breaking news on r.c. this hour. walks free after president putin signed a pardon what hey called humanitarian reasons. of the mark credit agency standard and poor's covered the european union's long term rating due to our lack of solidarity among the twenty eight member state. consumerism battled. admissions for thor's to autonomy rather to a new level demanding a seat at next month's international peace talks in switzerland and. the obstacle to true freedom of. speech is the obstacle which is in my mind the idea that the people don't deserve our system or because people cannot

deal with. ati's speaks to a wiki leaks associates and co-producer of a movie which shows just how hard it can be for whistleblowers to get the truth in print. and welcome to our scene to national twenty four hour news live from moscow my name is you have our breaking news this hour and after a day cade of the incarceration of the holder is free his lawyer says russia's most high profile prisoner has left trail president allegedly a preacher and signed a pardon for the former oil tycoon following a personal plea for amnesty as get the latest details from. who's in that petros divorce in a career leo for us hi there you are so where is it me ask you right now.

we've managed to get our hands on video footage of vehicles passing by the jail where he was serving his sentence and according to local journalists he may have been inside one of those cars all of this information hasn't been officially confirmed in fact the only thing so far we know precisely and that according to the course is a lawyer is that in fact its client did leave the prisons the premises although he didn't specify where he was going now the staff of the airport here into the theater as i walked around two hundred kilometers away from the prison they told us that they have information that the former tycoon took off on a helicopter towards seeing petersburg but this information also hasn't been confirmed officially in fact russia's emergency ministry said that they did send helicopters to the heavy pad near that prison but with

a different purpose to evacuate an injured soldier now local journalists on the other hand are saying that about course he is in fact inside another helicopter but that is still grounded also in a hell of a bad near the prison or frankly we are getting very contradictory information right now but the news about her of course using reason really did come as a major surprise to everyone including his lawyers and even family members. it's complete i haven't accepted what has happened yet 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 all of this is happening less than twenty four hours after president putin broke the news that her of course he did ask to be porn which was among the key. key points for him to be able to go free to be

released from jail and putin said that the man was already served over ten years behind bars his mother has serious health problems and he said he'd sign all the necessary papers for the former take on to go free as soon as possible which he did on the next day and apparently just a few hours after that because of course he left the presence premises. can also lie from petra's of all thank you very much indeed for that update. the decree granting a pardon to me hotter koskie is already available on the internet on the kremlin's official website and here is the 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 it all that signing so is already in falls. it's no exaggeration to say that president putin's announcement that holder across k. would be pardoned came as a huge surprise and he somehow it takes. 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 for the record ski and then this. who the coastie recently wrote a petition asking me to pardon him he spent more than ten years in prison this is a serious punishment he saw as humanitarian reasons saying his mother is sick i believe taking jew account of all the circumstances it's possible to take a 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 snapping up state assets at a bargain price in often dubious circumstances. fall from grace began in october two thousand and three when he was arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion he

and his business partner plateau never dev were found guilty in two thousand and five and handed eight year sentences four years later fresh charges were brought against the two men and in twenty ten both were convicted of money laundering and embezzling two hundred eighteen million tonnes of oil worth twenty seven billion u.s. dollars. holder gorski is here by sentenced to fourteen years carries a. word of his pardon and imminent freedom came as something of a surprise for all sides including apparently his lawyers debates are raging over whether this is a p.r. stunt a smart move but most intriguingly about what's next for mikhail khodorkovsky and he's now a r.t. moscow weiland russian news of hundred days came as a shock high profile here a pair of figures who are more reserved in their reaction as laura smith now or poor. 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 so it 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 pussy 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 head of course go he's ten years in jail he was due to be released next year anyway his mother is sick and he has asked for a pardon something which he had never done before. well let's now get more analysis on this from an investigative journalist well that honiss mr harness welcome to our seats always good to talk to a decade. after a decade in prison rather me how what are called skase granted a pardon from letterman peyton from your point of view also behind this may well he

i think putin has once again wrong footed the west by suddenly making this move i suspect for a long time he has wanted to do this but it's been very difficult because khodorkovsky is don't make it easy for the russian government by his constant agitation he's still a very rich man he could still be a danger to the russian government but i don't think they want to demean prison over at the sochi olympics any more than they wanted to grieve in peace protest is the only other. peripheral figures it's cleared up a lot of old stuff from the early days of putin's presidency. what are called skis padma would suggest he's no longer seen as a threat to the state to russia do you think this is the last time we can hear him no i don't think it's the last job we're going to hear from him because he's a bouncy character but i think that the russian government hand everybody was just

putin but let's face it this is a government decision as well have made a balance decision that he is no longer dangerous he might be a nuisance but he's not a danger he could have been in destabilizing russia imagine what would have happened if he'd achieved what he set out to do which was to get all of his well some forty billion dollars out of out of russia he was hiding in gibraltar let's not forget you cost company was owned by a gibraltar company of which no one had ever heard minitel if he'd got that money out and got himself out he would have been a huge problem for the russian government and now i think they feel that yeah sure he can be a nuisance but he's no longer a great threat. how do you explain such when you say the reaction from the western governments on this news well they have the discourse you see the russians are bad they lock up nice people like mr khodorkovsky and they won't let you out and they they they don't do the right things for human rights and then suddenly putin lets

these people out and he course not for the first time he's completely wrong footed and they're just gossiping to rest because they didn't expect this. what about human rights said the fund. is a monster of course could they use him for their own purposes if he were willing i think to be very foolish if they try because the more you examine the history of khodorkovsky with business partners suspected of being murdered i don't want to slander the man but there are all sorts of very shady things in his past going well back into the ninety ninety's and the yeltsin era anybody who tries to set cut across the opposite sort of new mandela is going to have some work on his hands. all right investigative journalist robert honiss thank you very much indeed for your time thank you and now ben arras and it's a business they were easily axed i concerns a positive signal to the business community and and out of russia. but of course he

has been a cause celeb here put some eyes and personified a lot of the concerns that investors have basically portfolio investors into doing business and investing in some russian shares to let him out it 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 should 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. and will be bringing you more news and perspective only one hundred of course is really throughout the day here on l.c. and at our website dot com our thoughts on the program a fresh push for independence. demand a feature at next month's international peace conference on syria as they continue their quest to setup a nation all that. is

immediately law so we leave the meeting. by the sea motions secure. your party visit the. questions that no one is asking with the guests that you deserve answers from it's all on politicking only on our t.v. . please. please please. please please. please. please.

this is also international while combine. the european union's long term credit raising has been. standard and poor's has downgraded it from aaa to a.a. plus the owner of a house that he sells founded 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. take up the e.u. well it's it's quite clear that there's when is and 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 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 island they were able to leave bailout conditions just recently however as my colleague tests 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 to be either a sugar company at the forefront of industry now stands empty this town is only one

hour away from dublin but niles apart 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. town for three hundred euros brief. history here. while the government heralded arlen'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 and i live in the country we thought that we put behind us the black plague effectively of immigration out of the country and now it is back growing sectors of this economy which are importing workers from outside of ireland on high wages with high skills and so forth completely deservedly and all but that is starting to draw these a little bit of

a tension within the population as well the european commission statistics office for. your show thirty five thousand more people left our land 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 i believe feel think if we want to feel you feel the need to feel feel 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 people here besides my immediate family really all my friends it's a londoner korea canada they're just completely cross the world so i made it very easy for it 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 cilia r.t.e. arland. despite the vigorous a time so whistleblowers to expose the wrongdoings of government it's often quite difficult for them to find media outlets willing to publicize the truth. a recent movie bonds by wiki leaks highlight their struggle. spoke to one of the film's co-producers far. it's been described as a wiki leaks or road movie following the journey of a group of wiki leaks associates across central asia searching for media outlets to help publish secret diplomatic cables with making me do. something which which i would like to call an acid test and our us interest was one of the u.s. state department cables where you give these cables to certain. publications

and see how they react to it most of the publications had difficulties in responding to and publishing secrets that had to do with the united states with empire an hour long as well strong helped direct the movie although a feature film wasn't the original plan initial goal was to actually distribute this material that bradley manning allegedly makes to work in leaks. and in the. attempt to get the material out to the public and to people realize that there were. some interesting things happening in the way that the media were actually reacting to it the team traveled through central asian republics from kazakhstan to us occupied afghanistan all in an effort to partner with local news outlets to redact and then publish rather than cables. going to version is then your bills you want you to give more. but you really need more than the

other. question is to. look at it another thing traditional in k. . after case editors would initially show interest and then back off. to me it was surprising. not as much based on the idea that these countries are bastions of free press or not but i was more surprised about the honesty. in their limitations and was surprised that many of the of the editors and journalists that we met. in the central asian republics they would would actually explain that there are certain things we can publish in certain cases we can actually see where fear of. having your funds or something else does actually physically influence your ability and in reporting on. what you know in this

particular test the material is american. but it's hard to tell to what extent it's a question of fear particularly from the united states or if it's a fear from the local regime as censorship of sorts that johan is believes exists within the western world as well the idea that censorship is something that exists . in third world countries and speak but not in the enlightened west that idea i think has. been very challenged by where critics the main point which which we're trying to make isn't that you know there is there is somebody which is more censored than somebody else the main point is that there is there is a certain degree of censorship everywhere and what would you say is the biggest obstacle to freedom of speech and freedom of information these days it's the biggest obstacle to to freedom from of speech is the obstacle which isn't

in our minds it is the the idea that the people don't deserve access to knowledge because people cannot deal with it and that idea in my opinion is there is not just a little stick it is. it's incredibly insulting but in making a film about the boundaries of press freedom johana says he discovered a world that's moving away from old boundaries one of the most amazing things which has happened with them. with these releases and particularly if we speak about the n.s.a. documents it is. is that the censorship that we had just a few years ago has become irrelevant. and will be showing the movie in falls rob the day today here on artsy and of course you can watch it online right now at our website. c whereas kurdish minority one's

a seat at next month's international peace conference in geneva the kurds are pushing for autonomy in northern syria and have been fighting to protect their homes from radical islamist rebels there because the largest people without a country in the middle east and are mostly spread out across a region they call kurdistan they make up key minority groups in turkey syria iraq and iran with a total kurdish population estimated at around forty million and as a policy are now reports the kurds have their sights firmly set on long awaited independence. discriminated repressed and divided for years the kurds with 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 are enjoying defect autonomy and many believe independence is not far away but you are going. to go is not run by. powerful state in baghdad.

strongly believe that we are more than towards. a full independent kurdish state in the north of 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 and whose side but as of lodge a long long always called for a good fighters they have more weapons and they'll never give them up easily but it's in syria where the kurds face the toughest fight they are caught up in the middle of a bloody civil war their territories are being claimed by al qaeda villages raided the people killed residents of this included spillage of pursue fina forty five kilometers from aleppo so all it does is make them tougher fighters they are prepared to die to protect. and there people did it 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

if they don't we want to take 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. . time now for more world news of the brave and at least eight people have been killed in the double bombing in iraq the two explosions struck a live stock market of the town north of the capital baghdad just yesterday a group of suicide bombers targeted share programs in another region killing as many as thirty six bloodshed in iraq this year has reached levels not seen since two thousand days as r.t. dot com we've got a special project looking back at how the violence in twenty thirteen unraveled there. why are the parents clashed with where with five teachers in southern mexico

a former members of staff a ride on pickup trucks to take over the school but praised fierce resistance hundreds of anti riot had to be deployed to restore calm in september the teachers who went on strike were socked and replaced with members of a different trade union. and coming up next on r.t. international. the parliament of yemen has put forward a motion to ban drone attacks in the country the motion is now awaiting approval by the president and it's probably impossible to enforce unless they could build a really big net or something isn't it 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 u.s. military to take care of the al qaeda problem for them for free could be really entices 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 with the good old rifles and bayonets pointed at the right targets but that's just my opinion. the whole civil rights coming sunday talk show david gregory moderator of n.b.c. news meet the press joins us. from washington's

amazing museum plus a look at christmas in washington including scenes from inside the white house with first lady michelle obama all next on politicking with larry. from the fantastic museum in washington d.c. it is now but there's no place like this the newseum as we call it right right my fiance yeah it's a want to say news museum and it will have david gregory the moderator of n.b.c. news meet the press he's moderated since december of two thousand and eight he was the chief white house correspondent during the regime of george w. bush and meet the press is the oldest running sunday news talk show in american

television history when you got this job for we get of of things yeah and what was that like. it was extraordinary told you well our brar news president the time steve capice called it was a mad dog to me die but it was some time after that as you remember tom brokaw filled and i think n.b.c. news did the smart thing which is after something is significant is that to to ease the transition into put tom into the job i think it was appropriate and it was a nice way to bridge that gap because it was going to be a difficult transition for anybody and it was thanksgiving i was in new york with my wife and our kids and our president called and said i was the moderator of meet the press and you know there had been a lot of speculation. running up to that but i was i was blown away i mean it's. it was always something that i thought about i never thought that it would necessarily happen i could imagine tim leaving that job and i certainly couldn't

have imagined it that stage of my life thirty eight years old to be in that position so but i remain blown away because it's just an amazing job i interviewed larry speed that the first was. he was and he he really you know he owned a piece of show and he yeah and he conceived of the show and you know we have a lot of photographs kind of the pictorial history of it and it's extraordinary and it was a radio show was a radio show and you know rose kennedy wrote back and talked about what it meant for for her sons all three you know two then three three and four to have been on the program and ted kennedy spoke about how important it was to the family so yeah it was. it was the guy and he really came up with the idea that you learn everything you can about the guest and you take the other side was sort of the basis of the accountability nature of the show oh and to look at its history.