we're making news on our t.v. ad tycoon it may help for the record he has a radio free according to his lawyers and is reportedly heading to st peters was that after president putin signed his pardon. also this hour stripped of its full marks the european union loses its top credit rating due to a lack of cohesion and turns budget negotiations within the block. the syrian kaddish community presses for a seat at the negotiating table at the upcoming trini but peace talks hoping to grab the opportunity to secure their right.

this is the international coming to life from bosco hello and welcome to the program and one of russia's most high profile prisoners. of jail according to his noir president bush and had earlier signed a pardon for the former oil tycoon who had filed an amnesty plea let's get more now from. he joins us now live from petrozza vaults there you are so where is it me right now or do we know at this point. well her ghost is a lawyer has confirmed that he's left the premises of the prison although he didn't say where he was headed in fact he said he didn't know where he was heading but here the staff of the airport in because of what's clear we are now around two hundred kilometers away from the prison they're telling us that they have information that the former got inside a helicopter and flew off to sing petersburg now. that of course the release

from jail came as a complete surprise to everyone including even his lawyers and family members. i haven't accepted what has happened yet and it's been too much since yesterday for me i'm still sort of lost and confused i guess i still can't believe it. now everything that's happening now is less than twenty four hours after the president broke the news that because of that of course he had asked him for pardoning which was basically one of the key conditions for him for him to be released from jail putin said that the man has already spent over ten years behind bars his mother has a serious health problems and he said he was going to sign all the necessary documents to free him as soon as possible he ended up doing it right on the next day with that whole scheme himself leaving the prison just

a few hours after that. is cut off reporting at that line from the petra's have also he want to thank you very much indeed for that's how tight. meanwhile the degree granting the pardon to me. is already available on the internet on the kremlin's official website and here's their original text of it it says the order is guided by the principles of humanity and that it comes into effect on the day of its signing so is already in force let's not talk more about me how to confiscate their release to get hard to mine got political scientists from the inspiration of our state all strata. very welcome to you to the program i mean how hot or cold ski's been released right now how will this affect russia's image in your opinion it was. one of the motivations of president putin to carve the map that we have seen a lot of western states make transfer window participation to such an extent and

president french president and u.s. bases and presidents of small states of course couldn't it was apparent to us to do something to. improve the image or shape and treat was what i had dreamed demonstrated from the me trying to traverse the demonstrations now it would cost you but certainly it also. seems to be can be very confident to the opposition at the moment instrumentalists it's better by internal divisions and so he doesn't have to fear to free her even if he might become a political player in the future rush. yes residents here he granted. a pardon because under cost he asked for it so why didn't he do it earlier. well i asked for a pardon called into article eighty nine of the russian constitution means that you

have to let me do it gifts and other codes because our history fused. now it seems because of the very poor health of the smuggler he changed his mind i ask for a pardon which means that mission and then and the mission of guilt and dispersant you the necessary correct seat for the president to grant him a pardon to easements on chip. and stand holocaust had always completed his why do you think he was granted a pardon right now i think you need reasons and it was for the purpose of improving russia's human rights record do we have to say it is money that she's used you she ignored i mean in egypt it is the first call trial at a cost he was not politically motivated that's according to you the european court of human rights which a couple of months ago stated to use force not politically motivated it's called trial this is this is what we have to bear in mind and today it's really it's the

spirit that is not speculation about or drove him to grant what are called case pardon what is the main motive in your opinion i think it's olympic games of course twenty is very crowded also big games as all of russia is and you can be very proud of it and it certainly was embarrassing i don't specify either canceling your participation and it could become sort of way among the best politicians competing with each other who says no. to the participation in the opening ceremony merely wants to spend it and maybe even trying to convince dos that what really counts is the patient to reconsider now that a lot of the most prominent human rights cases you know russia insults and those who have been in shale. oil and now we do. political scientists from the ins work university in austria mr god thank you very much.

president putin's decision to release me holder of course he came as a big surprise at home but among european leaders there's been only a muted response. to gauge the reaction among the e.u. officials and in the media. i've been looking at the newspapers this morning and of course they are all covering it the guardian newspaper is pretty news itself it calls the development unexpected but the telegraph newspaper used the word uses the word bombshell not once but twice in the article what it's writing about the pardon of had of course. has come as a big surprise here we've had a little bit of reaction particularly out of germany the foreign minister says that he hopes for a quick release which we understand it will be the case and calls the pardoning a good decision angela merkel the chancellor says that she's glad that it's finally happening she said maintains that she's been pushing for it in various meetings with president putin over the years and the head of the european parliament martin

shultz also says that it's a step in the right direction i've been reading some economics and political analysis of the situation and generally speaking they call it a good signal and they're not expecting any sort of improvement to happen straight away but they think that it could be seen in the future as having been a watershed moment for the investment climate the business climate in russia and investor relations of course in the west are saying that it's an attempt to boost russia's image ahead of the winter olympics in sochi but securely of course in the light of the amnesty for perceived riot and the greenpeace crew some say that even a display of clemency by putin is also a display of power and some of course are saying that it was just time to let head of course go he's ten years in jail he was due to be released next year anyway his mother sick and he he has asked for a pardon something which he had never done before and been areas of business news

europe says the release of the eckstein cohen will send a positive signal to those willing to invest in russian. part of cost is being a cause celeb here it's a miser and personified a lot of the concerns that investors have basically portfolio investors into doing business and investing into russian shares to let him out is not to say it's going to fix the problems with russia's perception but certainly it's a step in the right direction and i think at the end of the day the investors stock investors she quite pragmatic if not even cynical and to see how to cause to be released for them will be a positive signal and so much is a step in the right direction for investing into russia. back in february nineteenth one thousand seven hundred koskie became the tram and c.e.o. of the private corporation hugh cause which produced a fifth or russia's or oil he became the country's richest man about six and a half years later he was arrested on fraud charges around that same time linked to

the privatization of state assets he was eventually found guilty in may two thousand and five and was given nine years in prison appealed and that sentence reduced by a year in december two thousand and six there was a second case against the former tycoon who was charged with embezzling three hundred and fifty million tons of oil those proceedings also ended with a guilty verdict and an additional fourteen year sentence but the court counted time already served towards that new prison term oh he's an isa now it looks at heart of course he's rise and fall. he may well be one of the most well known prisoners in the world but the idea of a pardon for former russian tycoon mikhail khodorkovsky was unexpected to say the least a four hour q. and a and not one question about fred of course and then this afternoon don't know who the coastie recently wrote a petition asking me to pardon him but i should be spent more than ten years in

prison and this is a serious punishment he signs humanitarian reasons saying his mother is secure in the i believe taking jew account of all the circumstances it's possible to take your respective decision and in the near future i will sign a decree to pardon him the former c.e.o. and founder of the oil company yukos built a fortune that made him russia's richest man after the collapse of the soviet union sorry about that but after the break we'll tell you why europe received a bad month from the s. and p. rating agency and what's prompting irish people to park their bikes and had to the exits of that country.

it was a little very hard to take. her back with her but there are no. live a biblical. welcome

back to all scenes international the european union's credit rating has been dealt a blow that standard and poor's has downgraded it from aaa to double a plus the agency said the bloke's financial profile was a chair rated. one of our reports now from budget. standard imposed a financial services agency have decided that the european union's credit rating of aaa was too good for it so they've downgraded it one point to double a plus now the reasons that they've given for this is they said that the financial profile of the e.u. deteriorated also that there was a lack of cohesion within the european union and if you look across the individual economies that make up the e.u. well it's it's quite clear that there's when is this loses economically just this

last week the you agreed that they would they agreed in principle how they could put together a banking union perhaps this was an attempt to to assure their creditors that they were trying to get some cohesion the fact they put that plan a plan in place doesn't seem to have swayed them one bit in the slightest one of the countries within the e.u. that has seen the the green shoots of resurgence is ireland they were able to leave bailout conditions just recently however as my colleague tess are still reports it's still not stopping the irish from looking abroad for better options despite painful a steady three years and counting the irish capital of dublin is relatively bustling but the same can't be said for all other parts of the country carlo wants him to be are you sure the company that at the forefront of industry now stands empty this town is only one hour away from dublin but while the part in terms of the economy even if you just scratch the surface a look around you'll see

a lot of these boarded up houses or shop fronts or for sale signs a shadow of what this south used to be this is the center of a. four hundred year old. history here. while the government heralded ireland's exit from its international bailout as a success many find little to celebrate with others having long moved on in search of greener pastures people with skills people with jobs are not. live in the country we thought that we put behind us the black plague effect of immigration in the country and now it is back growing sectors of this economy which are importing workers from outside of violent on high wages with high skills and so forth completely deservedly but it is starting to draw these a little bit of attention within the population as well the european commission statistics office figures show thirty five thousand more people left ireland and

then arrived last year making arlin go from having had the highest net immigration levels in europe to the highest net emigration in just six years if we see what the families did leave fifty seven we want. you. to sleep over here and when young emigrants do come back it won't come as a surprise if they're just back for the holidays like feel one who had just arrived from perth he left two years ago after completing a science degree and went on to become a videographer in australia there wasn't anything sort of keeping me here besides my immediate family really all my friends it's a londoner korea canada they're just complete the world so i made it very easy for you and while the holidays draw back the irish to their native land it will take more than a bailout exit to keep them home does are still your r.t. . all screen and online as well as r.t.

dot com there are plenty of stories for you including the last air force the left red faced and furious after a top commander skips a nuclear exercise to get drunk and russia and spend his mission in the arms of two foreign women add to our website to find out what they misconduct cost the. lighting out sydney's car line it's a spectacular show stained glass mosaics opera jacket on to a cathedral to celebrate the christmas holidays see more of that in marshall's action. right to see. her story. and i think the trick. on our reporters would.

be to. see when crowds warmed up own delegation for next month's peace conference on syria known as geneva two last month the group declared and then told them is government in the country because a large ethnic group and they middle east and the majority of them live in the region known as kurdistan it's here and it's a situation along the border of four countries turkey syria iraq and iran and the total population of cars there is about forty million and they are one of the walls largest ethnic groups without their own state but as our reports history could soon be in the making. discriminated oppressed and divided for years the kurds were the scapegoats of the middle east but now the fortunes have turned resilient and hopeful history is on their side for four thousand years kurds lived in iraq now

they're enjoying defect autonomy and many believe independence is not far away but is now practical is another run by. powerful state in baghdad and a strongly believe that we are moving towards. a full independent kurdish state in the north of iraq across the border in turkey as much as twenty percent of the population is kurdish they fight for independence has long been a thorn in ankara side but most of the larger long. always called for a kurd fighters they have more weapons and they'll never give them up easily but it's in syria where the kurds faced a toughest fight they were caught up in the middle of a bloody civil war their territories are being claimed by al qaeda their villages raided their people killed residents of this kurdish village of pursue fina forty five kilometers from aleppo so all it does is make them tougher fighters they're prepared to die to protect their land and their people. now every night they want

to restart the clashes but now we're well prepared because we made new bunkers so we have more ability to them before if they attack us we are ready to defend ourselves but if they don't we want to attack anybody. with such a strong fighting spirit and even stronger desire for sovereignty the kurdish influence in this part of the world is growing and arguably it might be only a matter of time until a new state appears on the map of the middle east policy or r.t. . searing crowds have taken control of a large ponce of northeast syria and one kaddish political analyst says the civil war that has played into the hands. of the kurds in syria was a bold and by the fact that the arab spring came about the regional powers busy with internal strife with. the stability of their own government while the sunni

are observing the different factions syria are fighting each other and the governments we could and the kurds have found an opportunity to run their own affairs and grow to whatever they were territory. historically has been to my to take he's not very happy because what he sees if the. the because the kurds in syria get hold of and have some sort of autonomy turkey fears that this will translate into or encourage. kurdish population to demand the same rights or similar rights. for use in brief for you now a gun man a house shot dead four people at an airport terminal in the philippines capital manila a local mayor has a wife and a baby were among the victims the family were waiting for a calm outside the terminal when that sokka wearing a police uniform approached find at close range and fled the motive for that talk

is unclear. more than eighty people have been injured at least five of them seriously after a part of the roof collapsed during a performance at the apollo theater in central london police say everyone trapped inside have now been freed when the roof caved in to part of the balcony where that seven hundred twenty people were in the theater at the time the value was built in nineteen zero one it is still clear what caused the collapse. in mexico parents clash with teachers who were trying to regain control of another mantra school in the town of san pedro a march here last september that he shares from the national education workers' committee went on strike against educational reforms and were removed by colleagues from a different union they try to regain access to the school but met few rated parents

armed with rocks and sticks hundreds of m t riot police have to intervene. a fresh snowden leak reveals denmark the netherlands spain and germany have joined the club of these so-called five eyes work a hundred with the intelligence services of the u.k. and the u.s. however it's still unclear how the collaboration of these third party stakes words states works as previous leagues revealed the u.s. has been closely watching bubblin as a target not a partner and a former advisor to the u.s. justice department says the n.s.a. spying has fractured trust among allies. the n.s.a. has spread its reach into so many other countries including our our way. which is completely unnecessary destroys diplomacy disrupts economic relationships with other countries all for the purpose of gathering and storing a bunch of data on in this and people all over the world who are suspected of doing

absolutely nothing and i think we've seen reverberations not just among the five countries some of whom have been colu with helping the n.s.a. gather this data but we see the world by their far reaching because again and this is tentacles have been far reaching. breaking news story right now for oil tycoon. has been released from jail and we've just received footage reportedly showing him being driven away in a car from the you know colony where he had been serving his stab president putin signed pardon after receiving an amnesty plea one so russia's richest man ten years in prison for tax fraud and embezzlement. clemency because his mother was sick and of course we'll bring you more on this developing story as we get it.

and of humanity within three seconds i was had three decades is it really possible to find out next and breaking the set with. the parliament of yemen has put forward a motion to ban drone attacks in the country the motion is now waiting approval by the president and it's probably impossible to enforce unless they could build a really big net or something is a bit strange that now after years of drone strikes in their country the parliament just wakes up to the fact their systems are getting blown up from the sky to be fair yemen doesn't have a ton of cash and i could see how having the well equipped and funded us military to take care of the al qaeda problem for them for free could be really entice and i mean it must be scary to be a politician with lots of power hungry terrorists about this would be the first time in history that a stronger foreign power fought

a weaker states battles for them but the problem is that according to the huffington post a former u.s. state department official in yemen says that every year drone attacks create eight from forty to sixty new terrorists why they create terrorists because according to the human rights watch seventy percent of the people killed by drones in yemen are civilians you know if the yemeni government is really free from washington's grasp and really wants to deal with their al qaeda problem they'll have better luck doing it themselves or the good old rifles and bayonets pointed at the right targets but that's just my opinion. ok pos somi goes i'm not a martin and this is breaking the sat so much the duck dynasty controversy that the mainstream media is trumpeting there is actually positive news to report

a panel appointed by. just released its recommendations to scale back the n.s.a. and the document they recommended forty six changes to add transparency accountability the agency but most importantly they suggest scaling back its authority to snoop and every aspect of our lives so time the pop the champagne all rolls right out so fast this is only good news if obama actually decides to embrace the advice and here's the cold hard truth even if the recommendations are adopted it's not going to prevent mass surveillance and the president's review panel did nothing to answer the questions raised about the constitutionality of the n.s.a.'s global spying tentacles so walter nice gesture for members of the administration to condemn the n.s.a. as attack on privacy until there is action to end unabated surveillance on the entire planet i'll be here break in the set. of the. a. very

hard to take that. lightly ever had sex with the terror threat there's no. such. thing. but. if you're a regular viewer of the show you know how big of a fan i am of private mercenaries none more so than the security firm blackwater which has since changed its name multiple times no doubt due to the company's association with black market gun dealers shady cia ties and war crimes squad. oh

other than hiding out in abu dhabi for the last couple of years where is former c.e.o. eric prince been since all this went down while pushing his new book of course serially this week prince went on the daily show to tell his side of the story and of course instead of tough questions from stuart prince was given a platform to spew his revisionist history sixty minutes style you may remember during the height of iraqi occupation in two thousand and seven blackwater murdered seven hundred civilians in nasiriyah square in baghdad here's prince's account of that incident. and this risk where started with a car bomb and a team move to help that team leave the area and after they go through the whole use of force continuum they ended up having to fire and firefighter up to it in the armored vehicle that the guys are in was disabled by coming in to be around which delayed them longer because the vehicle was disabled and so yes it's a tragedy

a tragedy indeed a prince's retelling of the event is far from accurate and you have to take my word for it are an iraqi government a u.s. military port and an f.b.i. investigation at least fourteen of the seventeen iraqis killed that day were shot without cause it was also never confirmed that a car bomb even went off in iraq interior ministry that explosion was from two mortar shells that landed in the vicinity of the heavily secured compound blackwater was protected and furthermore according to several interviews blackwater guards said quote during the operation at least one guard continued firing on civilians walk holy eggs urgently called for a cease fire but here in prince deflected blame for the massacres he oversaw is not even a part of the interview that irked me the most let's not prince said during the web only part of the discussion. so you feel that the government actually actively turned against you.