A majority. And this board to pass and then pick minister says the tokyo game that could be delayed until later in the year but olympic bosses insist the event is still on course to begin in july despite the corona Virus Outbreak. Turkey has shot down a syrian warplane over it live in the northwest as Government Forces try to advance deeper to capture the last major rebel held area oh its the 3rd syrian fighter jet downed in 3 days turkeys escalating campaign is threatening to bring it to direct confrontation with the Syrian Governments ally russia the violence is taking an increasingly heavy toll on civilians 8 people were killed in an explosion in a blip city elsewhere fighting is intensifying in the south its happening in the raw despite a cease fire thats been in place there since 2018 there are reports of at least 5 people have been killed. Well hashem about it joins us now from have time i on the turkey syria border hashem just bring us up to speed whats happening there on the ground while the Operation Spring shilled is in full swing in the northwest some province of idlib where the Turkish Military releasing new footage of what it says were attacks targeting different government positions they were basically targeting i mean this in depose vehicles tanks heavy weaponry and Defense Systems in the area in a clear attempt by the Turkish Military to stop these Syrian Military from further moving forward to worse the city of aired live but some south of the top of the province of idlib fighting intensifies as the syrian army is trying to recapture more areas in that particular stronghold of the opposition and this is something which is likely to further exacerbate the situation in the area and it seems that as we are moving forward to words the 5th of march where president as it is going to meet for dinner put in the his russian counterpart about the need to implement a cease fire a demarkation line and a buffer zone it seems that every party is trying this particular crucial moment to gain more control d of the territory. And make it part of his own. Defense line has and theres been a lot of focus on the people who have gotten through turkey onto turkeys border with greece people who are trying to get through to the e. U. What about those people who have fled the fighting in edler province who are near to turkeys border with syria whats the situation there. Today in their visit to the border area of the u. S. Special envoy to syria James Jeffrey and the u. S. Ambassador to the u. N. Kelly craft spoke about the need to implement an immediate cease fire to allow civilians return to their own homes and to alleviate their suffering is and they also announced that the trumpet ministration is contributing more than 100000000. 00 to uncertain the the needs of the people of the situation further deteriorates but were talking about a fast moving situation where the syrian army now seems to be adamant it will continue its push in those areas which is a resulting in thousands of more civilians fleeing their areas our stringers operating in northwestern syria have been in touch with families and people who have been travelling on foot from the rural areas of hammer thats southern part of it if theyve been walking long distances they came under rocks they have been on the move and each time they arrive to a city they were told this is no longer a safe area you have to move forward to the point where you have now hundreds of thousands of people moving to the buffer zone to the border area with turkey some of them building their makeshift tents on it just by the minute military found the fans that was built by the turkish government in the past along the border with turkey sr a very critical situation now the International AidInternational Community aid agencies n. G. O. S are moving to start delivering aid but now against the backdrop of the intensified fighting i think its going to be extremely difficult for them to reach out to all those people who are affected just to give you an idea about how the situation is very dire for the family. How can not afford to get turned from International Aid agencies they have to buy its cost something between 200. 00 to 350. 00 a most of those families the tell us they cannot afford to buy those stones so just gives you an idea about the about the situation over there know in the border with turkey really does admit it makes a very real thank you for that thats has bought of their life from half time Russias Foreign Ministry has put out a series of statements defending the Syrian Government offensive in its live its describing the battle as a fight against terrorism the turkish president is hashem mentions traveling to moscow for talks with russian president Vladimir Putin on thursday sept 1st and has more. 2 days before an important meeting here in moscow between flooding they put in a turkish breast and tire berta one foot in spokesman Dmitri Pascoe says that he hopes that constant coordination between the turkish and Russian Military will minimize a clash between the 2 countries the meeting comes amid heightened tensions between russia and turkey in italy in syria and erdogan has said that he hopes that during the talks which are already being described as going to be very difficult he hopes that the ceasefire will be a great foot in only agreed to meet or the one after tens of turkish soldiers were killed in the last week and also turkey started an offensive against the Syrian Forces initially erdogan had invited quitting to come to istanbul but the meeting now will take place here in moscow which can be seen as a diplomatic win for the russian president and a lot of meeting which was also supposed to take place this week between erdogan put in and german chancellor Angela Merkel and french president a minor well mark on has not been confirmed by put in but his spokesman sassed that putin is willing to meet with iranian president rouhani and erdogan in the socalled style now formally soon basque of also responded to where you and report from the commission on syria which has accused russia of for war crimes against civilians in syria and the task of says that these allegations are on untrue and he calls the report one sided. Well the e. U. Has promised 800000000. 00 to greece to deal with a refugee in migrants from turkey as a techie said it will allow hundreds of thousands of people to pass through greece and bulgaria have stepped up security on their side of the land border with turkey the greek coast guard is now actively repelling boats trying to get to it so imans across the Eastern Mediterranean route his decision to open the borders breaches an agreement it made with the e. U. In 2016 to resettle refugees and stop them from crossing into europe turkey now hosts around 4000000 refugees and says it cannot cope with any more people fleeing the violence in a blip its on joins me now live from the greek island of lez boss john i believe just in the last hour the greek pm has spoken once he had to say. The greek Prime Minister stressed the need for a common asylum policy its been one of his main causes in the European Union since he came to power 8 months ago he said that we have not used our time wisely since the last refugee crisis the time has come for us to do this we need to show we are sharing the burden affectively and to show innovation we cannot leave the burden pushed on to the so shoulders of external you Member States this is a cry of help from europes mediterranean coast that the external border countries cannot be gatekeepers to europe without solidarity and support from the rest of the continent lets listen to what he had to say this is a blatant attempt by turkey to use desperate people to promote his jew political agenda and to divert attention from the horrible situation in syria the 10s of thousands of people who tried to and to greece over the past few days did not come from it live they have been living safely in turkey for a long period of time most of them speak turkish fluently and europe will not be blackmailed by turkey over the refugee issue. John youre on the island of as possible have seen a steady stream of people arriving there on of that past 2 days is that continuing or is it showing signs of slowing down. Yes it is and the reason were standing here at the passenger port is that just moments ago there was a Police Operation to clear away. Some dozens of afghan young men who were trying to climb this fence behind me and get on to that ferry which is leaving for us and shortly the police just swept the area clean theyve chased people up into the hills it shows you and we saw earlier similar scenes how badly these people want to get off the island to move further d inland move on to the greek mainland cross over into other parts of europe and begin their lives a lot of these young men in their teens they havent finished school many of them have dreams of going to University Becoming engineers becoming doctors they want to follow careers their families have sacrificed and or savings to send them here on their own because they count all the full to come over and this is their chance this is their one chance to make something of themselves and to save their families the harsh reality however is that on the european side the risk the loss of the numbers is seen as overwhelming and you can see the desperation through the number of regimes that exist here in greece alone there are the people who have been crossing over for 5 years who have been allowed to apply for asylum in the normal manner theres a 2nd category of people who applied for asylum since january 1st when a new asylum law took effect here in greece and they are being fast tracked and theyre supposed to be processed in 2 months so theyve been given priority because this is part of an effort to increase the number of returns of rejected Asylum Seekers so those deportees can be sent back to turkey quickly. And now theres a new regime since turkey opened its borders on february 27th of people who wont be considered for asylum or tool and those people are now being kept 20 yards away from me behind this fence in the port area theyre going to be shipped back to athens tomorrow were told although it isnt a final plan it is the intention of the greek or thirtys to keep them in detention and not to give them a chance to apply for asylum because theyre considered part of a turkish policy that is against europe rather than as people whove crossed over as free individuals think that thats John Psaropoulos there live from lisbon us movie is already there is a refugee or specialists at the university of reading he joins us now live from rating good to have you on the program. The e. U. Commissions president on the main stage that the e. U. Will give greece all of the support it needs in terms of whats happening at greeces border with turkey but greece as we just heard there is continuing to 10 people back so what should we take from that message of support what is the e. U. Actually likely to do in real terms to help these people. Yes. So the Prime Minister of greece said something that is correct which is that since the refugee crisis and 2015 europe has has not come together to form a policy of responsibility sharing that alleviate some of the but otherwise disproportionately falls on from tier states such as greece and italy there was a emergency relocation scheme that was going to read okayed about 120000 people from both italy and greece and even those d places havent fully been met and no permanent scheme has been put in place so hes absolutely right that the European Union hasnt stepped to the plate and doesnt yet seem to be doing so hes course wrong that the consequence is that if somebody is seeking protection in greece which is a member of the European Union and bound by e. U. Law then they can be on that basis turned away and so and so do European Commissions president may be willing to provide greece with his Financial Support with all the gods but thats not actually what greece and what refugees need what is needed is a european agreement for genuine solidarity and responsibility sharing across the e. U. And that is that is really the mission of the European Commission if it wants to genuinely help greece rotters and 8 writers and help greece fend off for fijis its got to come back to that point you you made are i remember covering in brussels at the time when the plan was agreed on that i think with 130000. 00 people would be resettled from italy and greece there was so much fanfare at the time why hasnt that been implemented why hasnt that worked out. Well the reality is it was 1st of all a genuine resistance from several European Union states to the resolution for the reset for the read ok sion itself so hungary the Czech Republic slovakia and poland have said initially theyre not going to cooperate and that is even led the European Commission to launch a infringement proceedings against them in the European Court of justice afterwards other European Countries which have normally said theyll cooperate have really been very sluggish in offering relocation spaces in their in their countries and so what was supposed to happen very quickly and and for automatically a fairly small moderate number if we compare it to 3700000 refugees that are in turkey so were talking about 120000 people across the continent or a European Union region of over 500000000 people what was supposed to happen fairly quickly rapidly hasnt actually fully materialize and some people read ok to it but the numbers havent reached 120000 over the course of a couple years and then the attempt to use that to basis of the emergency relocation scheme to create a permanent basis for. Relocating refugees across the European Union on an equitable basis that takes into account g. D. P. Per capita unemployment the capacity of countries to absorb refugees etc that scheme that was proposed has effectively been stalled coming to the last european parliamentary elections and it hasnt been resurrected says thank you for your analysis sense through these i know there are a refugee nor specialist at the university of reading thank you. But more ahead on the news all including planes grounded staff put on paid leave rotavirus oppressions the struggling Global Airline industry. And in sport the professional cyclists being forced to take a unique approach to staying fit santa will be here with that story. It is super tuesday in the United States the biggest day in the democratic president ial Campaign Vote is in 14 states are deciding who they want to take on donald trump in november each state allocates delegates who will decide on their candidate at the Democratic National convention in july more than a 3rd of the total delegates are up for grabs john hendren joins me now live from Charlotte North Carolina one of the States Holding primaries i was interested the mayor of charlotte has backed bloomberg one of the predictions there. Well the predictions were all made before the race changed really dramatically so what happened is over the past 48 hours you had pete new judge bail out of the race and amy closed which are both of them have backed joe biden there was a poll that came out just a day ago a day before the polls open that said lead the leading candidate was Bernie Sanders that Michael Bloomberg was 2nd showing that he has made some impact in that joe biden was 3rd there are other polls that have differed but the bottom line is that it doesnt matter what any of those polls say anymore because nobody knows where those voters for people to judge and amy close which are will go the race has been narrowed down to 5 candidates with the exception of gabbert who hasnt made a real impact here shes a bit younger the rest of them are all white and over 70 years old so there are some similarities in this race and its a test of a number of things the test of the bloomberg candidacy he has not been on the ballot in any of the previous 4 states so this will be the 1st chance for voters to get to see whether he will make an impact on this race right now what the Biden Campaign is hoping to do is make this a race between him the moderate and Bernie Sanders the liberal but bloomberg is also a moderate and he may have an impact on that race and theres another problem here for many people and that is that 800000 people just here in the state of North Carolina have voted early so that means they could have voted for people like people to judge and amy close this is the ballot people dead it was made weeks ago and it has 15 names on them presumably some people have already voted in advance for these people and presumably some people may vote for them still probably not enough to cross the 15 percent threshold which would grant them some delegates but another thing here is that North Carolina is the test for jo