welcome to russia the olympic flame of bribes in moscow as the first torch to begin the relay through russia before the sochi two thousand and fourteen winter games. celebrations for the fortieth anniversary of egypt's last more. violent in cairo where fierce clashes between opponents and supporters of mohamed morsi. leave scores killed and wounded. u.s. secretary of state says a military force is into the solution in syria while russia's foreign minister urges the opposition to follow the diplomatic way out. of diplomatic talks on the sidelines of the apec summit in bali. and the u.s.

operation in libya sees a top terror leader c.u.z. a separate raid in somalia proves successful special forces an able to capture a militant leader. and broadcasting live from our studios in moscow this is our sean thomas glad to have you with us a big day for russia the olympic flame arrived in moscow for the final countdown to the two thousand and fourteen sochi winter olympics. a massive convoy of bikers have brought it safely to red square and a cheering crowd before president putin sent the torch on its way going off watch the festivities by the kremlin walls. 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. scored by the. 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 the heart of the capital to red square where 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 across the whole country it's gland 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 of that the olympic flame will be taken on board the international space station and even. 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 i

guess the final stretch sort of before the actual start of the winter olympics which so many people have been waiting for. ortiz andrew farmer followed the olympic flame all the way from greece on board the very same jet that brought it to russia he shared his impressions of the journey. 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 a 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 plane but that's not just any old thing that's to be i paid plane 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 she 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 because it's once a word democrats really do for the generations. they knew more than russia after the war with the global war do. 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 miami to the city of sochi ok we've got a busy time ahead so i will let you get small rest we are g. to touch down in moscow in a bank two hours 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 bank to receive a very warm welcome we spoke to a veteran organizer of the olympic torch relay is who is a consultant for sort of two thousand and fourteen he told us about choosing

torchbearers and the logistics for making it all a success. for years 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 one 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 fourteen thousand torchbearers 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 of the games now you know all their selection processes were different category holders. number have been selected through campaigns with the percentage partners where they have gone out in public campaigns and people can apply or be nominated based on their merits and their good

job for communities they apply in or some are nominated but there's there's more than a hundred thousand applications behind these really. torch is on its epic journey to. one hundred twenty three days. through. cities of russia. really fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand. in a record setting trip. there. are numbers fades. a little torch relay. m r t. at least fifty one people have been killed and scores injured in egypt after violent clashes erupted between rivals and supporters of the deposed president mohamed morsy over four hundred protesters have also been arrested there as well according to the country's interior ministry riots broke out as thousands gathered

in the streets of cairo to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of egypt's last war with israel that he's built through brings the it's the latest from tahrir square. 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 very fierce street battles erupted tween security forces and supporters of the ousted muslim brotherhood leader mohamed morsi on the fortieth anniversary of the nine hundred seventy three arab israeli war this and we also have 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 them for their sisi to be president mohamed morsy supporters and the missing brotherhood had attempted to march on this very square but they wanted to hold on to military protests 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 those 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 there are a number of people here as on to here 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 were very angry with the mizzen brotherhood and their supporters for staging protests however the brotherhood for their part saying they are being treated in a very heavy handed manner and these clashes are no sign of abating we expect them to go on possibly through the week as does egypt remains extremely divided. ordering middle east journalist hugh miles there is a way to break through the cycle of violence in the country. the government could reconcile with the muslim brotherhood. it is possible that egypt could turn it

around in a short space of time probably not this current government because this is really just the only running the country at the moment but in a few months when elections take place there will be a new government and one would expect that they will be motivated to reconcile. beyond the democratically elected. national pressure a little pressure inside egypt and also international pressure to reconcile with the brotherhood of course the brotherhood is 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 netherlands has taken legal action against russia for the release of thirty greenpeace activists arrested after trying to scale a russian arctic oil rig nearly three weeks ago the story much more still ahead right here on our team. u.s.

secretary of state john kerry has declared that america will hold those responsible for conducting acts of terror accountable that's after american troops carried out two separate operations aimed at seizing senior terrorist figures in somalia special forces raided a villa of a foreign fighter commander for al shabaab but were unable to find their target while in libya they captured a suspect from the one thousand nine hundred eight u.s. embassy bombings in kenya and tanzania later he was taken to a u.s. navy ship and is now undergoing questioning however activist ryan dawson says that 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 are supporting a dictator like hadi in yemen who want to election because it is the only name on the ballot or they are supporting al qaida organising 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 are opposing neocolonialism in us 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 a suicide attack on a primary school in iraq has left at least twelve children dead as another string of blasts in the war torn country police and a shia pilgrims were targeted in two other attacks bringing sunday's death toll to over thirty people that's after dozens were killed in a wave of bombings just a day before jason did say news editor at antiwar dot com says that iraqi authorities are failing to curb the sectarian violence that is threatening to push the country into civil war. there's really a question here this fair to ask is whether or not iraq is already in

a new sectarian civil war we're seeing enormous death tolls 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 what we saw during the u.s. occupation. supposedly coalition government arose from the last iraqi election has ended up being the sastre it's really the disastrous way that democracy has sort of 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 it is going to be something that's nine have to be dealt with region wide. the

netherlands started legal action against russia this week and has filed a claim with the international maritime court to win the release of the thirty greenpeace activists arrested after trying to scale a russian article oil rig nearly three weeks ago the protesters were traveling on board of the dutch registered arctic sunrise they now face up to fifteen years in prison on charges of piracy and are currently in custody awaiting trial russia says it is well within its rights to defend its assets under international law saturday saw demonstrations calling for their release in dozens of countries former greenpeace leader patrick moore believes the activists should have found a better way to get their message across. 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 towed 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 zines specifically to withstand ice the intention is to make it a safer way of extracting oil. former warlords controversial politicians as well as the brother of president karzai are among those who submitted applications to run in the election for the top post in afghanistan the vote which will be held in april will mark the first to democratic transition of power in afghan history but whoever wins will be left with the tough task of dealing with taliban insurgents after nato troops withdraw from the country by the end of two thousand and fourteen afghanistan expert jerry van dyke who was kidnapped and held by the militant group

explains why they won't recognize the boat they consider democracy western religion for them islam of course which is submission to god which would be the rule of god which is what they want and democracy meaning the rule of man is anathema to them this is 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 and they wouldn't 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 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. take a look at some other news making headlines around the world for you this hour powerful typhoon it feel has hit eastern china forcing the evacuation of thousands of people there earlier the nation issued a top level red alert the typhoon is expected to bring torrential rains to five provinces over the next three days. through at least one thousand people have been killed and fifteen wounded after a bus drove off a road in the country's south east region the vehicle was traveling through winding roads in the andes and fell eighty meters the driver is believed to be at fault for a crash. in yemen an attack in the capital's district where. missions are located has left

a german embassy employee dead the victim is believed to be the bodyguard of the country's ambassador in a separate assault kidnap or seize the unicef employee gunpoint from a vehicle in northern sanaa no group has claimed responsibility as of yet. the party has begun talks with the secular opposition aimed at resolving the political deadlock in the country earlier the sides agreed on the creation of a cabinet of independence and that would be in power until elections are held the nation which has been hit by political turmoil since a two thousand and eleven uprising has seen a fresh spike of tension after the assassination of a prominent opposition leader in july with america's government and shut down for a sixth day various agencies are doing their best to bypass the partisan deadlock the pentagon says its lawyers have found a way to get hundreds of thousands of employees back to work meanwhile the politicians causing the stall have voted to pay laid off workers for the days that

they are missing. a fraud. spewed is sending shock waves worldwide. 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 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 count down 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 us congress that makes the us congress a little bit less popular than a sexually transmitted disease. the hardest hit are those in government branches unrelated to defense including massa thousands of its employees have been sent home with various programs severely affected george abbey who used to manage the

international space station for nasa told us how repercussions are likely to fall. there are missions that are coming up in say four or five or six months fairly critical motions or missions that robotic rights are going to the planets they have launch windows that have to be maintained and if the workers are furloughed that work and being done and so there is going to be an 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 trade 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 in a project on the line. very big day for russia let's take

a few moments to look back at a day of excitement here in moscow the sochi two thousand and fourteen winter olympics flame has begun its epic a four month tour of russia. the olympic torch relay has been touring the capital after a colorful welcome ceremony on sunday let's take another look at the highlights of the flames arrival.

nobody would really be scared when the fish you.

well in an apparent u. turn that u.s. secretary of state john kerry says there is no military solution to the syrian crisis while russia's foreign minister sergey lavrov is afraid that extremists among the opposition may undermine the disarmament process the two diplomats focused on the elimination of syria's chemical arsenal during talks on the sidelines of the apec summit on the island of bali in indonesia let's cross now live to our paul scott who is in bali for more details paul thanks for being with us it's been an interesting day for you what did these two diplomats agree on. well first things first apec is a summit an economic summit designed to push trade as an asian and asia pacific

countries however it was international politics that dominated the agenda this morning now it had been hoped that president barack obama and russian president vladimir putin would have been able to have a one on one meeting on the fringes of the summit however because of the financial crisis back in the united states on the shutdown there president barack obama has been forced to council his trip so secretary of state john kerry took his place in this morning had a meeting as you say with russian foreign minister lavrov and it was syria that dominated the agenda now confirmation came that syria's chemical weapons stockpile the dismantling process has already begun on that and the u.s. secretary of state also agreed on the fact that there was no military solution to the conflict in syria. we agree again that there is the risk here we share in the interest not the. radical extremists of. the. sunni.

status of decision in syria and the two that is a very specific purpose to move to a new process right. well the u.n. resolution on disarming syria's chemical weapons stockpiles only passed in the united nations in new york ten days ago when kerry confirmed that it's a record breaking process to get to this stage so we're only with the disarming process having already begun and russian the foreign minister sergei lavrov says despite the fact that he has fears that terrorist extremists in the opposition might undermine the entire process he says that damascus is complying with the international community. that this is. the most you see it is this is the this is the little.

piece is already. being built. start doing all these leaks out to syria the way he talked nation let's work really really. to work on these. well it was undoubtedly a productive meeting between the two sides u.s. secretary of state john kerry describing it as the most productive between the two nations in recent times and attention now turns to the possibility of a geneva two peace conference with representatives from the syrian government and the syrian opposition sat around the same table now russian foreign minister sergei lavrov says he can get a delegation from the syrian government around the table in geneva in mid november that is the anticipated date for talks and u.s. secretary of state john kerry says that he's hopeful he can do likewise with the

opposition. all right our t's'pol scott it's been more than two years of seeming deadlock between the two countries but now things of fast moving between russia and the united states on the syrian peace process we are staying across that there at the apec conference in indonesia fun in bali thanks for being with us here on our team. well the destruction of syria's chemical weapons has begun with some of the arsenal having already been dismantled but historian and middle east expert to recall he believes there may still be provocations 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 fix the country and then fight each other like it's happening in libya but that hasn't happened whether 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 section from within but tried to create of procreation and then blame it on the government because they were very upset when no war have. time for cross talk after a short break you're watching r.t. stay with us.