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

which international coming to live from moscow with memories. of the olympic flame has arrived in the host city of sochi heralding the final relay 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 in sochi artie's martin 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 the first time in history it made a space walk event should up to the north pole it's been a summary visit of the largest freshwater lake in the world by cal in siberia and finally after months of anticipation it is here in salt in fact it will rise not by

land but on a yacht and it will make its way across to adler very close to the olympic park where the opening ceremony will take place on friday she missed out space left at the airport as you could say i had it's way up to the beautiful mountain cluster of crescent. of course everybody is talking about who were the lucky people to carry the torch over the next few days we have russian actors comedic. 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 lympics flame is here in such an 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 the buildings there were various i should say where 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 the 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 bush and also 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 of 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've 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 forces army sniffer dogs horses you know i mean it really does 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 are the number one priority here in sochi 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 he's not looking at it but you will security is always of concern you know

to me at large who has been put through through a political one is that we can forget the terrorist attacks just booting venue's the boston bombings for example which happened recently there have been similar attacks at libby games and the bombings suring the g. eight summit in london but i'd like to thank our partners from almost every nation to actively working to ensure the game security together with our own security specialists there and judy twenty two hours a day i think it's very important to 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 a typical buildings you have to go through the screening in typical airport security but there is a very relaxed happy and excited less fear like being 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 will now that we helping the security measures over the next month.

the feds miss iles drones sophisticated settles 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 one 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 gainey but it's not just about tighter controls and manpower place offices are integrating extra training for mounted patrols that have distinct advantages at such events like when the pilots of the world who are called here ahead of the games mounted police are more effective during mass advance officers tower over the people and have a better view of the crowds. 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 apple lets they will be on standby to assist the police have been guarding russian borders for centuries were traditionally based in southern russia we know the region and its people very well . because sex job is to offer assistance spread safety culture and peace to

various religions and people from different countries because 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. saatchi and i've got continuing a live update for you from such a worthy olympic flame has arrived plus you go to our website to revisit the most exciting moments of the 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 to iran's prospects have been looking brighter since sanctions were partially lifted under a nuclear deal by college worried across really discuss this with r.t. 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 their telecoms already so the i was talking the biggest delegation in two years and the one they want isn't it and of course

and this comes after some of the locations where they're from turkey so everyone is trying to get our hands on it it's how i live and it's 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 evade our sanctions we will sanction them but surely they should have expected that international companies would start moving in as soon as they announced that exactly where it is imagine 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 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 likely again i think that stands to reason so you know it's no surprise but the u.s. too they also want to help the business relationship with iran because it's going to be forced 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. money you know i was in davos just just the other week he was there he was talking to oil majors. including some i bought as well from the u.s. and he basically said iran is i'm from the business to go completely different story ahead the reason why he's saying this is because his economy has been crippled by the sign says we're talking forty percent inflation five percent recession asked to depress the himself to get relations kickstarted with the oil industry and indeed any other whether it be call pharmaceuticals all materials

ghana sounds government has admitted to holding secret talks with a ton of on behind america's back as president karzai steps up his efforts to make peace with the militant group although the negotiations have been a largely fruitless so far the u.s. says it supports the push for reconciliation but. 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 obstacle the u.s. intervention you know afghanistan. has essentially created a new taliban. 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 that the afghan leader cited poet percy shelly 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 port 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 adjusted 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 an 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 was channel 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 u.s. national security for many decades to come in the year to come picture a for the u.s. 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 frankly i would say former british army officer who served in afghanistan thinks this is a perfect sign that america's decade long war a cheap 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 savage brutality over the last twelve years completely unhinged and i'm connected to any political process now the taliban they're very very conversant with the need to link and to mash and to marry politics with military action and they play this game extremely well and know what's happened but 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 move into the areas vacated by the british and american forces extortions being applied political pressure making deals with the local drug cartels but balance is already to ignore . for more on america's involvement in afghanistan and reports about funding human rights abuses in controlled territory stay with their team for adam martin and

break and said. 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 i think becomes a little bit more complicated because the u.s. is still occupying have right a sense of 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 abuses i mean irrefutable evidence of of torture happening in prisons in afghanistan. now the days of sprawling u.s. surveillance signs dotting the british countryside could be numbered coming out find out how senior politicians in the u.k. are trying to put it all seeing american spy genie back in its bottle but after the break we're reports from tokyo where passion is no longer in fashion for singles too busy with their computers to go on

a real date. to the playing. field the big spirit travels with the flame from its place to greece. julian james brown in the mental and epic journey around russia and beyond. where of art.

i was. right. it would. be. a good job looking back at you watching our two national 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 relayed 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 while 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 pay is 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 all of the proposed amendments to defense legislation lib dems baron s. miller 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. well 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 goals balls thousands of people working at the scale of it should have told us that something was going on beyond simply missile defense so parliamentarians 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 didn't know what was going on and were quite comfortable with it but either way i think we need now to see these bases become far more accountable to the british parliament that 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 are 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. r.t. london. 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 on our website. and fire ranges from the wagons of a train that derailed near the euro mountain span russia forcing four hundred people to be evacuated from a nearby town. to japan now where a lot of is due. finitely not in the air more and more people there are shunning personal contact in favor of a solitary life online and for

a country with one of the world's lowest birth rates demographic disaster could be looming i just i see a shift key 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 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 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 all this red light district in the world for centuries that has been thriving now its streets are practically empty for almost four hundred years it has been restricted to the locals and 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. richter regulations on sexual leader constant even sexy 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 are interested in intimacy in population of one hundred sixty million this is just a drop in the ocean alexi rush of c.r.t. reporting from tokyo in japan. and towards national news now. a forty eight hour strike of two workers 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 overcrowded trains and buses the strike was triggered by government plans to modernize the underground which would include almost a thousand job cuts and the closure of all ticket offices. this way was laid me target chavez has been fondly remembered and caracas where thousands gathered to mark twenty two years since the attempted coup that brought him to prominence back then the socialist revolutionary along with military officers rose up against an unpopular regime and it took another seven years for chavez to take the presidency but it's seen as a key breakthrough in a country so called boulevard and revolution. b.b.'s as it's now destroyed all of its usable chemical weapons and this comes ten years after the country signed up to the chemical arms treaty the disarmament process began under could offer but was

interrupted by the uprising that overthrew him the global chemical watchdog says levy has a low grade toxic stockpiles which are to be destroyed by twenty six. shortly entertainer national we trace the spectacular journey of the olympic torch as it and its odyssey. will. science technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future covered. new york london. the whole world is on the hook. of the original one a further one found the end of it to hang up the corner of that 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 police false is mobilized against the people who blend into the city the city the more people trust electronic devices the more defenseless they are the fear that has a thousand ways. 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 a limpia 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.

the temple. temple oath. from the. am.