this is al jazeera america. we're live in new york city. i'm del walters with a look at today's top stories. police in nevada try to find out what motivated a boy to take a gun to his classroom, and turned the gun on himself when it was over. there was questions about whether the shooter had been bullied.

the bart strike is now over. union workers reached a tentative agreement last night, putting an end to the four-day old strike. secretary of state john kerry is in london for the friends of syria meeting. the u.s. is pushing for another round of peace talks but assault and opposition say they will not take part. and as many as 60 fires are raging across new south wales. those are your headlines. i'm del walters in new york. "consider this" is next. and as always check us out 24 hours a day at aljazeera.com. ♪ ♪

a bribery scandal could sink several top u.s. naval commanders. charges that navy ships were sent to certain ports in asia in exchange for high-priced trips, tickets to shows, and even prostitution. are we seeing a worrisome growing trend? plus an nsa faux pas causes an american riff in paris. president obama has to do damage control. and a new nightmare for american parents kids connect with friends over social media, but are the popular websites forcing preteens into very question super boablebehavior. we begin with the

allegations of a major scandal in the navy. as serious as these allegations are, al jazeera reports, they are from the only scandals to year. >> reporter: according to federal prosecutors the chief executive of glen defense asia pried navy officers with cash, tickets, luxury hotel rooms, and in exchange they provided inside information. this commander allegedly helped dock four ships so it could overcharge for its services by the millions. this knave vor officer is accused of continuing off the marine about several fault investigations. this captain was relieved of his duties but not charged. the navy has been the most aggressive of the forces firing commanders this year. details are unavailable, but in the fiscal year that just ended

95 allegations of misconduct were found to be substantiated. just two years ago there were 18 substantiated cases. earlier this month the number two officer was relieved of his duties by president obama due to his suspected use of counterfeit poker chips. just 48 hours later this two-star general responsible for 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles was fired. the joint chiefs of staff was so concerned last spring he sent a letter urging recommitment to ethical leadership. for more joining me from dallas, texas is a jag attorney. he is now a criminal defense attorney. and from san diego,

janet steele thank you both for being us with tonight. misconduct scandals people to be a growing problem in the military forces. there were 250 allegations of misconduct, 95 were substantiated, the largest number 26 came from the army. the military reported similar numbers last year, but they are way up from 2011. do you think the last two years are anomaly or are we looking at the start of a serious trend here? >> they are the start of a trend, but they are not anomaly. as budget restrictions have come into the military, there has been an increased attention to where the money is being spent, where it is being spent, what

it's being spent on, and who is spending it. so that has lead to a lot more investigations. >> so you think it's really a case of just they are looking harder now because of budget tear issues? >> i think so. as you come to the end of the war you start asking questions about how the war was fought, who was done. while you're in the middle of a war, you are asking questions about how the war is going. this represents a cycle that is pretty common in the military, and again, that's not to say that the conduct is excusable, but that there are more cases is not surprising. >> janet, you there in san diego you have the biggest naval base on the west coast. what have you been seeing? >> that's right. and while we're talking about financial misconduct, most of the cases we're seeing is

personal misbehavior, either trying to date somebody who works for you, sexual assault allegations, so bad judge inspect your personal life is one thing, and all of these years of war, you have to wonder if that has lead to bad judgment. >> that has been an argument before, somehow since we have been involved in these wars, the military has been stretched very problem? >> that -- that's an argument for sure? and our ships have been away, for six, nine months, ten months sometimes at a time. it's hard -- that's a hard job to have under wartime pressures. the other thing we're it's so much easier to get caught right now for personal misbehavior

-- [ technical difficulties ] -- which end up being evidence against them if they are dating someone in their chain of come man, and you would think they would realize at this age you should don't that, but a lot of people don't realize it. >> an army spokesperson told the l.a. times, quote . . . and the navy's top spokesman insisted, here is another quote . . . charles, may not be an epidemic, but with that growth in those misconduct allegations, and the growth in many of these cases being at the highest level of the armed forces what does it level?

>> it says a lot of things about how things were policed in the past. one of the parts of the questions is why do we still have sexual assault stand ls and financial financi financial -- scandals. and i think a lot of that is we were looking the other way, so to speak. and no it's turning back to basic issues of how do we handle the money, how do we handle our personnel, and it is taking a while for things to change. some officers that had a problem in the first place, got this -- i believe over the last ten years or so that they could and did get away with it. >> so let's go back to the latest story.

the allegation against these two naval commanders and a singapore-based contractor. a commander was targeted by that contractor, it's called glenn defense marine asia as a likely bribe target. he was then able to direct ships, including three aircraft carriers and presumably support vessels to certain naval ports where they could be docked by this guy and he could overcharm the navy mass ively. >> those were liberty ports, places where they sent the trips to unwind. the real question is, is it secure and can you get the services there? and a very small group of people do that, so it's not surprising

to me, and i imagine based on reading the indigitments it founds fairly typical. there are strong rules that prevent you from doing exactly the type of thing -- like taking a lady gaga ticket, or accepting a hostess or suites. i would choose contract x but i won't have a good time when i go there, so i'll choose contractor y who is known to have a good party and a lot of free tickets. certainly the officers here lost sight of the ball. >> but we're talking about millions of dollars extra that were spent as a result of this, if the allegations were true.

janet there were also algayings against the navy criminal investigative service. he was again, getting something from this accused of getting something from this contractor and then providing them with information about the investigations against them. what is the reaction there? community? >> it is pretty interesting and disturbing that one of the people who is supposed to be policing the navy is in fact possibly corrupt himself. i was talking to a navy officer today about this case, and he was saying they warn ship skippers that the kind of way business is conducted in some foreign nations is different than the united states and this pay to play kind of atmosphere is far more open and common in other countries. and they warn them, listen, you are going to have to deal with have, be ware.

>> and charles it makes me wonder, because we all have such respect for the armed services and what they have done, particularly over the past decade or so defending this country, and then you hear of other stories, a captain who had won multiple awards for his service in iraq and afghanistan. again, are you surprised that people of this level are being swept up in these bribee scandals? >> i'm surprised on one level but not another. in cost plus contracting the contractor tells you what it costs to do it, and then they are given a profit on top of that. cost-plus contracting is very easy to inflate your costs, and thereby greatly inflate your profits in the

receipts. what i see is naval officers and military officers in all that have, i think, gotten a little too used to the entitlement idea that my rank and my service i should be rewarded beyond my salary. that's something that has not to ch change. i'm sure the joint chief of staffs is committed to changing that idea, but we also have to take a very hard look at the contractors themselves, because of course all of this starts with them. it didn't start with the naval contractor. >> the other scandals have rocked the armed forces this year, two involved officer s in with responsibility over nuclear

missiles. again, charles, i go back to you, since you are the person who used to be in the military. you have got to be concerned about people of this level who had their finger on the nuclear button losing their jobs for this kind of misbehavior. >> you should be. and in fact, i think that the security of the nuclear arsenal and nuclear -- over the last ten years with a non-nuclear threat in the form of the wars that we were fighting, and islamic fundamentalists, there was a fear they would get the weapons, but not a fear that we were going to utilize ours. and i think one of the problems is we haven't paid attention to

those areas that are necessary. and security and law enforcement has spent a lot of area looking in one area and overlooking these areas. what surprises me is they got to the level they did, before they were discovered. and that indicates we are not screening. >> i really appreciate you both joining us tonight to talk about this. coming up new nsa revelations from edward snowden further embarrass the us. this time france is fuming. and our associate producer is tracking the top stories on the web. >> we have a fascinating story from al jazeera's website. you have heard about hacking

into websites, and computers, but what about a human body.

new revelations show the nsa hasn't just by spying on american citizens but on the citizens of nations we're friending with. the nsa gathered records on more than 70 million french citizens. president obama immediately called the french president to do damage control. the question is as more of edward snowden's revelation tick off our international allies, what will the real impact be on our business dealings overseas? cliff sterns joins us from washington, d.c. he is a senior counselor at a firm specializing in cyber

security and trade negotiation. and lawrence korb assistant secretary of defense in the reagan administration, and he is the senior fellow at the center for american progress and a profess at georgetown university. cliff france was not happy, brazil's government did the same thing about other revelations. how serious is this for our international relations? >> i think it's serious, because right now we're talking about a trade investment partnership, and this is going to impact the free trade agreement between the united states and america, plus we have a 1995 safe harbor agreement that allows companies in the united states, over 3,000 to transmit data across the landic into the european union, and i think the

european commissioner will probably do away with that safe harbor, and come up with a new agreement, and it will be tough to do if you have more snowden allegations that continue to pile up. >> larry your old boss, ronald reagan had repeatedly said, trust but verify. isn't this is a case of that, that while we may have confidence in france's intelligence apparatus, that while we may trust their intelligence groups, we need to do some verifying ourselves and make sure we're capturing anything that might be out there from an intell against homeland? >> i think there's no doubt about the fact that they were doing this supposedly to catch terrorism, but they also got

business records. and once snowden came without this stuff, we should have notified our allies. john kerry was going to visit today which is why it showed up in the newspapers, and it makes things very, very awkward. and the president of france said this is a legitimate subject for discussion. he should have been discussing it as soon as snowden came out. we knew we did it in germany, and the uk, chances are we were doing it in france, and we should have let them know. >> why didn't they then? >> that to me is a mystery, ever since the snoweden leak, the administration has been playing catchup. the president needs to get ahead and let all of our allies know exactly what we have been doing

and how long we have been doing it. >> cliff we know that allies spy on allies and isn't this a question of we have a brave new world of technology and this is the way we are going to be looking at things in the future. >> that's not an excuse. you can't do this. there is a three-panel judge that is supposed to allow the nsa to do this, and people who have found out that this whole process allowed under the patriot act, i think that process has to be reviewed. we don't want the nsa spying on u.s. citizens. and they are doing it in a way that could be detrimental to citizen's freedoms.

>> let's talk about foreign countries, if we're doing it to them, what kind of reaction us. >> it's one thing to spy on enemies or potential enemies. it's a different thing when you are doing it to your allies. we worked together in afghanistan, we worked with the french in moli, and we may work with them together in syria. and you have this fisa court that have been basically a rubber stamp and we need to have the way that it works an advocate to go in and argue against the government before they do these things. >> but, again, how big of a deal is it, in the sense they were looking for specific words and phrases or at least that's what they are saying they were trying

to do, so in the end how big of a deal is it, larry? >> psychologically it's much more important than the data they got. the attacks on 9/11 didn't come on afghanistan, they were plotted in humborg. we have a common enemy here. >> let's talk trade. the u.s. offers some very specific benefits that other trade partners don't. we're the biggest buyer of world goods around, so an international embarrassment, temporary as this may be, does impact? >> i think so. when you look at the trade between the united states and european union, the gdp from the two countries is 50% of the world gdp, so it's important that

trade be successful, because if not the trade agreement with asia will take precedent. so the whole regulatory structure could be persuaded to be asian rather than the western country. so it's really important that we send the right message to the european union, and without safe harbor i think both the united states and the european union will suffer. these kinds of revelations hurt the publicity for us in dealing with the european union. i would want to know why did they spy on french citizens. the obviously reason is they think there are terrorists there, but where did they get the information to justify 70

million people? >> do you agree this hurts the u.s. for free trade agreement. >> i think they could use this as a bargaining chip if they are not happy with some of the agreements, and the 70 million we're talking about is one month. this is not 70 million over a couple of years. >> true. and cliff as these leaks keep coming out, what is the concern next? >> that's true. and the europeans have a justification saying what did you do, how did you do it, and when are you going to stop? and i wasn't clear that the president said that the nsa is going to stop. and if he didn't say it, that should be alarming to the european union. >> in the last election he pretty much did say he was going to take a very hard look at any kind of a

relationship with the united states as result of us spying on german citizens. >> well, i think these countries probably need us a little bit more than we need them. so i think they will be concerned but i don't think it will be a deal breaker, and the congressman is right, you have to lay down some ground rules. in germany, given their experience with the communists and nazis, that spying, i think really touched a nerve among the people, and the reelected chancellor could have taken a much tougher stance for a short-term political gain. >> and the question will be if the united states does damp this down in the future. it is a fascinating world with all of these technology. thank you both for your time.

we have a lot of great stories on the al jazeera website. and we want to start highlighting some for you. >> today's web story the brave new world of biohacking. a group of scientists work out of a basement in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, and they are the first do it yourself science community to develop an interacttive device in a human being. it is designed to fit between the skin and the muscles in the forearm where it will track information on the temperature. >> over the last 15 years i have traveled the year and spent a quarter million dollars to hack

by own biology. without counting calories or exercise, i lost over 100 pounds. i lowered by biological age. and learned how to thrive. you will learn there's simpler everything. >> as for your reaction . . . you can read more at the website, america.aljazeera.com. coming up social media has become a double edge sword.

teenagers are raging with hormones so what happens when they are able to access online dating sites that allow even 12 years old. they are constantly seeing celebrities who lead them to believe the more provacative they are, the more popular they will be. joining us now in our studio is nancy joe sales, the author of an article titled "friends without benefits" that focuses on this problem. and co-author of teenage as a second language.

great to have you both was nancy joe you mention a 13-year-old girl who says social media is doe destroying our lives, but without it she says she would have no life. do you really think it is destroying their lives? >> that's what she says. and what i was struck with is how much anxiety social media was causing them. feeling of isolation, depression, and all kinds of really difficult emotions. >> and you also highlight a lot of disturbing cases that really should worry those of us who care about our kids, most of us, i'm sure, and you mention a site like tender that not that many people know about. tender is a place where it's

pretty much an online dating site where you can browse for boys and girls and decide whom you like and don't like. are sites like to the ones to really worry about. >> i had never heard of tinder before doing this piece, and i write about teenagers. nobody can really tell you what it is like to be a 16-year-old girl right now, ebb september a 16-year-old girl, because technology really drives culture. and the technology is appearing so fast. so i think it's really incumbent upon adults to familiarize themselves more with what is going on. >> in our production meeting we were talking about what we were going to discuss tonight. and as we were talking about all

of these alarming behaviors, kids as old as 12 or 13 posting naked pictures or having naked conversations on skype or face time. one of our producers a woman in her 20s said i would never want to go through middle school again with everything that is going on, and a male in his 30s, said i would be psych. >> i think that's the perfect example of what it is. for girl there's so much pressure to keep up. because girls are focused on being well-known through relations, that mean girl stuff we hear about is based on that. and if you are a male who really lacks being the top dog in person, you have the opportunity

to really step up and take control on the internet, whereas females are, because of the dynamics set up are automatically being put in this submissive role, and it's really creating a very difficult dynamic, and almost pushing young women backwards to where we have worked so hard to get these days. >> and that's one thing that you really write about in your article. >> i talked to a lot of girls who expressed -- almost every single girl i talked to said they experienced boys being very aggressive, asking provacative questions and asking for nude picks and it's not that girls also don't have sexual urges,

but the ways these things are expressed on the anonymous forums is different, new, and challenges to girls. >> and it is pushing girls to do things they might not otherwise do in order to stand out. >> that's really true. in order to form a meaningful relationship you have to go through this, and yet that's not what you get in the end with this. and as was pointed out in the article that's not what the end game is. it's order to belong and part of the group, it's this pressure that this is the only way they can fit in or be acknowledged or feel any self worth. >> and they are oversexualizing themselves on the net. and you mention miley cyrus in the article, and some of the videos that kids have access to

on line, here we're knowing one where she is naked in a video called "recking ball." you also mention willow smith who is only 12 years old, and she had a very sexual -- this is the video -- you are not seeing the more sexualized moments, but also a very, very hypersexualized moments for a very, very young girl. the cda says that female girls who are sexually experienced, and teen pregnancies have dropped. this is just from last year, but as you can see it is a very significant drop from 20 years ago, and so how do you reconcile this extra -- all of this oversexuallization from the internet but then -- >> can i answer that? >> yeah. >> first of all just because you

are not having sex doesn't mean you are not having sex when it comes to social media. you might not be physically having sex now, but you might be having sex, whatever that means on social media, sex scenes. sexual chats, sending provacative pictures, it doesn't necessarily mean you are being -- you know, having intercourse. that's one thing. the other thing is i think the drop in teen pregnancy is because we have been very successful at educating kids about using condoms. that's good. what we haven't been successful at all in, is educating kids about how to have relationships and have intimacy and deal with this new world of social media, and how do i build relationships with people beyond this

impersonalized chatter. >> it's not real reality and that's the problem. >> and one of the things that nancy joe points out too, is the access to porn online. when i was growing up, the only way to get access to porn is if somebody got their hands on a playboy these days any 11 year old can see very hard core stuff >> we're seeing the threshold for excitement is getting higher and higher, so for example way back when, when, you know, a young boy found a playboy under a mattress, it was a big deal, and there was a lot of excitement attached to that. now because of the exposure from media, that excitement, the bar is getting so much higher that there are more and more explicit outlets. for example, we look a lot at video games, and they have become so graphic.

and it's a cycle being driven by the fact that what used to shock us isn't so shocking anymore. and the porn you are seeing is at a completely different level. we have a viewer question. >> thanks, antoine know. nancy joe, viewer says i wonder how many schools don't teach sex ed anymore. is this part of the problem? >> i don't really know what sex ed is at this point, except that it's about you should use a condom and be careful about diseases and so forth. i think because of political correctness and different trends in our culture that really is not talked about in schools at all are relationships and feelings and the right and wrong

of all of this. and there are moral situations involving sex. and that doesn't mean that you have to judge sex or judge kids for having sexual feelings, but there are right and wrong ways to treat people within a sexual context. this is not discussed and i think that's a problem. >> talking about wrong ways to approach people, cyber bullying is another thing that nancy joe points out which has gotten some publicity recently because we suicides. >> cyber bullying is very different than bullying. cyber bullying has to do with the person who is receiving the message how they perceive it, and the reason that matters so much is that we're judging -- it can be taken different ways. so a lot of cyber bullying that

we see out there are kids that think they are joking around, the person they are, quote unquote, dishing this out to can really take it. what they are not aware of is that that is not the case. that they are more vulnerable than they appear. yes, we have had many of these situations with suicides and have actually been directly involved with consultation in some of these pretty-well-known cases. but in many cases it's many factors, and many of those factors relate back to self-esteem and brings us back to the net and how these young girls, especially have to put themselves out there, and it's at the expense of their self-esteem. >> yeah, nancy joe puts that out there. i think it's must-reading for all parents.

i sent it to my wife, and i hope parents do read it because we need to be very aware of what is out there. thank you both for coming here to talk about this. coming up it is raining diamonds in outer space? and next we'll see how the still ma of online dating for adults >> how old are you? >> nine. >> how old were you when you first started working out here? >> seven. >> fault lines how children are hired by us agriculture to help put food on america's tables. >> in any other industry kids need to be 16 years old to be able to work. you don't see any of that in agriculture. >> they don't ask, "is she 12?". they just want their job done. >> how many of you get up before 5 o'clock in the morning?

re# #a# #d# #y# ##fo# #r# ## today's data dive tackles

the stigma of online dating for adults. nearly three out of five people say they think online dating is a good way to meet people. also the amount of people who say they know someone who found a long-term relationship online has nearly doubled since then. a big factor people find the online matching process making it easy to eliminate people they are not compatible with, something that takes far longer when you meet someone off line. and only 21% feel online daters are, quote, desperate. that's an eight-point drop. so shouldn't we all be happy that more people have a shot to find love. well, 32% feel online dating keeps people from settling down, because they will always have other options.

plus a lot of those polls say that a lot of people are dishonest about being married, but doesn't that happen in real life too. 45% of these people are doing so on match.com. the ease of finding a match online varies tremendously by age and gender. reuters find a woman's online availability peaks at 21, but continues strong at 26. but by age 48 men have twice as many online pursuers as women. i wish you all the best of luck in finding that perfect mate. coming up we'll tell you why the solar system could be showered on inside story, we bring together unexpected voices closest to the story, invite hard-hitting debate and desenting views and always

explore issues relevant to you. on august 20th, al jaz

it turns out the water we see falling from the sky might not be the most common form of rain in our solar system. new theories say it is raining diamonds on the largest planets

in our solar system, and we toll you about an asteroid that astronomers say could collide with the earth in a few years. joining me now to discuss those stories and more news from outer space is derek pitts. great to have you back. so diamonds literally raining down on jupiter and saturn and there may even be diamondbergs floating in a see of liquid diamonds. how does this happen? >> i -- i hope it's true. it's a new found source of wealth if we can get in there to get some. the interiors of these planets

have very, very temperatures at their cores. we find diamonds right here in particular places that indicate that is the situation. but new models have indicated the way these interiors are, carbon can be released by the lightning storms, and then the carbon rains down becoming graphite at first, and then as the temperature and pressure increase, that graphite then turns into flakes of diamonds that grow and get bigger until you have these chunks of diamonds or even diamondbergs falling down towards the center of the planet. >> that's fascinating. it's impossible to think about harvesting diamonds

from these gas-giant planets. >> oh, it really is. the temperatures and pressures are really far higher than anything we have built can stand. we have dropped a probe into the atmosphere of jupiter before, and the spacecraft has broken down and melted away. >> talking about asteroids they discovered one recently that is coming back in 20 years, while when it came back it was at a relatively safe distance. we did see another asteroid that came closer to the earth than many of our satellites and nasa says there will be two more flying close to the earth wp the next few months, what is the danger to them coming within

close proximity to the planet. >> we had a pretty good scare last february when an asteroid broke up over russia. and that really heightened our awareness. and it was very important for us to begin doing more to keep track of these near-earth asteroids. fortunatelys that nasa works with other centers to keep track of asteroids. and 93% of the big ones have been identified and that's a good thing, because that means we have a good idea of what is going to be happening when. the smaller ones under a kill only thor -- kilometer could

really do some damage. it would really disrupt civilization as we know it today. >> because the one in russia was only about 400 meters, which is less than half of a kilometer, and even though it didn't hit anybody, just the sonar boom that it caused injured more than a thousand people. is there anything we can do if we do identify an asteroid that is on a collision course? >> that's a really great question. there are things we can do, but the most important thing we have to be able to do is identify them early enough, because we need the time to actually remedy the situation. and one of the most interesting things that has been suggested is the idea of sending out a spacecraft that is essentially a big dump truck, and you dump something on one side of the

asteroid and then let heating push it off of course over time, but you need time to do that. >> right. but unfortunately it can be done without nuclear explosions. the meteorite we just talked about, they recently pulled it from the crash. is there anything we can learn about that? >> oh, of course, the asteroids we have been able to get our hands on, we can learn so much more about what the early part of the solar system was like, and that gives up tips about how planets were formed and it has been a very big clue about how all of our planets have come to be in the sequence we have seen them now.

we have richard branson's virgin gal actick. do you see this getting to the point where space industry becomes common? >> there is two sides to this. one is the side of allowing nasa to outsource the mundane tasks of carrying supplies to international space stations. >> and they have done that successfully already? >> yes. and there are two or three companies that are in the running for that, and that is going to save nasa some money.

and the virgin galaktic, that is going to become very real. and right now you can already take zero g trips if you will, on what is called the vomit come met that allows you to experience zero g for i think about $4,500 on a weekend, and you can do this already. so the doors and gates are opening and i think this really is going to become a strong possibility not too long from now. >> the telescope has found 800 super planets in the milky way. planets that might have life as we know it. what do you think -- will we get to the point where we really know that life can exist in these planets? and what will that mean to us?

>> so far what we have been able to do which is remarkable in itself and be able to identify planets orbiting other stars. the next thing we have to do is develop the technology that will allow us to look very, very closely at their atmospheres and determine whether they are earth like. we have found planets that are maybe close to the size of the earth, and with an atmosphere to earth, but not quite. so we still have to find those planets that are just right. >> derrick, we're going to have

welcome to al jazeera america. i'm del walters. these are the stories that we are following for you. delayed by the shutdown, those unemployment numbers are finally released. international leaders are gathered to try to find a path to peace in syria. and a nevada middle school dealing with a deadly shooting. ♪ it is 18 days late and on a tuesday, but the labor department finally releasing the september jobs report in october. the une