are mercenaries imported from libya by the way via qatar though where i am at the moment and this is a terrible subject to be discussed here in qatar i can't find anybody here who would discuss a train clee what the qatari intelligence services are actually doing on the ground in syria but this is part of the qatari foreign policy they are financing and weaponize in the really hardcore arm of the syrian opposition and i'm not sure mr sieda the new ahead of the syrians or council not what's really going on the ground

. now is more news analysis and pictures in our website r.t. dot com online at the moment and godly scandal final season a police raid on the former head of the vatican bank allegedly exposed misdeeds inside one of the world's most secretive organizations plus. montreal's may have police here gas and pepper spray student protesters but they refused to give in only virtue which in fear rises the video the analysis and the reaction are at r.t. dot com. president francois hollande socialist party and its leftist ally stand to take control of parliament following at triumphant first round and their allies secured more than forty six percent giving a powerful boost to launch reform mandate that are still you have the latest from paris the results of the first round sort of these a very good the morale boost for the socialist party in trying to get

a majority of the lower house of parliament however nothing is certain definitely there's no time for complacency and they can't just sit around and expect the same results in the second rail it's not forget that the actual voter turnout this time is just forty eight point three percent though if more people come out to vote in the second round the question is which side are they going to vote for and also there are still the u.n. people already the conservatives still trying to rally whatever support they can get most of dissipated a policy to this is the one that he's speaking about quite a lot during his campaign which is more growth for friends of the stair to you that's on the one hand and how this translates for the french people is that more jobs and taxing the rich it's this tax and spend policy that he wants it limited from it's a seven as much as seventy five percent tax for the rich certainly not something that conservatives want to see if you want to get this a policy like that through he will need the support of the lower house let's remember the socialists already have the support of the senate so it will be much

easier to get the things through you also promise about sixty thousand teaching jobs in the next why. years as well as retirement age bringing it down to sixty and this is against from sixty two this is against the. driven path that the rest of europe is taking so france will be taking a very different approach to the approach if you will also of course we want to drop french troops a year earlier than one from afghanistan and he needs the support of both houses to get this through so france will land gunning for a majority in the parliament and let's not forget that it's necessary that he provides concrete results for the french people the patience is very low but this point and the nicolas sarkozy became deeply unpopular for coming in with promises and not fulfilling any of those promises it's what got him out of the. to sarsfield reporting there now let's get the thoughts of alex corbell from of the news a website. contra points dot org and he is in brussels for us.

thanks so much indeed always for being here with us on the program now president alon already controls the senate if he gets control of the lower house of parliament how do you think will that affect that drive which france of course was a big part of in sarkozy's time. well. as you know it will be the first time in the fifth republic history that the socialist but you will control the both the lower. house and the presidency. if if the surface but you manage to. the absolute majority meaning two hundred eighty nine seats in the lower house in i mean on the seventeenth of june. it means that they will not be forced to deal with. the. left front party meaning that they will be able to. get some spending and

maybe trade to the public dept so they will be able to get along. and e.u. officials. all right let's not talk about foreign policy over here as we know socialist and self supported last year is libya intervention and he also joined the condemnation of the syrian president's regime wordy you see his foreign policy had a especially militarily at this point well really i mean the for a long as foreign policy and sarkozy's foreign policy likely to be similar in the near future i don't see any military operations going on in syria in the immediate future and certainly not without the approval of the kremlin but you have to remember that i mean polls back in april produces and twelve. less than thirty six percent of the french voters yet confident that no one will be made

will be able to manage an international crises military crazy's so clearly going on and doesn't have a new mandate i mean any particular mandate for military stick for military adventurism. now returning to the home policy alliance promises include raising the minimum wage and lowering the retirement age funded by even higher taxes so where does he think the french people are going to get the money during a slowdown well quite frankly the main point you can you can get from this election is really high. abstention you have forty two percent of the french voters who choose to. i mean two i mean four when you have forty two percent of sentient plus six percent of the of fringe voter who don't to both the to a to the resistor and one percent of the voters who choose to vote blink so if you

if you're going to meet in this nation of the popularity of the main political party i mean mainstream political party in france you have the center left eighteen percent. of the center right person to any of the. national front seven percent so grateful to be i mean people i mean eighty two people eighty two percent of the french voters have chosen to give their vote to the socialist party so clearly it's not. a clear mandate to do for so don't fall for the next five years and one question for impossible for you know from. now if the french troops will leave and get a stand a year earlier than planned so what does this say about his relations with the united states i mean one year earlier than.

because it's not really the clear change from the strategic plan. in afghanistan by the coalition led by the united states for us and some of of the . clearly if failed i mean it's a big it's a big defeat for the united states and the one with the europe and. i mean the way. first it was a punitive were against the taliban then it was there were two. and now it's a counter in syria. so i mean the objective has changed the strategic. decisions been really really bad and the result sickly of failure. to actually attend their goals all right isobelle thanks very much indeed for your

thoughts very much appreciated. thank. you watching our team now coming up later in the program equal work but on equal pay brains don't match the bank balance in the united states we explain why for every dollar man earns a woman gets just seventy seven cents. just four days into the euro two thousand and twelve full finals and the atmosphere certainly hotting up in poland and ukraine and it's not just on the pitch with aggressive fans and politics threatening to overshadow the championship police in poland have arrested fourteen people involved in a brawl between irish polish and gratian supporters just before the gratian island game on sunday it's the latest incident a string of clashes that has already seen a number of teams warned over their fans behavior over in ukraine the fans are not shying away from politics either as our correspondents here chefs in our reports.

ukraine's capital kiev is joining in with a feast of food well that is certainly the euro twenty two world football championship with the national side to play a swedish national side here on the monday evening out suddenly flans fans are flocking into the city with at least twenty five thousand arriving here on sunday alone so joining the huge army of swedish fans and fans from all over europe who have come here to witness this tournament now certainly from the organizational point of view everything has been smooth so far and certainly the tournament is all about sports it's all about football but to some extent you were going to do well is being overshadowed by bullets now we certainly remember that some leaders of the european states of the european union member states decided to boycott the championship because of what they describe as a mistreatment of ukraine's prime minister yulia timoshenko who is serving seven years in prison for the abuse of power and now we understand that some of the members some of the leaders of the member states of the e.u. member states have so often their stance somehow it was transferred to

a hospital in the city of one of the host city. well football championship nevertheless you can witness right here in a central key of what it's all about you can see the entrance to the found zone and just meters away from the entrance to the fans on we see the tent of the opposition those who are supporting the protesting her imprisonment they've been here for almost a year now they decided against removing their town with the euro twenty twelve coming to the ukrainian capital now suddenly they're still demanding that you must be freed and everyone all the tourists coming here can observe the posters they hang out in english demanding the political prisoner you know it's much like as they describe it to be released immediately certainly the e.u. leaders have softened their stance some of them will be coming to witness the football here in ukraine but we understand that angela merkel the german chancellor who always attends german matches when the national side plays decided against

coming to ukraine at least during the group stage should germany qualify from the group stage then maybe will decide to come here and witness her side some other side in the quarterfinals but for now i understand that she decided against coming here as well as almost all of the members of the dutch government the only sound of the minister of sport here to ukraine to attend the dutch games but other members who always attend dutch games when they play during the euros decided against coming here i also understand that the dutch supporters ahead of their game against denmark in the city of how to get marched to the streets of this ukrainian city wearing t. shirts saying free so you can see for yourself that this story is being closely connected to politics closely connected to the pressure from the european union on ukraine to release you will see certainly in the coming weeks how this situation will unfold for now it's been a very peaceful here and everyone certainly enjoys the great game of football which we seeing every night from both poland and ukraine thanks here to ask your pardon

from ukraine as for the football itself we've got all the drama on the pitch with the in an anti sports bulletin later this hour. to other stories now here in our team the police in moscow are searching the home of opposition leader at the scene of on the the partners of other prominent opposition figures are also under investigation they will be questioned further on tuesday the searches come ahead of tuesday's planned millions march in moscow scheduled to coincide with a holiday marking the foundation of a modern russia police say the search is in relation with street protests held on may the sixth there were hundreds of the rest when the rally turned violent with some demonstrators hurling stones and glass at officers the protest was over a blot of impudent returning to power and came a day before he's an integration ceremony. economists fear of the one hundred billion euro alone that the euro zone's agreed to give spain might not be enough by lending the cash to spain where one in four people are out of work ministers want to reassure investors and direct the crisis firewall spanish banks were left with

billions of euros of bad loans after the property bubble burst sending the country into a deep recession archie spoke to the man who is often called the euro's founding father later this hour former european commission president says that he used troubles began with a lack of control. when the euro was for the course clear. that we needed. to go the leaks come on fiscal policy by you guys in the program all right and no tory key to comb through the behavior of a member state in two thousand and three high rise of the program we gave france germany and italy they told that this was the game they support the need then i could. read the cocoa trolled by the euro stuff and they said no and so that we could cheat everything but to come before their budget is much warmer. but

nobody expects to be forgiven because of the greek government shoot at them no doubt that if we were six seven per year that was the day the series though is not to be state it is if i do it you know so you're open to a good otoh if you do believe that it will. now take a look at some other stories from around the world militants from a serious radical islamist group boko haram have attacked two churches fifty people were wounded by a suicide bomber in the city of jobs the blast triggered street protests in which six people died and a separate a town gunman opened fire on worship first in borno killing one person injuring three others bubble rahm's carried out a number of churches attacks and its attempts to impose sharia law across nigeria.

violence in the capital of chile it was sparked by a t.v. documentary which praised the country's former dictator augusto pinochet police had to use tear gas and water cannon to break up the angry crowds and some tag an estimated three thousand people were killed during pinochet's hardline seventeen year old while thousands more were arrested or forced into exile. muslims in thailand are calling on the united nations to stop the violence in the neighboring myanmar it's believed clashes between buddhists and muslims have killed at least seven people wounded seventeen others and saw hundreds of houses burned the country's government doesn't recognize the muslims as one of the country's minorities it's also reported that u.n. officials have begun leaving the more due to the worsening situation there. america's women are now top of the class over men when it comes to getting advanced degrees there is a sting in the tail though their salaries still lag far behind their male counterparts out what's worse is that conservatives are blocking legislation to get

fair pay as marina board now explains. these medical and scape of america's professional force has undergone major reconstruction over the decades women now make up fifty percent of the nation's labor force sixty percent of the voting population and they've surpassed men in earning advanced college degrees but when it comes to salary the land of opportunity remains a land of inequality for women a full time working women in the u.s. certainly aren't seventy seven cents for every dollar made by a man according to recent statistics men earn higher salaries in nearly all occupations including nursing teaching and even secretarial work but experts say the pay gap has less to do with qualifications and much more to do with stereotypes surrounding gender united states that definitely has a lot of cases where women are bluntly discriminated and where they are just

discriminated based based on sex the u.s. government says that the current earnings gap will cost the average full time working woman at least four hundred thousand dollars by the time she's sixty five years old we keep going for higher and higher degrees you know with the double masters and i'm going to go for my ph d. man doesn't have to do that so this move if you feel that you know you need to be paid more you need to like put it with don and say that i need to be paid more there's still racism that still sexism i feel like there's a men feel they have a higher power for women just in any sort of sense even the workplace socially it just doesn't make sense to me according to the institute for women's policy research females working on wall street or in real estate face the largest earnings gaps making as much as forty percent less than their male counterpart financial occupations in those occupations women likely doing big wage caps and is in part

because it's hard to access that few others like the old boys. then we're going to remember we're going to be your best friend or your worst enemy america's old boys network of the one nine hundred sixty s. depicted in the show mad men to put a man in their salute to get seriously seems to still permeate in most corporations today less than sixteen percent of fortune five hundred companies reportedly have a woman on the board. facebook has none facebook is a company whose success is really due to the participation of women on its platform more than sixty percent of the people who participate in facebook are women maybe even more importantly than that when seventy percent of the actual sharing the stuff that drives ad revenue and the stuff that makes facebook as dynamic a platform as it is being done and the question by women and yet they went public without a single woman on their board of directors inside the boardroom of america's lawmakers

republicans recently block legislation aimed at strengthening equal pay for women the paycheck fairness act would require employers to prove that differences in pay are based on qualifications not gender and y. been the window of time for filing discrimination lawsuits decades after breaking through the glass ceiling america's working women represent professional muscle but are still fighting for genuine equality. r.t. new york. all right we are now moving to the world of business. for us in the business down scam of course will be following the spanish bailout story now what's important to point is how the markets are reacting or are they still optimistic about the move exactly they do seem rather pleased to know which is good news just to recap for you over the weekend of course spain did request that one hundred twenty five billion dollars and that's to rescue the banking system so it's not a sovereign bailout is to the banking sector in particular the government of printf

area keen to stress that that's about ten percent of g.d.p. and it makes in the fourth year a nation to receive i know it in the fischel statement by the spanish economy minister he said the loan will cover estimated capital requirements with an additional safety margin all that's important now the move means spain now has a firewall should greek election on the june seventeenth unleash a fresh round of markets and that's what investors were really worried grounds so as i say this a sense of confidence restored into the markets let's have a look at the european figures and see that are indeed still gaining in the session i want to mention the ibex the spanish bulls desirous of around five percent in the session of the still concerns on the horizon particularly with a slave now they've got growth figures coming out later on today and they are expected to show contractions of the book saying that one of perhaps the figures will change recently and they say let's see how the asian markets responded to the

spanish bailout years and they too were off to mystic then out the end of the trading session for them action has been taken to the european sovereign debt crisis and the now that's good enough i want to talk about china's trade data because it did expectations that exports jumped over fifteen percent in may and that's from a year earlier now that it was all right because we had industrial output retail sales that she came in below. this is saying that will make chinese authorities continue with measures to stimulate growth on thursday the country's central bank cos its interest rates for the first time in more than three years on worries of a slowdown so investors were holding out for the stimulus in other words injecting cash into the system or alyse how wall street closed up on friday and see that they were optimistic and they were really holding out for investors to sorry for the. spanish banking system to have some movement and we now know that it has later on

wall street opens up we're expecting the optimism to carry very well let's have a look at the russian markets because they all closed today and some are for public holidays on substance a though they were open and they finished up on a high a lot of that was to do with oil actually had a bit of a battering recent sessions but it is indeed alive and we see the figures for this hour we'll be able to see that it's climbing by the most in five months that has a direct impact on the russian market we also have the spanish as well impacting those oil prices as well as imports from china expected to improve as well if you have a look at those oil prices if we may see pretty proud. and of course china is the second biggest consumer of oil says all right that's the reason i need the markets for now so let's see if i can keep up the optimism. katie thanks very much indeed

absolutely well more updates coming up next hour and of course there's more coming your way here in r t before that though i'll bring the headlines stay with us. commission free recrimination free transfer charges free. arrangement free.