i. think i. in the stories that shaped the week just gone the twenty eight hundred winter games kicked off in south korea but dozens of russian fleet for their hopes that just hours before the opening ceremony as their appeals against the doping related ban were rejected. airstrikes by the u.s. led coalition hit syrian pro-government forces reportedly killing nearly a hundred people the pentagon claims it was carried out to defend that american back group. and british m.p.'s jet out of washington to haul the biggest social media firms over the coals about suspected russian meddling keurig breaks it but they come away empty handed. and.

i welcome thanks take the time out to watch out international today with me kevin owen live here in moscow this is the weekly around the but the stories of the last seven days and first a big sports story the winter olympics in south korea got underway friday with a grand opening ceremony in the host city pyong chang nearly three thousand flights from ninety two countries took part in the event there but in the run up to the celebrations there were demonstrations and scuffles outside the olympic arena people supporting peace between north and south korea had gathered for one rally while another group protesting north korea's participation in the games physically clashed with police. i. know. despite the scuffles on the streets korean politicians are taking steps to try to

find a solution to the long drawn out conflict the south korean president says he's ready now to accept an invitation to visit the north if certain conditions are met this potentially sets up the first meeting between the countries in more than a decade the invitation was delivered by kim jong un sister she's attending the winter olympics she is in fact the first member of north korea's ruling family to visit the south since the one nine hundred fifty s. she met with president moon for three hours of talks on the games opening ceremony also hinted to a warming relations with both teams marching together. so

while the two careers were eventually able to march under a single flag russian competitors though were there under a neutral banner taking part as a limp fleet's for russia team away or as has been termed it after the international olympic committee banned russia following that doping scandal but of all the russian flags been forbidden by the i.o.c. officially it's still managed to find its way into the stadium. when i heard that russia can march under their own flag i felt quite sorry for the athletes you know the athletes who were completely clean and had no problems but they were deprived of the right to represent their country and so i thought i would support them by putting the flag out there and partially said because you know i was looking forward to seeing the best in the world and well the russians are the best in the world a lot of things so i can't see them which is kind of sad but mostly mad because they've worked for years for these olympics and now they're being told you know they don't even have really proof they just have suspicions and now they're being told without really a chance to properly appeal they can't compete and i just think that's really

unfair as you just heard a last minute appeal from forty five and two coaches against the ban prevented them from competing and failed at the last minute the lawyers branded the decision as sanctions in disguise. cast arbitrators of concert at the process created by the i.o.c. to establish an invitation list of russian athletes to compete. at least from russia could not be described as a sanction but rather as an eligibility decision so there you have it according to the court of arbitration for sport ridding the russian athletes of their own pick invitations isn't equal to punishment and cas is perfectly happy with the criteria that the i.o.c. and mission lee shows for these invitations the president of the world anti-doping agency is pleased he says that the timing is great and that all the clean athletes

should now be reassured the i.o.c. are happy to they have applauded the verdict as you can see and this tweet though the russians are obviously totally devastated i don't know what to say i'm really disappointed i can't understand the cast decision first they cleared the athletes and now they say sorry you can't go to the olympics this is some kind of madness it's terrible not just for our athletes but for all of international sport did i expect kass to reach this decision fifty fifty especially after thomas buck in one of his later speeches pressured the court of arbitration for sport after ruled in our favor he was literally threatening the court he was only saying he would dissolve the court if it root again in favor of russian athletes coach albert dempsey and co who was by the way one of those to the i.o.c. was referring to all the things that were being said about the court of arbitration for sport ahead of the hearings including these statements by the president of the

i.o.c. because the decision is extremely disappointing these decision shows the urgent need. for reform so. in though the internal structure of costs here thomas bach was referring to the previous cas verdict and that requires a bit of background the forty seven russian athletes and coaches who were suing the international olympic committee were from two groups thirty two hadn't been sanctioned by the odyssey investigators as a result of the russian doping scandal at all fifty received a lifetime bans their medals were taken away by the i.o.c. a few months ago but then the very same court of arbitration for sport last week cancelled these lifetime bans due to insufficient evidence the abuse of held the

sanctions and the. individual results achieved in such reinstated so the decision that we have right now completely contradicts the previous one and this is a real disaster for the country the athletes both the ones who are still going to compete and young saying under a neutral flag and those who are bad the coaches the fans they are baffled by how unfair it could get i have no words. i was hoping that cas would rule in our favor or right now i don't know what to do i'm disappointed but of course i won't give up on supporting my son got a lot ahead of me and i will compete and win medals for my country. and to the very end we were hoping that the decision would go you know favor you know i feel sadness and so rude but i would. have enough strength in the opportunity to compete in the next villain because when i had no emotions left we had our bags

packed you were just waiting for it is there anything strange situations make you stronger emotionally. meantime history's been made of this use of them pics nigeria has entered the winter games for the first time with a women's bobsled team the athletes monies to get to thanks to a crowdfunding campaign they say they hope their example will encourage other leagues from africa to think we definitely put ourselves on the map in terms of ok we don't have all these things were just existing possible to get as far as. africa is a beautiful consonant and we are representation of the africans here in our historic stance of being the largest number of africans we are a representation of exactly what that beauty genuinely is and so if we can encourage others to live inside that and take away whatever stigma is maybe associated with the consulate with regards to growth and development i think that

that's huge that's very important in the hope that we can do that. but i think if we continue to encourage those things in the future it will start to come together but you have to start somewhere. in the we just go on the syria is calling on the u.n. to hold the u.s. led coalition to account for wednesday's airstrikes against pro-government forces the number of casualties has not yet been confirmed still but some reports claim up to one hundred people could have been killed the pentagon described the attack as a defensive move but russia's defense ministry says the unit was engaged in an anti terror mission. and for every decision while carrying out an operation to locate and terminate an sleeper cell near form oil refinery units of pro-government forces were suddenly shouldered then hit by airstrikes by the u.s. led coalition vis was overkill if the numbers are true i would see

a demonstration of she have brute force perhaps you know to send perhaps the send a message nevertheless the united states says that. it's in syria and it will defend itself and it has the right to defend itself in this instance syrian democratic forces acted in self-defense with support from the coalition to defeat an unprovoked attack by syrian forces in eastern syria if the situation is like how they describe that they were indeed attacks while fighting isis is then i have the right to self defense well if you take them at face value you could think so but people they just killed were also fighting isis and recently they have been making much better progress against isis then the united states led coalition or their partner forces the the s.d.f. the syrian government has of course called all of this an act of aggression unwarranted and unjust but just for your information all of this happened in there

is or near a rich oil field and refinery chronicle it's called it was liberated last year by the u.s. led coalition very quickly and fact. u.s. partner forces seem to have a knack for liberating areas with oil under them much quicker than they do those areas that don't have oil under them since since all the oil rich areas were taken in there as ordered by the s.d.f. progress against isis seems to have dropped to a snail's pace but you know regardless here. america has said that it is in syria only to fight isis today isis has been all but defeated in syria but you don't see the pentagon packing its bags our military policy in syria has not changed our priority remains to defeat of isis whether it's in iraq or in syria that is our

intent to defeat isis and not do anything more than that the united states will maintain a military presence in syria focused on ensuring that isis cannot reemerge total withdrawal of american personnel at this time would restore assad continue his brutal treatment against his own people so as to put its ability to the lack of a fundamental commitment to our agreement that is typical of current u.s. diplomacy including the reasons why the americans stay in syria rex tillerson peter he stated that their only goal in syria was the defeat of ice so now they've got far more ambitious plans with more of the most with the mixed messages here is the pentagon staying general mattis said that the united states will stay in syria we'll fight in syria for as long as the united states wants to fight in syria i mean that's you know pretty direct now you see how this might sound strange go to syria and a vital and while there you start killing syrians in syria in self-defense.

against ever seen a correspondent there will regional experts told us that with islamic state practically gone from syria washington is now targeting the government instead of the. they are not just in syria to fight there in so. i have been in syria for a long time because they want to throw aside as the space to feeds as it becomes clear that it is the syrian forces themselves and large would be to die age the priority of overthrowing assad begins to reassert itself in the pentagon and in the white house so i think that's really the answer the question the overthrow of assad was always the president prone the reason why the americans were in syria the army in treating these groups intervening with air strikes and so on they were diverted from that by no with the possibility of a defeated diet inside syria that policy that reassert itself this is coming at the

end of a long war the united states has taken about twenty eight percent syrian territory and over fifty percent of its oil does this lead british in order to roll back it one and get rid of us i also just like it he wants that oil for himself there was a race only a few months ago that would get those fields and he's broadening undoubtedly under the pretext of biting isis the united states didn't think it was so the united states is trying to lay down the law here and not let anybody approach and as we know that turks threatened and mend it could take on the americans over there so the united states i think is very patients that goes in turkey will begin to push america out and try to push americans out of northern syria but he likes there. now the news in the way russia bid farewell to military pilot real man for lipo for thursday the major became

a national hero after his plane was downed by militants in syria and more details a funeral but in cochin of. the funeral for major roman filipe of who died tragically fighting in syria takes place here in his hometown of earlier with hundreds of people attending the memorial ceremony as family members friends his colleagues people who didn't know him all came to pay their last respects at the palace a plane was shot down on saturday and the northwestern part of syria which is still controlled by the latest incarnation of the terrorist group oh no sra roman tried to stay in the air as long as he could he then managed to eject from the airplane only to find himself surrounded by a terrorist the pilot of the plane supporting role months shared the details of their last communications his voice remained calm when i was there on the you get out of the movie yes i see them was the commander's reply and then he said so

evenly as if it was something ordinary on imports and i got hit hard the right is on fire moving south the lift slowing down to about twenty seconds here i did google search and. then he ordered me to gain altitude of course i didn't do it to leave my command is the last thing i would do i always tried to have his back during flights and now i have to do it on the ground while he was fighting i stood there and made several attacks to vehicles that were getting closer to the olive groves where room on touchdown i stayed until the fuel was extremely low i barely made it back to the airfield roman had waited for the terrorist to get closer to him and only after that he decided to detonate a grenade taking his own life but avoiding capture he even managed to shout this is for our lads what he did that russia's defense ministry released several facts

about his life he left a wife and a four year old daughter behind he was an experienced pilot and it was not his first time serving in syria he was part of a dozen successful military operations and he died as a hero fighting terrorist at the age of thirty three. so chilling is the weekly from art international coming up a lot more after the break including the story of a british m.p.'s have been trying to pin down the world's largest social media companies over alleged russian interference in the brics it vote we'll talk about that and a lot more to come in l. .

billions hundreds of billions probably a trillion dollars of u.s. government subsidies the energy industry yes government can subsidize mining big brother crypto currencies and put those into the wall it's called american citizens give each have an automatic wallet tied to the security council and they can get a daily and weekly or monthly air drop. outs that they can then years conny with the government can easily do that. with me kevin on things from watching his guts really bad news coming from for

a tele but now it seems very early details but we're hearing that a plane has crashed just outside moscow a passenger plane in the last few hours we believe it took off from the dead of our airport one of moscow's three main airports and the plane was apparently flying to siberia with seventy one passengers aboard details at the moment extremely sketchy looking at just very quickly some of the background of surats off airlines they run pretty new planes embrace the jets they've had a couple of those delivered of late they used to be part of the aeroflot group they're not now. an independent company operating from the surat of central airport . as we know at the moment the appears to have been some sort of accident we know that it's a passenger plane we think involved here so as we get more on this we'll bring you up to date and of course you can follow it as well it r.t. dot com. now to some more of the stories from the last seven days and three of the world's biggest social media firms are tackled on thursday by

british lawmakers who took the unusual step of conducting a parliamentary hearing outside britain as they tried to pin down the companies over alleged russian interference during the breaks but it seemed there was little if anything to back up those accusations. we looked at all advertisements with any connection to russia and we found no evidence of our services being used to interfere in the referendum a very small number of suspects its research agency linked accounts forty nine such accounts were active during the campaign which represents less than point normal for some of the total number of accounts these are very low level things until we complete this investigation we won't know but what we haven't had is. information that enable those to target on a particular page or a particular phenomenon despite all their commitment enthusiasm and hard work spanning over a period of really several months when this inquiry kick started it seems like the

u.k. parliamentary committee that's trying to find out the truth about a russian any brecht that meddling they seem to be really hitting a brick wall this week they travelled all the way to washington thousand thousands of miles presumably having spent thousands of pounds to get there and what they ended up with while questioning the executives of twitter you tube and facebook was just a frustration it seems and that was thick in the atmosphere investigative journalism for instance that this led to suggestion that there are lots of campaigns going to have it looks like you haven't looked have you that's the thing you haven't looked this economy. going on in the horror well it seems who did look with twitter and what they said they found was that they were only forty nine accounts connected to russia during the time of the bracks it referendum again i'm no mathematician so correct me if i'm wrong perhaps but it seems that there is and this is really nothing to write home about given that twitter has hundreds of millions of accounts

and despite the chair of this committee damian collins saying that his quote instinct tells him that the numbers should be higher that did not turn out to be the case so despite this goes chasing continuing in the committee keeping asking the executives to look harder it seems no fruitful results so far. but of course it all makes good reading grabs the headlines the similarly huge efforts to our appetite for this kind of thing in the media burg little for them to work with time and again let's look at some of the headlines one reads to it is finally conceded that russian accounts tried to influence bricks it you read on there's only passing mention to explain the stories only about a few dozen accounts so with the times headline which admits the existence of so-called russia trolls the first paragraph then reveals there are only forty nine suspicious accounts one more example fricative dig really deep here to find the actual numbers though in this lengthy article radio talk show host john gaunt told

us the russian investigation could well be a wild goose chase after all this is a fast these employees went all the way to washington to question to they don't understand how the internet works they could've got them on a skype call and question them it's far soko an issue a waste of my taxpayers' money and it served very very annoying it's a joke they actually are almost kangaroo court fashion firing questions at you and hardly waiting to listen to the answers you know or i don't think the british public care they know why people voted for let's just get over it and accept democracy. support for women's rights and gender equality has been picking up pace online for number of prominent hashtags but when it comes to feminism people can't seem to agree on what's acceptable to say and what's not as explains are you a feminist if you put on a muslim headscarf or on the contrary if you take it off and even burn it according

to the internet it could be either you just have to choose your hash tag there's world hejab day that's the one that promotes women's rights to wear a headscarf it's going big in the u.k. and the u.s. . i hate job has nothing to do with oppression it's a feminist statement but many men and men had to be women this piece of clothing is the very epitome of oppression but then there's also the no hit job movement the one that condemns muslim headscarves as a form of oppression it's especially relevant in iran right now where women are being arrested for costing off that and the anti hejab brigade is outraged. i have you know you have to.

earn the earn. but if you thought religious dress was a minefield or simply that it doesn't apply to you be aware because language is getting political too in case you one of faith with the new rules using the word mankind is kind of a foe paw that's precisely what the canadian prime minister justin trudeau tried to explain to a female journalist who used the word in a question to him little did he know that an even bigger focus on no matter how much of a feminist you are is mansplaining to a woman that she shouldn't be using the word mankind but don't worry the internet told him maternal love is the love that's going to change the future of mankind so we would like you to look what we're going to say people are going to not necessarily mankind.

and there's lots of things you can do to be a better feminism but here's a simple one i don't interrupt women but what about formula one bosses who presumably thought they were acting in an enlightened and pursed weinstein manner when they fired all the great girls those are the promotional models who traditionally adorn the racetrack there is some support the band say that being a pit babe object. defies and sexualizes women but try telling that to the grid girls many of whom all moving up said trying to think up a new profession i've never had even the slightest hint of feeling exploited.

i've wanted to be that i worked hard to get that they paid me well to do the job i saw my outfit before i agreed to do it i knew i was wearing i knew what was expected of me the world has gone completely mad. i don't see a problem with promotional work or we want it by choice and we're not forced into the work and or girls apply for the job it seems these days you can't write perhaps all the hashtags could now be replaced with one much less binary one something like freedom to choose. ok if you're just joining us this is art international i mentioned just now about ten minutes ago that some details were coming in about a passenger plane crash indeed we're getting more in oh man now it seems it's crashed outside moscow region which is pretty close to moscow in moscow county more ghostly of c. with me now as always with these things the details rescheduled to start with we

believe the airline involved here was surat of airlines we believe it's a russian plane and and one for a flight number we think was six w seven zero three for any friends of the watch of the concern this plane took off i think from domodedovo airport which is of course one of moscow's three main airports big airports and this was a regional flight rather violence from domodedovo airport moscow to. a city. which is a city in the audience or region just north of kansas town basically it's a two hour flight these are these are done you know these are flown every day multiple times and nothing out of the ordinary but we now have reports that witnesses saw reportedly this is unverified but this is what we're seeing from various news sources witnesses saw a flaming aircraft crash we've we've just read this rescue as we've been told by

the emergency services have been dispatched to look for this jet and again it disappeared seven minutes after takeoff from domineered of the airport just seven minutes after takeoff it disappeared from radar as. a n one four eight one four eight shouldn't take too long of course because it's not not too far from the capital it shouldn't take too long for the rescue efforts to get underway will be finding out over the coming hours i guess only people will be going out there for the emergency services there's been no word yet about casualties whether anyone has survived this or not too early days you know we have we have absolutely nothing on that yet there was sixty five passengers apparently on the plane seventy one with with the crew so six crew members as well more than that i've got to mention the weather in moscow sure you know kevin it's been awful atrocious this past week or

so we've still snowing outside knows two weeks exactly or very poor visibility more school was absolutely buried the city was paralyzed in recent memory and people thought should make a difference this plane often there were stories of some of the older russian planes crashing the five fours except for but this plane and sort of one for eight reading up about it now it's not one i'm particularly familiar with fly these things very often it's a regional jet airliner apparently pretty new in design it first took to the air. around two thousand and four. no i'm just looking at some of the stats about it no no particular. fatal crashes before there was an accident apparently during its development that was back in twenty eleven but it doesn't look like there's been any fatal accidents with it since so it seems like it's been a safe plane as you say these planes these regional airline is russia's.