we're clearly not the safest. the olympic torch starts the final leg of its historic relay as it arrives in the host city of sochi heralding the him and then start of the twenty fourteen winter games. the u.s. warns international firms against doing business with iran saying a partial lifting of sanctions that's not mean the uranium market is up for grabs. afghanistan reveals it's been trying to hammer out a hodgepodge deal with the taliban as america's role in the country past twenty fourteen it becomes less clear.

which international coming to you live from moscow i'm marina joshie welcome to the program now the olympic flame has arrived in the host city of sochi heralding the final real life stage before the games begin and what a journey it's been more than sixty thousand kilometers across the vastness of russia and all the way into orbit and the international space station among those welcoming it in sochi r.t.s. more than andrews and paul scott. what a journey it's made sixty five thousand kilometers around the largest country in the world that is russia fourteen thousand torchbearers over one hundred twenty three cities in russia featuring such features going up as you said to the international space station for the first time in history it made a space walk event should up to the north pole it's been a summer reading visit the largest freshwater lake in the world by cali in siberia

and finally after months of anticipation it is here in such in fact it will rise much not by land or air but on the yards then that will make its way across to adlib very close to the olympic park where the opening ceremony will take place on friday. outspread left at the airport as you could say i've had it on some cluster crosslegged pollyanna of course everybody's talking about who were the lucky people to carry the torch over the next few days we have russian actors comedians sports men and women and of course the main thing on everybody's lips is who will light the torch at the opening ceremony on friday lots of speculation there but in the meantime the lympics flame is here in sochi and everybody is certainly very excited because finally here at the black sea resort well absolutely as you just said the excitement is building up and we can feel that definitely for now though let's cross to paul scott who is also in sochi for us and what we see behind college is the sporting arenas and all of the buildings there were the various i should say

were the sporting events will be taking place and also we know that the olympic committee is there as well what have we heard from them so far. well as the final preparations takes day. and to the final stages into the home straight i can tell you the international olympic committee and president vladimir putin are there remain in the region president putin has visited the athletes village which you can probably just make out behind me it's a short walk away from the coastal cluster he's visited the athletes village where they're going to eat sleep train live and of course socialize over the next few weeks and he met a number of russian athletes who of course have a lot of pressure on them over the next week or so they're performing in their home olympics in their home games and they are expected as a team to put in a better showing than they did in vancouver four years ago when russia won just three gold medals present and also i witnessed the olympic flag being raised above the olympic village which really does signify that these games are now within

touching distance of course it all gets underway as martin said on friday evening with the opening ceremony but a number of world leaders are political figures have decided they will not attend those games however president of the international olympic committee thomas parks says that the olympic movement in the olympic games should not be used for 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 however the courage to address your disagreements in a peaceful direct political dialogue and not on the pics of the athletes well that's president of the i.o.c. thomas back speaking in sochi just two days now before the start of the games all

right paul thanks very much for this and as the finishing touches are being added security of course is one of the big topics are there and martin have you heard of any last minute concerns there and what's being done in terms of security in the city. that's right marina security is obviously the word the everybody is talking about this much media hype surrounding this situation of the the ring of steel which we're standing at the moment personally but i can say is that i had no trouble at all you can walk the streets i spoke to various foreigners he said actually being here in sochi is really just like any other olympics if not more secure we have six thousand athletes arriving this week if i haven't arrived already twenty five thousand volunteers and up to one hundred thousand police members armed forces army sniffer dogs horses you know i mean it really just feel like such a is one of the safest places to be on this planet at the moment of course security concerns are vital and of the number one priority here in tsotsi but then again i suppose you could say that they are in all sporting events the conferences around

the world this is what president putin had to say about the subject of security take a look you know look it up when you will security is always of concern you know the at large who is your friends but you're also a political one and we can't forget the terrorist attacks the scrutiny when you see the boston bombings for example which happened recently there have been similar attacks at the olympic games and the bombings suring the g. eight summit in london but i'd like to thank our partners from almost every nation who are actively working to ensure the game security in the world together with our own security specialists there and judy twenty four hours a day i think it's very important mention that even though the security is tight here in sochi it doesn't feel like a blockade or concentration camp everybody is at ease of course when you enter typical buildings you have to go through the screening into bickel airport security but there is a very relaxed happy and excited atmosphere well i've been here in such over the last four or five days and really for my own experience it feels a lot safer than the media hype surrounding it yesterday i met various cossacks and

horses who allows it be helping the security measures over the next month. air defense missiles drones sophists. hated 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 lot of the safest places on 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 residence to work this could enter without an official powers but it's a case of high visibility and minimal fuss was that you didn't measure the astronauts 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 police officers are into growing extra training for mounted patrols that have distinct advantages that such events over cannot buy you through rubble to work all year ahead of the games mounted police are more effective during massive burns. there's a tower over the people and have a better view of the crowds and the beefed up security including assistance from the u.s. government is primed 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 applets they will be on standby to assist the police cossacks have been guarding russian borders for centuries which

traditionally based in southern russia we know the region and its people very well . because job is to offer assistance spread safety culture and peace to various religions and people from different countries like normally 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 cossacks sorties visitors locals are certainly in good hands and with an estimated one hundred thousand police security services and armed troops here the aim is to ensure that these will be the safest lympics in history martin andrews r.t. sochi and we've got to continue a live updates for you from sochi a were 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. investors are once again flocking to iran and that set off alarm bells in washington with top officials insisting the oil rich nation is still not open for business but to iran's prospects have been looking brighter since sanctions were partially lifted under a nuclear deal by calling marina cossar of discuss this with our t.v. presenter kate i'll be him. we've had a huge french delegation making their way to iran in anticipation of this post sanction iran or mages are all looking forward to not as oil majors but car

manufacturers including rand all with that telecoms are into the i was talking the biggest delegation in two years and the only one that was missed and of course in this comes after the locations when they're from turkey so everyone is trying to get out early it's how i live and it's it's almost like everyone wants to get in the line out 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 evade our sanctions we will sanction them surely they should have expected that international companies would move in as soon as they announced that 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 in terms of both oil and gas world exactly

right so people want to drum into that and also you gotta 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 to tell what active in the region and they want to get in those oil fields and get them likely again i think 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 kind of twenty two for the u.s. yes doesn't want to aggravate iran 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 my brother as well from the u.s. and he basically said iran is i've been for 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 they do any other whether it be call pharmaceuticals all materials i'm gonna stands government has admitted to holding secret talks with the taliban behind america's back as president karzai steps up to make peace with a militant group although the negotiations have been largely fruitless so far the u.s. says it supports the push for reconciliation but now reports washington appears to be losing its influence on kabul. 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 and last week that the afghan leader cited poet percy shelley when describing the plane fully strained relations with america i believe the best way to summarize this is to put it in the words of shelley the great british court 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 or see right 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 a exacerbation 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. who was travel a 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 history for the u.s. may turn out to mean leaving afghanistan in the same circumstance it was when it was invaded. new york. now frank

a former british army officer has served in afghanistan thinks this as a perfect sign that america's decade long war ichiban nothing all this is testament to the total strategic illiteracy of the whole campaign from the start we've had a military campaign really quite some of its brutality over the last twelve years completely only good and i'm connected to any political process now the taliban very very conversant with the need to link to mash to memory politics with military action and they play this game extremely well now what's happened is we're right at the end of the campaign the balance of power is already tipping the back of the taliban particularly in the south where of course most of the combat has taken place we're seeing the taliban already moving to the vacated by the british and american forces extortions being applied political pressure making deals with the local drug cartel the. balance is already tipping not now for more on america's

involvement in afghanistan and reports of it funding human rights abuses in controlled territory in state with r.t. for abby martin and breaking the sap. this is the longest war in u.s. history still going strong ninety percent of the 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 becomes a little bit more complicated because the u.s. is still occupying the sense of the u.s. is still running a lot of these a lot of the infrastructure there so we're seeing widespread cases of human rights abuse widespread abuses i mean irrefutable evidence of of torture happening in prisons in afghanistan. well the days of sprawling u.s. surveillance signs dotting the british countryside could be numbered coming up find out how senior politicians in the u.k. are trying to put the all seeing american spy genie back in its bottle.

after the break we report from tokyo where passion is no longer in fashion for singles too busy with their computers to go on a real date. the united states. significant technological over the rest it is now using that spy on the rest of the world then there was the deal between the u.s. and england where u.s. 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 sure veiling our own people so this is what i think of as the scandal.

welcome back this is a national now the u.s. has military installations dotted across the british isles and senior u.k. politicians are calling for a complete overhaul of the rules governing a shady now work it's thought some of the sites may have related secret information

to control drone strikes in yemen and to carry out a dragnet spying reports. 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 lib dems baron s. miller and s. 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. well we're really talking particularly about menwith hill anyone living in new york should be familiar with it huge goals pulls dozens of people working at the scale of it should have told us that something was going on beyond simply missile defense so perelman terence 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

that would be pretty appalling. and we're quite comfortable with it but either way i think we need to know 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. space says it should be added herring to british laws. r.t. london. while russia opens its arms to syrian refugees granting asylum to more than a thousand displaced people who are fleeing a country that's been ripped apart by nearly three years of civil conflict all the details are on our website and fire rages from the wagons of a train that derailed near the euro mountains in russia forcing four hundred people

to be evacuated from a new year by town. and to japan now where a love is definitely not in the air more and more people there are shunning personal contact in favor of a solitary life online and for a country it was one of the world's lowest birthrates a demographic disaster to be looming explains. thanks but no sex says this japanese woman in her mid thirty's she's now 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

a married man and near half of women aged eighteen to thirty four are not in relationships moreover 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 you know we're rapidly shrinking and 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 discredit light districts 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. with

a home ok now 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 that 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 i'm out of just to help up to one hundred

people every month but with growing numbers of those interested in intimacy in population of one hundred sixty million this is just a drop in the ocean. reporting from tokyo japan. for more international news making headlines around the globe now forty eight hour strike of two workers has been has began in london disrupting the on the ground journey of tens of thousands of passengers some major central stations have been closed forcing people into over crowded trains and buses the strike was triggered by government plans to modernize the ground which would include almost a thousand job cuts and the closure of all taken offices. in israel is late and this has been fondly remembered in caracas where thousands gathered to mark twenty two years since the attempted coup d'etat brought him to prominence back then the socialist revolutionary along with military officers who rose up against an unpopular regime it took another seven years for charges to take

the presidency for the event is seen as a key breakthrough in the country so-called revolution. after the break its boom bust with host erin eight. is there a new cold war brewing pitting the west against russia what is being called a reset relations at this. part of the obama presidency today is in tatters western media and politicians are determined to between russia and the worst. even to the point of undermining the sochi games what are these new cold war years to achieve. new york london. the whole. country of the original one of the one on the end. of the court building at the end of the street another one

a more transparent society gets the money or the tears become we see military and. police forces mobilized against people who blend into the city who inhabit the city the more people trust electronic devices the more. fear that has a thousand on. is obviously more for the latest because it's pink. women wanted to avoid rate they really need to buy guns and. this is the one that i want to go away from once again it's the fear. of the gun lobby. not one that killing many would have so many would be would this will hurt. more that's really scary marketing tactics which implies that women have some sort of moral obligation

to protect their family and young girls shoot out here. so we do have a pink. kids young kids choke on food than are killed by firearms if being armed made us safer in america we should be the safest nation on earth we're clearly not the safest. there i marinate this is boom bust and these are the stories that we're tracking for you today. coming up a white collar crime expert sam antara joins me live on today's show to discuss financial fraud in all of its forms then debt ceiling drama is that the treasury secretary says we must do something about it but we're asking the question why are we in this position in the first place find out just ahead and finally in today's

big deal ed harris and i discussed free trade friend or foe it's all coming up and it all starts right now. with. our story today the debt ceiling or lack there of secretary treasury secretary jacob lew says after february seventh we'll have to start using emergency measures to avoid a first ever default on national debt and lew says he expects to exhaust those measures very very quickly now congress is spending the debt limit last october as part of a deal to reopen the government after a partial shutdown however the so.