the syrian opposition calls on international action is the government helicopters pound rebel held parts of aleppo an attempt to retake control over the country's second city. london olympics gives out its first sets of medals after a breathtaking opening ceremony that was however tainted by police arresting about one hundred cycling activists. saudi arabian police attacked demonstrators with clubs and live ammunition as pro-reform protests from bahrain and united arab emirates. six am in moscow i met très a 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 conflict with a rebel is claiming they can't win the battle without international support russia says syrian authorities need to work towards peace but can't be expected to concede while western backed insurgents continue taking over cities moscow accuses foreign powers of fueling the 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 conflicts and new allegations also emerged of foreign interference in syria in defiance of u.n. efforts artie's on a boy who reports. one week has passed since the united nations has issued a new mandate for its observing mission in syria beach and this can radically should help calm tensions in this country but if anything the violence in syria has only intensified over the past week the clashes between the army and the rebel still continue and in the. aleppo. with the death toll believed to be in the

hundreds and 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 al assad stopped calling each other france turkey has played a very active and some would say a very destructive role in 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 at a cost to its own security for

a number of decades the turkish state has been struggling against its own militants i'm talking about the coup stance workers party. 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 had a chance to visit several kurdish settlements around syria and i was very surprised to find that they are a defacto independent they have their own security force their own schools that own administration so old these developments with the kurds in syria leave turkey very nervous and on thursday its prime minister accused 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 self-defense but if those attacks carried out that's going to make a very volatile a very bloody a very unstable situation in this region far worse. london based security analyst charles shu bridge says the forces fighting to replace assad could pull syria into chaos if the regime falls. there are certainly amongst the opposition democrats perhaps people a section a walking 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 are 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 those people and what looks to places like saudi arabia and one has to wonder whether saudi arabia is interested in promoting democracy said is i'm with you but it's only borders and one i think has to have the greatest fear is that south florida will fall from

being a panacea for this problem for syria may well be the. atrocities chaos and carnage on a secular basis and a syria that may well be far worse than people can imagine could possibly be a replacement for assad. turning to the day's other top stories of london's olympics move into competitive mode with twelve sets of medals earned on the initial day of the thirtieth olympiad but while we're gearing up to get tough on their 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. head over to r.t. dot com for all 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 you can watch the surprise entrance of queen elizabeth two teamed up with double zero seven to

put on an impressive show at the ceremony also online updates from all you have. very well some are being swept up by the olympic fever others aren't so excited. i know i'm. a bit crazy back home because of. yeah. later we asked people in new york whether they'll remember the athletes names months after the olympics resident coming up in about ten minutes. also r t questions more take a look at whether the olympic spirit is being watered down by commercial interest surrounding the game. but first tensions simmering in eastern saudi arabia after friday's police crackdown on protesters clashes happen in the city of qatif where activists say about fourteen people were injured after officers started firing live rounds police arrested several protesters after the demonstrations

against political imprisonment and discrimination by sunni rulers yeah area mostly populated by shiites has seen under arrest or out the year with saudi authorities beefing up security opposition voices also been silenced in bahrain and united arab emirates eric draitser from stop imperialism dot com thinks 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 considered entirely backward style system where people are thrown into prison for tweeting people. 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 . we're following the events in the persian gulf on our web site r t dot com here's what's also a click away right now google's little secret find out how the search giant managed to keep an illegal private data collection that it should have destroyed in two

thousand and ten your classified information revealed online. one of the bloodiest conflicts of world war two resurrected russian filmmaker shooting the battle of stalingrad in three d. a sneak peak of the action at our team. has egypt writes new pages in its history pieces of the country's legendary past are in danger of slipping away museum looters and toomer agers have stepped up their hunt for artifacts and 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 egyptian antiquities in cairo more than five thousand years of civilization on display and earthed over the years from the

shifting sands with the world's largest collection of fair army pieces and the treasures of king two to carmen but the ancient world's artifacts are being plundered as is this museum and something. from the museum says this is not one of the better downsides of the chaos of last year's bloody uprising on the streets of egypt an outbreak of fifty 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 effort all the more difficult since many police have left the force in the wake of the countries and raced before the revolution where fifty go to a place the maximum when it was ten people. to fifty after the russian it became seventy four hundred people and that's again is. the twenty aside it all starts

here in the shadow of the permits ancient temples in visit sites here egyptians dig for 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 that 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 happened on 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 as 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 worth 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 cairo. this hour words of freedom georgia why many outside one of the world's best young democracies or you hear from somebody inside who would tell a different story stay with us. it all started here. for going global. now it's killing the fire.

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thanks for staying with us here on r t quarter past the hour in moscow praised for preaching freedom and reform georgia's leadership is cast as a democracy success story both by the western media and state channels at home some journalists who work in the country though see a different picture as are reports. that's exactly what we're seeing in my current of the world in my part of the world you know you are leverage that you know energy by giving people more freedom freedom is the key word find words from the georgian president some western officials like hillary clinton continuously praised me really 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 the new journalists 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. but one channel is owned by saakashvili aid another by his friends relative to all people get really is just state controlled propaganda and i think so what if the 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 concept or channel nine are available only to those who have satellite dishes and other luxury for 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 outlet 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 here i know that 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 someone no news agencies and ask me questions why do we film stories about political prisoners for example cholesterol test 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 some very samaritan 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 is the effect he may have and billy see georgia. turning out as some other stories making headlines across the globe a major police operation on just as the border with afghanistan has left at least seventeen soldiers dead and forty wounded the ongoing offensive was launched tuesday in an attempt to track down a former warlord accused of killing a senior security official police killed a total of thirty militants and captured forty one some of them reportedly defecting from neighboring afghanistan authorities have sealed all border crossings in the region with the exception provided to nato supply trucks. a road accident has killed at least fifteen pilgrims in the paul when the jeep they were traveling in europe off the road and fell into a river victims including fourteen nepalese one indian with four children among them the accident happened three hundred kilometers west of the capital katmandu

pilgrims were heading to reading a sacred pilgrimage tallinn the pope of the. continued fighting between soldiers and rebels in the democratic republic of congo has forced more than two hundred sixty thousand civilians from their homes over the last three months some five thousand sought shelter in informal refugee camps near the city of goma aid groups say conditions and sanitation facilities are inadequate the un accuses neighboring rwanda of backing the rebels. the russian cargo spacecraft progress successfully dock with the international space station after a failed attempt five days ago the maneuver was conducted with the help of a new automated system designed to be used in the future robotic and mad missions to orbit cargo has already be unloaded progress is now being filled with garbage and will later billy released into the earth's atmosphere where it will burn up on reentry. well the olympics grabs the headlines these days with

a lot of opening ceremony and sporting events some naysayers think it's a temporary distraction from the world's problems among them our own resident laurie harf inist in new york asking whether people share the jubilant olympic spirit that has seized the british capital. well. 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 to be really great 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 finished and i think . for a minute 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 you know i guess a sort all some boss that did push ups in london for a double decker bus with a big push ups that might for the olympics. that's in satan so they're trying to yeah they're getting they're getting people excited anyway that they can what is why do they do that just for the good of sports i have 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 you should be prepared to be bombarded by a lot of media coverage in the coming week. staying with that 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 churkin a reports on the role big business plays in the games. faster higher stronger bodies built like machines an olympic extravaganza of athletes grace magazine

covers baring it all it would be nice to take it 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 is not just the the gold at the when and where but the good old of all these endorsements 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 goal and ideal the original ideal and old to earth lettuces in 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 and 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 stunning bodies mcdonald's sets up the biggest joint in the world outside the olympic stadium to 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 and so. and they base it off this is a great story and that's coming from warning you know citizens about basically how

the war was ending with the persians and going twenty five miles in just having bleeding feet and have that inspire the marathon for what it is today. while the aura surrounding the olympics of today's anything but poised sportsmanship appears to be the last guest joining this party and stacy churkin a hearty new york. kaiser report up next but first are a couple the headlines stay with us.

wealthy british style sign. that's not on the typewriter this time. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cause 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 around. and it's clear what happens with such witnesses i got him on my site. on. many subjects to. shoot nurses shooting on our. everyone wants to be president. whether their old lady own engine driver. but it might be quite tricky to get a fancy head cut. because you live out here in siberia.

and the only way to get to you is by train. to new music sigrid laboratory to mccurry was able to build a new world most sophisticated robots which will unfortunately doesn't give a darn about anything tim's mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans and world this is why you should care only on the dot com. it is easy.

to. see. please. please please please. please .