with aleppo quickly becoming syria's fiercest battleground russia accuses rebels on their western backers of leaving the mosque has no choice but to fight on. the london olympics gives out the first sets of medals up for a breathtaking opening ceremony that was however painted by police arresting around one hundred cycling activists. saudi arabia police attacked demonstrators with clubs and live ammunition as pro-reform protests spread from buffalo and around united arab emirates. good to have you with us here on r t our top story dozens of people reportedly killed during fresh clashes in syria's largest city as government forces step up

a counter offensive against entrenched rebels witnesses describe the scene in aleppo as the fiercest fighting of the sixteen month long conflict russia says syrian authorities need to work towards peace but can't be expected to concede while western backed insurgents continue to take over cities moscow accuses foreign powers of fueling violence to bring about regime change in damascus the former head of the u.n. mission to syria says assad's fall is only a matter of time but admits it won't necessarily mean the conflict will end new allegations also emerged of foreign interference in syria in defiance of u.n. efforts artie's oksana boyko reports. one week has passed since the united nations has issued a new mandate for its observer mission in syria beach and this theoretically should help calm tensions in this country but if anything violence in syria has only intensified over the past week the clashes between the army and the rebel still continue in the northern city of aleppo with the death toll believed to be in the hundreds and the enormous damage to the city's infrastructure now before the syrian

uprising began aleppo was considered the best case for the burgeoning economic and political ties between syria and its northern neighbor turkey but ever since are there on and bashar assad stopped calling each other france turkey has played a very active and some would say a very distractive role in the syrian affairs turkish territory is being actively used to smuggle weapons for the free syrian army and on the top of that's reuters news agency has revealed that turkey alongside saudi arabia and qatar has sat at a secret military base in one of its southern cities to direct vital military communications support for the free syrian army now a number of experts have long warning that turkey's adamant support for the syrian opposition may come with a cost to its own security for a number of days the turkish state has been struggling against its own militants

i'm talking about the crudest on its workers party the been fighting for the establishment of an independent sovereign state for the kurds world's largest people without a state a few months ago i shall get a chance to visit several kurdish settlements around syria and i was very surprised to find that there are a defacto independent they have their own security forces their own schools our own administration so all these developments with the kurds in syria leave turkey very nervous. and on thursday it's prime minister bashar al assad of aiding kurdish militants in syria and those are the on sad that he's country it reserves the right to strike kurdish targets kurdish locations within syria pretty much like it does in iraq and. may be needed for turkish only self-defense but if those attacks carried out that's going to make it very volatile

a very bloody very unstable situation in this region far worse. london based security analyst charles troubridge thinks the forces fighting to replace assad could pull syria into chaos if the regime falls. there are certainly amongst the opposition democrats perhaps people. working on the inside is what is the outside with that has to be said many of those should we say opposition figures who are speaking about secular democracy or actually on the outside of syria so the question is who is controlling who is the influence behind the armed rebels who are succeeding on the ground it may well continue and one has to look at the supplies and inspiration of various people and what looks to places like saudi arabia and one has to wonder whether saudi arabia is interested in promoting democracy so it isn't with its it with its own internal borders and one i think has to have the greatest fear is that south florida will fall from being

a panacea for this. may well be that for atrocities chaos and carnage on a secular basis and a syria that may well be far worse than people could imagine could possibly be a replacement for assad. very some of the day's other top stories the london olympics have moved into competition mode twelve sets of medals given out on the initial day of the thirteenth of the thirtieth olympiad are gearing up though to go tough on opponents police were getting tough on some locals around one hundred cycling activists taking part in a monthly mass bike ride were arrested during the games opening ceremony they claim to have been encircled by police while pedaling toward the olympic park officers reportedly used pepper spray as scuffles broke out. head over to the details of the olympics opening show which proved a breathtaking spectacle with a final price tag of around twenty seven million pounds also online a surprise entrance by the queen who teamed up with agent double zero seven to put

on an impressive show at the ceremony also online for you updates from all the events. well some are being swept up by olympic fever others though not so. i know i'm here. looking a bit crazy back home because. yeah later we asked people in the big apple whether avail remember awfully its name is months off to be a live resident coming up in about ten minutes. also our t. question is more of taking a look at what the olympic spirit may be watered down by the commercial interests surrounding which when you twelve games. but first tensions simmering in eastern saudi arabia following friday's crackdown on protesters clashes happen in the city of qatif where activists say around fourteen people were injured after officers started firing live rounds but lisa arrested several protesters following the demonstrations against political imprisonment and discrimination by the sunni

rulers the area mostly populated by shiites has seen unrest throughout the year with saudi authorities beefing up security opposition voices have also been silenced in bahrain and united arab emirates analyst eric draitser from stopping period dot com says the ruling elites in the region are marching to the beat of a different drum. to voice your view in saudi arabia is to stand against anglo american hegemony in the region remember the united states the british the israelis and the western powers have been propping up these regimes for decades and so to popularize ideas that are anti regime is essentially to say that saudi arabia qatar and the various gulf monarchies are not going to be subjected to us hegemony any more saudi arabia has a very repressive police state apparatus that exists in the country and because of that you see

a tremendous amount of repression and that repression can very easily escalate into violence we saw a similar situation in bahrain where the the royal family essentially carries out what what would what could be key. entirely backward style system where people are thrown into prison for tweeting people are thrown into prison for criticizing the regime really what we're looking at is a situation where there it's the pot calling the kettle black the united states and the western powers and their proxies in the middle east are using human rights as a cover when it is convenient and in turn violating human rights when it serves their interests so we can't we can't look at this in any objective terms this is all in the service of anglo-american imperialism in the middle east and in the gulf as egypt writes new pages in its history pieces of the country's legendary pastor in danger of slipping away museum looters and tomb raider as have stepped up their hunt for artifacts as artie's policy reports officials say they lack the resources

to stop the thieves egypt's pride and past which is slowly being stolen from its people here at the museum of egypt and antiquities in cairo more than five thousand years of civilization on display on earth to the years from the shifting sands with the world's largest collection of fair on pieces and the treasures of common but the ancient artifacts are being planted the this museum and some scene may is. the museum. this is not the one of the bitter downsides of the chaos of last year's bloody uprising on the streets of egypt and outbreak of museums and antique warehouses across the country more than one hundred thousand artifacts are stored in the cairo museum basement alone and at least a million are stored across more than egypt protecting these treasures requires a colossal and fetch all the more difficult since many police have left the force in the wake of the countries and raced before the revolution that we had fifty go

to the police the maximum then the ten people then to fifty after the movement it became seventy or one hundred people of them that's a good is. the twenty inside it all starts here in the shadow of the permits on your ancient temples in visit sites here egyptians dig for a quick and illegal back it is easy to go deep under the cover of darkness and far from the nearest security guard but many don't even go there far instead turning over their own backyards under the ground on the every house there are only one so if you want to go from a million people on the ground even something as simple as a knife from the times of the pharaohs can sell for up to fifty million dollars on the black market deals are done through a labyrinth of illegal buyers across europe and the united states. of money digs happen and vast open places that are difficult for us to access those responsible

then leave the country by sea or across the border where we have few police it's impossible to know what's been stolen directly from the ground whereas we have documented evidence that at least three hundred pieces were stolen from museums since the revolution it's estimated that illegal digs have increased one hundred fold in the last year those trying to safeguard egypt's in comparable history feel powerless the country's treasures are falling into the wrong hands and lost to the people forever the egyptian president may have more pressing matters right now but many archaeologists here feel the legacy of the people is surely with fighting for before it's too late egypt is in a state of flux and while there are many people here worried about its future there just as many worried about preserving its past policy our team kyra still ahead this hour words of freedom. held by outsiders as being one of the world's best young democracies we hear from someone on the inside very different story.

please. hold started here. for going global. cooling my. place. to. make your statement. the world. through. the money with the business of russia.

now to some other stories making headlines across the globe a major police operation on the border with afghanistan has left at least seven hundred soldiers dead and forty injured young going offensive was launched tuesday in an attempt to track down a former warlord accused of killing a senior security official police have killed a total of thirty militants and captured forty one some of them reportedly having defected from neighboring afghanistan authorities have sealed all border crossings in the region with the only exception provided to nato supply trucks. a road accident has killed at least fifteen pilgrims in nepal when a jeep they were traveling in veered off the road and fell into a river fourteen of the victims were nepalese one was indian four children among them the accident happened three hundred kilometers west of the capital katmandu

pilgrims were heading to reading a sacred pilgrimage town in the pump but this. severe wildfires have engulfed parts of siberia with state of emergency being declared the situation is being hampered by extreme heat and poor visibility that's kept emergency planes from reaching the worst hit areas cities in the region blanketed with thick smog making it tough for people to brief the crews battling the blaze say they managed to protect residential areas and promise to extinguish the fires in the next few days. continued fighting between soldiers and rebels in the democratic republic of congo forces more than two hundred sixty thousand civilians from their homes in the last three months some five thousand sought shelter in an informal refugee camp near the city of goma aid temp say conditions and sanitation facilities inadequate u.n. accuses neighboring rwanda of backing the rebels. but praised for preaching freedom and reform georgia's leadership is cast as

a democracy success story by both the western media and state channels at home but some journalists who work in the country see a different picture as reports. that's exactly what we're seeing you know my cancer the well you my part of the world you know you are liver and that you know energy by giving people more freedom freedom is the key word fine words from the georgian president some western officials like hillary clinton continuously praised me truly for his supposed program of reform but journalists in the country are less impressed and say talk of freedom doesn't extend to the media made at being a journalist is now a dangerous profession in georgia there's always a risk of being accused of being a spy journalist get beaten up frequently all of this is happening in front of the entire country. the chances are that most people in georgia won't find out about these cases from their evening news according to the latest polls more than eighty percent of georgians depend on t.v.

as their main source of information yet georgians only have free access to three channels all of them controlled by the state one way or the other. one channel is owned by saakashvili eight another by his friends relative to all people get really is just state controlled propaganda and i think so whatever georgians don't get the full scope of their country's events from the t.v. sets after all there is always the internet but still they have to understand a lot of people here still live in rural areas and for a lot of them the world wide web is simply not available readily at their fingertips independent channels like of can't see or channel nine are available only to those who have satellite dishes and other luxury from most georgians. sometimes i have friends or relatives visiting from other parts of georgia and they watch these channels and say what is this really happening in this country we knew nothing about it. but operating an independent media outlets isn't easy here

journalists say their cash flow has run dry since advertisers were told by authorities to stay away from channels which may be affiliated with the opposition on top of that their every move is being closely watched by authorities yeah. i constantly find myself facing over the top control from local officials i'm always being followed by some strange people who say they're from some unknown news agencies and ask me questions why do we film stories about political prisoners for example. it's about state officials don't feel comfortable coming to us because we ask questions they don't want to answer but state controlled media never ask those questions president saakashvili is a frequent guest on various american t.v. channels but he's never made an appearance on any of the opposition channels at home perhaps it's not so much the questions that he minds as the effect his answers may have and billy see george and. our team is far more stories on our website r.t.

dot com with the latest news and in-depth analysis there around the clock including this google's little secret i don't know how the search giant managed to keep an illegal private data trove that it should have destroyed in two thousand and ten your classified information revealed. plus. tree huggers hot under the collar thousands of chinese go activists rampage the coastal city of the bug a pipeline to tell us that our team. while the olympics is grabbing the headlines these days with the lavish opening ceremony and sporting events some naysayers think it's a temporary distraction from the world's problems among them our own resident laurie harvest in new york asking whether people share the jubilant olympic spirit that has captured the british capital. do you really care about the olympics this week let's talk about that are you

excited about the olympics i know i'm here. but is it crazy back home because of it yeah and we got out what are you excited about well team usa i hope we go all the way. the right does that mean we're the best country in the world if we win all the gold medals oh i don't know about people really aren't that into track and field and not so much you know then the swimming you know the media build up between. phelps and his rival you know but you don't even know the name of the right man even to give his name on the front just finish tonight. for a minute i mean do you think that the olympics are kind of a way to just distract people from what's really going on might be you know from your problems do you think people remember the names of all the athletes three months after the olympics are done i guess it depends what kind of sponsorships they've got and what advertisements are doing but yeah if their names are in plays

and in lights everywhere yeah they're selling us wheaties yes exactly those athletes yeah they'll be remembered a lot of them probably wouldn't be you know i guess a sort all some boss that did push ups in london for a double decker bus with a big push up so that might for the olympics yeah that's insane so they're trying to yeah they're getting they're getting people excited in any way that they can what is why do they do that just for the good of sports no idea probably just try to drum up some more money for the country at that right over here tourism you know historically the olympics is something that's always meant to be a unifying action yes so it doesn't that kind of take away from that message of unification when it comes down to just drumming up business ya think. greed is unfortunately taking over the priority of some folks whether or not you care about the olympics the bottom line is that you should be prepared to be bombarded by

a lot of media coverage up in the coming week. with a theme amid the spirit of sportsmanship and friendly competition some critics say another focus of the modern olympics is also on being sexier and more profitable artes honest us here a chicken to reports on the role big business place in the game's faster higher stronger bodies built like machines and the olympic extravaganza of athletes grace magazine covers baring it all it would be nice to hate like to not look at these athletes like you know these are special specimens almost members of a different race but these are people just like us they could they could help us strive to do better their superhuman bodies are on display in a competition for attention and personal exposure the olympic gold it's not just the the gold at the sleeves when and where but the good old of all these

indorsements and all this this ability you know they want to cash in on it's their moment in the sun unfortunately i think that undermines the olympic pool and ideal . the original ideal and only two of lettuces and human might scrapped the olympic dream and culture now transformed into glossy images of athletes striking a pose in the nude the original olympics were performed completely naked so you could make the case this is turning back to the original form of the olympics. in an ever expanding entertainment culture surrounding the olympics self p.r. is the new tradition and the fifteen minutes of fame an opportunity not to be missed you've got hundreds of athletes who come back to nothing but a lot of them really look back and say well what do i get out of the last four years i could have made more money being a manager at mcdonald's corporation that's one of the biggest sponsors of the olympics is on a journey to send a somewhat confusing message while the athletes are busy promoting their starting

bodies mcdonald said some of the biggest joy in the world outside the olympic stadium a record one hundred fifty thousand condoms are also being distributed at the olympic village that's roughly fifteen condoms for each athlete some argue sexing up the olympics is slowly racing the true meaning of these historic games the marathon really became into effect and they base it off this the great story i'm a guy that's a pita coming from wanting you know citizens about basically how the war was ending with the persians and going twenty five miles in just having bleeding feet and how that inspired the marathon for what it is today and. while the aura surrounding the olympics of today's anything but poised sportsmanship appears to be the last guest joining this party and hearty new york kaiser report still to come but first the headlines stay with us.

wealthy british style. that's not on the title of.

markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons are for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report. if they shoot something inappropriate for public they can easily be shown to accept casualties of war ok. i wish he would have never happened but it has happened. in a war a t.v. camera becomes an unnecessary what destroys their own safety all foreign nationals including journalists and inspectors should leave room. and this clear what happens with such witnesses i got it on my site. many checks are.

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