it's torch time in sochi the epic journey of the olympic flame and its final straight to get the winter games going. u.s. threatens european companies with sanctions for seeking opportunities in iran insisting it's still not open for business even though restrictions are being a. clandestine talks with the taliban it's revealed of ghana's hands been trying to secure peace with militants behind closed doors while washington tries to keep some kind of military grip in a land ravaged by ten years of war. our team international coming to you live from moscow

a marina josh welcome to the program. before the winter olympics begin one journey has to and after traveling more than sixty thousand kilometers the iconic flame of the games has reached its final destination is in the host city of sochi for our team. lympics torches arrival here in sochi is going to be greeted with an increase in excitement levels over the next couple of days or so three hundred volunteers are going to carry the torch as it continues its journey all around this region and then of course it comes to a climax on friday evening during the spectacular opening ceremony where the olympic cauldron will be laid another person who is tasked with that corner at the moment we simply don't know it is a closely guarded secret and of course the olympic torch began its relay across russia the world's largest country back in moscow in october since then it's traveled sixty five thousand kilometers it's gone to the bottom of the world's deepest lake lake by college going to the top of europe's highest peak mt albert

and it's also gone on a space walk as well on board the international space station but now it is here in sochi all eyes are turning to friday the international olympic committee they're having their one hundred twenty six session now the president of the i.o.c. is thomas park he is here in sochi as an and has addressed a number of issues around these particular games and in particular he's addressed the issue of a number of political leaders who have decided to boycott the games in an apparent protest against russia's so called in hotly debated anti-gay law back says that the olympic movement should be above and beyond any political point scoring we are grateful to those who respect the fact that sports can only contribute to development and peace if it's not used as a stage for political dissent or for trying to score points in internal or

external political contests to other political leaders we say have the courage to address your disagreements in a peaceful direct political dialogue and not on the backs of the athletes another issue that has been firmly in the spotlight in the lead. up to these games is the issue of security of course december's twin suicide attacks in the city of volgograd which is less than a thousand kilometers from here has heightened tensions and my colleague martin andrews now takes a look at the issue of security around sochi. air defense missiles drones sophisticated suttles capable of detecting some of the rains and high speed patrol boats a vast array of high tech gear is being deployed to make such a part of the safest places on earth with any global event security is the number one priority and no expense is being spared to achieve that end at the twenty

fourteen winter olympics a ring of steel is in place around the city and no one from residents to work has can enter without an official pass but it's a case of high visibility and minimal fuss was that you did know many of the athletes have been saying that back home they saw very negative media coverage about the olympic village some are even afraid to come here but monday arrived this started wondering what all the bad press was about and were very impressed by what's going on here they say there is much less hassle and discomfort is specially when it comes to security checks compared to previous game. but it's not just about tighter controls and manpower place offices are into growing extra training for mounted patrols that have distinct advantages at such events i recall nobody thought i would work all year ahead of the games mounted police are more effective during mass advance officers and our over the people and have a better view of the crowds and the beefed up security including assistance from

the u.s. government is prime to keep a protective i'll locals of this is more than ever before almost five hundred cossacks warriors of russian law will also be on duty at various olympic locations . with their traditional black hats and coats with police they will be on standby to assist the police who have been guarding russian borders for centuries traditionally based in southern russia and we know the region and its people very well. because it's job is to offer assistance spread safety culture and peace to various religions and people from different countries because like nobody patrols without any weapons they can only stop a crime in progress and they can only call the police and wait for the authorities to arrive so as the population of this black sea resort swells by the thousand whether it's sniffer dogs or horses patrol boats or cost x. sorties disses locals are certainly in good hands and with an estimated one hundred

thousand police security services and troops here the aim is to ensure that these will be the safest lympics in history today andrews r.t. sochi well we've got our continuing live updates for you from such a word the olympic flame has arrived plus go to our website to revisit the most exciting moments of its journey from ancient greece to the russian black sea resort . iran is not open for business and that's a stark message to european firms from top u.s. negotiators the warning was voiced at

a senate foreign relations committee hearing after a business is lined up to take advantage of recently agreed sanctions relief the six month window as a concession towards a final deal on iran's nuclear program argues marina earlier discussed the latest developments with our business presenter. we've had a huge french delegation making their way to iran in anticipation of this post sanction iran the oil majors are all looking forward to not just oil majors but car manufacturers including rand all with that telecoms are into the vocal manner and we're talking the biggest delegation in two years and that one was business and of course and this comes after. one there from turkey so everyone is trying to get out . alive and it's almost like everyone wants to get in the line now in reaction to this the u.s. is saying whoa hold on a minute ok hold your horses we've got wendy sherman she was quite still in her was as to what she had to say we're going to have a quick listen iran is not open for business because our sanctions relief is quite

temporary quite limited and quite targeted doesn't matter whether the countries are friend or foe if they have read our sanctions we will sanction them but surely they should have expected that international companies would move in as soon as they announced exactly where it is margin so wouldn't you because we know the reserves in iran are huge incredibly vast one if not one of the biggest oil and gas reserves in the world are talking about the top they fall over in terms of both oil and gas world exactly right it's a people want to drum into that and also you go to remember europe is still dealing with stagnate grows it's no wonder that they want to drum up business and product to these sanctions a lot of these countries including what active in the region and they want to get in those oil fields and get them like here again i think that that stands to reason so you know it's no surprise but the u.s. too they also want to healthy business relationship with iran because it's going to be a force to be reckoned with when it's back up and running if these six months go well in the way it's country twenty two for the u.s.

yes doesn't want to agree to run too much at the moment because then they stand to lose. anyway but iran's leader. is trying to drum up some publicity and also some investment so you know i was in davos just just the other week he was there he was talking to oil majors. including some i about as well from the u.s. and he basically said iran is i believe the business to go completely different story hit the reason why he's saying this is because his economy has been crippled by the sanctions we're talking forty percent inflation five percent recession he's undepressed to himself to get relations kickstarted with the oil industry and indeed any other whether it be called pharmaceuticals all materials out emerged out of the afghan government has been holding secret talks with taliban officials to try and tackle the country's volatility discussions took place three weeks ago in dubai but reportedly achieved little although afghan officials remain confident they will eventually bear fruit the u.s. has voiced its support despite washington having spent billions of dollars in ten

years fighting taliban militants there and there is the ongoing wrangling over america's role in afghanistan beyond two thousand and fourteen now looks at what's been achieved after a decade of war. one of america's longest and most expensive foreign investments is turning into one of its greatest obstacles the u.s. intervention in afghanistan has essentially created a new television movement far more powerful you know no comparison really with the taliban that existed before nine eleven or before the u.s. intervention in afghanistan matter of fact as the taliban and afghan president reportedly remain in secret talks about reaching a peace deal washington's future in the country after twenty fourteen remains in limbo president hamid karzai still refuses to sign a long term bilateral agreement with washington last week the afghan leader cited

poet percy shelley when describing the painfully strained relations with america i believe the best way to summarize this is to put it in the words of shelley the great british put i met murder on the way the whole twelve years was one of constant pleading with america please treat our civilians respectfully and treat their lives as the lives of people. the u.s. has reportedly spent more than ninety billion dollars on reconstruction and relief in afghanistan i just did for inflation that's more than any european country received after the second world war however journalist gareth porter says in this case no amount of money can buy love what the united states has accomplished in its escalation of the war in afghanistan is that they are the exacerbation a tremendous increase in anti-american sentiment and a large part of that of course was the use of night raids of on people's homes

knocking down doors in the middle of the night and antagonizing hundreds of thousands of people who who is family friends neighbors were affected by this tactic and it's tremendously antagonized. the afghan population and that is going to be a problem that will affect us national security for many decades to come in the year to come victory for the us may turn out to mean leaving afghanistan in the same circumstance it was when it was invaded marina porton i am r t new york of a more on america's involvement in afghanistan and reports of its funding human rights abuses in controlled territory stay with r.t. for abby martin and breaking the set. this is the longest war in u.s. history still going strong ninety percent of world's heroin is coming out of that country we're still funding billions of dollars in there i mean at the same time

bombing the hell out of it i guess afghanistan i think becomes a little bit more complicated because the u.s. is still occupying have read this and so the u.s. is still running a lot of the a lot of the infrastructure there so we're seeing widespread cases of human rights abuse widespread cases i mean irrefutable evidence of of torture happening in prisons in afghanistan. and in just a few minutes on our team they can spot but they cannot hide britain's leaders are told to get a grip on american global surveillance after senior parliament's figures say u.s. bases on u.k. territory are getting away with taking liberties. plus we'll tell you why it's no longer glamorous to get amorous in japan where thousands are finding their sex drive is blinding to uphold that a more in just a few moments. to

the playing. field the big spirit travels with the flame from its birthplace to greece. julian james brown elemental and epic journey around russia and beyond. where i. play.

welcome back you're watching our team international american military bases in britain might come under greater scrutiny and that's after a series of allegations that washington has been using them for drone strikes and spying the revelations include funneling the german chancellor's phone data the emergence of which caused outrage in berlin last year now senior u.k. politicians want the government so overhaul its current intelligence arrangements as boyko explains. well they arrived during world war two and they stayed throughout the cold war and now there are some ten thousand u.s. military servicemen working here in britain in dozens of facilities but what are they still doing here well it's alleged that one of the u.s.

military bases here in the u.k. was relaying data back from a network of spy posts alleged to have been monitoring the phone calls of german chancellor angela merkel so now three senior peers from all three major political parties here in the u.k. say they want to see greater transparency in relation to u.s. military bases and they want to know exactly what the u.s. military servicemen are getting up to on british soil well to talk about this i'm joined by one of the authors of the proposed amendments to defense legislation. baron s. miller barnett miller thank you very much for joining us the u.s. and the u.k. have a special relationship they're both part of nato what does it matter what they're getting up to on these bases. what you're quite right we do have a special relationship but the global surveillance program that the american national security agency has been up to has gone well beyond what we think is

acceptable in terms of security are you saying that these bases have basically become a lauren to themselves within the u.k. what we're really talking particularly about menwith hill anyone living in new york should be familiar with it huge gold pools dozens of people working at the scale of it should have told us that something was going on beyond simply missile defense so perelman terrence like myself have been asking questions over the last couple of decades but we've received a brushoff a not very good answer now either our ministers didn't know what was going on which would be pretty appalling or they did know what was going on and were quite comfortable with it but either way i think we need. no to see these bases become far more accountable to the british parliament it really does need to be something that we do knowingly and not just wandering into what we've got now which is a big state run from the states proposed amendments to defense legislation

currently being revised but certainly here in the british government there are those that say while they are on british soil u.s. bases should be added herring to british laws. auti london. well it turns out that spending millions on cyber security isn't stopping hackers getting into u.s. federal agency websites. and it's all down to the basics of using computers at r.t. dot com we tell you why staff are unwittingly holding the door open on line criminals. plus on our on line in vision section we've got pictures from i see iran which has endured one of its heaviest snowstorms in years . but if you're going through a moment like these policies i think you. should

have you with us here on t.v. today i rollers you should. international almost every word you look it seems that sex sells t.v. films music but in japan thousands of people are being turned off explains why the japanese are getting bored in the bedroom. thanks but no sex says this japanese woman in her mid thirty's she's no on her second marriage but intimacy with her husband is off the marital menu. after i had a child with my first husband i lost interest in sex we divorced i remarried but my

second husband lost interest in having sex with me so i have actually got used to having no sense at all this is becoming a trend which now has its own name in japan sexless according to recent polls more than sixty percent of unmarried man and near half of women aged eighteen to thirty four are not in relationships more over forty five percent of women and a quarter of men aged sixteen to twenty four were not interested in having sex at all for the country with one of the world's lowest birth rates this spells huge demographic trouble we used to have a very large population but now we're rapidly shrinking if things carry on as they are japan's population will be half of what it is now by the year twenty fifty that would be seventy point eight million we have indeed struggled to find many couples openly showing their affection in the multi-million capital of tokyo and what makes the situation even more bizarre is that japan has always been a world heavyweight when it comes to the matters of sex but your show our area in

tokyo is one of the old this thread light district in the world for centuries it has been thriving now its streets are practically empty for almost four hundred years it has been restricted to the locals now with japanese people having less sex the businesses here had to open their doors to foreigners. here she used to be called queen love and worked in one of those brothels now runs a special course called sex counseling she helps people resuscitate their basic instinct sometimes through hypnosis she even urges men to dress as women to make them understand what the opposite sex feels like she says the government is partly to blame for the situation taking on. the government puts. to regulations from sexual. even sex to commercials disappeared from t.v. these forced young people to go there show in their sex lives now they have more interest in social media and dating becomes annoying to them. not

only social networking but also high unemployment among the youth generates this widespread celibacy and sexual reclusion say researchers many simply have no money to date and get married oh yeah amount of just to help up to one hundred people every month but with growing numbers of those are interested in intimacy in population of one hundred sixty million this is just a drop in the ocean. reporting from tokyo. bomb blast near a government science and baghdad's highly secured green zone have killed at least sixteen people the deadliest attack happened as two cars packed with explosives went off near the foreign ministry last were also reported near a restaurant and commercial buildings there's no evidence of who carried out the assaults but sunni insurgents have repeatedly carried out similar attacks against civilians and government implodes. a train carrying gas condensate has derailed in central russia causing twelve of the carriages to

explode it's thought faulty wiring is to blame for the train coming off the rails emergency services have now almost put all of the fire and no one was injured during the incident but around seven hundred people have to be evacuated from the area. troops from france and the african union have been unable to stop the looting in muslim neighborhoods in the central african republic peacekeepers on tuesday repelled attacks by radical christian militias on muslim residents but so far failed to completely restore safety there the country has suffered months of sectarian rest that has claimed hundreds of lives and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. a saudi journalist has been sentenced to twelve years in prison for disobey the king and claiming the country inside of terrorism the court also found him guilty of steering addition and undermining the nation's prestigious even after he's freed he'll be banned from

traveling abroad for twenty years the move follows a recent ruling that brands people as terrorist for insulting the king or defaming the country's reputation. and very shortly on a national we trace the spectacular journey of the olympic torch at the end it's odyssey but for our viewers in the u.k. it's going on the ground with you know tons.

new york london. the whole world is on the. complete truth of the original one a further one down the end. of the courthouse building at the end of the street another one a more transparent society gets the money or the puppet tears become we see military and state and police forces mobilized against people who blend into the city hobbit the city the more people trust electronic devices the more defenseless the. fear that it is a thousand on. one corner the wall street jamie the. drug goes wild. and in the other corners the evil no good

dick refused to tell bellow long-term capital management always dick the guerrillas who. are. here to mediate this fight is hank paulson will be rescued this stage rumble in the wall street jungle with a seven or billion times out the audience yes the game is rigged. the united states. significant technological over the rest of it while it is now using that supply on the rest of the wall then there was the deal between the u.s. and england where us spy agencies couldn't spy on people in the u.s. but british spy agencies could spy on people in the u.s. so the two governments said alright each of us will spy on the. other citizens and then we'll trade and that way we'll be surveilling our own people so this is what

i think of as the scandal. and. one of the marginalized should be.

a pleasure to have you with us here today. it was supposed to be just another news or of course although admittedly for a special occasion it was one hundred twenty three days before the start of the winter olympic games in sochi and i was in greece for the lighting of the olympic flame the ruins of elim pierre one of the most famous monuments of ancient greece the site of the very first olympic games where stones like this would have been part of the temple. to temple.

temple. home. mom.

well that was all rather surreal. definitely the way to stream i've had for a while. there was a memorable ceremony. with one pretty sure the high priestess never spoke to me. what was it she sent full of the flame or something. you have a lot more of course base. on which the top story this morning than the thirty twenty people tina libby claim has invited mosque seven days after it was in the ancient greek city of olympia carried by russia's deputy prime minister dimitri cool with ak the flame traveled in a small mountain to red square where president vladimir putin spoke of.