welcome to russia the olympic flame makes it to moscow the first torchbearers are now taking the torch in a marathon four months relay through russia until it launches twenty forty. big news the day also headlining the u.s. special forces reportedly forced to fall back during a militant raid in somalia but a separate operation in libya says a top terror leader seized his claim swirl that washington suspiciously picky in its war against insurgents. in the netherlands goes through international tribunal to try and free the thirty greenpeace activists who russia's taken to court on piracy charges.

hello this is the week on r.t. around over the top stories of the last seven days with me kevin i've been dominating our coverage from moscow this sunday one big story unfolding right now big day for russia the olympic flame now in moscow for the final countdown to the twenty fourteen winter olympics. and a massive cover boy has brought it safely to red square the cheering crowd before president putin sent the torch on its way across all the developments in red square to day. in office cross live to now sure why there has been a really good day is there all went well apart one tiny little talk about that a minute the sun shone down blue skies take us through the day well it's truly a historic event for the whole nation and possibly even for the history of the olympic games themselves the olympic flame was first delivered on board the special

flight from greece to airport there was a supported by the knight wharves biker gang one of the most famous ones in the country many. these guys are athletes themselves they're also known for their various charity projects they said that it was a great honor for them to be able to take part in the civilians then several thousand people were waiting for the flame to arrive to the heart of the capital it's red square where it was greeted by president was going to putin and celebrities can graduating pretty much the whole nation with the flame finally arriving to moscow and basically laying the foundation ahead of the start official start off with a longest olympic torch relay in the history of the games and all of this was happening of course and some mishaps are always possible and at some point one of the olympic torch was being taken inside the kremlin for a brief moment the flame actually went out it had to be real it's what we have spoken to experts including those taking part in the organization of the olympic

games and they say that this is a normal practice and specifically for these reasons they brought several lanterns with the original flame from greece so no worries it is ensured that the flame which is going to end up in sochi on the seventh of february is going to be the original one from greece now like i said this is a relay is going to be the longest one in the history of the olympic games we're talking about one thousand nine hundred cities and villages across the whole country it's glenn that the flame will be taken on top of the biggest mountains like the sport on the bottom of the biggest lakes like the league well might call it it's also plans that the olympic flame will be taken on board the international space station and even outside into outer space but cosmonauts themselves so far have been hiding the secret help technically that's going to be possible fourteen thousand people are going to be taking part in this really it's estimated that we're around one hundred thirty million russian citizens will be at a reachable

a distance to the flame at one point or another to be able. you see they're all nice or possibly even participate in the really itself when it comes to the transportation then this flame is going to be transported all the possible. means of transportation not only airplanes and trains but dogs and reindeer camels even hot air balloons and spaceships so this is truly a historic event what we've seen here today in moscow but it's also really the start of i guess the final stretch sort of before the actual start of the winter olympics which so many people have been waiting for absolutely no from the center of moscow in red square thanks for that last one the call. spoke to. follow the olympic flame all the way from greece earlier on he was onboard the very jet that brought it here he shared his impressions of the route. which is going to take you

back a week because this flame started its life in a limpia this time last week and the reason it's been increased for the last seven days is just to remind us about the history of these olympics the birthplace of the olympic games two and a half thousand years ago two and a half thousand years ago and in the limpia there are still the remains of the great temples that were there then and you can also still see the original running track that the europeans used back in seven hundred b.c. so essentially what happened was they used the rays of the sun as they did back then to light the flame that flame is used to light the first torchbearer in olympia and then this torch went around greece the flame was handed over to the russian olympic committee it's a beautiful stadium it's called the palace and i call stadium in athens and that's where the first modern olympics were held at the end of the nineteenth century and the public were allowed to go in and watch and they did in the hundreds so it was well received there and then the question was well what happens to the flame now

how will we get it to russia well i found it so the question is how do you take the flame from sunny athens all the way to moscow while it's quite simple you put it in a small lantern and then you put it on a plate but that's not just any old thing that's to be i pay play and i've got a ticket. we're now cruising at thirty thousand feet and tucked into the seat twenty five billion pick flame you might notice it has been used to light a couple of other lanterns and that's because one of them might go out god forbid so they've got those extra ones just in case now they are in good company because on board among other people is the president of the sort organizing committee dimitri tunisia and he sat just over here dmitri you spent the last eight years of your life trying to bring this flame to russia you must be pretty excited yes very broad very much so that's because it's one of the to do for the generations. the new modern russia of the war with the global war deals. so with this several

billions of universe you're in the opening ceremony which will be held on in one hundred twenty four days in the very heart of my image of city of sochi ok we've got a busy time ahead so i will let you get some more rest we are g.'s to touch down in moscow in a bank to ask time. and we have just landed in moscow it is in the story moment and if you look out of the door you will see the olympic flame for sochi twenty fourteen is a bank to receive a very warm welcome. for the olympics never come cheap here to talk about the money side of things kitty pilgrim from marty's venture capital program. i see europe just hopeful back from. russia program a great interest in. quarters to have you with the athletes so you have some of the . offer as well but. what is the most expensive olympic games

in history. yeah we're talking fifty one billion dollars which is quite extraordinary really and that really dominated the agenda for the investment for him in as i say fifty one billion dollars let's not forget that originally it was supposed to be twelve billion dollars so we're talking more than four times the original so there has been if you were right though to say what's been said about well the thing is let's not forget we know such as had a huge transformation eighty five percent of it had to be completely valid to talk in tunnels roads out of all sorts of things it was a complete swarm before all of this took place now as far as presentation is concerned he's saying that actually six point seven billion dollars has been spent on the sporting facilities the games themselves and the remainder of that fifty

billion dollars has been spent on. his justification it was a holiday resort it was a it was a soviet holiday. enjoys a very nice climate. that's one of the things that bothers me there's a. lot of renovation. there has absolutely and that's because they want it to be a terrorist destination afterwards abilities just talk about a few of the dramas that have gone on over the costing because one of them had to be the ski jump because originally it was basically thirty seven million dollars ok that was the budget. it manages to skyrocket over two hundred fifty million dollars in the person who was in charge and larry mccomb for the wall exactly did get the sack out today after that blast as one example of one of the investments is just completely skyrocketed so he was pushed over the mountain on that one now of course free to a lot of the investors on this one one of the biggest investors i spoke to suits let's have a look and i really i grilled him

a little bit to see if he's going to get his money back or not. doing right now but i enjoy alison from basic element out we're going to be talking just now about your project here we know we've got the olympic village that we're now walking through i've been working on the airport refurbishing it as well as the marina to a total cost of one point four billion dollars i played are you going to get your money back on there of course we will you know we'll be doing the for full on time you know we've been involved in different infrastructure projects and this one is very special you know and of course it's very special because it has disco and angle and if the return doesn't count. argument's sake do you think there's going to be some punishment and he's going to be. you know i don't think it's a lot of blaming you know we were not looking for anyone to blame if we turn doesn't come the government wants to see that investors do complete deal big asian

and you see here you know you know the olympic village you know this nice building is already standing ready to you know except a few of the first guests for the olympic games to port is there so i think when the government says the investors have completed the obligations they will be very willing to you know make a step forward from deicide and support in some subsidies some special programs or support sold it to investors get their money back. yes there's also an expectation that they want the government to get involved and i spoke to people about the issue of visas as well on the cost of flights because we know it can sometimes be more expensive to fly domestically than account turkey's argument that is being focused upon to make the money post-game and talk about those overspends just a few heads have already rolled yes although people done their best to keep it on track and they've been more than a few presidents for success after major overspend some of those others look at the

cups not half staff so all let's look at it that way yeah it was. while i was at the investment forum actually it became a bit of a joke the investors were laughing saying our heads might roll in all of this but they were trying to justify the fact that they have spent this much money by comparing it to other global mega projects that have completely blown the budgets i'm talking about the suez canal actually twenty times over budget which as well as that received even it is about inflation and counted as well as well as at the opera house in sydney as well fifteen times barges these are mega projects if we talk about sporting events barcelona has to be the huge success story at the time the budget by over four hundred percent now a bustling terrace town crime has come down tremendously so there are some success stories and obviously it's too early to say where sortie fits into all of this i also spoke to a hotel chiefs as well and they were saying in the near term they're focused in on

the russian middle class and then further on they want to go for the foreigners for a ski resort or a beach resort and they wanted to be hustling bustling tourist town and when you would know what were the lawyer actually this time larry when so you can probably tell by my hair in that clip just there with david it's very somber a very pleasant. trip to see more of it i'm sure more business to be. true forty minutes past seven in the evening thanks for being with us this is international news after the break. the olympic torch is on its epic journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand nine hundred two cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand kilometers. in a record setting trip by land air and sea an outer space. olympic

torch relay. m r t r g dot com.

this is the media leave us so we believe that maybe. by the same motion security although your party has evolved questions that no one is asking with the guests that you deserve answers from it's all on politics only on our t.v. . this is the weekly around the post the big stories that shaped the news in the last seven days and the away from the sochi olympics u.s. special forces in somalia reportedly had a pullback of the heavy resistance from militants who had navy seal attempt to capture their leader but another terror raid over four thousand kilometers away in libya was more productive as the military captured the suspect from the one

thousand nine hundred u.s. embassy bombings in kenya and tanzania. dorson told us washington's very selective when it comes to fighting terror the war on terrorism has really replaced the cold war to justify massive military spending and so when they're supporting a dictator like hadi in yemen who want to election because it is the only name on the ballot or they're supporting al-qaeda or getting mercenaries in syria or whether it's in the in afghanistan or any of these terrorist groups or drug cartels and so on if they are supporting u.s. policy in the region then it's not terrorism it's not spoken of if they're opposing neocolonialism in u.s. edge money and they're terrorists it's not about how the actor who they kill us has no problem supporting terrorists all over the rest of the world so for them to be fighting terrorists in somalia sounds a little disingenuous when they're supporting. al-qaeda in syria as well as and many other terrorist groups all over the world it's not just the u.s. has been accused of supporting terrorist russian diplomatic sources are blaming

a saudi backed group for the deadly august chemical attack in syria claiming they wanted to provoke foreign intervention independent user to james cole who believes that's exactly why it's incorrect to describe the war in syria a civil. mistaken assumption that's often purveyed in the media that what's happening in syria is some sort of civil war as some sort of internal conflict and a lot of the narrative has been framed around that that frame but i think it's fundamentally false to assert that i think we have to understand what's happening in syria as the planned result of a nearly decade long intervention foreign funded foreign armed foreign supplied foreign trained intervention in syria that has been arming and training syrian opposition groups on the record documented leap back to the bush administration as far back as two thousand and six they were starting to fund and train the opposition forces in syria so we have to understand that this is not some sort of spontaneous uprising and that as a result there are many different outside forces including the united states

including the saudis qatar ease and others the middle east correspondent is right now on route to damascus to report for the destruction of syria's chemical weapons she's traveling from lebanon by so is that a poll a census just as she crossed the border. we've just driven through the lebanon syrian border and aside from a couple of bureaucratic delays the whole process was relatively smooth it took only about twenty minutes for our passport to be checked and stamped on the lebanese side and there in the departures who are they were around two hundred two hundred and fifty people everybody staying in in a queue everything or to be the lebanese army managing and controlling everything the situation is really stable here at the border post it took us around an hour and a half to drive from beirut to the border at this time in the morning it's around ten o'clock the traffic is mostly in the direction we are going which is from beirut to damascus and here there are

a number of mostly civilian cars there are number of taxis that also some buses and inside those buses on mostly women and small children i managed to speak to some of the taxi drivers and they say that business is still good between beirut and damascus you still have a number of lebanese gangs that are working inside syria at the same time you have a number of businessmen who while being based in beirut are still having to come through to damascus on a fairly regular basis trying to speak to some of the passengers particularly the women that no one would speak on camera of course they're afraid of any kind of retribution maybe situation as you can well imagine is still very sensitive here paula sphere on the lebanese syrian border. really big stories of the week. for six days various agencies doing the best to try to bypass the parties and deadlock the pentagon says it's lawyers have now found a way to get hundreds of thousands of their employees back to work meantime the

politicians causing the stall of voted to pay laid off workers for the days that are missing economists much frug wolf says their disputes is sending shock waves worldwide number less. there's literally nothing the u.s. government can't and won't do for unclear reasons sending whatever shock waves they feel like sending into the u.s. and global economies i cannot imagine a recipe that would undermine confidence in the dollar and the us or particularly the us government faster or more effectively than what we see on every news channel in the world every day for a week and countdown the us congress presently enjoys a ten percent approval rating there where you could think about that is ninety percent of the people they asked nine in ten do not approve of the u.s. congress that makes the u.s. congress a little bit less popular than a sexually transmitted disease. nicely put the how to say so those government branches and related to defense including nasa thousands of its employees have been

sent out on the various programs severely affected your job it used to manage the international space station for nasa told us how repercussions are likely to follow there are missions that are coming up in say four or five or six months fairly critical motions or missions that robotic flights that are going to the planets they have launch windows that have to be maintained and if the workers are working and being done and so there is going to be in effect on the one where i was the director of the johnson space center and we were flying the space shuttle and of course flying missions to time so we had to maintain a schedule so i managed to keep the workforce. working and we kept our word going on in the johnson space center and the kennedy space center in florida and we didn't really have an impact but this time with about ninety seven percent of the workforce at the johnson space center laid off there will be an impact on the wind

. both president obama the republican majority leader of the house of representatives say they're no closer to the to a breakthrough but this is far from a president actually washington's been here before and holding that stuff hostage to a partisan deadlock the last four decades been rife with the last one in one thousand nine hundred five lasting a full three weeks in fact there's been eighteen in the recent past in some cases several times a year we spoke to london based market strategist mike ingram he told us that washington will look for another thrill even when the current crisis is past. makes them look like idiots quite frankly. i think previously details. the government just about managed to avoid a shutdown two and a half years ago and at that point in time credit agency standard poor's downgraded u.s. debt from its aaa status and one of the reasons they gave was they said all that you know this country is becoming ungovernable there's no visibility on what your

fiscal policy is because politicians are just playing with fire a year after year and here we are again two thousand and thirteen in the same situation and i would have to say that even once a deal is finally thrashed out at this time around and one was to will actually happen we're probably going to be in the same sort of situation next year. much of our government must now shut down until congress funds it again. the netherlands started legal action against russia this last week it's following a claim with international maritime court to win the release of thirty greenpeace activists arrested after trying to scale a russian art to go rig nearly three weeks ago now the protesters were traveling aboard the dutch soldier should arctic sunrise they face up to fifteen years in prison on charges of piracy and the currently in custody awaiting trial russia says it's well within its rights to defend its assets under international law such as the meantime mosul demonstrations calling for the release of the activists in

dozens of countries former greenpeace leader patrick moore believes the activists should have found a better way than to get their message across. but you can't expect to have people allow you to continue to storm their oil rigs oil rigs are a very serious operation with really big safety issues and you start scaling the rig and then people have to come and try to get you off it puts them in danger and so i can certainly understand why they were apprehended and finally told away from the state i do tend to agree with president putin that they are not pirate. it's it that's pretty obvious i think their intentions were not to loot the rig or anything like that but they're still putting people in danger and it is a serious situation it's my understanding that this is the first oil platform that is done zines specifically to withstand ice the intention is to make it a safer way of extracting oil clashes between police and muslim brotherhood

supporters should be gyptian capitally room sunday at least one person died scores of others were wounded in protests against the authorities and isabel true reports next government pressure on the muslim brotherhood is helping the group's cohesion . egyptian security forces stormed to kyron companies for ousted muslim brotherhood president mohamed morsi back in august tents are torn down over six hundred people killed a month on brotherhood activists like mr teep say they have been driven underground . have started to hide my identity every day i shave my beard i have a second phone number that has to be a change of show it's not a truck now i can live in my apartment i move from one place to another life has become very difficult for over a month this was the site of one of cairo's main promo see citizens after august body dispersal by security forces it's become just a busy street since that day for many missing by their activist like mr furze they

say they aren't able to attend rallies and their leaders are in jail or in hiding with last week's court order banning them as a brotherhood many fear this crackdown will just get worse. egyptian human rights organizations say the military led government is being too harsh for all of the activities of the muslim brotherhood. and it's. related to the muslim brotherhood this is a week of course so that as a collective punishment restrictions. for muslim brotherhood also will not lead to anything but supporters of the interim government say there is documented evidence the brotherhood uses violence so silencing its membership they say is necessary to ensure stability and the transition to democracy to hang with them and was free in the thirtieth of june revolution which was the second wave of the twenty fifth of january revolution muslim brotherhood killed a lot of egyptians they had no problems killing innocent people they proved they were to push egypt into civil war morsi supporters maintain they are being

prevented from peacefully protesting the brotherhood's newspaper was also shut down its website announced this week they had to move operations to london due to the escalating crackdown. but rather than stifling the meat mints mr arthur and his fellow activists say it makes them more determined than ever pushing egypt further towards a bigger crisis. tree for our cairo four stories to online twenty four seven r.t. dot com that's the news wrap this hour let's send the take a few moments away to take a look back at the day's main event the such a twenty fourteen winter olympics flame is now beginning its epic to its four month tour of russia. and such a twenty four to limping towards relays already began with a tour of moscow after a colorful welcome ceremony a few hours ago as you move in watching us let's take another look at some of those

great highlights of the flames arrival from a good buy. daily

beast you're going fishing village. is on its epic journey to such. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand nine hundred two cities of russia.