now all of this stuff is unusable ok now. big drama. screens on thursday the film about soviet dissident writer sort of gave the last off premiered at the bird in film festival where it won the silver badge for outstanding artistic contribution is director told us why he was surprised the film was even shown that. i mean you could see all of this all of the name we need to show up with new along with that is. just on a few sleeves can you should you. base your was a sort of even if you could also use a serious case for socially if you insist. that when you proposed of large after the berlin film festival what did you expect. from the will and i knew the decisions would be obstructed by the political and

particularly personal views of the jury and that's what happened there are a lot of films no worse than our movie and the german pitches one of them were left with no awards whatsoever and the outstanding movie about the brave it events didn't get anything all of that is kind of hard to explain because i think there were other intentions than just fair competition but i was amazed that a lot of was even shown there when i walked by the convention center where the festival took place i saw a person with a book in german about of lot of and another with the same book in english and then a young german guy came up to me and started asking me who was about the culture the one nine hundred seventy s. leningrad culture what kind of struck me was how well our film was received how universal and relatable it was to everyone do you cook with but by women dominated this year's by the now with both of the top prizes are awarded to female filmmakers nevertheless the lack of female representation generally in the film industry was discussed at a special festival panel as was the topic of sexual harassment in the wake of the

me too movement alexy got to win junior again shared his views on those issues. this is a tough one on the one hand we've got to treat the sexes absolutely equally there should be no gender preference it's obviously on the other hand bearing in mind everything that's going on some sort of support for women is important. i think we have fewer problems with this in russia i've heard some one pleasant stories but very few maybe because we have less money for less money there is less power and less temptation to quit doing. so in less than one hour president vladimir putin will give his annual address to the russian parliament and other members of course of the country's political elite here on r.t. we will be bringing you that live but for now here's our to go with a preview. well this year there's a new venue it used to happen inside the kremlin but this time the so-called state

of the nation address is moving to an exhibition hall just outside the red brick walls called the money and we've been told the reason for it is that mr putin wants to make things more interactive with stuff being shown on big monitors quite unusual for a formal speech like that and that is intriguing because i don't really remember the president giving a visual presentation like that we know that a lot of our putin loves showing some numbers knowledge and perhaps we're going to see a bit of that on these monitors and probably we will hear a lot about the economy with real incomes having fallen across russia people will be expecting to hear some announcements on reducing poverty russia's business community will be looking forward to hearing about some specific steps to help the economy recover from recession plus whenever president putin is speaking of course he brings up international issues and things are getting smoother when it comes to

how moscow is getting along with the west washington in particular the syrian crisis keeps bringing more trouble and that's why let's see whether vladimir putin will say anything groundbreaking on that as well. that is about in half an hour's time and we'll be back here were naughty international. at the moment we've had the period of fake the flavor. engineer by all the central

banks and that they don't have the control that they think that they have and once you start to see this being picked up in markets like the gold market and others you know you've got to start to see it feeds on itself in a big way. fifty years ago breaking within two cons again as a sleeping pill. the scientific sweat terrible but not on the road. across europe. legal battles demanding at least some compensation. in two ways the physical damage itself as well that the constant mind that the people who actually perpetrated this crime has never been the justice and it has been the.

this is boom bust broadcasting around the world from washington d.c. i'm part chilton and coming up we talk about puerto rico's recovery from the standpoint of the economy and how privatization is coming to the island kate long the founder of the puerto rico clearinghouse joins us and canadian real estate worth billions of dollars is being seized by the chinese government alex mahela bitch tells us the story. from toronto and boris iliescu and i talked about those toxic exotic trade funds that caused problems during the recent market volatility

and their futures all of that on the program but first let's get to some hot as a. delta the atlanta based air carrier is facing pushback from some republicans in their home state of georgia after the airline canceled discount rates for members of the national rifle association following the deadly florida school shooting which took the lives of seventeen people georgia state senate majority leader and a candidate for governor casey cagle says he will quote kill any tax legislation that benefits delta unless the company changes its position delta is the largest employer in atlanta and the hartsfield jackson airport is the largest hub for the company in related news dick's sporting goods has announced that they will no longer sell assault rifles at their thirty five field and stream specialty stores the chain ality ltd of the chain initially limited sales of assault rifles to these

stores after the two thousand and twelve massacre of twenty children and six adults at sandy hook elementary school the fortune five hundred company also says that they will no longer sell any firearms to anyone under the age of twenty one and will discontinue all sales of high capacity ammunition magazines the corporate statement said that our thoughts and prayers are not enough and list of policies they urge elected officials to pass including universal background checks and a database of prohibited buyers this bold move is reminiscent of c.v.s. alpha's choice to stop selling cigarettes back in the day. the e.u. is demanding that the united kingdom remain subject to the european court of justice the e c j for an indefinite period of time under the brics it divorce proceedings the. puts british prime minister theresa may into yet another big battle many who has considered e.c.g. jurisdiction over the u.k.

as a potential part of the divorce deal is faced with internal pressures from u.k. bret's sitters who want nothing to do with the e.c. j. and their drive for independence from the e.u. the final departure of the u.k. from the e.u. is planned to be at the end of twenty nineteen if the e.u. proposal were to become effective it would indefinitely subject the u.k. to e.c. j. decisions. and here curia the large commodity trader is seeking permission from the us department of treasury's office of foreign assets control ofac to buy out one point five billion dollars in a loan between rosneft the world's largest publicly traded petroleum company and p d s a the event of what venezuelan state oil company which holds a major state in citgo the american refiner in an effort to lessen control of moscow's influence in the united states p t v s and he has borrowed more than six

billion dollars from rose enough and has put up a large share of a's ownership as collateral if he vs a defaulted on the loan theoretically rosneft could all in forty nine point nine percent of citgo if approved by ofac mercurial would be permitted to buy p.v. essays sit go back portions of the loan. citi group has become a major banking investor and loan operator in puerto rico including interest in the puerto rican electric power authority known as prefer now is deep and delinquent in loan repayments that will be auctioned off while sin. he is being paid to ensure the energy goes to the highest private bit or the circumstances have raised issues

about which banks are involved in puerto rico and what real role they are playing now here discuss we're joined by kate long the founder of the puerto rico clearing house kate thank you so much for joining us put this into perspective for us first of all the overall puerto rican debt and then let's talk specifically about prepaid please share puerto rico has issued basically since the one nine hundred fifty s. and when they started to fall tienen twenty fifteen they had about seventy two billion dollars of debt outstanding. that includes seventeen classes of debt for the central government and for the utilities it's the largest municipal bankruptcy probably in the history of the united states and no state level entity has to fall today and since one thousand thirty's when arkansas defaulted on debt they just him from the local communities. what was the problem i mean was it poor management at the electric power company there or there is something else going on just too

expensive to provide power. well that's a lot of things part so proper is the largest publicly owned utility in the united states it has the poorest safety record in the united states probably around fifteen or sixteen percent of the electricity they produce is taken to illegal means it's theft essentially. it probably was a as a public utility became a place for you know basically brothers and sisters and cousins to work. they had a terrible you know issue of just even building out the system the u.s. army corps of engineers are there now repairing it after the hurricane and said you know really poles were just barely put into the ground when you know and don't meet you know standards that you would find on the mainland so there's this whole raft of issues there and then they kept issuing debt on top of all those operational problems and there's issues you know related to like fuel fuel prices that they've paid there's a case in federal court now where they overpaid over

a billion dollars in for fuel to venezuela and other suppliers so there's this raft of problems and you mentioned privatization and that's basically where they need to go it sort of sounds like it were the people but the board and the you know the general manager or president were they political appointees with this sort of you know quote to use them at its worst yep yep that's it you know the so the governor it has changed numerous times in less number of years but governor essentially appoints the members of the board of couple were elected in the past like the consumer won and then the governor also appoints the upper management approach and you know there's been testimony that every time a governor changed that they would change centrally all the people running it so you know instead of having professional management there to oversee and make sure the utility is running well it was just kind of like you know friends are for you know contributors positions and stuff you know patronage can be good in some cases

but it's a pretty poor policy by and large let me ask you because. the article i read kate talked about you know city and it mentioned in there that one point they had a seven hundred eighteen percent interest rate now i mean obviously. you know all these problems we've been discussing but boy a seven hundred eighteen percent interest rate if that's the case would certainly way any borrower down is is that a typo or a well how do they come up with that number so most of the dead the private. interest rates like four to six percent maybe even maxing out the seven hundred eighteen percent which is people that are not the market people like to toss around is this just a particular structure upon called a capital appreciation and it's basically a zero coupon you would see in the treasury market so i mean if you want to look at it like that that you're not accruing any interest till till the end you know when

the bottom of chores i guess you could say it was had that high rate but just a particular structure it's essentially. you know a lender gives the money to the utility now and gets all the interest and principal back when the bomb matures so kate is there any let's talk more broadly about puerto rico and their their their debt is there some agreement to life seen figures all over the map but maybe i'm reading the wrong places is there some agreement on what the actual number of the puerto rican debt is yes so basically the bonded did a pretty close around seventy two billion there is some a fair amount of this capital appreciation debt which depending on how you want to value that could set up there's also another forty to fifty billion dollars of unfunded pension liabilities which most people can.