>> it is a.t.f. under fire for sting operations that are partly

manipulated mentally disabled people and applied minors with challenge and drugs. consider this, did the activity encourage all sorts of crimes, the a.t.f. is supposed to be fighting? many employers snoop on that their workers email and internet use, but a new together following this raises new questions about how far is too far when it comes to bosses tracking workers. >> a mainstream paper gets a marijuana reporter. the man who just got the highest-minded beat at the denver post will join us. i'm an tone i antonio mora. the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives, the a.t.f. in an effort to get guns and drugs off the street set up undercover store fronts in high crime areas and used mentally disabled men as unwitting pawns in their operations.

i'm joined from milwaukee by the main investigative reporter in the series on the a.t.f. sting operation. that thanks for joining us. this story began for you and your paper with a botched a.t.f. sting in milwaukee. what happened there and how did that lead you to this larger story of a.t.f. stings around the country. >> what we found was a series of follow-ups and failures in that sting operation, including agents having their guns stolen, as you mentioned, a mentally disabled person being employed to promote the store, then they turned around and charged that individual. they also arrested some of the wrong people, and they also admitted quite a bit of damage to the landlord's property and did not pay for it. after that story and the series ran, we looked at -- and the a.t.f. assured members of congress that this was an isolated incident, a case of failure of oversight in one

operation in milwaukee, so we put them to that test and we've investigated for a number of months and found that little a much broader problem than they portrayed at the beginning. >> after the a.t.f. told congress no, we are not doing it anywhere else, you found they are doing it in a half dozen cities. are more of these sting operations going on that you know of? >> they are around the country. the a.t.f. refuses to say much of anything to us for our work here, refused to disclose where these stings are, you can understand that if they are on going, but we asked for those concluded. they refused all of our freedom of information requests, that included tips and press releases in other ways we were able to cobble together a list. what we found in those six cities has a lot of people talking. >> let me bring some of those in. here are some of the a.t.f. tactics. the bureau

used mentally disabled people in tinge operations and then in some cases arrested them. it opened undercover drug buying operations near churches and schools. provided alcohol and marijuana for teens, encouraged gun theft by offering high prices for stolen weapons. it damaged buildings, like the one in milwaukee, leaving landlords to pay the bills. it pushed suspects to obtain guns that would bring higher penalties in court, so more elaborate guns and then it hired a felon in one case to run a florida pawn shop in order to boost arrests. you describe them as rogue tactics in your story. when you listen to that whole litany of things you found, it seems rogue is a nice way of describing it. >> as people talked about it over the last couple of days, there's been more colorful terms used. the anecdote we start with is the mentally disabled individual that the agents encouraged him to get a tattoo on his neck of a

squid smoking a joint, and this was to promote their storefront sting in portland, oregon. the jump in that case was trouble'd by that. he's a former sufficient attorney in oregon, so that was one example. you mentioned the confidential in form a.m. or felon working for the a.t.f. that was in florida. what's interesting in that case is after he helped the a.t.f. bust these people, he himself was arrested for pointing a loaded gun at an individual outside a bar, which is arguably a more violent and serious act than the people whom he set up. that case ended up getting picked up in federal court and he ended up getting a nice deal, just six months and he's now on house arrest. >> that case always involved the 24-year-old in pensacola, jeremy norris who got caught up in that sting after getting a phone call of someone asking for a gun.

he has an i.q. of 76. he ended up selling the gun to the fellow working for the a.t.f. this is what he had to say. >> this kid would come in and sometimes barely keep his eyes open, or barely stand, and he always talked with a slurred speech, because of either alcohol or drugs, so, you know, i personally couldn't tell, he might have some learning disability for something, i don't know, but he don't seem retarded or any kind of, you know what i mean? >> norris was convicted, but because of his mental disability, the judge just gave him probation. doesn't sound like much of a victory in the war on crime. >> what he doesn't say there is he said that the agents and he would jokingly, he said jokingly refer to him at half retarded. there was another case in wichita, kansas where from the very first video, the agents

referred to a man there with an i.q. in the mid 50's of being the slow-headed one. that guy was key. he helped be the pied piper in the neighborhood. he helped set up 50 people and then was charged at the end with more than 100 counts of being a felon in possession, but he thought he was working for a legitimate tore. he tried to reach out to the a.t.f., not realizing who they were after he was arrested, thinking that they were his employer and they were going to bail him out, that's how, you know, mentally diminished you this individual is. >> according to a.t.f. spokesman robert schmidt whom we asked for comment, he said: >> what's your response to that? the a.t.f. says it was just doing its job, trying to keep the streets safe. >> they also issued a statement

out of washington to the same effect. what our questions were, they did not answer. what they're talking about is their overall policy, but what we're looking at is how did it play out. if your goal is to keep the guns off the street, why did you let a felon leave the store, telling him to saw off the shotgun because it brings a higher penalty and even telling what kind of saw to use. you're talking former federal prosecutors, the point they raise, this isn't really what the federal system is for. it's for large, you know, gang takedowns and kingpins of that nature. their point, one individual put it this way, this individuals are coming in making these kinds of cases and they're not going anywhere, that's a waste of federal resources, in this former prosecutors version. go ahead. >> in this case, what many have said, to criticize what the atf did, they were manufacturing crime, buying guns at higher prices, people were buying guns

and bringing them to the a.t.f. sting operation. they operated pawn shops where they would buy garmins and other technology, so people were going out, stealing the stuff and bringing it to the a.t.f. >> that's right. they would do it over and over again, that happened in pensacola, in arizona, as well. you know, that was not a component here, but what we saw was time and time again, they would continue to buy these things and that was a concern that the state prosecutor in florida said from the outset. they realized that this could stimulate the burglaries in the area, and one individual stole a bike from walgreens, rode it right over there and sold them the bike. the office was burglarized in milwaukee. in one place, they stole the equipment and sold it back to themle. >> appreciate your time, thank you very much.

>> thank you, appreciate it. >> switching tactics from a.t.f. tactics to new calls for a truce in the international war against illegal drugs. prohibition and rad occasion remain the official u.s. you stance where illegal drugs are concerned and is the official position of most our countries and the u.n., as well. according to deputy director of harm reduction international, the idea that there is a global consensus on drug policy is fake. the differences have been there for a long time, but you rarely get to see them. a story in the guardian claims we may get to see those differences next spring when the u.n. publishes its latest position on the drug war. according to a leak on the document, some european and latin america policies want drug treatment to take precedent over punishment and prohibition. that what could that mean for the drug war in the united states.

for more, i'm joined by the executive director with the drug policy alliance and from rio, the director of the open society drug policy program, advocating for change in global drug poses. great to have you both with us tonight. ethan, your organization advocates and i quote for drug policies that are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. i know you're focused on marijuana in the united states now, but in the end, does that mean trying to get legalization of drugs across the board? >> no, no, what i would say is about a third or a little more of our work focuses on ending marijuana prohibition in the u.s. and around the world. that began with medical marijuana, now legal in 20 states, also decriminalizization. with 50% of americans saying lets regulate and tax marijuana like alcohol, that's a focus. with other drugs, some of our membership is saying legalize it all. i think most would say, legalize

marijuana, tax and regularring great it, with the other drugs, stop criminalizing people for simple drug possession, make a commitment to treating drug addiction as a health issue and for those people absolutely determined to get their drugs, from the black market if not legally, lets look at what the europeans have done, allowing heroine addicts to get legal drugs. >> if international support for prohibition and punishment for the main policies is really breaking up, why is that happening now? >> there are many reasons. that right now, we are seeing quite clearly the public health outcome of those failed policies, that's mostly in europe, we are seeing clearly in latin america the violence that is increasing significantly over the last number of years, so i think on both continents,

they're increased unrest and disappointments with the current policies as they stand and those are being articulated more and more clearly. there are a number of countries, for example, switzerland and others that have already implemented drug policies and we have much to learn from them, and to inspire others. >> ethan, hasn't the international experience been buried in some places, it's worked quite a while, portugal, which has the most liberal drug policies of all, it seems it's working there, that drug use is down, but in holland an the results mixed? >> not really. the bottom line is any country that's made a commitment to a health approach, a decriminalization approach has by and large seen positive results. in the netherlands where the retail sale of marijuana has been legal for 30 years, the rates of marijuana use there are roughly the same as the european

average, maybe lower, dramatically less than the u.s., which has had a harsh prohibition policy until recently. the percentage of those going on to harder drugs is lower, because the dutch separated the marijuana market from other drug markets. by and large, the risks of decriminalizing drug possession. health commitment are virtually nil where as the up side in terms of ricing crime, disease, death, overdoses, spread of h.i.v. and help c are all, the evidence is sort of hands down clear. the bigger questions are when you legalize something, what washington and colorado are doing now, you are guy is likely to do tomorrow, there i guess risk of marijuana use going up, but the benefits in terms of reducings alarms of prohibition, the black markets crime are overwhelming which is why i am in favor of moving that direction.

>> there is a lower cost, not danger involved, because the quality of the drugs, you don't have to worry about poisons being mixed in. there are many reasons why drug use could increase with legalization. >> i don't think the increase is going to come among young people, already they have remarkably easy access to marijuana. there's three national surveys where young people say it's easier to buy marijuana than alcohol. i think with marijuana legalization, we'll see an increase in people our age, it's going to be older people saying, you know, this is about her than having a drink at the end of the night or i prefer it to the sleeping pill or it helps me with this anxiety. i think it's going to be this medicinal use that's going to expands. frankly, i don't see health consequences involved with that. >> what about internationally,

allowing the states to experiment while telling the world at large that prohibition is the only solution to the drug problem? >> i think it's a very telling moment for the united states. for many, many years we have seen united states being the sort of prohibitionist leader, and now with the states that actually chose to legalize can bass, obviously that legitimacy of the prohibitionist leader is gone. i think that is powerballly why a number of latin american countries louder and more articulate in what it is that they are -- what they're hoping for. i think the assumption across the u.s. is that those are not the only -- the two states that chose to legalize are not going to be the only two forever. i assume those numbers are going to increase. i think it's actually very clear when you talk to leaders in latin america that they no longer want to listen to the

u.s. telling them to be restricted. >> right. >> when at the same time, it is the two u.s. states that are legalizing can bass. one important point, just going back to the question about what is the potential impact of decriminalizing or regulation, looking at the portuguese example, what's interesting is that actually more people go into treatment since they decriminalized personal possession, because the state is no longer the enemy. it actually is a potential service provider. i think that's also an important point. it's not whether people are going to use more, it's also a question of what is the relationship of drug using sit en s to the state and in portugal, clearly people want to go into treatment. i think that's an important piece of information that we shouldn't overlook. >> according to the league documents, i want to talk about that, the focus on treatment in the united states, according to

the leaked documents, countries that want to move away from prohibition, columbia, ecuador, morocco, norway, switzerland, morocco is discussing legalizing marijuana cultvasion. the europeans are concerned with h.i.v. spread by intravenous drug users. you mentioned are latin countries like columbia, part of the focus trying to put down the guerilla groups? >> we need to be realistic. we are assuming that regulation is going to salve owl problems is unrealistic. we should think about there is no need to use a policy to continue the status quo as it

is. i think taking the market away from the illicit trade is one way to go about disempowering that market, so i think that's the right direction to move forward certainly with can bass and we'll see how the discussion moves around coke da in latin america. >> interestingly as i was reading through this, i know both of your organizations at different times have had support from george sroros. interestingly, the koch brothers report think tanks that also ever the same position as your organizations have had on decriminalization. you have been pushing for a long time for a different approach to handling the drug problem. what significance would it have in the u.s. if the u.n. began to move away from prohibition to treatment. >> i don't think it's going to make a big interest in the u.s. americans are not that interested in what's happening outside the united states. what's more important is that

with washington and colorado voting to legalize marijuana last year, look for oregon to move forward next year, maybe california, possibly alaska, we're going to see a number of states going that way. when i go to latin america, what people want to know there from the president to people at every level of society, they want to know what's going on with legalization in marijuana. for them, the notion that the united states which has been the evil empire for the war on drugs for so many decades, when it comes to marijuana policy, the u.s. is emerging as the global leader of sensible marijuana policy. not at the federal level, but at the level of public opinion, city and state government, that is galvanizing for other parts of the world. >> opinion, more than 80% of the americans feel that the war on drugs has been a failure. how quickly do you think things are going to change in the united states. >> i will tell you. i think 2013 will turn out, thief been the tipping point

where it comes to marijuana legalization. because of last year in washington and colorado, the gallup polls, the justice department giving washington and colorado a green light to move forward, when it comes to dealing with the issue of mass incarceration and pulling back those levels in the united states, we're more at a turning point. it's a lot like turning around an ocean liner. you can point it a new direction, but trying to unravel this prison industrial complex we built up over the last 40 years is going to take many years and a lot of hard work. that's the long term struggle we have in front of us. >> a lot of changes coming. i appreciate you both joining us to talk about it >> start with one issue ad guests on all sides of the debate. and a host willing to ask the tough questions and you'll get... the inside story ray suarez hosts inside story weekdays at 5pm et / 2pm pt only on al jazeera america

night with the combatants in their training base.

>> how closely are you being watched at work? it's no longer just about what you post on social media, write an email or your last key stroke. we report on the next phase of monitoring employees, data

collecting badges that track your every move. >> most aren't jumping at wearing an employee tracking advice. >> they ask do you count how many times i go to the bathroom and do you record what i say. >> i had those questions and more. >> the and that is is no. once you answer that, people participate. >> top of voice, postyou are, body movement, with the end goal of producing a more efficient, more profitable company. thing billy bean, played by brad pitt in the 2011 film, money ball. >> the problem we're trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. then there's 50 feet of crap, and then there's us. >> for the sake of our one day trial, we collected and viewed data on an individual level. >> i'm about to get my electronic badge. very excited to test it out.

>> you just put it around your neck and flip up the on switch, ready to go. so let's start. >> data is being collected. i'm a little self conscious. >> that happens, but it fades over time. >> we enlisted the help of ben's colleague, the first scenario, a conference room discussion about what to order for lunch, very heavy stuff. >> consistently, they have all these competitions and everything. >> you know that coworker that just talks? >> i want to go for something a little healthier. >> and talks. >> just a lot better and really good. wait, wait, wait, hold on oh second. >> oh did the data show it. >> you can see this is me in blue talking. people are able to come to me and say ben, you need to tone it down. >> you got to pipe down. >> exactly. >> after lunch, we compared the alert productive employee with the lays, tired employee. >> time for a snooze.

[ buzzing ] >> again, the data was loud and clear. >> you're in your chair, your posture is upright a little bit and it starts to front line when you lay down. >> if my boss had access to this individual data, i might be in big trouble. i asked if ben's company would sell it to those who wanted to spy. >> they're not allowed to use it in a way that identifies individuals. if they did, they would vital the contact, the participant would have the right to sue them, as well. we won't operate in that way. >> almost all of. we's employees choose to wear the badges, but why? bank of america is a good example. ben's team saw one call center was outperforming another. they looked at the data the badge collected and made one simple change. they gave half of the teams at the lesser performing call center the same scheduled break time. >> people completed calls 23%

more quickly when we made this change. there was no significant change in a group where they didn't change their breaks, and that's i didn't know credible. >> you found when people are more social, they're less stressed and their performance is higher. >> it's not rocket science. >> like it or not, people an littics is evolving and you might be the next lucky employee to find a badge with in our name on it. aljazeera, boston. >> we are joined by the guy who talks and talks and talks, ben waiver, the president and c.e.o. and by don peck, his cover story, they're watching you at work looks at the field and how it is transforming how companies hire, fire and promote. he joins us from washington, d.c. great to have you both with us tonight. don, we already know we are

being monitored in all sorts of ways, depending where you work, employers will watch your emails and instant messages, two thirds of employers are said to be monitoring your internet activity. we have cameras watching us. we have our phone information, laptop information, some even monitor every key stroke we use on our computers, so why would a data gathering badge like that be much more of an invasion of privacy? >> well, it's different that that those other methods, because companies are beginning to do things beyond looking at weather you're looking at pornography at work. they're using voluminous data now and comparing it to metrics of performance at work, using this kind of data to try to assess how people are doing and how they can do their jobs better. that it's really a kind of different tracking. whether it's an invasion of

privacy, as the opening segment indicated really depends on the employer, and the way they use the data. >> well, and ben, your company doesn't want the badges to be used to monitor individuals. they want to come to the workplace, but to look at sort of group trends amounted not about tracking individual employees. again, as i asked don, why is it such a big deal to focus on the individual? >> well, i mean, first of all, in terms of the technology, employers don't have the ability to look at individual data. we aggregate the data so it's not possible for employers to look at that. if you hacked in to our databases, you wouldn't know whose data is who. i think it's important that the idea today, one of the examples i use is the work we're doing in retail. you think about it today, the way it works today, i might have, it's sort of like the gap. i might have stores all across

the country and maybe one store is out performing the others. today i have fundamentally no idea why that's happening. it's the way employees are interacting with customers and with each other. understanding that is hugely important. if i can bottle that and transfer it to these other teams, it's going to make everybody happier. >> you did that in the bank of america example. i understand looking at it, sort of in a group way. >> sure. >> but wouldn't it also help if you had more information about individuals and how effective they were? >> the thing is that in terms of performance data, we're not actually, the badges themselves and data sources that we tap into, we're no the generating the performance data. this is data we get from the company and we can relate it to patterns. if you take a rest at work, take a nap that that'sun productive is not accurate. the idea is that we're taking

performance data that companies already have and relating it to these patterns. it's not to say that there aren't potentially uses for individual data, but we think that the potential for privacy violations and abuses just make going down that sort of road really not a good way to go right now. >> don, you say in your piece that these technologies and there are many of them, not just the badges, that all of these could have all sorts of positive effects, including getting rid of some of the biases that exist in the workplace that you can actually eliminate a lot of the discrimination that exists whether intentional or unintentionalle. >> when you look at how we hire, evaluate and promote people in the u.s. it's astounding how casual it can be. what's the difference between c.e.o.'s and other people no one big difference is that c.e.o.'s

visually look more competent than the rest of us, but they're at great pains to show that looking confident has nothing to do with the financial performance of a company. tall men get promoted more than short men, beautiful women make more than unattractive women, the list goes on. much as with money ball, i think the opportunity to use data and link it to performance and use that to kind of augustment our qualitative human judgments can actually be a good thing, match people to better jobs, and can eliminate some of these biases. >> ben, then for that to happen, don't we need it individualized? >> well, and there's a real question, i think of in the long term what the sort of data looks like but also what the laws around this are. you can imagine a future where i take my data, because the way we work is essentially you own your own data. imagine i try to find my job and take my data to another employer and say i'm an ideal candidate.

you can take my data and see that i am going to be an excellent employee and fit in really well with this company. i do think there's an emphasis on the individual here and certainly there's all these benefits, but i would argue that the whole reason we're in companies and a lot of the problems companies have is about working together and collaborating with each other. the very simple questions that we have around what groups should i be working with, that's an individual feedback that i can get is incredibly useful. i think that the area is really important. >> the harvard business review looked at what came out of the study and said about a third of teen performance can be predicted by the face-to-face exchanges among team members. too many is as much of a problem as too few. he was able to predict what teams would win a business plan contest and the data signature

of natural leaders. is there a danger of going too far with this technology and just becoming a slave to metrics and not even -- yeah, that we go to you, ben. >> well, i think that in our c.e.o. that did that study, when you look at these metrics, the idea that you are just saying i've got to get my cohesion metric up or talk to this many grooms just to do it, clearly you're going to have problems there. really, the things that we focus on and find as outcomes are things that individually you can influence but are much more about setting up the environment in such a way that the right interactions are going to happen. to give an example, the way motor people try to choose where you sit at work, here's an open

desk, we're going to put there you. that has a huge impact in terms of how people collaborate. the people you sit next to are responsible for 40% to 60% of all the interaction you have. what that means is if you have -- if i just put you on a different floor, away from people you shouldn't be talking to, that has a huge effect. with this data, we can say let's use al gore rhythms to make decisions. you can drive collaboration patterns that we want to have. >> these ago gore rhythms are being used. xerox uses them for possible employees.

>> derocks does do interviews, but many hiring managers have found the scores to be so successful in predicting success that they see it as a form at today. they got a color code red, yellow, green, based on an on line test that prospective candidates have taken to look at cognitive ability, personality and specific skills, and the score has proven to be very predictive of performance. i think that that is a danger. i think if you take these things too often, that that's not such a good thing, because, you know, scores are fallible just as people are. i think most companies that i've talked to are really using both. i should note, including xerox. >> you talked about how you were creeped out about this, but looked into it and found all this workplace technology could

ever a larger impact on the economy than wall street trading and the once that figure out the ads that they should sell us. thank you for joining us.

>> today's data drive is a big fraud or at least those who fake their way on to big stages. nelson mandela's memorial was marred by a signer who wasn't really signing and stood a step away from world leaders. the deaf federation said the

man's movements were arbitrary and did not make sense. one tweet summed up the outrage? what is he signing? he knows the deaf cannot vocally boo him off. >> david any of convenients introduction of liz tailor was interrupted by a naked streaker. >> probably the only laugh that man will ever get is stripping off and showing his shortcomings. >> a man wore a fake referee uniform. he stripped offer the uniform and danced, wearing only a thong before a player tackled him. he has run naked through wimbledon, the morning weather t.v. forecast, but called the superbowl the holy grail of streaking. in superbowl xii, as tom landry

was carried off the field, you can see defenseman larry cole on the right. the guy on the left was leon rich. he was even part of the trophy presentation to winning coach vince lombardi. he snuck into dozens of ceremonies. he had a better time than james miller, paragliding into the ring during the seventh round of the beau, holyfield fight. the lines of his parachute got caught in the lights and the crowd and security attacked him and knocked him unconscious. >> then there is the white house dinner being crashed. they got a public lashing before congress. mikael parleyed it into a spot with the real housewives franchise before running off with a guitarist. >> coming up, why are scientists

questioning widely held beliefs in human evolution. the discovery that could hang >> audiences are intelligent

>> the history of man has been up ended by the oldest human d.n.a. ever discovered. scientists pulled it from what they believe is a 400000-year-old fossil, 400 times older than the oldest previously discovered d.n.a. and is changing everything we thought we knew about human every illusion. john, great to have you with us. tell us about this discovery and the importance of it. >> well, basically, what it's done is multiplied our ability to look at our ancestry. your d.n.a. carries a signatures of where we evolved from, came from and being able to find it in these ancient bones adds to it is tremendous amount of information to what we understand about them.

>> how does it change our thinking? >> up until about five years ago, we really thought that within the last couple hundred thousand years there were behavioral three groups of ancient humans, modern humans like us, neanderthals, and probably homo erectus. it was a simple picture with the specimens we're talking about now were basically common ancestors of modern humans and neanderthals. what we have found as we eek wednesdayed ancient d.n.a. is there is a group we didn't know about. this group in spain is closely related to this little part of the dna to eye berrien who lived 80,000 years ago. that we have this complicated mixture the of ancient groups and many more kinds of them than we anticipated finding. >> that's the thing, that there

may have been multiple species of humans that were living at the same time? >> yeah, it's a great problem for people like me, because we've got this complication of there are different kinds of things. we know we were mixing with each other to some degree. when we call them species, we are not talking about species in the sense of they weren't able to interbreed, because we're finding that humans today are part neanderthal and part this other population we didn't know about. neanderthals are part other stuff. it's this crazy mixture of things, like a dr. sues world in the past. >> when you look at different parts of the world, people may have more neanderthal d.n.a. or some populations in asia, what they found in spain

was this den iso van d.n.a. >> it is literally just the end bone of a pinky, and we would know nothing at all about what that bone was like, it's not like we used a pinky bone as our indicator of evolution, but out of that bone, we now have 3 billion base pairs of d.n.a., the whole atory of this individual's ancestry from this tiny bone. in the spanish specimen, 400,000 years ago, so far, we only have a little part of the d.n.a., but the technology has evolved to the point where we're going to have more of that very soon. >> we're going to be seeing more and more old d.n.a. because of the new methods? >> yeah, basically as you die and your body degrades, so does your d.n.a., broken down into tiny bits over time.

today's sequencing technology which was not developed for us, for medicine and for understanding jeanettes is basically built on the idea of sequencing little tiny bits of the genome. we are able to use those techniques and added vans them to a certain degree, doing a tremendous job developing new library prep techniques to make the d.n.a. from ancient bones work in today's sequencing machines. >> do you think we'll find more species that haven't been discovered yet? >> we've sequenced three different groups of ancient people and thought they would look pretty much alike and we have two of them that we didn't anticipate finding before, so i expect that as we're able to sequence things from more places, we're going to find more

groups and not less. >> even though they didn't look a like in the past, they were as you said, interbreeding pretty extensively, it seems. >> yeah, people ask me, you know, what do you imagine this interbreeding was like. it's basically dances with wolves, you know, different groups of people that come together and when they come together, they behave at people do, whenever we come together. >> why did these other species go extinct? >> it is the best question, really, because we look around the world today and we see such a diversity of people living different lifestyles and these ancient people, you would think well, they couldn't be that different, considering the variability that exists now. i think that the real answer is that over time, we always have sources of human populations

that are growing, and they grow in the expense of other populations. when people come in contact, some succeed more and others decline. that doesn't mean that they necessarily become extinct because they do mix, but replacing to a genetic degree the ones that are declining. that's probably what we're looking at in humor begins. it's much more complicated than we expected it to be. >> a lot more as we find these different fossils and the d.n.a. keeps teaching us. really appreciate it, thank you for making some very complicated very color. we look forward to having you back to talk about further discoveries. >> the show may be over, but the conversation continues on our website or facebook and google plus pages. you can find us on twitter megae

> hello from al jazeera's headquarters in doha and london. this is the newshour. coming up in the next 60 minutes: millions desperate for help. the u.n. launches its biggest-ever appeal for aid. $6.5 billion is needed for syria. >> all the children we have with us are ready to fight. >> we are in central african republic where rebels admit to using