was. welcome to russia the olympic flame makes it to moscow the fans torchbearers have started they marched on for months the relay for russia until it launches sochi twenty forty. page battles across cairo see dozens die during gatherings for the forces anniversary of egypt's lost war with israel. u.s. special forces are reportedly pushed upon during a militant raid in somalia but a separate operation in libya is a top terror leaders seized as claimed swathe of washington this suspiciously take a in its war against insurgents. and primary school pupils are targeted by a suicide bomber in a wrong was killed twelve children and made a way we can monitor.

and welcome this is the weekly on r.c. with me you know our thanks for joining us and it's a big day for russia the olympic players and mosco for the final countdown to the twenty fourteen winter olympics. a massive convoy of bikers brought it safely to red square and the cheering crowd before president putin send the torch on its way. to the festivities by the crowd animals 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. special flight from greece to

local airport then was a scored by the night wharves biker gang one of the most famous ones in the country many of 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 this offense then several thousand people waiting for the flame to arrive to the heart of the capital to the red square where it was greeted by president putin and celebrities congratulating pretty much the whole nation with the flame finally arriving to moscow and basically laying the foundation ahead of the start official start off the a longest olympic torch relay in the history of the games we're talking about one thousand nine hundred cities and villages across the whole country explained that the flame will be taken on top of the biggest mountains like the war on the bottom of the biggest. 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 hell technically that's going to be possible fourteen thousand people are going to be taking part in this really it's estimated that 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 to see it with their own eyes or possibly even participate in the relay itself when it comes to the transportation then this flame is going to be transported via 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 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. and. plain old

away from greece on board been very chant had brought a tear. anyway. 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 he was in olympia and then this top twenty 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 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 well 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 paid plain and i've got a ticket. we are now cruising at thirty thousand feet and tucked in 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 she organizing committee dimitri tunisia and he sat just over here dimitri you spent the last eight years of your life trying to bring this flame to russia you must be pretty excited yes very

brode very much so because it's once in a way of democrats really do for the generations. is that you're more than russia to the war with the global war. with this several billion so you verse during the opening ceremony which will be held on one hundred twenty four days in the very heart of my in the city of sochi ok we've got a busy time ahead so i will let you get small rest we are g.'s to touch down in moscow in a bank. time. and we have just landed in moscow it is in this story moment and if you look out of the door you will see the olympic flame for sochi twenty fourteen is a back to receive a very warm welcome and also spoke to a veteran organizer of olympic torch relays who is a consultant for such a twenty fourteen and he told us about choosing torchbearers and the logistics in making it a success for four years i have been planning this and like i said over the last

two years is thirty to forty people with the organizing committee and with the operational agencies in addition and presenting partners there's a hundred people who've been working on this over the last over the last year and when when we go in there all there will be be thousands every day involved it's a fantastic story behind the forty thousand torch bearers and you can see your problem they are and. it's really building the excitement for the game so basically the celebrations start now everybody will realize wow with your four months till the games and we are carrying this message all the games now you know all their selection processes were different category holders select. number have been selected through campaigns with the percentage partners where they have gone out in public campaigns and people can only apply or be nominated based on their merits and they're good your local communities they apply in or some are nominated but

there's there's more than a hundred thousand applications behind these really. deliberate george is a much epic journey to such. one hundred twenty three days. through two hundred cities of russia. relate fourteen thousand people. or sixty thousand killing live in a record setting trip by land air and sea and others face. olympic torch relay. on the marquee. and turning to developments in egypt now this sunday fierce clashes have broken out between muslim brotherhood supporters and anti muslim protests as across the country leaving at least forty four people dead ph the battles have broken out in several areas of cairo after people gathered for the fortieth anniversary of the yom kippur war which was

a chip's last conflict with israel. who is into her square brings us the details. very fierce street battles erupted this afternoon between security forces and supporters of the ousted muslim brotherhood leader mohamed morsi on the fortieth anniversary of the nine hundred seventy three arab israeli whoa this and we also had rival protests with supporters of the military gathering in tahrir square as you can see behind me some people even collecting signatures calling for army chief of the vote there sisi to be president however just a few kilometers away from where i'm standing here in the giza district and in other locations across the capital there were very bloody scenes and mohamed morsy supporters and the missing brotherhood had attempted to march on this very square who they wanted to hold on to military protest they say they went against necessarily the institution of the army but they were against their generals who they want to see changed as they say they are really leading the country to destruction and targeting them as mother heads and there is calling for mohamed morsi to be reinstated at the scene it was very chaotic the battles are spilling

over into the science streets of what is essentially a residential middle class neighborhoods and security forces were joined by civilians who were throwing tear gas and also firing these protesters with birdshot but it's and i've had reports of mine i mean it's not that i can't confirm that we have heard the interior ministry of said at least two hundred and muslim brotherhood sympathizers or supporters of mohamed morsy have been arrested in mass roundups around the country as the death toll continues to rise however there are a number of people here as on to his square and also the presidential palace who were celebrating what is considered to be one of the greatest military victories in egyptian history and they told me today they are very angry with the mizzen brotherhood and their supporters for staging the protests however the brotherhood for their part say they are being treated in a very heavy handed manner and these clashes are no sign of abating we expect them to go on through the night and possibly through the week as this egypt remains extremely divided. middle eastern journalist here miles says there is

a way out of this sign of miles. the government could reconcile with the muslim brotherhood it is possible the agent could turn it around in a short space of time probably not this current government because this is pretty just the only running the country at the moment but in a few months when elections take place that will be a new government and one would expect that they will be much feted to back and saw i mean that was beyond the democratically elected i'll be on the national pressure local pressure inside egypt and also international pressure to reconcile with the brotherhood and of course the brotherhood aides a force to be reckoned with in egypt it's going to be very difficult for them to run the country without without having the reconciliation with the brotherhood. the weapons inspectors in syria say big government's chemical stockpiles have

started to be destroyed but will the pulses continue as they stay without seeing us report on the risks from rebel promises to get in the way to fee is the president assad might hide he's also not. on the netherlands goes to an international tribunal to try and free the thirty greenpeace oil activists who russia's taking to port on piracy charges but he tells just ahead. be an expensive car saloon. like snoop clueless a new fashion show. also designing banking shoes in the best shop windows. luxury is the school.

is the last. concert. on our cheap. right to see. first street. and i think the true. reformers would. instantly. be. on. your washing be weekly here when i see the latest news on the week's top stories let's move on now. but its function of syria's chemical arsenal has begun

international inspectors in the country have confirmed that warheads chemical mixing installations and rockets are war undergoing dismantling and eradication the process is expected to take months but historian and middle east specialist tariq ali says there may have be provoke a sions ahead the opposition is very disturbed because they were banking and this applies to all sections of the opposition even those sections like the more religious extremist groups who loathe the united states who are hoping for an invasion which which they could then use to take the country and then fight each other like it's happening in libya but that hasn't happened where the sections of the opposition are going to destruct the inspectors from taking off disarming doing whatever they're doing to the chemical weapons i don't know what totally surprised

me of some sections from within but tried to create of procreation and then blame it on the government because they were very upset when no war. and down middle east correspondent has a chance to arrive in damascus to report on the destruction of syria's chemical weapons and here is the report paula slayer's centers as she calls the border problem have been. 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 and 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 a number of taxis there are also some buses and inside those buses on mostly women and some with 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 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 rick tribute to the situation as you can well imagine is still very sensitive here . on the lebanese syrian border. radical in mom's controversial politicians and even hardened warlords have all submitted

applications to run in afghanistan's presidential election next year there are already fears of bot rigging violence and corruption all that pales in comparison to a war over a possible return of the taliban afghanistan expert siobhan dyke who was kidnapped and held by the militant group explains why the time of on won't recognize. they consider democracy a western religion for them islam of course which is submission to god which should be the rule of god which is what they want in democracy meaning the rule of man is anathema to them this is they are diametrically opposed to this so for them to see in their eyes a western religion come to power truly by having a democratically elected president step down a new one come forward is not something they're going to want at all to have right now nato the united states depending upon the afghan national army and the police force which number three hundred fifty two thousand to take over you have the

taliban who number approximately twenty to thirty thousand at the most and you have the taliban on the upswing they killed four american soldiers today you have a did you have a desertion rate of up to thirty percent in the afghan national army can they stand up to the taliban there are many people and i am one of them who question whether they can see the united states and its allies may pull out in total about two thousand and fourteen but can they afford that because that will mean twelve years perhaps have gone to waste u.s. special forces in somalia have reportedly had to pull back up to have it was this sense from militants during a navy seal attempts to capture that leader but i'm not a tirade of the four thousand kilometers away in libya it was more productive as the mitchie captured a suspect from the nine hundred ninety eight u.s. embassy bombings in kenya and tanzania he's actually based on says washington is 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's the only name on the ballot or they're supporting al qaida 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. 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 our nursery and many other terrorist groups all over the world a suicide that's going to primary school in iraq has left at least twelve children dead as another string of blasts had their war torn country

a separate incident claimed the same number of lines as a border town to share programs heading to a shrine in baghdad and jason did the news that at antiwar dot com says that iraq is a failing to the sectarian violence just threatening to push the country into several . it is really a question here it's fair to ask is whether or not iraq is already very unstable or normal stuff calls all through the summer and i think the reality is the current government doesn't have a reasonable policy to respond to that there is just an enormous amount of sectarian tension above and beyond well you saw during the u.s. occupation. supposedly coalition government arose from the last rescue election has ended up being the staff it's really the disastrous way that democracy has served failed and interact is

a lot of why we're seeing all of this fighting but it's definitely a problem for the whole region we're seeing a lot of spillover violence back and forth with syria especially sooner or later in the it's going to be something that's i never dealt with range why the netherlands started legal action against russia this week it's filing a claim with the international maritime court to win the release of thirty greenpeace activists arrested after trying to scale a russian oil rig man and three weeks ago the protesters who were traveling on board the dutch courage to take sunrise they face up to fifteen years in prison on charges of piracy undock aren't in custody awaiting trial russia says it's well within its rights to defend its answers on the international saturday so what is calling for the release of the activists in dozens of countries one greenpeace leader patrick moon believes the activists should have found a better way to get that message across. you can't expect to have people allow you

to continue to storm their oil. 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 site i do tend to agree with president putin that they are not pirates it'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 designed specifically to withstand the intention is to make it a safer way of extracting oil was america's government and shot down for a six day and i'll various angus's doing that best to bypass the partisan dad no

the pentagon says its noise has found a way to get hundreds of thousands of employees back to one day while the politicians causing the stall have voted to pay the laid off workers when the days they are missing and economist mark friend wolf says the dispute is sending shock waves wall why 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 can't imagine a recipe that would undermine confidence in the dollar and the u.s. or particularly the u.s. government faster or more effectively than what we see on every news channel in the world every day for a week and counting the u.s. congress presently enjoys a ten percent approval rating there where you could think about that is ninety percent of the people they are nine in ten do not approve of us congress that makes the u.s. congress a little bit less popular than a sexually transmitted disease. the hardest to hate those government branches

unrelated to defense including nasa thousands of its employees have been sent home with the virus program severely affected and george abbey refused to manage the international space station for nasa told us how repercussions are likely to on. their missions that are coming up in say four or five or six months really critical motions or images that are robotic lights that are going to the planets they have launch windows that have to be maintained and if the workers are working and being done so there is going to be an effect on the line but 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 or going on in there to georgia to each other and the kennedy space center in florida and we

didn't really have a real impact but this time with about ninety seven percent of the workforce at the johnson space center laid off there will be an up or down the line. news this hour let's take a few moments to back out a day of excitement here in moscow the social twenty fourteen winter olympics for labor has begun its epic four month tall brush. their limbic torch relay has been touring the capital after a colorful welcome ceremony a few hours ago let's take another look at the highlights of the flames there right .

nobody would really be scared when the fish is delicious.

coming out we'll look at the toxic environment surrounding the way. stay with us.

i recently read headlines all over the russian internet screaming in full paranoia mode that china has just bought five percent of ukraine now they're writing that china will lease five percent of ukraine over ukrainian officials themselves claim that china won't be getting either and that this is a deal about some drip irrigation system the situation didn't explode onto the internet to the fantasies of bloggers the south china morning post reported that one company does have a crop in pig farming plan design utilized nine percent of ukraine's territory also last year the ban on foreigners buying land ukraine coincidently been lifted although i am the distrustful pro sovereignty type getting a rich foreign country to pay to develop your nation's agriculture might not be too bad of a deal it would definitely take a lot of money to restore ukraine's farming to its former glory they see that ukraine used to be the bread basket of europe i'll give you that status back could really help the country but selling off or even just leasing nine percent of the nation's territory is absolutely unacceptable doing

a large project with the chinese that is mutually beneficial is one thing but selling or leasing off your country is another and by another i mean treason but that's just my opinion. after decades of prosecuting a covert and proxy war against iran can watch them change its behavior many in washington have dismissed obama's all branch out of hand many in a rant are just as mistrustful is this quest for peace a fool. eric. has area bagus classified as one of the world's thirty most polluted sites it's tanneries or an out in out ecological disaster playing to waste everything around them every day the factories belch for fifteen thousand cubic meters of toxic refuse leaving it to pile up amid the housing and along the river bank.