militants in syria's eastern georgian district continue to shell the capital damascus despite a un backed cease fire that's according to russian defense minister in. the two thousand and eighteen winter olympics crop up in south korea with the spectacular closing ceremony but the drama continued right to the very end of the games on the final day n.p.n. chang russia's ice hockey team saw germany four three in a nail biting final that win gives a lump athletes from russia a total of seventeen medals and south korea. and in the stories that shapes the week germany's leading tabloid publishes what it thought was undeniable evidence of russian meddling in the country's politics only to realize it was an embarrassing hoax.

welcome to the weekly here on r t where we wrap up the top stories from the past week i'll bring you the latest developments as well thanks for tuning in. militants in the eastern district of syria are indiscriminately shelling the capital damascus according to russia's defense ministry that's despite the united nations voting on saturday to implement a cease fire our war correspondent my dad was here in the studio earlier with the details russian conciliation center monitoring center in syria says that over the last twenty four hours rebels in the east launched no less than thirty one shells into damascus and i know what that looks like every time we've stayed in the mosques every time we've been in damascus we have shells landing all over the capital all over the masks because east ghouta is the last rebel stronghold in the vicinity of the capital the last stranglehold you know lou the rez revolutions

because all other on claves around the capital have been. retaken by the syrian government nevertheless these incidents of shelling the very night and they shelled blindly you know shell might land in a market right now the military base in a hospital or the government building and usually there's a lot of casualties of the last twenty four hours a dozen casualties the syrian authorities but. the rebels in east ghouta generation islam the army of islam which holds which is the most powerful rebel group in east ghouta says that it is abiding by the cease fire it says that it is being shelled and bombed by the syrian government and that is indeed happening there are strikes from what we've gathered from the various reports there are strikes on going against against islam the army of islam but the syrians are saying that you know the rebels are shooting at us and the rebels are saying the

syrians are shooting others. to speak of quite yet. the russian defense ministry also said that according to its sources armed groups in eastern gota are preparing to use chemical weapons to provoke outside forces into attacking the syrian government political science professor my dead voters believe terrorists have no intention of respecting the cease fire it's naive to say we have to stop the violence overnight and cease fire overnight simply because all the parties involved have interests to continue on with this violence there is groups have instructions to is can lead to violence. terrorist groups in this day of this story they are so desperate that's why i can believe that the they can use chemical weapons as the last chord on the table. the two thousand

and eighteen winter olympics in south korea came to a dramatic close on sunday a stunning fireworks display rounded off tonight as well as the traditional handover to the next winter olympic host city which will be beijing in twenty twenty two wrapping up the final day n.p.r. . time really does fly and i can't believe that it's already the and of twenty eight ng we've seen the closing ceremony and the nations parade out and i'll tell you what it was much warmer than the opening on february ninth quite literally and the fans didn't have to freeze themselves that much to see the spectacle something that hasn't changed though is the fate of the russian athletes who weren't able to march with their national colors there had been a glimmer of hope that they'd be allowed to do that but earlier on sunday the i.o.c. decided not to lift the suspension of russia's national olympic committee after two

of the all way our athletes tested positive for doping although the i.o.c. president has said that these two cases appear to be isolated these are cases off of negligence and there is no indication. of so ever for a systemic or systematic. of the doping affair here the astley's who failed the test though claim it could have been a result of salva tas or some sort of mistake they say that they have never taken banned drugs on purpose to improve their performance back to the final day of peeling chang twenty eight ng i guess if you asked the russian fans would they rather see their national flags at the closing ceremony or would they rather have their men's ice hockey team win gold for the first time in twenty six years most of

them would still choose the second option and that is exactly what happened inside the gunning ice hockey arena on sunday the red machine be germany for three and a gripping final and then at the prize giving ceremony the olympic and them was. played instead of the russian anthem obviously but guess what the winners and the stadium sang then the national anthem of course and that was quite a scene to watch this was the second gold at these olympics the first one was won by a fifteen year old alina's the gates of a in the figure skating and i'll tell you what these winter olympics were really games of hope for russia with many more experienced star athletes having to sit out yung chang twenty home the o.e.r. still won a total of seventeen medals that is of course by far not the best performance but

still in these circumstances it deserves a huge round of applause as for the whole medal table norway came first with fourteen gold fourteen silver and eleven bronze and that's of course a spectacular result as here i mentioned sunday saw a thrilling win for the russian men's ice hockey team they secured gold with a four three victory over germany and a gripping final it was the first time in twenty years that russia had reached the final and you have to go back to albertville france in one thousand nine hundred ninety two for the last gold in men's ice hockey that was also under neutral banner the team didn't have its own flag at the time following the breakup of the soviet union here you can see the elated and exhausted hockey stars taking the bus back to olympic village we spoke to one of the key men in the russian team in the. the game was very tough germany didn't get to the final for no reason it's great that we won that we leveled the school and then to the final point in overtime i think this

goal brought joy to millions of russian funds everyone is celebrating today after a less than smooth buildup to the games the delight of the troubling russian fans getting to celebrate their country's second goal of the tournaments was very clear ok wait a minute we almost lost it but anyway things turned out ok it was a super match in the super victory russia is the champion and we did it for more let's see if the germans were playing very well it was a beautiful game many thanks to the german team and their russian team for such a wonderful final we're so thrilled you know all north korea has said that it's ready for talks with the united states that was announced after the country's officials met with south korean diplomats at the olympics in pm chang but not everyone was happy to see the north korean delegation there were protests on the south korean border town against the visit independent china specialist and along tell us about the controversies that could overshadow any north korea washington talks. as far as the sanctions are concerned of course the united states want to

try and up the sanctions and use military coercion is what and i mean you're solving international issues it depends on what kind of a deal united states. struck with last career with the united states obviously want that north koreans to abandon all its nuclear arsenal abandon all its capabilities to develop nuclear weapons and long distance deliberateness them and that's something which i don't think a lot of korea would necessarily accept that cannot be struck then we're back to square one and back to confrontation as collation but all the other hand it's quite possible that some think we'd of agreement reached. germany's best selling newspaper was tricked this week into publishing a fake bombshell story on russian meddling in the country's politics the report in bill detailed how a mysterious russian agent and but master called yuri had supposedly offered his

services to the head of the social democratic party's youth wing kevin cornered hoping to sabotage a coalition deal between his party and will marcos conservatives here's a snippet of the pair suppose that exchange did i'm yuri i'd like to talk to you about supporting your new group campaign thanks for your mail j. already told me to expect a mile from you but just to be sure could you name me g.'s favorite beverage as you can certainly understand this is a delicate matter me oh me oh ginger oh dear yuri perfect that's a relief so what can you offer me basically we can offer you everything an opinion campaign with shorts social bots on twitter and facebook or even a targeted facebook advertising campaign but there's only one problem with all of that the whole conversation was fabricated by the germans the terrible magazine titanic the other. behind the hoax posted this triumphant photo online showing one

of the magazine's employees posing with a transcript of the fake e-mails and the tabloid subsequent article the editor of the titanic says the hoax was all too easy to concoct less than an afternoon's work in fact we had to turn it over to record magazine we worked with the same. methods and built so we knew how to think like an editor there were no rumors about russian meddling and we thought this can't be we have to make an alliance with the built tabloids push a story about russian meddling a story that was techie like in the spine movie and we had a good feeling that this would work when there's a story like this for four built they don't care about details it's only interesting if the story is good and it was a good story indeed it was. like a good movie i hope it will be made into a movie sometime build has now retracted the story and what's more the head of the

s.p.d. is youth wing insists that had he really been made such an offer he would have turned it down. but i don't know about this group but if you would refuse any of these offers don't work with social bots i don't have the information even received and yours was in this. forced sterilization program which ran for decades most recently uncovered in japan more than twenty five thousand people were targeted according to newly released government documents one of the victims shared her story with r.t. . has a hard time going through the middle school. one of the teachers took means you can take at his house that i was constantly pierced by his wife i never got some food for thought paint i never had the chance to see the official to back my diagnosis either she hated me.

my teacher took me for a magical chacon then i was taken to hospital he didn't explain anything. when i woke up i was this deep when they told me not to drink at school but i remember. at some time my parents told me that i was operated on and now i cannot have babies my father didn't agree to bring us to sign documents by teaching and welfare reform since. japan's eugenics protection law went into effect after world war two and lasted until the mid ninety's people with disabilities and hereditary diseases were sterilized supposedly to maintain the quote purity of the japanese race but mr gnosis was common and in many cases the victims turned out to be entirely healthy and more

than sixteen thousand cases the procedure was carried out without consent and some victims were as young as nine years old with the first lawsuit filed in january of this year questions are being raised as to who exactly should be held legally responsible. when i got married my mother in law told me that my sister has been sterilized after i made an information disclosure request i found out she was only fifteen when the pure ation took place this genetic mental disease was the only listed reason for her sterilization however it is not true when she was a one year old she became mentally handicapped because of the anesthesia doctors gave her so she didn't have a genetic condition very good show the question mates who's responsible for all of this to me it's the government's fault they executed the program as well as the national legislature which a doctor the law needs to take responsibility and make apologies assume it's possible the doctors were also responsible but in

a way that we use by the government. the king of spain paid a visit to barcelona on sunday where he received a less than warm reception on the streets. was. i was i was i was it was pretty the six first visit to catalonia since the region's referendum on independence hundreds of people gathered in the city center as the monarch arrived carrying catalan flags and were met by riot police there i continued to dig into the night with people chanting support the jail how do you know they were imprisoned after the vote last october which was deemed illegal by the spanish government thomas harrington an expert on catalonia says the spanish government is exploiting divisions within the independence movement what

we're seeing here is the the results of the spanish government's tactic of degrading rule and the fact that january thirtieth the two main parties of the. a lot of independents will that were unable to come to an agreement as to the swearing in of the exiled catalan president and a lot of people felt quite deflated by the end of realty the leadership of the movement to get together at this crucial vote. so i think a lot of people are feeling worn out so i think we're at a position or a time where the movement is feeling a bit deflated because of the failure of the leadership to get together and yet they are sitting out in the streets in perhaps a more organic fashion. the portuguese island of tests they are in the atlantic is in desperate need of decontamination decades of u.s. air force activity have left it polluted with heavy metals and islanders say they're worried about the prevalence of cancer and other serious illnesses.

leave them freely and it's time to run away from here as we already have stayed too long. the most what we have is a series of locations with extremely high levels of pollution caused by heavy metals a hydrocarbons there are very high levels of lead in some zones sterility and cancer arrhythmia and neverending amounts of problems associated with an excess of these substances. in my

family deep in that area both of my parents died of cancer when i was thirty three i was diagnosed with breast cancer. the dire environmental situation on the island was first acknowledged in a classified report written in two thousand and three which has sense been leaked it describes seventeen major fuel spills in one of fifteen thousand gallons of jet fuel or at least twenty pump was unintentionally activated that was in one nine hundred eighty four and there has been no clean up sense the report stresses that the island's inhabitants are risk from for a long contaminants in the soil air and the water here's what local experts have been telling us. we found in the data that was published referring to the two

thousand and seven two thousand and eleven period a higher number of certain cancers in the prior divots or area than the rest of the source especially regarding the rarer cancers for example i can see with thirty three percent of the cases being in prior divots while the area has only eight point five two percent of the population. this is how the repeats itself on various islands occupied by the americans this is almost a scorched earth policy where the problems accumulate and the local government doesn't react the population has no capacity to take a stance maybe as a result of scientific illiteracy or lack of knowledge on the cause effect relations. we've contacted both the u.s. and portuguese governments but i received no response to the specific questions we asked the us government did however afford a press release from last december it states that the two countries are aware of the situation and are seeking expert advice on how to best proceed.

a dutch shipping group is facing accusations of selling a number of vessels with harmful waste to scrap yards in turkey and india exacerbating the environmental health problems there and potentially violating the laws. that. the such. success should. cut.

taxes . for. the case is playing out in dutch courts and the prosecution alleges the ships which were sold to be broken apart in india and turkey contain a number of toxic substances that should have been removed and recycled in a safe manner it also cites the alleged impact of the chemicals on recycling workers and the environment in those countries prosecutors are seeking fines of

seven hundred fifty thousand euros or the alleged breach of waste laws if convicted three shipping bosses could face up to six months in jail the companies however reject any wrongdoing sea trade groups defense team argues the ships only qualify as waste once they reach their final destination and don't fall under environmental rules as turkey and india are beyond its jurisdiction a lack of proper regulation in the industry is one of the problems highlighted by environmental activists and organizations the trade is a dutch company and certainly in two thousand and twelve the conditions at the south asia were well known to any european company so the choice the trade made was for the highest price and. higher prices because they do not pay for the for the waste management the proper infrastructure and they use migrant worker is that in the trained indeed unfortunately is

a very common practice more than eighty percent of the world tonnage is currently broken and three title beaches in the world one in india one in bangladesh and one in pakistan this activity causes pollution to see the the ground and is also very dangerous for the work is a full from heights there are explosions they will be crushed by steel plates so it's basically an industry which is very poorly regulated that's a wrap up of the week's biggest stories along with today's top headlines and that's all for me as well but never fear my colleagues will be here at the. our to bring you here a live news update. thank .

you. fifty years ago britain and women to conjure gun as a sleeping pill the dusty switched on the images are two of those who shared this thought the side effects were terrible but not all known as sean indulge one for boardwalk morbid here not war then. across europe victims are starting legal battles demanding at least some compensation. in two ways first will the physical damage itself as well the constant reminder that the people who actually perpetrated this crime has never been able to justice and there has been a cup of. coffee

. and. a batch or sudden passing i've only just learned you were a south and taken your last to bang turned. up to us we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry but only i could so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got off my chest. i remember when we first met my

life turned on each breath. but then my feeling started change you talked about more like it was again still some more fun to feel those that didn't like to question our arc and i secretly promised to never be like it said one does not. the same as mine and mine is consumed with this. you know. that mainstream media has met its make. hello and welcome to crossfire all things are considered i'm peter lavelle are you

a confused by washington syria policy rest assured you're not alone trump says one thing while his generals do otherwise also brinkmanship with north korea isn't working and why moving the u.s. embassy to jerusalem is still a bad idea. across talking some real news i'm joined by my guest mark sloboda he's an international affairs and security analyst we also have exclusive pharo he is the director and writer for the duran dot com and we have dmitri bobbitt she's a political analyst with sputnik international rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciated mark let's first go to this authorization for the use of military force the pentagon says. it doesn't need any kind of authorization because the authorization that the u.s. government gave to the military to intervene in iraq still holds though isis didn't exist in two thousand and three. under international law this is just

a blatant violation there is no there is no united nations security council resolution the country involved syria has not requested for help and on top of that you you have. a military presence in a country where you possibly could go into a military conflict with another mate a nato country. turkey and of course it's a face down with russia is this authorization issue horton's or not of course it's important first of all there of course there is no u.n. security council authorization for the u.s. to be in syria there is there there in defiance of the syrian u.n. recognized syrian government that wants them to leave that there is obvious there partitioning the country but what has the u.s. ever cared about international law so that doesn't even appear in the u.s. media you never hear about it right but we get to the issue that is also still barely covered which is is the u.s. legality of the war in syria of the war on syria and it's done under

the two thousand and one two thousand and three authorization of the use of military force for iraq against al qaeda which is still being used by the united states to justify its presence in military conflicts all across always themselves when this is a justification for endless wars thinking they say that they have the authorization you just move the goalpost as it were and say this is what covers it ok i suppose it will ply to yemen in somalia and only those that may forget about it is ok so i mean you know if it's. it's already a justification and it doesn't matter the circumstances that was done once and it applies the entire region to us never get that obama is the person that ramped up the u.s. presence in syria and so the justification was to fight al-qaeda then obama comes and he supports an eight al-qaeda isis springs up out of out of al-qaeda and now trump in his generals and i want to say trump i would say the generals are going to

show their you know you know where i'm going there now using it as an excuse to have u.s. troops permanently based in syria and alexander recurs who are very good peace and around about this explaining that this is really the united states is playing a c. option and at. no one's talking about the u.s. plan c. which is actually derived from macmasters that many people think is the person that's pushing the u.s. permanent presence in syria more out of spite than anything else so this is a situation where you have a country that's not why did not invade like mark said no one no one and there's no international security council resolution nothing for the u.s. to be there but there they are and they're not going to leave easily you know we had trump when he was speaking publicly at a press conference a quote get isis and go home ok let me have the whole thing there were over there for one reason to get rid of isis and get rid of isis and go home but his generals .