breaking news here on our t.v. russian anti-corruption campaign or alex a not only is sentenced to five years in jail for embezzlement after a court found him guilty of a scheme to defraud a state company out of half a million dollars in what's been seen as a highly politicized trial. exploiting the chaos of conflict is said to be drawing plans for its own islam a state carved out of the potential ruins of war and tore syria snorts with control over oil revenue and arms routes. and the competition is launched in britain for the best roadmap to leave the european union following the government's promise to

hold a referendum on whether the u.k. should remain a member. great to have you with us this hour it is two pm here in the russian capital i'm lucy catherine of and of course you're watching our. well on to our breaking news story this hour alex and of all need best known for his campaign against official corruption here in russia has been sentenced to five years behind bars after being found guilty of embezzlement i'm now joined live by our who is outside of the courthouse and cure of and also by our team who is in central moscow where protests are expected now let's start with you this is been described as a highly politicized trial on what grounds specifically was mr of only convicted. of violent as well as

a man who's been deemed his accomplice but that it sort of has been found guilty on . the moment of timber in the amount of roughly half a million dollars now it is looking at five years in prison whereas if it's not if he's looking at four year prison term there are lawyers in advance before the verdict. that they're going to appeal it so they have ten days to do that but of course it comes as a sort of a crash for inviting me through what is considered to be a poster boy for the russian opposition he's a very popular blogger in russia he has millions of followers on twitter and on his live journal account ah he's extremely well known among the so-called intelligentsia or the opposition intelligentsia and russia especially in big cities like most cuisine gives birth perhaps not so much in the region as we have found out but definitely so within the larger cities now in a vitally it has been has been cherishing you can say. dreams of becoming a valid politician in russia and

a step stone in that direction was his ambition to be a moscow mayor and the elections for that are going to be held in september except for the head of the violent. election head to head quarters has said that he that they're going to withdraw a huge handed to see from the mayoral elections but of course they are saying that the last word is still stands but in the valley and he didn't mention didn't make a mention of whether or not he's still planning to run for that or not because if the appeal is actually looked at if the if the court does uphold the appeal of the lord then finally does stand a chance at running for the post hole over it remains so that has been sentenced to five years in prison his supporters were here in the number of aracely hundred fifty people they have followed his. they have told the vehicle that has left the courtroom with a volley who was handcuffed in the courtroom they have pulled

a vehicle to the place of preliminary confinement but that doesn't seem like i have the have actually found. they are so we're closely following the developments here and of course we'll bring you the latest as we get it and igor to you now of course i really had mentioned supporters of nepali. to remind our viewers he did rise to prominence when he became the de facto leader of the anti-government protests that have swept across the russian capital back in late two thousand and eleven what response to the verdict are we expecting on the streets of moscow now. well even one day before the verdict was announced late on wednesday activists began organizing groups in the various social networks calling for nobodies now and his supporters to gather not only in moscow but in all over twenty others large cities across russia now the verdict itself was instantly spread by most online media and as soon as that happened the numbers of those who confirmed that there are planning to take to the streets of their cities in his support began and rapidly growing

even though none of these around these were authorized themselves it's one of the most well known and controversial opposition figures in the country he gained supporters even before this massive wave of protests two years ago through his online corruption projects in other aspects of the controversy around him is open sympathy to the russian nationalists but even though there is still no unified opposition force in the country he's for sure considered to be one of the leaders of the movement and if we look on a nationwide scale well and the roughly one hundred forty million people citizens of the country then not only is popularity among that amount of people is definitely less compared to his supporters throughout the community in fact a recent poll conducted by the center showed that only around ten percent of russian citizens even followed this criminal case around him but nevertheless the

online community still consists of large amounts of people not not millions but tens of thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands and we should still expect rallies to be held both in moscow and in over twenty of the other cities across the country so we'll be following the events and we'll be bringing you the latest news when extremely controversial case regardless that's bound to have implications both here in russia and i brought our inclusion from outside of the court building in tear of and keeping us up to date from the heart of the russian capital thank you both. well let's discuss some of all the case and the possible fallout from it with political analyst who joins us live from london thank you sir for taking time to speak with us we were hearing or at least on the twitter sphere there was discussion of potentially a suspended verdict in the case of course he did end up getting five years in prison what do you think is effectively behind the court's push for this what's

been described as a quite harsh sentence. well i think it shows some degree of division within. the criminal how exactly to deal with me because he is currently the defacto leader of the opposition and the biggest single threat to the current government in russia remaining in power now there are certainly some elements that want to face them head on and it's been said that moscow merits are going to sit down and would like to face in the election so that he can you know beat him it is a game if you want if you will what the longer sentences. the the faction within the kremlin that is saying you know what let's confront a volley or let's you know beat him in the electoral sphere. declining or is weaker then the the more hard line elements who just want to put him in prison see him as a threat and want to deal with him as a threat as quickly as possible well certainly a difficult case in

a sense that i mean you put but not only behind bars and he becomes a de facto martyr you will release him in the streets he becomes a perceived hero in the eyes of some not a very easy political situation to handle here and i'm curious on your view in terms of how he will be more of a threat per se or more or less effective behind bars do you think that he will still have some sort of a platform to get his message out. well how much of a platform he has behind bars does depend somewhat on the prison regime depends on how many of his supporters are determined to continue his optimism and keep getting his message and. i believe marco the audi. an analyst on many russian politics has spoken about this a bit and said you know if you have all these to remain effective as a martyr in prison he's going to need some way to keep organizing people to communicating to his movement otherwise it will wither on the vine but you're absolutely correct in that this is been the dilemma ever since the. case was

brought against involving is that if you punish him too hard and you put him in prison he becomes a martyr but if he manages to beat the system and remain on the streets then he's a hero so it's a question of you know which of these two options do you want to deal with which is less threatening and at this point it does seem that there is a decision that's been made. in prison yes he may be a martyr but he's easier to control he's easier to isolate and it certainly keeps him electoral politics even with this is spend it sentence if that does happen it's quite unclear whether or not he'll be able to run in the moscow mayoral race later this year as you plan to do and without that platform it's it's quite questionable or it it's difficult to see how he will go from moving from you know the leader of a protest movement to leader of an alternative coalition government which is

clearly hussein right and of course the other issue here is that russia's protest movement is highly fractured course it also remains to be seen whether this will either unify or further divide the movement unfortunately we're out of time political analyst. live from london thank you. well meanwhile a senior researcher at moscow state university marcus load botha believes that allison of all news jail sentence is unlikely to trigger a strong reaction from the russian public. i don't think the russian public will be much concerned at all i'm sure we will see some relatively small protest a couple thousand people tonight in moscow but we have to keep in mind that this is an extremely small percentage of the population. five percent with that are liberal and would be supporters of the volley against the verdict in this particular instance so i don't think you'll see any big reaction from russian society at all however we can expect the western mainstream media. and several

western governments to keep opprobrium on the verdict. and to. basically claim that in the fall he has been on fairly sentences i think that russia are actually paying attention to some of the particulars of the case and they are similar within the ball me as a political figure in quite a different way than he has conceived of in the west in the west the of all the is is presented as a poster boy for a liberal opposition and he's a commonly referred to as the most popular leader of the liberal opposition and a potential threat to president putin the facts on the ground really don't lay this out even after the trial and they may or all race which of all me has been running in. the only is known by still only thirty two percent of russians and that's after a lot of heavy t.v. and newspaper coverage russians really aren't that interested in in the the brand

of politics that he's selling them and that's because what is often on presented in the west is of only holds what could be considered in the west as quite extreme ethnic nationalist racist zina phobic views of what is could be considered an extreme rights including gun rights advocacy and the like what earlier peter lavelle the host. parties debate shall cross-talk weighed in with his point of view on alex and of all man he believes that he has failed to unite the opposition and has scared supporters away with his hard line thing is less than a third of russians know who we is less than a third and the more you find out about him the less you like him he's a racist that's what he is he's a racist and he's not a liberal and the entire opposition isn't surround surrounding him and support not at all here is who is racist attitudes turn a lot of people off of course who remain very popular in the west ok and maybe this is to his advantage but it's not going to be his political advantage here in russia

he's not electable this is the whole point here ok he's an interesting personality for some people but on the ballot box he's not going to win it anywhere one of the many that's what he wants to be he wants to be at the very center of it but that will hurt russia's opposition immensely because his politics don't attract people whose politics repelled a lot of people. the point of view of peter lavelle there of course will bring in more opinion and analysis on the only only case throughout the day of course we've also got live updates for you on the story on our website r.t. dot com and don't forget to check out our twitter feed for all the latest on this developing story. right see. first struck. and i would think that you're. going to.

syria faces the prospect of radical forces gaining overwhelming control over the country's north now sources in the free syrian army the rebel group claim that the international terrorist network al-qaeda plans to create its own state near the border with turkey the movement was until recently believed to be cooperating closely with extremist groups including al qaida but that relationship had been deteriorating are going to judge you can reports. you imagine okai hiding in some caves in remote mountains not anymore they want their own country they found the land so that it's syria the part of syria which is under the rebels control we're talking about the northern part of the country so that borders turkey according to an influential arabic newspaper off charcol outside which site the source of the free syrian army is a kind of feel liberated militancy intend to accidently assert their control over the territory immediately after ramadan ramadan and around the ninth of august

according to the source of a kind is about to announce an islamic state in syria they want full control over the weapons coming from turkey and the money coming from oil smuggling in serious eastern province of their own store for example and the worst of times and smugglers has exploited they can also afford to create an illicit oil trade with the reports that the al qaeda link the loose right has reached an understanding with the tribes over the division of. crime has of course used this property to buy more weapons and pates fighters now apparently they want more they feel powerful enough to want more it makes some of the rebels nervous of course many levels ordinated their efforts with the all move but those who were accused to do that risked their lives recently the all new threat have killed several members of the free syrian army including a member of the western backed supreme military council but the territory is controlled by the rebels now all the signs are becoming the old quite a land and in this new all qaeda land you have things like checkpoints where the

militants check whether people are fasting more or no local from near aleppo say they check their songs to keep their fasting and if they are not the militants beat them many syrians are of course deeply saddened by what's becoming of their country . so i had for you civil rights activists are up in arms over the acquittal of a man accused of murdering an unarmed black teenager in the american state of florida later this hour we'll take a look at whether the ruling indicates a rise in a racial profiling also coming up eunice parades in northern ireland to open up old wounds as belfast braces for more violent clashes between catholics and protestants more on that after the break. some of these traditional chili lines they've been bred and developed and passed on from generation to. this is a total destruction of the culture of new mexico and i tell him what i mean this

this is not going to impact asylum in mexico whatever happens here it's about the whole world now where even antibiotics in the in the middle east you know all the organs that were. genetically engineered crops why do you think this country is full of obese and sick people because we have a crappy food system. could make it without any federal officials some of. the. chief. troops access to.

the british think tank the institute of economic affairs has promised a large cash prize for whoever comes comes up with the best roadmap for leaving the european union prime minister david cameron has pledged to hold a referendum on britain's future in europe if his party is re-elected or does playboy go has the story. picture the scene is the year twenty seventeen and britons have just voted in favor of exiting the beleaguered european union so the government now needs to implement a road map for how to leave that's what the u.k.'s institute for economic affairs think tank is also economists who imagine in order to come up with the best blueprint for britain's potential exit from the european union it's a competition and the winner who comes up with the best proposal will be awarded one hundred thousand euros want to talk about the challenge i'm joined by dr richard wellings from the institute for economic affairs dr weddings why i don't

want to the competition now it's four years until the referendum and even so britain's might vote to stay in the european union at that point that's true but i mean it is such an important issue that is important that economists start thinking about the consequences of britain potentially leaving the given that there's such a large amount of your skepticism of most british public it is quite plausible that in a few years time britain will be leaving so i mean is absolutely essential that we have some idea of where britain is going to go next with the winning strategy be put forward to the government to use in case of a euro exit yes i mean where we're going to publish the winning strategy along with some of the other better entries as well said to be plenty of ideas there for the government's slow cuts and hopefully come out with a very very sound plan now the prize is aimed at looking at the least disruptive way to leave the euro but there are those that say that leaving the euro zone will be detrimental to the economy no matter how you do it obviously i mean there were major upside potentially because the u.k.

can then get rid of all this very burdensome e.u. regulation on jobs and climate change and so on all the red tape is suffocating business but obviously this is where we retain very strong free trade links with the rest of europe that's absolutely essential they have great free trade links with europe and the rest of the world will be the key to success in the future dr welling's thank you. very much for telling us about the competition now the prize is going to be judged by a panel that includes former chancellor nigel lawson who recently claimed that the british economy would be better off if britain were outside the european union. london and while britain and the rest of the e.u. feel the grip of austerity tightening some well connected individuals could be making more money than ever r.t. is next kaiser believes it's a sign of a looming financial apartheid of course you can watch the full show later today but here is a quick preview. so basically the bank of england is loaning itself money that actually is called the asset purchase facility lending it money at point five

percent interest and then lending it to the government at a higher interest with their guilt but then capturing that spread and giving it to the government to reduce their deficit so the budget. you know if you borrow money from longer which is a payday lender shop here in the u.k. they charge annual analyze rates of interest of five thousand percent if you're one of these bankers dealing with the bank of england mark carney's new shop then the rate of interest is negative in other words they pay you to take out a loan at one go they charge me five thousand percent at the bank of england they pay me two percent they pay me to borrow money that's the difference though the only assets of wires are those huge walford i think of gap in the u.k. and around the world well because if you're on the inside you get paid to borrow money if you're on the outside of the interest rate apartheid wall then you get charged five thousand percent to borrow money and then you go on the b.b.c.

and say well we are going into effect well nothing but mckibben but i'm of the got to make that the do the do the do it just means efficient market steering i've got backed by your post i mean those things. that would. it's fraud and if you do the frog. in northern ireland unionists are planning yet another parade in belfast this despite a recent series of street clashes with nationalists the orange order has applied for permission to hold a march this weekend sparking accusations that it is deliberately stirring up confrontation or to sour furthur ports on the international efforts to ease the standoff. well the former u.s. government peace envoy to know the island richard haas bank installment yesterday party moving the island tools now first minister peter robinson has said that all

party group has been set up with the purpose of seeking an alternative to the parades commission never quit school say going to be looking to bring food a set of recommendations by the end of the year on parades and protests flags and symbols a hugely important issue to northern ireland blackpool with and really seen by many as the only result parts of the peace process now all too often we see days cultural elements really i'm a survey to for the sectarian flare up over the sort that we've seen following on from last friday's july twelfth parade now after that we saw the parade commission's controversial ruling in force by police that then led to very serious writing by the loyalist marches in moved belfast and there's been really a period of sustained well i think i know the orange order had yesterday applied to

the parades commission to have another parade on saturday this coming saturday very near to that contested area now that's been seen by many to be quite a provocative me move some people speaking out say to the orange order haven't learned any lessons from the violence we see of recent days already moving seventy police officers injured more than sixty people arrested more than one hundred petrol bombs training everyone paying that which it has been here these all party talks now getting underway can bring an end to violence. moving on to other world news in brief now and we begin with greece where the greek parliament nalley approved a public sector reform bill to secure nine billion euros in financial aid from international lenders now the ruling which will see thousands of people lose their jobs comes despite large scale anti austerity protests throughout the country the german finance minister is scheduled to visit greece on thursday to discuss

a one hundred million euro zone. in egypt thousands of supporters of the ousted president mohamed morsi have taken to the streets of cairo the demonstrators denounced the newly formed cabinet branding it as illegitimate and it emerged this emerged in the wake of a military coup now the new government has entirely excluded members of morsi as muslim brotherhood movement the rally follows the visit of the european union's top foreign policy official who urged both sides to cooperate in the political process . the twenty seventh world student games have officially ended in the russian city of close on the host nation's team dominating the opposition competition pardon me orgies paul scott has been closely following the events and was at the closing ceremony. the cuts in it comes down on their state twenty seven on one of the largest ever world university games the closing ceremony attended by prime minister dmitri medvedev was yet another top notch display of pyrotechnics music song and dance whereas the opening ceremony focused on russian history russian culture and

what russia has offered the world over the years the closing ceremony was much more of an old fashioned policy russian pop and rock stars were joined by their counterparts from south korea south korea the country that is hosting these games in two years time on there was the ceremonial handing over to the south korean delegation is undeniably a feel good factor around right now a feel good factor that organizers will be keen to keep hold off ahead of a big decade for russian sports not only of the world athletics championships heading to moscow in around four weeks time but of course next year in twenty fourteen in sochi it's the winter olympics and organizers are keen to stress that any issues in terms of organization the may have a reason during these games will be ironed out in time for twenty fourteen when the sporting world next descends on russia. ok stay with us coming your way after the break artie examines the role of chili peppers in the world economically modified food.

you want to hear something truly baffling the u.s. supreme court has ruled that generic drug makers cannot be sued for bad reactions to their products only the original branded creators of the drugs can the court's decision was five to four overturning a multimillion dollar award for a woman who was horribly wounded by taking a medication which gave her toxic epidermal necrosis which is basically the equivalent of getting third degree burns all over her body and of course after winning the case mutual pharmaceutical company is demanding their millions of dollars back from the woman who they naturally blame for having side effects from the medicine they made themselves remember this is not just a ruling about one drug but ruling about all generic drugs which are eighty percent

of the u.s. market all of them will not have any accountability i cannot wrap my head around the logic of only punishing the creator of a product and granting immunity to anyone that later reproduces said product i mean would any sane person say that if you shoot a person with a colt forty five pistol that is a crime but if you use a copycat made in mexico to blow your neighbors off well that's ok because it's a generic copy no no sane person would allow generic drug producers to have no liability for their product but that's just my opinion. too a lot of the crops to drink poison. herbicide. eighty five percent of all the g.m. crops are sold with the herbicide that it's desired to die from. so riled up brady soy is designed not to dog from around the purpose of genetic engineering is on the

coat tail of conventional and does feel agriculture that is characterized by the proliferation of agro chemicals fertilizers pesticides herbicides fungicides all of these chemicals have. costs on in on energy production they have cost in environmental cleanup this is self-propagating genetic pollution we have the technology today to fully clean up the damaged gene pool maybe we will in the future but we're not feeding the products of a good food science to the entire population and releasing me to the environment where they can never be recall. any scientists who tells you they know that g m o's are safe and not to worry about it is either ignorant of the history of science or is deliberately lying nobody knows what the long term effects will be geneticists dr david suzuki genetically.