i nodded and. made signs of progress in syria peace talks washington accuses the moscow's of holding on to his biological weapons program despite the ongoing chemical design a little closer. we need a way to build against geneva but he need to find a way to continue to demonize the assad government because the ultimate goal is to get rid of assad. while inside syria survivors of the alleged massacre recount the horrors they saw when islamist militants seized the city more than a month ago he's the first foreign t.v. crew to film in the area since it was taken. also the ukrainian president makes yet another concession in a bid to end violence and kiev a done straight has refused to leave the barricades saying it's still not enough we'll be live in caves shortly. i wonder how this super hero brings

new hope to the down and down through portland how a comic book strip is giving hundreds of financial lifeline. this is unseen to national coming to life from moscow mining is you. and welcome to the. and they were cheering daylight breaking through in syria peace talks international mediators brahimi is said negotiations between the government and opposition are finally seeing some progress but at the same time washington says it's worried about new threats to matching from syria with terrorism being only one of them the u.s. national intelligence chief warned damascus is still capable of producing biological weapons despite the current process of design them and them are unimportant details for us the us director of national intelligence claims that

syria has not successfully weaponized biological agents in affective delivery system but he says the government possesses conventional weapon systems that could be used to launch biological weapons now speaking to the senate intelligence committee james clapper said that america's spy agencies believe that. biological warfare program might have advanced beyond the research and development stage and might be capable of limited production now the timing of these comments are quite interesting you have to understand them in context mr clapper is making these allegations as damascus has been successfully complying with the russia u.s. brokered deal to remove and destroy its arsenal of chemical weapons the agreement was brokered as a way to avert u.s. missile strikes that president obama was threatening in september to carry out now

it looks as though the u.s. administration may have a new reason to revisit their military playbook mr clapper is warning that syrian militant groups tied to al qaeda such as the al nusra front is aspiring to attack the united states he told the senate intelligence committee on wednesday that extremist groups in syria are conducting training camps to train people to go back to their countries and conduct more terrorist acts clapper says that some twenty six thousand rebel fighters battling the government of bashar al assad in syria are extremists and he also estimates that seven thousand of them are from fifty different countries including europe we've been reporting for months about how an influx of extremist groups in syria has turned the war torn country into a terrorist training center now the u.s. is currently feed facing quite a conundrum because members fighting with the rebels may pose a greater threat to american interests than the syrian president washington wants removed. brian becker believes washington's warning about.

just a new way to push on to assad's government. it's a clear indication that the obama administration is looking for other rationales other pretext to keep the pressure on the assad government and when i say pressure that's kind of euphemistic what they're really doing of course is creating a great international crime by funneling arms and weapons and money to an arms struggle in other words for mental and civil war so that they can destroy an independent nationalist government in this region of the world we've gone through this script before we saw it in iraq we saw it in libya we're seeing it in syria united states government is carrying out an armed struggle policy a civil war policy and they need to keep up public rationales also they need a way to balance against geneva but he need to find a way to continue to demonize the assad government because the ultimate goal is to get rid of assad not for a negotiated settlement it's been more than

a month this is the mystery novels seize the industrial syrian town of andhra and allegedly massacred dozens of civilians that had a fighting let alone the displaced and militants still hold large parts of the city making it impossible to go in and verify the details of any atrocities yes how he became the fast foreign t.v. crew to get to the area since the start of the siege and spoke to some of the survivors that. is just a twenty minute drive from damascus but the highway runs through an area firmly under rebel control so instead we take a newly created pass driving through high mounds of sand and piles of old tires the army uses to its convoys from attacks it may be longer but it's a safer route. government offices told us that last december our job was attacked by militants from a kidal in crude and the free syrian army. they stormed into the city and they kept

the civilians in their buildings using them as human shields which made our mission very difficult this is why it takes so long we want to avoid civilian losses they're actually to address the old town admiral blood and their work is house in complex nearby a drama lear both and i'll besieged. with maybe some bankers here to separate other out by law and out room earlier and to prevent the militants uniting these corridors go all around the besieged cities with the army watch in the area day and night. this is one of the checkpoints of the syrian army behind this wall is territory held by militants and the soldiers strategy and the mission right now is just to watch this area and to shoot if they see the enemy approaching. and this is actually all they can do for any military operation could

threaten the lives of those who remain hostage and with no access inside it's impossible to tell just how many the are but luckily most of the residents managed to escape address we meet some of them two kilometers away they sheltered around what used to be a large sum and factory life in this hotel's me he doesn't go to school anymore but this place because a terrorist attack the street and we had to skate they occupied and we cannot go there their rooms are blocked he says his father is a government employee this is why it is dangerous for his family to stay we ask where they live now. the hours mother appear from the darkness of the room barely ten square meters and a silence everything what is happening is wrong there was no need for any of this see where we are now what degree we have reached now it's a question that many here are asking because these children haven't seen their

mother for a month already seriously ill she couldn't get her medicine due to the siege with her condition deteriorating she was sent to a hospital far from her family. and. we were living in peace and now where are we i wish peace would come back to all of syria. a month later it's still not clear exactly what happened and not drug most of those we talked to here in this camp fled before the militants arrived but occasionally we meet some who didn't escape so quickly and alone and up they were looking for anybody serving in the syrian army and also the virus of the syrian soldiers beheaded at the sewage system. we were in a group of about twenty people they were beating us three at a time and killing us i saw with my own eyes people stone i still see them in my nightmares. but i don't like this sort of they cut drinking water and they prevented the bakery from working for us and young children are about to die from

a lack of water and they threatened us with machine guns. once an important industrial and peaceful city has become yet another syrian battleground for weary forces whose three year long confrontation has left well in excess of one hundred thousand dead and millions displaced and yet it's another place where no side looks able to will and it's the ordinary syrian people left to pay the price. see from our draw in syria more witness accounts of the alleged atrocities are available online on our website dot com protests in ukraine are refusing to leave this tres despite parliament passing an amnesty bill but forward during recent negotiations with the president as a part of a deal to and then rest but because it would mean dismantling the barricades in care and returning station governmental buildings their political opposition are

refusing to accept the conditions and alexey. is in care for us all right alex is here and i look say it is so to early to speak of compromises that. well it looks we're in for another deadlock which could drag on for weeks maybe even months the essence of it is quite simple the opposition wants all those detained in the protests to be released from prison sending criminalised the government the ruling party says they are ready for it only on one condition that other protesters dio keep by all the administrative buildings they have captured over the past several weeks and dismantle the barricade in the governmental quarter in kiev and this is the sticking point right now last night on wednesday the parliament stayed almost until midnight to find a solution they managed to pass and then an animistic law which provided those conditions but the opposition says they are not willing to take these to meet these

demands they are not willing to make concessions of their own the essence of a compromise itself is being lost completely here. provided that both sides are have to lose something but the opposition is not ready to make any steps back they're willing to keep the protests to life even despite that it's almost minus twenty five degrees centigrade now in kiev and all across ukraine to get what they want which is essentially the resignation of the president an early election let's listen let's listen to what some of the opposition leaders said last night. which for me here unfortunately did dr could bill which you know of you is not the best solution to the crisis on the contrary it's true that deteriorates the situation tensions in society because those of us who have the prickly how can we discuss negotiations today they're pursuing their own goals they pay no attention to the people they ignore the people's representatives in parliament they decided to go their own way and we'll see where it leads as little of what. we've already seen

several very important concessions coming from the side of the government they offered the opposition to take the government to take the prime minister's job they refused and we also saw that the controversial anti-riot legislation which sparked massive protests and riots was a bullish on the problem. the session on tuesday but the opposition has not made it willing to make any concessions of their own as i've said and things may get even worse because the deputies of the ruling party confirmed last night that the president said that the parliament's maybe just solved if it fails to find any sort of compromise and we're not seeing any compromise as of yet we also know that the foreign affairs chief or european union catherine ashton who came over to give on the words they said that both sides must stop the violence and find a compromise so the tension is no longer molotov cocktail throwing but definitely it's now in the political sphere and it's really hard to say where this will all go until the next line from the alexei thank you very much for keeping us up to date

ukraine's president made concessions after meeting with the opposition earlier this week and last and he rallying laws were lifted shortly after that the country's prime minister offered his resignation there and the head of state accepted that and dismissed the cabinet and now we see the amnesty bill which the opposition says is not good enough because it contains a condition that they should leave central kiev the ukrainian president's attempts to broker a peaceful solution was not enough for one hundred brussels to ease the pressure they're putting on the u.s. is preparing sanctions for the authorities and the opposition responsible for riots while brussels remains highly critical of the violence seen during the protests global policy expert martin sieved believes the ukrainian leaders attempts to restore peace are being blocked. the united states and the european union nations are very much amiss and mistaken that what they should be doing is supporting the

ukrainian government urging the rebels the holdouts to accept the amnesty agree with the most important thing is to defuse tensions and prevent new explosions of violence and the opposition are not doing this they are not in a constructive mood they are in an oppositional destructive mode they don't want to make change to due process i think it would be disastrous of president you know which were to resign i think if that was the case the danger of civil war in ukraine between eastern ukraine and western ukraine with kiev caught in the middle would be much greater president you know because it should be supported by the european union and by the united states he is the main force for moderation and reconciliation left in this country. day after day from a balance of your crane twenty four seven with the help of our website r.t. dot com and by you'll find a timeline placing fighters from a pair of as well as fresh reports of course that.

a superhero has cattle to the rescue of balance homeless has not i guess from the planet no a rich crime fighter basically has just a car except for one augustine but as alice has pointed black out reports even bats may be enough to help that isn't me. his muscles affair but he has no fixed abode it's super hobo the unlikely superhero inherited his super powers accidentally after savoring some discarded beer. normally like bettman or iron man they are very very rich playboys who rescued the world no it's the guy from the on the cross and rescue which gets to the city because it's very attractive for people all over the world not because it saw correct or clean city

but because of his heavy charm so it's logical that the glorious superhero of pearl and the bomb super hoboes creator says the idea was spawned while watching a homeless man trying and failing to sell a newspaper on a train. so stefan went to the stratton fagen newspaper which is sold by the homeless and unemployed and offer to launch the charity supplement in order to boost its sales for sure it's a little bit political incorrect but that's the only way to get more people into the subject homelessness and so we decided to do it the newspapers distributed through kiosks such as this one so the city's homeless can come here and buy in copies for sixty cents apiece which they then sell on for one year a fifty and they're able to make a profit but certainly in the time that we've been his several people have come up

trying to buy in more copies of that super hoboes supplement that has been selling so well super hobos breath stinks he dreams of oceans of beer and yet the homeless vendors don't take offense. it's a very good idea it should have been thought of earlier the supplement makes it heavier and i can't carry as many coffees but it's not too bad you just didn't carry on. now the customers are asking for this comic because they have super car too. the document publication aims to brighten the fortunes of its fellows the soup kitchen at zoos station has an increasing number of hungry mouths to feed the cries is. doing and or bringing in bringing much more people into difficult situations for a lot of foreign. for a lot of. people telling them joni is a rich country and please come and you will have

a good life but in fact it's very difficult to get jobs here and it's very difficult to get flats i'm thinking that's the number of people. especially in mumbai leaders increasing in the next us along with me but those trying to shift the papers daily say the comic strip has at the very least added that little bit of comic relief. curling as five centuries old but it's relatively new for the winter olympics so after the break we'll take you inside the ice cube telling a renamed soldiers on the big dogs stay with us.

choose your language. actually we can we know if you measure. choose the consensus you. choose to give us the degree great. choose the stories but if you. choose the access to.

your washing our international welcome back big games don't start for just over a week but such as winter olympic village has opened their doors to the finest athletes today there are three areas ready to host thousands of competitors and post called when to see them. well behind me is one of the three athletes villages that between them can house up to seven thousand competitors this is the one in the coastal cluster and for the next few weeks it's going to be the home of two three thousand competitors it's where they're going to eat sleep train and of course socialize now the unique thing about this coastal cluster is that the athletes all of them are going to be within walking distance of their venues leading to a real sense of community spirit there are two other olympic village is based a thousand meters above sea level there are in the mountains and it's going to house all the competitors in outdoor events and of course any olympic games it's

really just about the sport it's just about the athletes and with the first complex is beginning to arrive in sochi excitement is on the increase with the games now just a little over a week away. of all the winter sports to the outside curling can seem like one of the most complex the game has been dubbed chance on ice due to the strategic and technical details involved at the sochi winter olympics it has its very own banging . it's curling up in sochi for the winter games and at the curling lympics stadium at least will be affecting this sweeping. and ultimately the question. the ice cube curling center is a three thousand multi-purpose arena it's one of the smaller centers here at the olympic park it will be hosting the wheelchair curling competitions the come the paralympic games now it's quite

a spacious small center and those with disabilities will be able to enjoy this center so what it is creating you made one point have seen this all this we've been this to some it looks like a sweeping match but it's more than that physics and strategy play a role. the idea is to push the stone from one end of the ice to the other aiming for the center of the house which looks like a bull's eye a sports plant comes when the sweeping begins sweepers with what looks like a mop to go ahead of the stones melting the ice ever so slightly with the friction of the sweeping this is done to make the rock go farther it can straighten out the pop that the rock is traveling on. now the team with the rock closest to the center of the back soon after all those throws winds in the end knocking the opposition's team stories out of the house of blocking it's part of

a key parts of the game. this involves intense strategy sessions and this is where curling really turns into chess on ice. now you know so curl up at the curling stadium this winter olympics would say sochi olympic park our team. continue to walk here through a big hall courthouse here is a report from the soldier bad news here on our international syria. how do you operate do it again i'm going to host the two gates boards and such experts is it as easy as bruce rose i'm not an olympic hockey player the bond market is on the big. league i live in my son. and in the world of days this hour iraq's capital baghdad has been shaken by a series of bombings and shootings leaving at least twenty people dead shops and

restaurants and commercial districts of mainly shia neighborhoods were targeted although no one has claimed responsibility for their thoughts or issues all kinds of link to militants often launch similar attacks against share communities that. a young palestinian man has been shot dead by israeli soldiers near the west bank city of ramallah israeli defense forces claim the victim opened fire at civilians and military post but local say he was unarmed while those in the region has increased in recent months with over twenty palestinians and four israelis having lost their lives. hundreds of protesters brought into the streets of brussels to protest spain's abortion policies demonstrators much from this punish under siege of the european parliament last december madrid adopted restrictions on abortion allow you to only in limited cases including rape all physical risk to the mother. and on our website to your sanctions take a toll on those hungry for knowledge as an american company providing online

education says abbas uses from iran and syria from using its services blaming sanctions put in place by washington. and a vocal critic of the us can no longer and almost harbor her home state including hospital after she lost a legal battle with an oil giant. we have right after the break marcus kaiser delves into the murky waters of the financial world that's in the kaiser report on our international.

dramas that could be ignored. story others. say since changed the world right. to picture. from a. local. hello

and welcome to worlds apart is there life on mars it used to be a million dollar question than a billion now it looks like it may soon become a trillion dollar question but will it produce announcer well to discuss that i'm now joined by a co-founder of the marsh one mission lonsdorf mr loves or pink you very much for a time i know that you've been a very passionate advocate of sending a manned mission to mars and do you believe that you can do that by circumventing governments and space agencies and you don't even need so much money for that your claim that it may only cost around six billion dollars but i wonder how much of that money have you already raised. we don't disclose the mother's money that we've raised but i can tell you that's we've we've now theresa significant portion of those six billion us dollars as we are talking to the right people we're talking to the right people in the media industry we're talking to the right potential partners and sponsors for our mission and we're very confident that we can raise

that level of money well correct me if i'm wrong but they're courting to some media reports as of november first this year you received slightly less than two hundred thousand dollars in donations which seems to be a little bit short of the six billion dollars why do you think people haven't responded to your pleas more generally maybe it space exploration is no longer as appealing as it used to be donations is one of the ways that we will finance this mission but it's only a small part of what we what we seek to to collect and the larger amounts of money will come from investments from from investors who are interested in the media outreach that we will do and from big partners. that will contribute to this mission because they want to attach share name to such an exciting events now the main reason why your price texans to be relatively low is

because you don't really factor in every turn journey you believe that those valid volunteers have to stay on mars for the rest of their lives and i know that in your first round of selection you received more than two hundred thousand applications from all over the world but i wonder if it's even realistic to ask for an informed consent on something like that can you really ask people for something like that because they they simply don't know what it entails but we will prepare them very carefully for what it does until they will we will hire them in about six groups of four people in about two years time and they will train significantly for this mission full time. eight years and they will they will learn what it's like to be alone they will be in an isolated environment on earth by the copy of the march outpost and they will get to experience all the things that they will experience and not experience will march before they leave but of course it's still

a very very big deal and that's why selecting those people and keeping track of what they do is so important it's one of the most difficult things for our mission it's not the technology it's not the money it's finding the first crew that can do this how could do you make sure that those people who commit that chair you know through all of these training process will not regret that decision later on anyone who applies for the marshal mission is selected to come into our a short course they can always regret regret the decision and step out and that's why we will select multiple crucial for people and train all of them as if they were the first crew to go and only if a year or so before the actual departure will we decide which crews are ready and only the crew will only know if they fly the moment they are invited to step into the rockets and we're very confident that that there are groups as will drop out and we're also very confident that there are groups that will finish the program.