large scale military operations in syria to push out terrorists are coming to an end says landed near putin speaking at a summit attended by russia iran and turkey in forty. lebanon's prime minister and now says he's putting his surprise resignation on hold after the president asked him to reconsider the pm sparked a regional political crisis two weeks ago when he said he was stepping down. the international olympic committee makes another ruling in the russian doping scandal banning four russian skeleton athletes for life.

a very warm welcome you're watching r.t. international broadcasting to you live from the russian capital only care and good to have you with us. with the tide it now turned against islamic state in syria there's renewed hope that a political solution can finally bring peace war torn syria has now got a real chance to stop the six year long civil war in the country that's the message from vladimir putin speaking at a summit in sochi attended by russia iran and turkey our correspondent in the trunk is there for is what have the leaders said. nagy hello again well we've seen the president's vladimir putin type aired on and has saw me at one big negotiating table smiling and looking quite determined the foreign ministers were there the heads of the military as well so there you have it we got to the point when i saw almost got completely erased from the map of

syria and serious to biggest regional neighbors as well as russia whose air strikes were a really big help in the efforts to wipe out the terrorists in syria are getting together here and sought to discuss the next step or maybe even steps saatchi could become well association associate associated sorry with the syria peace process in the near future vladimir putin really wants to create what he called the congress of national dialogue here and i've said the word determined that wasn't for nothing let's just listen to how the leaders praised the new opportunities there are now opening up. much that we used to be a large scale military activities against militants and terrorists in syria are coming to an end i'd like to know that thanks to the activities of. iran and turkey

we managed to prevent the dissolution of syria prevented being captured by international terrorists we avoided a humanitarian catastrophe to. our joint efforts over the last eleven months of how to prepare the ground for a political settlement to the syrian crisis has and our meeting today symbolizes the start of a new stage in this process. the trilateral meeting today has that most important is the final stage in putting an end to the bloodshed in syria we have achieved success thanks to the union of the rand turkey and. but nicky we have to remember that damascus and the opposition groups are still at war and cease fires are fragile will the effort spike ankara moscow and two on finally lead to the point when we will be able to say that the syrian civil war is over that's

a big question but one year of working together is really giving us hope after all the three countries russia turkey and iran were able to start the astronaut talks in the first place then the agreed on the for the escalation zones that really changed the situation on the ground so let's take a look back at these eleven months of joint efforts.

as mr putin mr aired on and mr ron a get together here and sought you may well ask where is the syrian president where is the syrian opposition well i can tell you that bashar al assad was here with a surprise visit just two days ago turkey is in close contact with the syrian opposition all the time also you may ask where is the u.s. and does it play any role in all this while that's again a big question but i can tell you that lot of our putin updated donald trump the american president on the progress during a phone conversation on tuesday and i'm sure there will be more. phone conversations after the discussions that are happening today on wednesday besides this we are going to hear from the three leaders mr audley mr putin and mr edwardes shortly they promise to deliver a statement to the media here so we'll be watching out for that. keeping us up to date trying to there thanks delia. now the lebanese prime minister has announced

he's putting his surprise resignation on hold after the country's president asked him to reconsider the state carla. i discussed today my resignation with the president of the republic the last me to wait before submitting it to put it on hold and to allow for more consultation and the reasons behind it i came up with. the political crisis began when the lebanese prime minister announced his resignation in saudi arabia's capital riyadh that decision was televised and was met in beirut with this belief with many suspecting he had been pressured by the saudis then france's president came across and invited her very and his family to paris where the french leader assured him of his political support after paris hariri flew back to lebanon for independence day though not without paying lightning visit to the president of egypt and then the leader of cyprus on his way

and now he's back in beirut having made his surprise announcement artist maria fanaa brings us the latest from the lebanese capital. pool is a surprise but a relief space time prime minister hariri has been speaking from beirut for the first time on the lebanese soil in the last twenty days that has been a very turbulent time for lebanon more than two weeks ago mr hariri left the country and he announced his resignation in his televised speech while speaking from the capital of saudi arabia and i draw a kind of crisis here to lebanon and today is speaking after the official part of the independence day celebrations he can see now they are still can see here in beirut mr heriot has said that he agrees to put his decision on hauled off and he discussed it with the lebanese president and he stressed that said major goal right now is to gas and keep levelled out away from any arab conflict he didn't give any

further specific detail but as he earlier mentioned the attempt by some iranian backed military and political forces to meddle into fairytale lebanon and throughout the arab region as the major reason behind his decision to resign his today's speech was under to by many as the al to make him the iranian influence to be diminished i have been able to speak to people here on the ground and they have told me that given how influential iran bag forces are this could be a difficult thing to do but it is also clear mr hariri made it clear that if it's not happening he might come back to this because he's very sick they should decision again so i guess this is the challenge that lebanon is now facing a professor of history and international relations jamal wakim believes the saudis are using hariri as a tool to put more pressure on iran. i believe that got damaged

a lot here received. the liberal news probably the prime minister probably was humiliated in the movie if you're really going to purge the. body for the repeal really. for. a long time representative of all the influence in lebanon and that is a widespread belief in lebanon and how did he was forced to designate by a muslim so the man at the time where the crown prince of saudi arabia. is trying to increase the tension in iran especially in lebanon they lost their influence in iraq. and syria. the former bosnian serb army commander ratko. been handed a life sentence for his role or to in atrocities committed during the bosnian war miller did was found guilty on ten out of eleven counts including war crimes

genocide and crimes against humanity he was sentenced by un course in the hague but it was in command of the bosnian serb army at the height of the bosnian conflict between one thousand nine hundred two and one nine hundred ninety six taking part in the siege of the bosnian capital sarajevo he was also found responsible for ordering a series of persecutions and exterminations across many other bosnian towns including several where over eight thousand muslims including men and young boys were slaughtered by his troops many of the victims have not been identified to this day and serbia while condemning the killings has never accepted the charge of genocide we discuss the verdict with political analyst john bosnich. this verdict was in to support it even before the court was formed there's no surprise about the way it was done what is surprising is that anybody anywhere expected even the slightest

chance the general might be acquitted that i'm sure no normal rational person could have expected and not because he is guilty but because he was determined to be found guilty even before the first witness presented any evidence but i can tell you that here in downtown belgrade in the main central park in the city there are rows of stands for tourists to buy things and among the things they can buy are t. shirts with general blood of his face on them and generals hats of the type exactly worn by gen and i can tell you that later today there's going to be a run on those stalls and you're going to see young children aged ten and twelve years old buying those t. shirts and buying those generals hats doesn't that tell us a little bit more about what the reality is here. the international olympic committee has handed lifetime bans to four russian skeleton plates so if the

athletes have also been stripped. winter olympic medals the i.o.c. says it has disqualified the athletes who are violating anti doping rules at the twenty fourteen games or to discuss this let's cross live it to cashmore professor of sociology at aston university good to have you with us mr cashmore now is less than three months and so we see the winter games in south korea and some on the russian side complained that it's unnecessarily cruel to drag this process out for so long so it's not just sour grapes or could the i.o.c. have made this ruling earlier. well it's. really we have two months ago in the lead up to the rio olympics the summer olympic games that is . and there were kind of a push to ing and fro ing and the pressure was put on the i.o.c. that's the acronym for the olympic organisation. the pressure was to ban russia

completely as a nation just to disqualify the whole country from the summer olympics and it provides for a while and eventually came to a decision that please no one it said well we'll let the individual sporting federations make up their own mind and the likelihood is i think the book is would probably say something similar to that will happen again now there is still enormous pressure on the i.o.c. to ban russia completely and as you say it's less than three months to go we expect a decision on about a two weeks' time december the fifth or december the seventh something like that that's the next meeting and that will be about two months away from the olympics so it will be almost impossible really for for any russian team to prepare itself adequately in such a short period of time so i presume that russia is at the moment presuming that as a team it will be allowed to compete but we still don't know it's still in the

balance and this latest episode doesn't really help the russian cause let's face it i can go out there day i wonder how much stress these russian athletes are still hoping to compete or experiencing i mean even if they aren't cleared how could this whole thing that affects that performance. tremendously negatively i mean i mean it must be dreadful i can't even get yourself into the mind of an athlete to imagine that it's if i'd prepared for four years maybe longer and was still waiting for the outcome of the deliberations to know whether i'd be allowed to compete for what is after all a lifetime's goal i mean it's unimaginably difficult for them you know in a properly run world probably so that this should not happen let's think of an analogy it's as if. moscow city center for the past several saturday nights the a high number of driving under the influence of alcohol arrests you would expect

that the offenders would be tried individually cases evaluated and they would be punished accordingly we wouldn't expect that everyone who holds a driving license in moscow to be banned but that is effectively what is being contemplated at the moment. in these new cases should not really material impact the material impact the decision on whether to disqualify russia as a nation but i think in the real world they probably will i just last week were reporting how the world anti-doping agency had refused to reinstate were started the russian anti doping agency saying it had failed to comply with the watchdogs requirements now could that lead to a blanket ban of the russian team and think of the bigger picture what would a russian team ban mean for the olympics. well two questions you've asked the first one is a categorical yes it could really very easily lead to a complete ban this is not something that the i.o.c.

wants but it may be pressured into this kind of decision say ok we've had enough we there's been a kind of an accumulation of positive dope tests from russians and so that's it you know we've got the report the mclaren report which allege that the state sponsored doping should say as a side bar that many of us remain unconvinced by the evidence presented by mclaren but most of the world is convinced so it could very easily ban the whole russian team the implications as your second question and i think that there would be far reaching this is not something that the i.o.c. really wants russia is a sporting power in the world it is a force and so it doesn't really want an olympic games without russia it's kind of neutering the olympic competition in many senses also there is the more pragmatic motive here russia brings with it a lot of money i mean there are a broadcasting rights here and the olympic organizers have extensive broadcasting

deal with russian broadcasters now broad broadcasters aren't particularly interested in the games without russia so they stand to lose several million as a direct result of this so i imagine the i.o.c. is trying really to find a way that it can preserve face and allow russia to compete and a time limping biathlon champion legend beyond our lines that if the russian team is banged on the basis of mclaren's report it would instill fear in all rule abiding athletes do you think that the evidence provided by the mclaren report is sufficient enough. no. on our team many times over i will research myself. the first question i ask when someone comes along and says we found on the basis of our research that we say ok thank you very much now let me

examine the methodology please how did you arrive at this conclusion can i look at the evidence is it transparent have you disclosed it and all these questions have been put to mclaren in one way or another over the past several months hasn't been forthcoming i think the i.o.c. itself is uncomfortable with the status of the most current report on the face of it it says yes we do accept it but we would like a little more clarity from professor mclaren in other words come and see some proof and it does seem to hinge on the testimony of one person a russian defective the former director of the russian ping agency so you know his testimony is not exactly neutral. so i think the obligation should be on the client to provide evidence that will satisfy not only russia but the rest of the world and it's kind of small fast if they shall a day at aston university thank you for your time. i'm as it is providing data

storage for the us government to make the funds tech giants are working to place before the government story and more right after this break stay with us. for many years so i know the game and so i got. the ball isn't only about what happens on the pitch to the final school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the super manager. and spending two to twenty million. it's an experience like you know fidel sort of because i want to share what i think what i know about the beautiful game great to watch all transpire. and thinks it's going to.

the political crisis inflicted upon lebanon by saudi arabia appears to receive it least for now is this a sign of things to come as the saudi royal family changes so to saudi arabia and the region is it time to buckle up for a stream. welcome back the u.s. intelligence community has struck a deal with amazon and for the company to provide data storage they are line giants developed to special projects tended to exactly to the government's needs vacay explains. the line between political business and commercial business is getting thinner by the day especially when it comes to internet and tech giants let's start with amazon which has just announced a new deal to provide

a tailored cloud service to the u.s. intelligence community this secret region yes that's really its name comes on top of amazon's existing six hundred million dollar contract with the cia and other agencies and the cia's chief information officer couldn't be more excited about the partnership that we named it commercial close services or shoot to us for a reason because we want to be like commercial would want to be like government we want to the best of breed as well reported with amazon and they aren't alone just last month microsoft announced a similar partnership over a dedicated cloud for the u.s. government and their partners microsoft is partnering with the u.s. government in the journey to the cloud providing both infrastructure and platform offerings to digital transformation meanwhile a treasure trove of connections were uncovered between u.s. politics and internet heavyweights after last year's presidential election in which some of them seem to have sided with hillary clinton now take google clinton's campaign chair john podesta had his emails hacked and published at the end of two

thousand and sixteen they contain several references to eric schmidt the executive chairman of alphabet google's parent company and schmidt seemed eager to help with that which made tonight he's ready to fund advisor recruitment etc clearly wants to be had outside advisor but didn't seem like he wanted to push others out one of clinton's digital advisors noted that schmidt had a team working on important products for the campaign and a memo which also mentioned that discreet conversations had been initiated with google facebook and apple to understand their priorities when it came to the election and their priorities were quickly made obvious especially when it comes to facebook there was a sense of deja vu when facebook's chief operating officer was also revealed to be in communication with protest expressing her hope and willingness to assist clinton in the race for the presidency i still want hillary clinton to win badly i'm still here to help us i can. look forward to working with you to elect the first woman

president of the united states with such an intricate web of partnerships between internet giants politicians and the government perhaps it's time to worry about our online freedoms getting tangled up in them. and i should be mentioning to hillary clinton's former campaign chair suggested some of the leaked e-mails could have been doctored professor piers weapons and gave us his take on the situation there's something to worry about. so notionally government and business are supposed to function in a way that they're independent of each other. i think the reality is that there are overlapping interests and influence is exercised and this is a problem it's a problem for democracy those platforms then become extremely useful tools for governments to try to exercise influence and power and it is a real danger this is not a new form collusion sense that it's been there before historically with mainstream corporate media and government certainly new in terms of the global reach and i

think that you have these corporations are continued to be a get. the behest of the u.s. government i don't know increasing drive of people to leave them and go to other platforms which are under the same kind of influence. the upper house of the russian parliament has voted to adopt a law on foreign media operating in russia within a carton of the has the details. the upper house of the russian parliament of this wednesday approved bill law on foreign media working and russia now a new piece of legislation any foreign media which receives funding from abroad could be asked to register as a foreign agent and as soon as this media is given this new status the status of a foreign agent should use a special disclaimer and its work and it will also be obliged to file reports on its funding to the russian government now next step for this new law is that it

should be signed by the russian president now this particular move to introduce this new piece of legislation was the made and response to the recent demand coming from the us department of justice that are it see brains working in america r.t. america should register as a foreign agent now r.t. america followed that demand and register it last week but that happened after months of pressure and being blamed for allegedly amount ling and the twenty sixteen us presidential elections however all that time there was no real avodah and provided that it did take place and now this demand coming from the us parked a lot of debate within the russian government and the government said that there will be some reciprocal a measures introduced very soon and this is exactly what we see at the moment. and i purchase in a moscow mark

a scale of one french woman more than she bargained for it was only when she got her thought calmer home that she made an interesting discovery. sixteen would be. black and white picture. porton moment of his life so i've got to found it find him to to give his photos back to him. yeah well we're a part of the i was at the airport when my friend sent me a photo of a little boy who looked very much like me with a caption saying looking for a russian little boy there were so many questions where do these photos come from and why someone looking for me i'm sure who is this elizabeth and how did she get those photos. found me really.

i got a what's a message from dimitri saying i am the russian boy you are looking for like india i decided to call her by skype we talked for two hours about everything she turned out to be a very nice woman. but it turned out that my uncle given it to his friend to sell at the market but he'd forgotten to remove the film. provided elizabeth was planning to come here in february to visit all those places in the photos she has written an amazing film script for the story that's going to be turned into a documentary i will do my best to help the idea would be to use a camera in it or a camera which is it is a key object in order that story and use it as a character really follow you know those of us of the camera and go back to the

places where fictional was taken. i'm not looking for fame i just want to share this amazing story to other people so that others might realize that our life is not just about politics and death but includes room for small everyday pleasures. well the latest headlines i'll be back at the top of the. earth.

but no. other. facts geysers financial survival. housing bubble. oh you mean there's a downside to artificial mortgage through don't get carried away that's cause report. seen years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with a gun if a bad guy tried to get to one of my family members he would have better luck with that better and i think they are inheriting whatever my my baby says my book was published in the year two thousand more than hoffa million americans have been

killed by phones in the u.s. where how do i thought i did this this is a middle school we go through drills and we put ourselves in a real scenario so it was interesting to see who actually got hit by the gun i just saw i did to return to the subject to track down each gun owner who i'd met and photographed those years ago. but we were. hello and welcome to crossfire where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle the political crisis inflicted upon lebanon by saudi arabia appears.