ists objected to the presence of north korean officials at the ceremony. at the stadium of the north and south korean teams marched together under a unified flag and lit the olympic torch together it was seen as a major milestone on the way to overcoming decades of tension in the south korean president says he is ready to accept an invitation to visit the north when the right conditions are in place that potentially sets up the first meeting between the country's leaders in more than a decade the invitation was handed to him by kim jong il and sr is the first member of north korea's ruling family to visit the south since the one nine hundred fifty s. . now russian hopes were dashed just hours before events got underway in south korea

a last minute appeal from forty five russian athletes and a two coaches against a doping related ban failed their lawyers branded the decision sanctions in disguise while this was the official announcement made by sports highest court. gus arbitrators of concert at the process created by the i.o.c. to establish an invitation list of russian athletes to compete. 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 olympic invitations isn't equal to punishment and the cast is perfectly happy with the criteria that the i.o.c. initially 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 too 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 almost 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 sue 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. kind of the decision is extremely disappointing. the decision shows the merchant the need. for reforms in the internal structure of the cause here thomas bach was referring to the previous cast's 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 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 the

sanctions and those 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 banned the coaches the fans they are baffled by how unfair it could get i have no words. i was hoping that cast would rule in our favor right now i don't know what to do i'm disappointed but of course i won't give up on subordinates and a lot ahead of me and i will compete and win medals for my country. and to the very end we were hoping the. as you would go. you know i feel sadness and so rude but i would. have enough strength in the opportunity to compete in the next village. i had no emotions left we had all or. you were just weeding through the.

situations to make you stronger emotionally. three of the world's biggest social media companies that were grilled on thursday by british lawmakers they took the unusual step of conducting a parliamentary hearing outside britain and they tried to pin down the organizations over alleged russian interference in the brakes at referendum. 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 five percent 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 this. information that's enabled us 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 russia and 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 frustrating it seems and that was thick in the atmosphere investigative journalism for instance as it led to suggestion that there are lots of campaigns. you haven't you haven't looked happy that's the thing you haven't looked the succumbing to rent a car do you remember going on in the car well it seems who didn't look with twitter and what they said they found was that there were only forty nine accounts

connected to russia during the time of the prank that referendum again i'm no mathematician so correct me if i'm wrong perhaps but it seems that there's 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 call and 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 there is a seemingly huge appetite for russian meddling stories in the media let's take a look at some of those headlines this one reads twitter has finally conceded that russian accounts tried to influence brags about the article goes on to admit this is based on just a few dozen twitter accounts meanwhile a london times headline says twitter admits russian trolls posted about bugs in the

first paragraph then reveals there were only forty nine suspicious accounts radio talk show host john gaunt told us the meddling claims may be just a wild goose chase. this is a false these employees went all the way to washington to question to that honest about how the internet works they kind of got them on a skype call a question it's. an issue a waste of my taxpayers' money and it's a very very annoying it's a joke they had said in almost congo group cool fashion following questions that you and one of the waiting to listen to the answers you know well i don't think the british public care they know why people voted for let's just get over it and accept democracy now that there's a for me i will be back in about thirty five minutes with another look at your weekly you're watching international quite happy with us.

that's in american interest to not see any russians die in terrorist attacks as it is in russian interest to prevent any terrorist attacks in the united states or elsewhere in the world so i don't think there's any dispute on that in congress and i think maybe some of the posturing is frankly political as opposed to substantive . a.

clone of welcome to worlds apart for decades russians have both laughed and despair that the inadequacies of their system while also struggling to accept this same kind of criticism from foreign there's and when russia decided to hold a mirror to the west only imperfections including by setting up this child it turned out western tolerance to criticism is even volar why is it so difficult to communicate pointing out what's wrong with one another well to discuss that i'm now joined by tony cab and a former diplomat and the author of a book called return to moscow well mr cavanaugh it's great to have you in the studio thank you very much for your time and happiest charlie a day thank you very much. now when you say australia in the russian context it conjures up an image of a beautiful faraway land with bright sonde blue sky

a beautiful beaches with friendly people who spent most of that time surfing and i know it's a typical but i think it's a nice mental picture to get you through the long russian winter but i suspect when you say russia in their struggle and contacts. the associations are probably not so positive are they. there if they can be quite negative unfortunately we have been fed a diet of cliches about russia. russia is still very much seen through a post soviet lens. of success the state to the soviet union and somehow or other images of go leg and stuff. in the countries of extreme cold discomfort of rudeness these are the kinds of things that unfortunately still linger on and you wrote the whole book to address some of those negative stereotypes and i think

you have a very unusual take for a western or former western diplomat. when it comes to russia because. i think there's a lot of understanding there's also a lot of compassion in your book and i really appreciate that but i will want to ask you whether you ever felt that you are giving this country an easy pass i don't think i think that the majority of the content of my book deals with the sometimes very disagreeable parts of russia's history i've got a chapter on the leg museum i've got a chapter on the jewish museum of tolerance and i talk very frankly in those two chapters of some of the black spot in russia's history. and i think what i felt as a former professional diplomat for thirty years and i was an ambassador to poland and. the mother asked postings. i felt i had

a certain responsibility to my own society to say look we are being fed. bad fantasies about russia the real russia is not what we're being told about. i want to go and i want to see what it's like and my process of disenchantment from the western propaganda machine against russia it really began pretty much in interest thousand and fourteen with the events in ukraine and the way in which they were being reported now i hope we will go into the ukrainian events a little bit later on into the program but. you mentioned the this negative image of russia and russia is definitely not an easy country it's a very complex society it's sometimes a very contorted country and i think we the russians are the first to you know and experience that and i think that actually goes to the very notion of russian patriotism it's loving russia's it's

a bit like caring for the disabled loved one you know the disability you hate them but you love the person all the more because of that and that is actually i think the most moving part of your book for me that you accept disability rather than the typical western scolding that russia is not good enough but what i thought find even more troubling is that that's called thing that irritated russians a lot if you years back now it seems acceptable because it essentially dick rest into the open bigotry why do you think this lack of compassion not even the lack of basic decency towards this country has become so does your mental conditioning and mutual propagandizing to the point where people come to believe each other if they keep telling each other that's good you know if you if you repeat large enough and enough they become the truth and when you've got people in time media communities who are constantly. for instance each other with attitudes and opinions that really

have no basis in fact unfortunately fulfill to undertake will to fulfill certain reality takes hold and i found when i decided to come to russia i was confronted by my friends and my colleagues in canberra which is the government center of australia with all sorts of illusions once you get outside moscow people will be stuffing better not get sick in moscow in russia you won't be looked after properly all rubbish but the point is they serve become general beliefs and i felt as a former ambassador for whatever authority i still had.