a russian court has found members of the controversial punk band pussy riot guilty of. religious hatred of course the following the. main cathedral. given asylum but still trapped unmoved by acceptance of. political refugee saying it was a blow it's still subject to arrest and will not be allowed to leave the country. and a rogue u.s. hacker group claims it's behind an attack on the web site in an attempt to silence coverage of julian assange.

it's good to have you with us here in our. life are you in moscow. now we're three members of the feminist punk band pussy riot have been found guilty of hooliganism motivated by these are live pictures you're seeing right here from the courtroom in central moscow it all follows the controversial protest stunt in russia's main cathedral earlier this year and the judge in the case still delivering findings has been going on for quite some time now yet though to hand down a sentence in a short while will be catching up with artie's i do apologize we do have right now standing outside the courtroom as we show you these live pictures here let's cross live to. the latest from outside from here in central moscow peter thanks for standing by for us a little bit of a technical difficulties here and there the judge has ruled guilty as charged what's been the reaction. well in finding the three women guilty the judge said that they had committed

a gross violation of public order that they disrupted the calm of the citizens and it offended orthodox believers the church also went on to say that they clearly expressed hatred based on religious affiliation in their protests which took place in russia's main cathedral in february of this year the church going on to say that the reason that they picked christ the savior in her opinion was that they wanted to cause the greatest amount of offense which they possibly could which is why they picked the main cathedral in the country and in describing her finding she said that video files had been found on the computers on computers in the hard drives belonging to the women which showed in her findings that they clearly had hatred for the orthodox church now and terms of what's been going on outside of the courtroom here a quite large crowd gathered both pro and. we are already here waiting for that

said to be handed down after that guilty verdict. at the moment it's more. pro pussy riot the have been shouts of free pussy riot going up every now and again . they have also been some people taken away and arrested now there were some opposition figures here among them election of on the the anti corruption blogger and opposition leader among some of those they were among some of those arrested around twenty people taken away the police have now cleared the road outside of the church and puts up barriers to stop the crowd from from congregating all not at all not for a fair but everybody here at the moment currently waiting for the sentence that the judge is going to hand down on these three women who she's found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred that's right sir peter certainly as we've been talking to you again showing a live picture still incoming from the courthouse inside the courtroom the

courthouse of course or you are outside of as we all know the old girl punk band pussy riot guilty of hooliganism incited by religious hatred although they did say in their comments passed through their lawyers they didn't mean to offend anybody they didn't mean to offend orthodox or christian believers they were simply trying to do a protest stand against the russian president vladimir putin artie's peter all of it i have to say rory some of the some of the main debates of actually being going on here amongst em both sides and devastation have been over just how sincere those apologies were some members of all the docs church groups saying that they were just unwilling to accept those apologies that have been given by the three women all right we'll have to see how this pans out we're still awaiting for the sentencing so peter all of us stay right there we'll see you very soon it. obviously this whole pussy riot case is just exploded on the internet i'm now joined by the host of artes website program why you should care blogger tim kirby coming back on the program a good to see you again today this has just exploded all over the world because anyone who has access to the internet can view it and partake you know exactly i

mean it's one of these things where you know with this everyone can sort of. do their own little protest or do their own little thing and share it with everyone you know yeah it is getting very very big very very quickly that's for sure do you think you think peter all of it was right just now saying that some some people in the courtroom was saying that the girls from pussy riot their apologies would not sincere how do you recall the well their apology may be sincere in their hearts but logically it's very flawed because if you didn't want to offend a religion why would you do the protest of that nature in a very specifically religious place if they would have walked thirty meters i think it's thirty or fifty meters to the street i don't think we'd be having this conversation right now there's a lot of russia that's non holy in nature why they go there are nuts and let's talk about some of the komi a copy cat issues his their group has now won over the world in various cities who are doing the protests copying in some way or another the actions of pussy riot

what are we saying oh yeah well we just saw a femen group the femen the women who are notorious for not wearing tops during the protests in ukraine they just cut down a cross which i saw on the internet i can't confirm this it actually may have been at a place where they were victims of the repressions of stalin and not so much a church so take that victims of oppression also in vienna there was a copycat group that went into an eastern orthodox church and there was a sign there was another group then in up to now went to school going to church they were down with church fanatics school is a city in russia and also there was in front of the again the of course to see for what they did the original protest there was a group of people sort of stood with you know with letters that spelled out i forget what's my little son like you know free pussy riot which also sort of got broken off however if broken up very peacefully there's a video of that on the internet for one to watch as you're saying tim certainly a lot of a copycat protesting stage certainly old around the world but what about the hype

on the on this case how is it reflecting public opinion in russia because a lot of people say that moscow is not a true representation. all of russia trust me as a foreigner i get to hear that every day and it really isn't the sort of moscow super liberal internet click really isn't and the problem is is that people are saying this dividing russia and its sense it is but it's dividing it between kind of religious people and the tiny tiny minority of ultra liberal extremists who have a bigger voice because of the internet than they would under normal circumstances and so i think in a lot of ways worse it's not really. being depicted i think a lot of the average people in russia this is a really huge thing for them or they're sort of passively against it they're not exactly going to pick up a pitchfork and but to me it's all about you know tim tim regardless over regardless of what the members of pussy riot have done regardless of what's happening in the court and they're stunned in the cathedral the world in one way or another it's almost embracing them to their bosom because at the end of the day the

cranium version of playboy wants at least one of the demos that magazines i'm hearing stories now about possibly even a book deal in the making will i mean all these girls going to be turned into hollywood glamour girls and get their own bloody reality program in hollywood with their embrace of them because this is really become a trend and the trend right now in russia especially from starting with the russian internet is that putin is evil russia is evil here's tyranny look at how cool where are we we're barely get something all rebellious it's cool it's trendy it's got madonna now in all this and that's exactly like what's happening is they've sort of gotten into that and of course some other people are going to capitalize on it because ukrainian playboy they don't care about what's happening they just think this is cool you know so that's the other thing we have to understand is it's like you know who are these people communicating with and also why is there this this this interesting this trend is also very dangerous because people other countries they don't get that much information about russia but now when they do get this one big nugget of information it's that we're living in a tyranny we're living in some sort of new north korea here which is ridiculous if

you come to russia you walk outside and do anything you'll realize that this is some sort of. i don't know it's sort of the exception that's going to prove the rule in the minds of people who live outside of russia and that's kind of the thing that's a bit of a downer i think when you look at things compared to some of the things that are forbidden to say and do in the european union we're doing pretty well in the freedom side here at this point now everyone's going to believe that this is an evil tyranny well. if you know the last you heard of it as here i'll see what we're in fact down the small box on the left of your screen here still watching a live feed in the moscow courthouse a waiting still the sentencing of the members of pussy riot tim i'm sure be speaking to you more in the future simcoe be the host of the website program on r.t. dot com why you should care thanks for coming on with pleasure. before the case came into the public eye both in russia and abroad pussy riot was little more than just an obscure punk band of more in the past the popularity of the reactions to their trial is ati's are really going to. it was

a prayer directed at virgin mary but it was heard all around the world to see why its performance of the christ the savior cathedral outraged invigorated others and left almost no one indifferent along with the patriarch or russia who condemned the flashmob thousands of orthodox believers especially of the radical kind were just short of demanding the women be burned at stake the whole question of us burning it was blasphemy a desecration of a church it was sacrilege but i think they belong to some sect which conducts the tannic rituals and. but their supporters see them differently to the defendants their lawyers and hundreds of supporters to dancing and singing was an artistic way to express the women's disagreement with the government particularly with president putin that's why they say the women ended up on trial and on trend.

madonna the red hot chili peppers sting franz ferdinand just some of the celebrities who have voiced their support for punk collective despite a very limited number of seats inside the court house even a member of british parliament managed to get in to observe and make her own judgement. just like you like i don't like. that because they say what. they say. they. as part of the our group by now which translates in russian as war this wasn't the first time pussy riot has attracted attention but is that the work when you give a participated in one of the group's performances an orgy moscow's biology museum just four days before giving birth because you know some would say that she is said to be the woman seen here performing a sex act with a frozen chicken in a supermarket both incidents were also meant to be forms of political protest but neither were followed up with the rest of the stuff. the actions of immoral

initially they were forgiven for the disturbance i mean the museum the incident in the supermarket. now we just want this to end but we don't. have a puzzle from playboy for a cover photo shoot and offer to perform along with bjork from of the singer herself and a contract with a record company who believe pussy riot are now worth tens of millions of dollars these are just some of the offers the group has received in the week leading up to the verdict so if their goal was to be heard and to become famous then it's safe to say that with the rise players have been answered in moscow if you've got the sco our team. and here and out here we are closely following the pussy riot case our live coverage from the courtroom available you try to also in the lower left part of your screen right now that small box is a live from inside the courtroom also

a lot of tweets coming out you can find those that. underscore com. twelve minutes past the hour here in the russian capital now julian assange officially a political refugee but he seems no closer to getting out of the ecuadorian embassy in central london than before the asylum announcement britain has made it clear the deal did not affect its determination to arrest the will and extradite him to sweden in a clear defiance of international law laura smith was outside the embassy on the day of drama with this report. it was the day they'd all been waiting for julian assaults holed up in london's ecuadorian embassy for two months and his supporters who turned out to cheer for him rain or shine since his legal battle against extradition to sweden first began more than eighteen months ago also there in large numbers the police who didn't wait long to make their first

arrests and. when the decision came it was the one they wanted. we decided to grant asylum to julian a song. called it a significant victory and his mother was fulsome. and shining like it will automatically encourage the government. but not everyone was pleased the u.k. foreign and commonwealth office called the decision disappointing and foreign secretary william hague said it changed nothing it does not change the fundamentals of the case we will not allow. safe passage out of the united kingdom nor is there any legal basis for us to do so hague also denied any suggestion that british police would storm the embassy so over in territory under international law to arrest but that's not what ecuador inferred from

a letter it says was delivered through the british embassy in quito in response ecuador played hardball. what is no national law could be used in this way in any intrusive way in any diplomatic facilities any place in the world it shouldn't be used to threaten or blackmail the sovereignty of any other country and they called a summit to try to deal with this threat so that this fact doesn't go unpunished. the scary part the part that i find completely incredible and outrageous is the british threats to actually go in and try and extract your innocence but i must say to see british police surrounding that embassy was it an act of intimidation that should not be allowed and is not allowed under asylum or stuck in the middle. who has a new home but no way of getting their truck parts and put him in a big trunk and label him in his diplomatic bag i'm not quite sure whether that would work but otherwise we might see him holed up there for

a mixed couple of years who knows until a solution to this impasse but if he leaves the embassy he's liable to arrest by the u.k. which insists it must still extradite him to sweden a position that went to accept it or respond to the united kingdom it would that mean simply breaking relations on a regional level if it happened the crown saying of asylum by june enough songs has been spelled the end of this tale already full of twists and turns in fact it appears to be the beginning of something else with neither the u.k. no way to do apparently willing to back down it's developing into an ugly diplomatic spat which could affect relations for some time norris may see outside the ecuadorian embassy and up to now one of the key factors in ecuador's decision to grant asylum was the danger that he could face political persecution in the us the south american country also stressed the u.k. and sweden's failure to guarantee that he won't be handed over to america prove

that assad has fears for his freedom and life just about are an important part of washington's playing in the long on running saga. julia saunders mother is calling this a victory for her son many see this as a small defeat for the u.s. and that is because many believe the u.s. was hoping that julian assange would be extradited to sweden so that sweden would subsequently be able to extradite julian assange to the united states we have heard in recent years it's no secret former and current u.s. government officials a quavering julian assange two are terrorists and that was in the aftermath of releasing cables and memos that were classified that belonged to the u.s. government as a result the integrity of the u.s. government was compromised a lot of secrets were revealed and it painted the u.s. foreign policy in a dark light it's no secret that the administration of u.s.

president barack obama has been earning a reputation for waging a war on whistleblowers fiercer reputation than any of his predecessors many journalists scholars and activists in the u.s. have signed a letter of support for julie the songe one is including naomi wolf she's a journalist and author first of all this is a white house now to weigh houses obama's and bush's which is systematically overclassifying everything especially wrong doing it specially anything related to what whistleblowers want to release specially you know torture that they've engaged in methods of torture like mafia tactics it's come to this the government same to journalists everywhere in america. we're going to do you and we're going to threaten you and we're we're threatening you with with serious legal penalties like prison time if you do your job when i was speaking with naomi wolf what she wanted

to clarify for me and her position is that she sees julia sanji many do as the publisher similar to the new york times chilliness songes the publisher the one that made the information available he is not the leaker she noted why isn't the u.s. government going after the new york times for publishing what. instead the u.s. government it is presumed is all to me hoping to go after julian and i signed either way she said that this is this would be a dark day for all journalists in the u.s. if he would be in the custody of america prosecuted held indefinitely or possibly even face capital punishment if you'd like to see more of what we will have to say you can just well check out her internet scheme her interview on our website or to dot com or stand by we are broadcasting it all day here at odds. now it's just turning out twenty minutes past the hour here on good to have you with us a small box down on the left of your screen is the live feed from the moscow courthouse

where the pussy riot trial as winding down but continuing we are now waiting to hear the sentencing though for now though it looks like the access to our web site has been restored earlier today. by an avalanche of on line moments where essentially the website crashed tom barton has more on that. if you try to go to our web site today you may well see this message instead of the actual website that's the result of a d.d. o. s. cyber attack which struck many hours ago and has made r.t. dot com one available around the world on twitter a group calling itself anti leaks is claiming responsibility for the attack they linked in their tweets to the topics june songe and wiki leaks they also made a joke about the show hosted on r.t. saying that they wanted to see him smoking cigars and drinking whiskey but that they weren't able to because of this attack those and other tweets indicate that

they wanted to stop artie's coverage of the granting of diplomatic asylum to the wiki leaks founder by ecuador's embassy in london a d.d. o. s. or distributed denial of service attack is where attackers use remotely controlled computers around the world to flood a website with too much traffic for it to handle and to leaks has previously attacked wiki leaks his site itself would didio us as well but they say that their primary target is julian assange himself describing him as a new breed of terrorist the group says they're based in the usa there's much speculation as to who and he leaks actually are and the that is our top bottom reporting right there right now it does seem that we've managed to bring our web site back online so you can just get over there for any stories or any feature you may have missed as well let's have a look and see what's waiting for you there at our dot com right now a gaggle of the power lympics as the games are serving as a symbol of world unity overshadowed by accusations that have outraged disabled

ticket holders. one of the distinctives suicide rates in the u.s. army reach a new peak with an average of more than fourteen people killing themselves every month. international observers in syria have begun winding up their mission which expires on sunday that's softer the u.n. security council decided not to prolong their mandate or the move is viewed as disappointing by russia which sees the mission is key to finding a political way out of the war on tees and i see a child going to reports from new york. regretfully for russia we have to see the united nations security council did in fact decide to not prolong the mission the mandate of the observer mission in syria of the united nations now there were two conditions for this mandate to keep for them to keep functioning on the ground and these were and end to the violence as well as ending the use of heavy weaponry and of course we know that this unfortunately has not occurred as of yet the united

nations will however mean team a presence on the ground in a different format this will be a civil mission that they will put in place the details of which are being discussed now russia's position in all of this is quite simple. as monday is coming to an end we believe that those members of the council who insisted to. continue the. commitment to ending course still it is. working towards a political settlement studio however we're looking forward to the formatting a u.n. presence in damascus. doing the job it is supposed to do in the light of the new. political process in syria it's important to keep in mind that russia of course has been calling for a peaceful political process in solving the syrian crisis and this of course comes as we're hearing armed groups on the ground threaten to combine forces with al

qaida if the west does not help them out and this would of course be catastrophic development in the crisis we're hearing from our united nations sources that filling the shoes of kofi anon will be a lot of dark brahimi a seventy eight year old veteran diplomat among his previous titles is the foreign minister of algeria and curiously it's an interesting selection for several reasons first of all we do know that in the past this man has served as u.n. envoy to iraq and afghanistan where of course as we're well aware the conflicts and the violence continue and also his daughter actually a former employee at c.n.n. . and is married to a family to a royal member of the jordanian royal family and of course this is important in the in the sense that we know that this is a country that's been accused of supporting the armed groups on the ground so this is quite an interesting twist we're going to out we have to have to wait and see what kind of approach this man takes but we do know that he has already said that

he would like a different official title from kofi annan because he doesn't want to be seen as somebody just filling his shoes he believes that kofi annan approach was a failure and he wants a different mandate and a different name so we're going to have to wait and see how this man works in the crisis from now on when he takes the position when a mandate officially expires at the end of this month. and off to dmitri go to retreat it's been a busy day for me with the ongoing trial of pussy riot how are the markets looking in your eyes well actually the day is dragging on and it's as monotonous as the reading of the verdict and that's what i would say at least a second ago what's happening right now in europe we are seeing very light movement with the volumes quite low. moving up within half a percent now it seems that the steam from the from the optimism which came out. assured the she would support the euro is kind of wearing off let's move over to

two currency is the euro now is losing slightly as i said that steam was was going away and we're waiting for crucial data on consumer confidence in the united states that might change the dollar's parity against other currencies and the russian ruble is the weakening slightly on the commodities market was still seeing a downward movement with bread now declining one dollar thirty cents it's recovered somewhat that's after several days of very significant gains and on the russian markets as i was saying the obvious the myself looking very flat with low volumes. perhaps we might see some changes after the end of the verdict reading but for now it's all very very quiet gas problem is an outstanding gave up around half a percent this hour. now ukraine has made its first big step to to wean itself off russian gas now it's strict a strike up

a consortium led by exxon mobil to develop a gas shelf on the bottom of the black sea now this is a ten billion dollar project which would provide ukraine with five billion cubic meters of gas a year which is equal to around twelve percent of what it gets from russia artes and exceed our ships he explains. the biggest gas deal involving foreign investors in the history of silver in ukraine this is how experts have been describing the latest agreement between the ukrainian government and the exxon mobil consortium on development and exploration of the natural gas field in the black sea coast of ukraine the offshore gas field combined with other potential deals which the ukrainian government is now discussing with the british investors within the system i said by john and through committee stan could enlarge the natural gas extraction in ukraine in the next twenty years by four times which would make this country all but independent from the gas imports it's been having from russia currently key it

is on a contract with moscow until twenty nineteen buying russian gas in a certain amount of a certain price and it's been looking actively for both the discount and lowering the amount of gas it has been buying but so far when the stand negotiations have not brought any success another way that ukraine is trying to implemented to diversify its natural gas resources is getting a loan from the china investment company and there's already been an agreement on that three point six billion dollars on buying new technologies which would allow ukraine to buy less russian gas certainly this raises many concerns among european consumers whether there would be any more disruptions of the russian supplies into the european continent which go through ukraine but both sides in the negotiations have been holding over the past several years have been saying that regardless of how much gas ukraine buys from russia the transit of russian gas through ukraine to europe will not be hampered will not suffer in any way besides russia is already building several other pipelines to deliver its gas to europe so this should not be

a concern according to both countries' governments and both countries gas monopolies companies so as you can see rory the markets just like you and i waiting for the end of that sentencing and. indeed the day will lot close thanks to me. we appreciate have you with us here on the program a small box on the lower left part of your screen that is the live feed from the. we are awaiting the final for the members of the.