this is al jazeera america live in new york city. i'm del walters with a look at today's top stories. a number of allies growing increasingly upset with the u.s. over the allegation of spying. they say the trust has to be restored and reinforced. a report in the french newspaper says the u.s. has spied on 35 world leaders. and now seven senate democrats agree that the website

needs to be fixed. six agree that they want to postpone the enrollment deadline. and others want to suspend the penalty. one of the most powerful politicians in china has lost his appeal to overturn his sentence. he was convicted of corruption, embezzlement and abuse of power. those are your headlines. "consider this" is next. ♪ >> a congressional grilling on

obamacare. finger pointing and lots of anger. consider this, did we actually learn what went wrong, and do we know what is really ahead for the politically polarizing law? and was he once a radical in ask a commercial pilot turned author tells you, the real reason airlines ask you to turn off and stow your computer, and shouldn't we be worried when a plane hits turbulence in foo turbulence? >> the debate with the affordable care act. the clash with congress, and a hearing before the committee. >> this is not about blame, it's about accountability. and transparency for the american public >> if we want this law to work, we have to make it right. and we have to fix it. >> top administration officials and lead contractors appeared before this committee and looked

us in the eye and assured us repeatedly that everything was on track, except that it wasn't. >> amazon and ebay don't crash the week before christmas, and pro flowers doesn't crash on valentine's day. >> i cannot give you the exact date as to when it will be to satisfaction. >> how about a guess? >> i would prefer not doing that. >> the american public have been dumped with the ultimate cash for clunkers, except that they had to pay the cash, and still got the clunker >> the system is working, and people are enrolling >> once again, here we have our republican colleagues trying to scare everybody. >> will the gentleman yield? >> i will not yield to this monkey court. >> do whatever you want, i'm not yielding >> for more, i'm joined from los angeles with wendell potter. he's an executive with the

health insurance company, and mike from the kato institute. it's great to have you back. it got ugly there on capitol hill with blame flaking in every possible direction. and wendell, her group said that they had two weeks to do an end to end test. and another said they had just two days. others say that they do months of testing and the federal government could not pull off an effort as difficult and complicated as this, and are they right? >> they're off to a rough start. and i think in the coming days and weeks, the website will get much better, and we can't judge whether it will work in the next few days. it's a very complicated undertaking as i've written before. and i think we'll eventually get there. i think it will be sometime in november. >> michael, health and human

services asked congress for an additional $1 billion this year to set up the affordable care act and apparently, the republican house turned the agency down. so do credential republicans deserve some blame for this lousy roll out? >> absolutely not. congressional republicans, every single one of them have voted to fix the problems by repealing the law over and over again. we would not be having this discussion, and some people are getting cancellation notices and they might not be able to buy a new health insurance policy by january 1st if the changes are not up on time. question is, why did the democrats not vote to repeal this law as well if they knew it was going to go so poorly. >> wendell, you wrote

about this, the initiative of its inned i kindi think that we'll see that these problems be resolved. one of the things that the administration didn't count ongoing into this, they have to run these exchanges in 36 states, and it's enormously complicated, plus you're dealing with multiple insurance companies in every state. and even the insurance companies have difficulty transferring from one to another. it's an enormous undertaking, but it will be fixed >> michael, talking about the

states, some of the state run exchanges seem to be doing a better job with people that the insurance. but some people, like connecticut, are doing a lot of testing, and they're fine, and kentucky, because they kept it clean and simple, they're doing well. and we know that some republican governors have done what they can to resist obamacare, forcing them to go to the government website. and what do you think? is this not another case of obamacare adding to the problem if. >> it's not just republican, in missouri, there was a referendum by voters saying that we don't want it. and it's not just on the exchange side. two third of the states say that we don't want to implement this law because we don't agree with its approach. and the other half of them, medicaid expansion. and so when you're saying, oh,

this is the fault of the republicans or the fault of 25 states or in states that don't want to implement this law. what you're saying is that obamacare would be a great law if implemented in another country but not in the united states. >> let's look at history. the president had this to a in 2009 about his signature initiative. >> so let me be clear, if you like your doctor or healthcare provider, you can keep them. if you like your healthcare plan, can you keep that too. >> well, according to kaiser permanente, the largest healthcare group in the country, only three of their plans, 300,000 people insured from florida blue have already received cancellation notices, and 300,000 by kaiser itself. and another 119,000 by blue shield in california. these people are going to have to reregister for insurance, and

blue shield said 2/3 of their policy holders will see their rates go up, and as many as 16 million people will not be able to hold onto their current policies. so wendell, what happened to those current policies? >> a lot of those people are underinsured. in the studies over the last years, 30 million people are in policies that are totally inadequate. and they go far to make sure that people are adequately insured. and are buying value. the companies that i work for have sold policies that have such limited benefits that they are automatically in the run so they are underinsured when they enroll. so they're going to be getting much better conform, and one of the things that you must keep in mind, many many people, the majority of those uninsured, will be able to get help for premiums, so what they paid for coverage and out of pocket will be less than today.

>> mike, you want to respond? >> well, the question of when someone is underinsured or overinsured, the government has botched those decisions as well by telling people that they have to purchase more insurance than they find valuable. and the only difference is, it's not as obvious how much they're botching those questions as it website. >> let's listen to the former florida governor, jeb bush, and he had voice for some of his healthcare. >> i think that the best way to repeal obamacare is to have an alternative. you never hear the alternative. we could do this at a much lower cost and quality based on free market principles. >> is there a republican group in congress that has come up with a plan, but it falls way short, michael, in what

obamacare does in insuring large numbers of people. don't the republicans have to come up with something as good as obamacare to try to get people on the insurance rolls? i i think that they do, but neglect at this point in time would be a better policy than obamacare. unfortunately, there has been a republican policy for years and years, in prescription drugs in medicare, but i agree with jeb bush that the republicans need to put forward an alternative, but the most important part in any free market reform plan is to repeal this law. and until you do this, no free market forms will matter because this law permeates the healthcare sector and you can't take away one piece at a time. you have to get rid of the interior thing in toto. i think that as a result of all of those years of benign neglect, republicans don't know

what they're doing when they try to put a package with healthcare reform. and they need to spend time educating themselves and going back to the drawing board and coming up with better proposals and educate the public on how the proposals would make it better and more secure, and then advance those reforms. i think talking about their half baked proposals right now is dividing the opposition of the law, and distracting what the law is harming real people now. >> we have winners, including older people, and people with preexisting conditions, and people who can get subsidies, and losers include younger americans, and americans who will not get the subsidies, and will end up paying more in many he cases for insurance that they already have. are we seeing a situation where people making less than $200,000, and less than $96,000,

are in fact being taxed so others get subsidized healthcare, and is that not a violation of the president's promises that he would not tax people making less than that amount of money? >> one, we have to get away from the exchanges here in a minute. it really reforms how the insurance companies operate in an important way. it will make them -- they have blocked people in the past because of preexisting conditions, and they have been charging older people ten times as much as younger people. and that's one of the reasons why people my age, and each if had their 40s and 50s can't afford coverage. most people are in entry level jobs, and they don't make a lot of money. so most will be able to get subsidies to help to pay for premiums, and it will help to benefit every one of us. >> they were supposed to support poor people.

but according to the new york times, many small towns or rural areas will only have one or two insures, and no competition. a 50-year-old in atlanta would pay $350 for a silver plan, and that would cost someone who didn't leave in georgia $640, twice as much. is this pair to live a distance from cities? >> i'm not sure. there are economies, living if an urban area, there are conglomeration sternalities, and the piecing of these plans is so arbitrary that it's hard to say what's fair and what isn't. but that brings me back to something that wendell just stead in the last question, there are no winners, at least among consumers, because this

law, kathleen sebelius forces insurance companies to operate in new rules, they can't discriminate with people in preexisting conditions. those are price controls. they don't reduce the costs, they just tell insurance companies that you can't charge piece that's reflect those underlying costs, so insurers have to respond it that underlying economic reality in different ways, and wendell knows this, they try to avoid and mistreat and dump the sick, and we have seen it in markets over and over where they use these price controls. so even the people that the laws are intended to help are going to suffer. and they're going to find it harder to get the care they need. in a world where the government isn't telling insurance companies what prices they have to charge, what happens is, people purchase health insurance when they are healthy, and that

insurance stays with them when they get sick, and does it rise to reflect the fact that they get cancer or diabetes, and it's more secure than the health insurance that the government has been pushing on us for 70 years, which is employer sponsored insurance, which disappears when you get sick and can't work anymore. >> i will benefit. i'm in my 50s, and i am not eligible for medicare, and i couldn't get a policy because i have a preexisting condition, my mother will be helped and my daughter will be helped because she worked for an employer who doesn't supply coverage, and my son will be helped. the only policy that his employer offered is a junk insurance and that will be outlawed either.

>> somebody has to pay for it, but clearly a lot of people will benefit. this discussion will continue for a long time. thank you for coming on the show tonight. coming up, how did rupert murdock go from owning one newspaper to being the biggest media mogul in the world. and our assistant producer is tracking the stories on the web. >> cute and furry, and some slimy, and they all call the amazon home. great photos to show you coming up. and what do you think? join the conversation on twitter, consider this. and google.

>> when it comes to rupert murdock, you love him or hate him. on the left, the conservative bias of his media, and on the

right, a shining light of truth to counter the mainstream media's liberal elitism. the man who grew a family owned newspaper in australia, the most influentialipedia empire in the world, we're joined by the author of that book, great to have you here. he's a very interesting man, and of course the book is coming out at a very propitious time, because of the trial of many of his tenants in england about the phone hacking scandal next week. how high up is this going to go? is this something that threatens murdock himself? it's pretty high. among the people on trial starting in london are rebecca brooks, formally the ceo of his british operation there. and coleson, the editor of world news, who was forced to resign

when a hacking scandal occurred years ago, and then he went on to be head of the communications for the prime minister, and jake carney in new york. >> very high up. and he was taken to new york to testify last year, and his tabloid, the one that was involved in the phone hacking scandal had to be closed down, and parts of his media empire had to be closed down. and this company, they were trying to completely control. this is the guy who has the biggest media empire in the world, so why in the world was that the result of this investigation, just because of this one scandal? >> if you look at this scandal,

it's a two-fold scandal. murdock is the owner of the wall street journal. and fox news, and the new york post. and one of the top circulated papers in the world. and a paper through which he exercises a punishing regimen on the politicians that he wants to go after. in britain, it was an intersection of his control of the newspaper market, he had 40% of the newspaper circulation in the uk, and he had politicians vying for -- people say that he's hard right line, but he's center right. and he's willing to toggle left. and the politicians in the center feel like they might get him. hillary clinton running for senate, she made common cause with him. and tony blair, what it means, you have the political establishment on his team,

desperate for his approval >> catering to him and trying to come to him to get his approval. and one of the interesting things that you point out in the book, his political leanings have varied substantially over his life. when he was at ox ward, he was a left-wing radical. and how did he go from being a virtual communist to being in charge of the most powerful voices in the world. >> sowing his oats, and he had an anti-authority streak, and there was something that made him take the voyage from being the guy on the left to being significantly on the right. he had a vision and a drive, and you have to give him credit. he forced his way into the table when there were these established newspaper barons in australia and britain and he wasn't good enough for them. and then he did it in television. you used to work for fox tv out west.

and he demanded that he made it happen despite regulator. and he did it in britain as well. and he maintained this fiction and illusion that somehow he's apart from the media. politicians of all stripes and popes and prime ministers have him on speed dial. >> let's talk about his politics, you said center right, but he actually supports some issues that are certainly things that fox news and the wall street journal would strongly oppose. immigration reform, and he talks about wealth disparity in the united states, and he about global warming. a bunch of those issues that his outlets, he doesn't exercise any really? >> i'm going to say that he's really candid about this stuff. the times of london and the wall street journal in a way that he is not going to day-to-day

interfere with how they operate. he did say under oath, and this is true on both sides, and down in australia too, if you want to know how i believe in my heart, go read the sun tabloid every day. and he's not going to interfere as much. the funny thing about the wall street journal, he felt that the news coverage was too much to the left. and he installed top executives to pull it more to the center. when it comes to the wall street journal, they're more conserve testify than he is, and in fact, they're more. he said i'm not going to mess with paul jigo. >> this guy who lost money, and he was running the paper in the 5th largest city in australia, not a big deal, and how did he go from that to what he has

become. he tried to break into the american market, and he had serious issues because of foreign newspapers. >> i think that drive and combativeness, and willing to go for readers and viewers in a way that others might not have. he used numbers games in the tabloids. in london, took the sun, and made it an anti-elitist paper. he put the bare breasted women on page 3. the coverage of sports, and the girls was a bestseller to this day. the bestseller in the uk and it out sells everything in this country too. s a moxie and grievance that has driven him. a sense that his father has never given him the respect that was due, and broadcasting more, and it has sustained his fading newspaper fortunes, and his love of television. >>

his true love. moo >> reporter: and they have had to split the companies. >> you've been criticized from the right,s this a cruelty to his journalism, and a right for people who are critics and political opponents. and what happens been brought up, doesn't the other side do the same thing? if you're watching msnbc or some of the other liberal outlets online, there's very very aggressive position taking in those outlets too. >> i would say that what we operate? in some ways defined by murdock and defined either in relation it his approach or in opposition to it. >> so you think there has been a reaction to fox news? >> msnbc has been a profitable enterprise by observing it and doing an inversion of it on the left. the new york times said we are straight down the middle, who we

are, and look at the wall street journal, we're going to be a general interest newspaper. and we define the times as being on the left and we're in the center. and a smart news woman from the new york times said there's a way in which we have an ushane sensibility. we speak to the people in the country, not on the upper east side, but people with concerns who look through our eyes, and a lot of people say that's liberal. and criticisms, those were defenders to murdock, but if you talk, as i have, to many dozens of people who have worked with murdock in his home country of australia and in the uk, that's just a descriptive account of how he operates, not descriptive. but how he operates. >>

in australia he can pull 70% of the newspapers, and in the uk, it's above 1/3. >> is he unique? will we see anybody else like him? >> i think we will in times to come >> that kind of dominance? >> who have that kind of influence. i would say the combination of murdock's anglo sensibility of a strong voice and a punishing blow when he feels its warranted, it's kind of a norm in journallism, isn't it? and we have yet it see somebody in the new digital age. >> do you like him? >> i have real admiration for him. and i joyed the fact that he didn't want to play perfectly in the rules. and i do think that he has

subsidized a lot of hiring in journalism and these wonderful organizations, there are people who cover wars and put themselves at risk. but at the same time, there's a criticism with journalism that goes against the values that most journalists espouse and believe in. >> it's murdock's world. and it's out on bookshelves now. >> thank you for having me. >> time to see what's trend on aljazeera's website. >> this is a fun story from the science section of our website. scientists at the world wildlife fund have discovered more than 400 new species in the amazon. check out these wild creatures. this is a new species of a piranha, it can weigh up to 9 pounds, and it's strictly veg tare can. inia e >> and in the mountains,

scientists found this brightly colored snake. in the am zan, they found this from the hatchlings they collected and it has not been seen since. this frog may also be endangered because the area where it lives could soon be opened to tourism. if >> and my favorite, this species of a monkey found in the amazon basin. when their babies are content, they purr like a cat. in two words. , >> check out this story on aljazeera.com. antonio, what's not to love about a purring monkey? >> straight ahead, the mysterious case of a mysterious girl sheds light on a colony of gypsies, what are they really

like? fact from fiction, and also, they're famous, and making millions and millions of dollars, and they're dead. how are the latest incomes of celebrities in graveyards stack >> 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?

. >> did you know that 1 million roma, often called gypsies, are living in the united states today? it's part of the american mess treamerican -- mystery. for the american roma, difficult questions ofreas, ethnicity and social acceptance. joining me are two american roam a. thank you both for being here, and i expect that most americans do not know that there are around 1 million roma in this country. and you told us before we went on the air that you're taught to keep it secret. >> many of us are.

i would say most roma in the united states are taught by their parents to keep it secret. for the very practical reason that that it's a stigma. it's not the same kind of questions that you get in europe, but there's a lot of prejudice, and as i get older and less naive, people may not say it openly to my face, but a lot of people have negative ideas. >> i see you nodding, and you were also taught to keep it secret? >> absolutely, when it came out in the community where i grew up, i would get teased. there would be all of these assumptions about what we were, and what might happen, and the kids would be told to keep away from us. >> what happened this week, you have this little girl in greece

taken away from the people she was living with, and two children in ireland and they made dna proof that they were the children of the parents they were taken away from, and as you see that, how do you react? >> i'm horrified. it's these centuries old stereotypes, and these assumptions that romany people are gypsies stealing babies, and these are medieval truths touted in the 21st century. and they're doing harm to people. and even the child in greece. suddenly the idea that we're protecting the rights of the child goes out the window in a quest to find something that doesn't belong to what people assume to be romany features. >> you've lived in the united

states and in europe, so you've seen that there's a significant difference in the way, you were taught to keep a secret in the united states, there's a very big difference in the way that you're seeing here and in europe if. >> there are certainly differences in the reactions of people. over in europe, there's open racism. every time i go back this, my children and i spend our summers there, and we have some sort of verbal attack or physical attack or threats, and that's just part of being romany. and my children are darker skenned. in places like the czech republic, safety is not usually an issue here, but honestly, i have to say this week, watching the person next to me on the subway, with an article, huge letters, entitled

gypsy kidnap case twists, and it is what my kids are going to school with. >> and using the word, gypsy, there's ambivalence on whether it's okay or not? >> in general, it's not okay of course but the etymology of the word comes from two different roots. so in western europe it came from the misnomer that romany people came from egypt and it is not really offensive. >> because originally, they probably came from india. >> yes, 1,000 years ago or something like that. and then in eastern europe, it's a problem because the root means untouchable. >> there's serious segregation going on, and in schools, and there's tremendous poverty in europe. in the united states, they don't stand out as much. there's so much diversity here,

and they don't stand out. and the two of you are fair with light eyes, but even the darker skinned roma wouldn't stand out because there's so much diversity. but of this been so many depictions of roma on television. my big fat gypsy wedding, and also on the national geographic. let's look at that. >> meet the johns family. hot tempered, business savvy, and psychic. >> we're a big gypsy family >> looking at the two of you and how you were looking at that, i know the answer to this next question. what do you feel about that and those teens of stereotypes, doesn't it make it worse for all of if you >> absolutely. i'm teaching at rutgers right now, and i have a course on the romany people.

and my students will ask, was it really like ta? and what's worse, when i see romany people from europe, and they will say, are you guys in america really like that? so on every level, you have kind of non-roma u.s. seeing this, and you have them saying, really? >> on the other hand, there are those who would argue that there are roma in this country, and there's still owinged crime in the community and that is an issue, and what do you say to that? >> it's an issue in some italian-american communities, and it's an issue in certain jewish communities, it's an issue in every community. i wouldn't say that it's not true that some sort of ethnically defined groups of

people have particular kinds of crime that they tend to do. of course that's true, and i don't think that it's more true of roma necessarily than other groups. >> in europe, is it fair in europe that there's more crime in other communities because of the poverty? in france, they say that the community is only 50,000 strong and 10% of the crime? >> i think that's highly problematic, and first of all, that number is pulled out of thin air, and there are no ethnic identifiers that are legal in france to make, but on top of that, it denies the fact that roma in europe are often the develops of cream. of hate crime and thea appropriation of their land. >> and they have significant discrimination. in the united states, we're generalizing, but it's

thriving here, is that fair to say in i've read that, but both of you don't seem to think so many >> there are sub groups, and it's hard to generalize -- are jews thriving? but there are jews who are on welfare, so you have to be claire about which group of roma you're talking about. >> it's tremendously diverse within its ranks. >> class diverse, and group diverse, and i think that what happens, the racism and/or the thriving is very localized. so from community to community, whoever you are, if people know who the roma in the community are, there could be deep discrimination that's not at the national level on one hand, but also, the thriving can happen in all sorts of ways because of that diversity. >> the journey of the roma people is fascinating and i urge

people to read about it, thank you for being here. straight ahead, which celebrities who is not among the living beat the earnings of those who are? and later, cockpit confidentialful find out why you have to turn off your cellphones.

all next week america tonight investigates the campus rape crisis. >> serial rape is the norm on college campuses. >> i know that when i did report, i was blamed. >> then on friday, november 1st at nine eastern, we open up the conversation in a live town-hall event. sex crimes on campus, a special week of coverage and live town-hall on america tonight nine eastern. only on al jazeera america. >> today's data dive has the top earning celebrities who happen to be dead. michael jackson easily tops the deceased

celebs, raining in $460 million last year, he takes back the top spot of elizabeth taylor, who came in fourth largely because of her white diamonds perfume. most of jackson's money comes from two cirque du soleil shows that uses his music. and jackson's tony/atv music catalog, with rights to living entertainers, including taylor swift and lady gaga and the beatles. how does he pair to the top living entertainer in madonna is number one. but jackson made $5 million more than the material girl. incredibly celebrities who live in a graveyard have gotten more cash than those in the real world for three of the past five years. among the dead, elvis in second, $55 million,

not bad when his estate was only worth $5 million when he died. speaking of cartoons, peanuts creator, charles shultz was third, with $37 million, followed by elizabeth taylor. ask bob marley rounded out the top five. he beat marilyn monroe's earnings by $3 million. it seems that the fascination doesn't end when the celebrity's lives do. elvis' home, grace land, has attracted 18 million visitors in the last three decades because of the rumors that he's still alive. at popular novel based on them faking their own deaths. all of the issues of come back kings have sold out. as the comic said, death can be the ultimate career move. coming up, is turbulence a insure sign of trouble on your

flight in and what's the real reason you have to turn off your 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. millions who need assistance now. we appreciate you spending time with us tonight. up next is the golden age of hollywood going golden but elsewhere. why l.a.'s mayor has declared a state of emergency for the entertainment industry there. next. on august 20th,

>> a lot of what you think you know about flying is wrong. for example, the reason they ask you to turn off your computers has nothing to do with the signals they can send and receive of the a new book, cockpit confidential has everything that you need though know. it dispels a lot of myths that exist about flying. patrick smith wrote the book and he joins us from seattle. and as one of the millions of americans who is addicted to his electronics and mobile devices, is it necessary for us to turn landing? >> one of the things is that people need to remember there are different rules for gadgets for different reasons. one of the reasons you're not supposed to have your laptop out

for takeoff and landing is not for electronic interference but you don't want it to be a projectile. i don't want to get hit by my macbook air going 200 miles per hour. and as for phones, that's what everybody wants to know. there's a lot that we don't know. we're erring on the safe side. and there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that phones can interfere, and there were two accidents, one in new zealand that phones were thought to have contributed to the crashes. i think it comes down to being a social issue than being a technological issue. and by that, do we want to be on an airplane, sitting around 200 people all chatting on their phones at the same time? i don't. it's interesting because airports, u.s. airports in mar,

not so much in you were or elsewhere, are so damn loud. and i talk about this, what's so wrong with airports and why they're so desfunctional, one of the reasons is the knows level. you have the damn pb monitors league the news of that other network at every date. and they can't be shut off and turned down, and you have people talking, and pa announcements, sometimes playing four at a time on top of each other. and ironically enough, the airplane is peace and quiet. as long as there's not a crying baby near you, and we should try to keep it that way. >> i still have a bruise on my left arm from a woman that i never met before, from where she grabbed me with nasty turbulence a few months ago, and people get scared. worried? >> for the most part, no. it's amazing to me.

when i first started writing can and taking questions from the flying public, it amazed me how many, as a safety issue per se. granted, every year, a certain amount of those people are injured. people will hit showed, fall, break ankles and that sort of thing. the kind of turbulence that can damage a plane structurally is the kind of thing that 99 out of 100 airline pilots will never experience. >> flying out west, in one of the terrible storms that created a bunch of tornadoes, we must

have been flying for 40 minutes among the most incredible lightning storm i've ever seen in my life. it was dozens of bolts every second, and incredible to watch. is lightning something that we need to worry about? >> as a rule, no. the average airplane, it might surprise people, is hit by lightning once every two year, and this is something that i talk about in chapter three i believe. planes are built with lightning strikes in mind. and the reason is that they're sometimes in close proximity to storms. and the energy is safely discharged. i've been in planes hit by lightning several types, and the worst i've seen is a lib of superficial damage on the outside afterwards. and even that is unusual. in very rare cases, there can be disruption, usually a temporary disruption of the plane's electrical systems, but no big deal. >> we have heard all the time

that the plane flies itself for most of the trip. and no offense for you as a pilot. but how much time do you spend flying the plane? >> the idea that modern planes are so automated that they fly themselves is the most maddening myth, and it comes up all the time. we hear it over is over and over. it's wrong for so many reasons in so aen ways, but the analogy i like to compare, put it this way, the modern automation in a cockpit helps a pilot the way that modern equipment in an operating room helps a surgeon. it makes the job easy, but the plane can't fly itself fi more than an operating room can perform an organ transplant by itself.

the cruise control can't drive your car from new york to florida. and a cockpit can become so busy with both pilots, even with the automation on. >> the plane crash in buffalo killed 49 people. and in that case, pilot fatigue played a big role. these days, pilots don't make a lot of money, especially in the smaller computer airlines and what has been done since? >> pilot fatigue has been a problem for along team. and the faa has gone around and started a slew of new changes that will be put in place that should go a long way for the problem. people should remember on long haul flights, we bring in crews where we work in shifts, and pilots will work in teams, run will be in the back in the rest quarters for the flight and we switch, so we're getting rest

that way. in some countries, canada for example, in some other places too, naps in the cockpit are allowed under certain parameters, and maybe that's something that we should look at for two pilot crews where we don't have the automatic cruise. but the faa sees that as a radioactive topic. >> copilots in some countries often held back on telling the pilot about things going wrong because of cultural norms, and in some cases had disastrous results. >> the overwhelming crashes are either a result of break down in communication between the pilot and the copilot. if you overlay the list of cultures in the world by their power and list of culture per capita, it's the same list

>> anything to worry about it america? >> i think that he's using old data, and i have an email exchange where he talks about this. some of the safest safety cultures in the world right now come from places that you wouldn't expect. after the asiana accident in san francisco last summer, there was a spotlight on korean safety standards, and how people thought they were well below ours, and meanwhile, the un civil aviation branch did an audit a few years ago, and they determined that south south korea's aviation system was safer than ours and the world's. and they took in aircraft and culture and all of that. so what he's talking about is a problem that i think, in more in the previous generation, than the training now.

yeah. >> quick final question for you. nervous nelly flyers, any best seat for them? >> i'm asked that all the time. i don't like that question. statistically, the absolute safest place to a sit in the airplane is as far back as possible, but having said that, there have been crashes where the people in the front survived and the people in the back did not. it's not something to a concern yourself with. buy your ticket and sit where you want based on price and comfort. and don't worry about the safety aspect. flying has never been safer worldwide than it is root now, and you wouldn't know that, listening to the media, because these minor incidents get spun up so much. >> the snow may be

>> welcome to aljazeera america. i'm del walters, and these are the stories we're following for you. u.s. spying alleges, a growing distrust. saying not so fast. and painkiller abuse, the fda wants new rules. and coming out of bankruptcy, how man's best friend is getting left out in the cold. the u.s. now on damage control mode after