from behind bars to burlington former russian tycoon mikhail khodorkovsky is in germany looking forward to being reunited with his family following his pardon and release from prison. the friends surprise eight and a half trillion dollars goes on the county for less than two decades as part of the effort to keep the pentagon running. and friday turned violent in egypt as police just supporters of the president were protesting against the law restricting demonstrations. are you watching r t international with me andrey farmer. now just hours after

being released from prison mikhail khodorkovsky is back in the lap of luxury the former oil tycoon was one of russia's richest men before being jailed a decade ago but following his presidential pardon he jumped on a private jet flew to berlin and is now in a five star hotel this image is believed to be the most recent picture of horticulture skates emerged on social media and is thought to have been taken in the german capital where he is waiting to be reunited with his family artie's lindsey france is following the story. we know that his mother plans to get to berlin as soon as possible in fact we just spoke with her about her travel plans. for when we're on which flight i still don't have the tickets i just got up i hope we will meet today. now marina. his mother is is in failing health and in fact that situation was cited by president putin as one of the

reasons he decided to consider clemency in this case. his. daughter also released a statement to the press in which she she said that for the first time in ten years she got used to living in a reality where her dad was in prison and to realize that she'll be able to see him every day is just on real so it was a very rapid fire succession of how things took place when his release was announced in fact some of the family members didn't even know what had happened they were finding out from media reports things happened very quickly when president putin made that announcement after thursday's q. and a with journalists it was less than twenty four hours later that he was on german soil now right now he is at the ad one hotel in berlin journalists of course camped out there waiting to catch any glimpse they can of him and now this

announcement as i said was made thursday around five o'clock by president putin and landed on german soil by five o'clock the next day that jet which had flown from st petersburg to berlin was met by former foreign minister hans dietrich and the shed some light on how this all could have possibly happened so very quickly in fact german chancellor merkel released a statement saying she was very happy with the outcome and in fact praised cantor's efforts in recent years for petitioning helping to petition for. release. so germany obviously putting in some extra effort in at taking those travel papers which usually take a while to process and this happens very quickly now khodorkovsky posted a statement on his website where he says on november twelfth i asked for a pardon due to family situations admission of guilt was not raised and now he also does plan to hold

a press conference on sunday so we will of course be learning much more from that especially when it comes to his future plans or some german media reports suggested horticulture headed to berlin because he thought his mother was there i should recently undergone treatment in the country for cancer but the moment of his release was actually back in russia and here's footage from the hold of the family's house in moscow region both of his parents were reportedly traveled to bill in on saturday while his son is said to be heading from new york to join him in germany because he said he was hoping to be able to spend the christmas holidays with his whole family or political commentator eric margolis believes in terms of his plans for the future it will be hard for him to launch a political career. what i wonder is he might be a little chase by his lip and not started rants against google career for a while what little you know of that kind of thing after ten years in prison will

he be mandela or will he turn out and really star lasting good crown what is the core of the good. track to the brilliant man. he really is of no not a rouse and he simply i don't think it russian certainly not in the west. no none of them sort of even a martyr there was little. love lost on the russian oligarchs most people filled the should've been in jail and had their money confiscated so he's lovely really to have got away with some money into a boarded no longer jail sentence while the pardon to the state the decision was guided by the principles of humanity however there has been much speculation in the western media that the release was an attempt to boost russia's russia's a major head of the winter olympics in sochi but legal experts and blogger alexander mccourt especially it was first and foremost because of order called skins play for clemency. i don't think it got anything to do with nobody was going

to stay away from salt because of vista holder god being imprisoned i think the first point to make is that he is guilty and i i want to say that because this constant attempts to say that he was a political prisoner there's been six or seven decisions by the european court of human rights i've lost count how many there are which is said unequivocally that mr holder koskie is guilty of massive tax evasion on a simply enormous scale now he has been punished he's been in prison for that for ten years what what has changed the situation and has led to his release is that mr holder koskie did what he had previously consistently said he would not do and that is that he wrote a letter to mr putin asking for a pardon so i don't personally see that there's any compelling reason to keep him in prison or longer. but of course we are following closely the latest developments

in the story is footage from outside the five star hotel in berlin where were the course is believed to be staying a team from marty's video agency ruptly is watching the scene and feeding us the latest pictures. in the half a trillion dollars that's the figure handed by the u.s. congress to the defense department since nine hundred ninety six and it's remained unaccounted for ever since despite the organization having some of the most sophisticated military hardware in the world it still relies on antiquated and error prone counting computer systems and it's even led to active duty personnel more veterans being underpaid. investigates. the pentagon is almost certainly the biggest source of waste in the u.s. government the reuters investigation says since one thousand nine hundred ninety six the pentagon has spent eight point five trillion dollars in taxpayer money that

has never been accounted for and nobody can say for sure how many billions of that amount were wasted on goods and services that were never delivered on over payments to contractors and many other things what does congress do about it nothing and national security experts the mile serious here with me to help us crunch the these numbers even a tree lead dollars i think can only be for a lot of money this is the kind of thing that you would think would bring capitol hill to a screeching halt they would be hearing this kind of almost daily you know various committees looking into it none of that just leads to massive waste and there can be all sorts of fraud that you don't know about just one example when the inspector general looked at iraq which was you know a lot of money but in the grand scheme just a portion of the money the u.s. what they found was about fifty billion dollars of the money the u.s. spent there was wasted about six billion dollars was completely go off as they had no idea where it was completely unaccounted for but put that in perspective that's

a. about the amount of money that other countries would spend on their defense in a year total and that's just the least pocket change that we lost in the couch one thing i found very interesting in this report is that the pentagon apparently using a standard operating procedure to enter false numbers or so-called blogs to cover lost or missing information in their accounting in order to submit a balanced budget to treasury so they could write a new everything this probably the most shocking part of this is that they get to the end of the day and they say oh there's money missing what do we do we just put a number in there that says it's there are more sorted out later i mean again this is this is the type of operating practice that if you did it in your own business if you try to do with your own taxes for the government they haul you off to jail what contributes to the massive waste is the fact that for two decades the pentagon has dodged an audit which means nobody checked if the numbers in their accounting made sense congress has just passed a budget that allocates around six hundred thirty billion dollars to the pentagon roughly the same amount as last year how much of that will be wasted taxpayers will

never know in washington i'm going to check out our t. m we talk to retired u.s. army colonel douglas macgregor on the pentagon's failure to keep track of its money he things given the seriousness of the government doesn't seem anywhere near concerned enough. i have actually been in this position when i was the director joint operations that shape headquarters for reasons that i did understand my pay was suddenly reduced and it took a year older at least straightened out and then subsequently i was paid money that i had actually earned but for reasons that no one could explain had not been paid to me and my point is that you're dealing with millions of people and lot of instability a lot of movement and it's a difficult system to to work effectively. this is an enormous problem and this is something that absolutely must be addressed and addressed in a forthright manner at the moment no one on capitol hill seems terribly concerned

and a senior editor for the veterans today newspaper gordon duff but he's fast expenditure his own funds the full defense projects that never come to life. we have so many. defense entities that have gained so much power in washington over the past ten years certainly the i consider the phony war on terror has been an opportunity for the defense industry to buy congress the pentagon it works much like the federal reserve we have overt and covert policies we have so many black budget a budget projects including nuclear weapons development projects that when dark is early as one nine hundred ninety one we have heard of none of the advances we know that were achieved during the strategic defense initiative in the eighty's and

ninety's those have all gone dark but they're continuing to eat funds and we're watching much of the military budget used for sustaining a top heavy military and air force where every third person in our air force is a general. not draining every inch of the festive spirit of the glass. for the holiday season getting underway special patrols get going in the scottish capital to take care of those who have overindulged we take a look at this story in a couple of minutes. science

technology innovation all the developments from around russia we've got the future of covered. if you. got no opportunity. to start to construct your own little currency. kuno let me bet. don't want to meet gangsters they don't want to be drug dealers they don't want that bull without the time that the kid came be we can see. you just makes a profit i was like oh probably the hook em but they killed somebody with the wrong clue. but it felt like. i said. i

don't want to die i just really do not want to die young young. dramas that can't be ignored. stories others refuse to notice. the faces change the world writes never. to picture just days. from around the globe. looking. to me. again welcome back now with police in cairo and giza have used to gas on a series of protests clashes started when cries of supporters of the deposed

president mohamed morsi took to the streets after friday prayers. takes a look at the brutal police crackdown through the eyes of the egyptian people. mohammad tucker waits at home for the return of his fifteen year old son played it jailed for taking a pro morsi ruler to school teaches notify the authorities when they saw the fourth think it symbol which commemorates the bloody august dispersal of citizens in support of the troops to present. the first time in my life that the child is locked up in the military prison for having a ruler resume and the rest warrants out for me for inciting my son to take the ruler to closs but even if they look my son our problem we're ready to keep fighting islamist supporters of morsi like mohamed say they are in hiding fearful of showing any allegiance to the oust of muslim brotherhood president. since they cleared the sit in some men started shaving their beards and the women to go off

their new cabs anyone who is against the coup does not sleep in their own homes they spend nights at friends or even in barns they're not even arresting activists but normal people the checkpoints because they look like islamists with a beard even the simplest expression of support for mohamed morsi like a piece of stationery puts people in danger both from the communities and the state hundreds of morsy supporters have been arrested and many face trial after july's overthrow by the military security forces say the crackdown is necessary to secure the country but human rights organizations say it's part of a wider clampdown on i the military backed government is determined to enforce new legislation banning protests without police permits so now leading secular activists are on trial to be jailed under the new normal. again and the breakdown of political activists is normal and natural because it's easy to accuse them of working for a foreign agency and charge them with treason attacking people in killing them is

part of the political game played by the state. the government insists on restricting and controlling demos to keep the peace. egypt's dissidents are determined to keep protesting no matter the consequences. for r.t. after a shake. this is a photo of khalid in his classroom apparently shot on a mobile phone you can take a closer look you can see him making this four finger salute which is enough to land you in jail in egypt no matter what your age or gender will allen muhammad chairperson of the british egyptian for democracy group says the detention of the fifteen year old is far from an isolated case. so this fifteen year old child along with many many children are now placed in prison just because they have things simple symbol it's a symbol with full fingers on a yellow background and he's actually placed in an adult facility alongside suggs

and rapists and criminals and in fact this is actually outrageous what we're seeing is the military regime. going absolutely mad because a child is reminding its of its atrocities and the clear violations of human rights are taking place and as as you know at the moment there are many many children as well some of them we know about some we don't know anything about because once they're in prison and you don't get access to a lawyer or medical attention in the. course of writing stories for you want to website to including another blow to gay rights this time in uganda where the parliament has ratified a bill that could land homosexuals in jail for a lifetime for more details on this tough measure log on to r.t. dot com plus us and the giants come under fire again with louisiana environmentalists claiming their water is being contaminated with radiation for more on this story just click on to our web site. right

on the scene. first street view and i think that your take. on our reporters with my instrument. i. am. on my. despite the vigorous attempts of whistle blows to expose government wrongdoing it's often difficult for them to find media outlets willing to publicize the truth media stan is a recent road movie short by wiki leaks team of journalists who embarked on a trip across central asia and highlights the difficulties they face will be showing the film here in r.t. in about three hours time but you can always watch it on line at any time at our website at r.t.

dot com. interesting. strategic. undercover team of journalists trying to release wiki leaks documents. about its growing. global media. counter to your ignorance and to pressure. the country blocks the way to information freedom. media style. to. some international news in brief now in the capital of the central african republic a fresh outbreak of sectarian violence has left at least thirty seven people dead a red cross official claimed most of the victims were either shot or hacked to death with machetes this comes after france which already has more than sixteen hundred troops on the ground appealed to its european allies to help violence between muslims and christians has left around

a thousand people dead this month alone. i was. i. did in the greek capital is hundreds of farmers took to the streets in protest of the new property tax they were confronted by riot police who they pelted with fruit before attacking them with sticks the clashes broke out there ahead of a vote by pays an unarmed popular bill needed to qualify for more international bailout money. dozens of writers have attacked a police station in the german city of hamburg after a demonstration over the threatened eviction of the large war protesters smashed police cars and windows while a number of arrests were also made refugees and their supporters are expected to gather on saturday in front of roughly floor squats demand open spaces and refugee rights about four thousand police said to be deployed. mexican president seen and

yet it has signed a controversial fuel which allows foreign companies to drill for oil for the first time since the sector was nationalized seventy five years ago protests across the country denounced it as an act of betrayal by the government but the president says it will help attract investment and boost falling quote. maybe the height of the party season but some people will always celebrate just that little bit more than others in the scottish capital edinburgh those patrols are taking to the streets so the festive mood doesn't spill out of control r.t. sarah ferguson joined one. in the streets and pumps of edinburgh and the festive spirit is alive and well. and with the city's bars and hotels filling up the holiday season provides a much needed boost for the local economy. it was.

right. that. the scottish new year is known as hogmanay and the celebrations held in the city of renowned around the world being the hottest ticket. basically we have the tradition is that you're go round the houses and you take your ticket but glass of whisky and some coal coal to keep you warm and whiskey to to have a drink and i think new year's eve was invented by the scots but it's not all cause for celebration and violence and police start it's a busy period and in edinburgh this year a number of schemes have been put in place to try and provide support for the people here corson a little to marry safety zones and to say called police buses will be in operation to try to take the strain off the local services the scottish ambulance service

says the buses will be there to treat those who suffered a minor injury or have simply overindulged so last the city gears up for a busy holiday season and as that midnight countdown is party goes here in edinburgh asked to try and enjoy the spirit of the event just easy on the spirit. sarah firth r.t. edinburgh was. is coming up to twenty five past ten in the morning here in moscow and up next is writing this. 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 u.s. 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 for 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.

largest consumer sees and i see it with me in the country is the federal government is simply safe from. these government. this the united states privilege it was public has to realize it can't just by. just throw it away. for instance belongs to the united states environmental protection agency and i found this on a dump site here. it's not always. the producers of these and that's what i think should be able to collect these i believe that they should be responsible for their products from cradle to grave. fatal from mexico department of mental health

proper jail cell to america incorporated it also belongs to the washington metro area transit authority properties of a dentist aids pay trend and trademark office. i don't understand you correctly that you don't believe that adequate snowden performed a public service may be in the best interest of the united states but at least in the best interest of humanity here countries don't want to turn over their play book to the other side and that's essentially what's happened here it is true that it is heard a big debate about the role of our intelligence services in the united states i think that debate was coming anyway after nine eleven but i don't think we've had sort of anything in the interest of humanity served by this ship so.

the the. merry christmas happy kwanzaa happy belated hanukkah and happy festivus everyone happy martin this is great insight well guys this is our last show of the year and given that this could be really depressing we thought would be quite appropriate to take a quick look back at some of the most up to lifting and encouraging moments of two thousand and thirteen incredible technological advances were made from ultra efficient solar power to prenatal d.n.a. sequencing perhaps most incredible was the advent of three d. organ printing yes for the first time ever three d. printing technology was used to build tiny bits of organs although we're still years away from fully grown organs that can be built from an individual's own cells this development means one day people will no longer have to wait on

a transplant list now staying on the world of game changing technology last month nassau launched maven a space probe that's been sent to mars to study the martian atmosphere and determine how the planet went from being richer in water to the barren red rock that we know it is today the discoveries that maven makes may read. aleutian eyes are understanding about space and the atmosphere of planets but another story that shook up the status quo here on earth zero why is courageous decision to legalize marijuana amazingly the country's president hosts a move was it a complete abysmal failure of the world's war on drugs same quote einstein said there's nothing more absurd than trying to change results by always repeating the same formula that's why we're trying other methods whom he that world the new law could save why which spends eighty million dollars a year on drug trafficking millions of dollars but here in the us we saw one of our

own bigoted laws shot down when the supreme court overturned the federal defense of marriage act since then we've seen seven states legalize same sex marriage and just yesterday new mexico supreme court gave same sex couples the right to wed take that all the countries out there with repressive gay laws moving on to one of most inspiring international diplomacy stories of the year an agreement with the wrong and six world powers of the development of the country's nuclear program and while it's only a tentative six month agreement a warm relationship between iran and western powers is a much needed step toward stability in the middle east finally the most inspiring story of two thousand and thirteen has to be edward snowden in this courage to come forward and reveal an out of control and unconstitutional global spying machine infiltrating all of our lives has changed the world as a result of snowden's actions we now have documented proof of just how severely.