only on al jazeera america >> this is al jazeera america, i'm thomas drayton in new york with a look at the top stories at this hour. >> in california two former fullerton police officers have been acquitted in the death of a mentally ill homeless man. kelly thomas died five days after a videotaped struggle with officers. >> chris christie facing more questions. federal officers looking to see if he misused hurricane sandy money on an ad that featured his family. chris christie will give a state address tuesday afternoon. >> west virginia's governor said tap water is safe again.

five days ago the water was contaum nated of -- contaminated 300,000 people. the chemical is in the water but it at low levels. >> sim is erupting. it had remained dormant for 400 years. more than 25,000 people have been evacuated. >> a plane is in flight after an overnight stay at a missouri airport. it landed in the wrong place, on a small run way. the pilots have been grounded while the airline and faa investigate. those are the headlines.

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>> th welcome back to inside story. i'm ray suarez. we're talking about

consider this: the news of the day plus so much more. >> we begin with the government

shutdown. >> answers to the questions no one else will ask. >> it seems like they can't agree to anything in washington no matter what. >> antonio mora, award winning and hard hitting. >> we've heard you talk about the history of suicide in your family. >> there's no status quo, just the bottom line. >> but, what about buying shares in a professional athlete? assault. afghan president karzai is long accused the un

coming up, next a method of birth control and a prescription you tune into and the discussion is next. for exclusive... revealing... and surprising talks with the most interesting people of our time... >> parkinson's forced his wife to type his novels. >> not only was i typing badly,

but i was hallucinating... >> now, a revolutionary proceedure is giving is giving this best selling author a second chance >> it was a wondrerful moment... >> after the implant, they turned the juice on, and... >> emily & martin cruz smith on talk to al jazeera only on al jazeera america

the stream is uniquely interactive television. in fact, we depend on you, your ideas, your concerns. >> all these folks are making a whole lot of money. >> you are one of the voices of this show. >> i think you've offended everyone with that kathy. >> hold on, there's some room to offend people, i'm here. >> we have a right to know what's in our food and monsanto do not have the right to hide it from us. >> so join the conversation and make it your own. >> watch the stream. >> and join the conversation online @ajamstream. >> the birth rate in the u.s. the birth rate for u.s. teens has declined dramatically since the peak in 1991 and a low in

2012 according to the c.d.c., the bureau says an unusual force behind the birth ray and the show 16 and pregnant and the spin off series "teen mom" 61 teens gave birth by the time 16 and pregnant aired in 2009 the rate went 39 out of every one thousand and then it's 29 out of 1,000 in 2012 and believe 16 and pregnant would have contributed in some measure to this resent sharp decline. >> i suddenly feel so grown up, in my life i don't come first anymore and joe is realizing he doesn't either. we have never been so stressed and it doesn't help that neither of us have slept in days. >> will you feed him for me? >> if you don't get up first.

[baby crying] a crying newborn is basically the new sound track to our lives and both of our patience is starting to wear thin. [baby crying] it's definitely taking a toll on us. >> you left the milk out again. >> what? >> no, joe. that makes me, beep. >> reporter: can a show like 16 and pregnant reverse a trend

like teen pregnancy? we are joined by a professor of economics at welsly college and thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> in a nutshell i'm curious, how did you do this study? >> well, we used a lot of data. they took two forms and used birth that took place in the united states over the past several years and focused on teen birth and the locations they occur to see whether or not the timing of the introduction of 16 and pregnant and the locations in which the show is more popular had a bigger effect on teen birth rate and we found that it did. the other thing we do is use a lot of data from google trends which describes search activity on the internet as well as tweets on twitter. and what we see in that data is

people search for and tweet about birth control and abortion considerably more when the show is actually on, like the days the show is on the air indicating that that is a mechanism for what is happening. >> reporter: why did you do this study in the first place? how does it occur to you we are going to study whether or not there is a correlation between this show and the lower numbers of teen pregnancy? >> it's really a very interesting question. it never would have occurred to us in the first place. but the teen birth rate started falling in 2009, 2010 and commentators started talking about what they thought their explanations were. most of the standard explanations didn't seem like they worked to us. we figure the labor market mattered a lot since we were in the middle of a huge recession at that time. but we also read sarah brown, the president of national campaign to prevent teen pregnancy talking about the potential influence of fixing a

pregnant and i wonder if maybe there is something there and that started the study. >> reporter: do you have any fear as you put this study out that you are making some false correlations here? i mean it could very well be that the teens who are watching it and that those teens have a relationship with their parents where their parents feel they are responsible enough to watch this in the first place and might not be the type of children who are prone to go out and get pregnant in the first place. >> yeah, the vast majority of the paper is designed specifically to distinguish the issue of correlation and causation and working to say it's a causal relationship. the sort of relationship you describe would not fit the change that we observed. in the locations in which the show is more popular at the time that the show begins, we observe a changing rate in teen births. and the change itself and it's

not just the people, it's the change in behavior that seems to be taking place at that time. >> and teens are resistant to various forms of manipulation professor and this is clearly the case and all you do is look to nancy reagan's just say no campaign regarding drugs back in the 1980s. >> sure. >> what makes you think that the media now can be an effective tool when communicating with young people? >> that is a very different intervention than nancy reagan telling people no. first of all you have a media company that is bread and butter is trying to make sure to cater to the interest of young people and very good at doing that and happen to pick this particular outlet conveying messages of child bearing and women themselves going through the experience, the fact it's a reality tv show, these things are actually happening to the women and the messages they get across in terms of relationship stress and instability and

nature of their relationship with their boyfriend, you know, lack of sleep, the fact that they have difficulty with their other friends which they tend to lose over time, difficulty in continuing with their education, these are things that are actually happening to real people and focus that in the show in a way that the regular public service announcement or nancy reagan just say know cannot possibly match that level. >> i have to stop you there and thank you very much, professor of economics at welsly college and thank you very much and very interesting study. >> okay, thank you. >> reporter: a teen mom featured on the first season of 16 and pregnant joins us now via skype. were you surprised by the conclusions of this study? >> not really. i had always, you know, gotten my own feedback from the audience and different people i meet and hoped and heard from

the girls actually watching this show what impact it was having on them. i think just by the study kind of proving it it just made it more worth it for me and made the whole experience much more of an accomplishment. >> reporter: what is it about the show do you think that makes it so effective reaching out to teens? >> i think the girls being able to actually put a face on a problem or a conversation that is going on. they always think abit but they don't know anyone who has gone through it or they never actually heard a story being told by someone that actually went through it i think. really just being able to put a face to the struggle and to the issue at hand really hits home for girls especially when we and the peers are the same age as them. >> reporter: when you hear generally about pregnant

teenagers, the connotation and image that most of the public has of young teenagers who get themselves pregnant is a pretty negative one, what is it about your personal story do you think that people really relate to? >> that is exactly what it was in the past. girls who became pregnant as teenagers were always viewed at, permiscuous or in trouble and lot and things like that and that wasn't the case. there were girls all the time who were very involved in school, very involved in sports, had a lot of friends, never got in trouble and girls like me, that is how i was this high school. this was happening to them. but they would hide from it and as soon as they got pregnant they would drop out of school and kind of disappear. so i think, you know, girls like me really relate to that because i'm kind of telling them, you know, i thought that this would never happen. i thought that i was too good to become pregnant as a teenager.

and i really wanted to show them that it doesn't matter what you're doing that is good and what all you have going on, if you don't protect yourself then it very well could be you too and could happen to anybody. >> one of the blessings of being a parent, i'm sure you figured this out by now, is being in the position to make sure that your children don't make the same mistakes that you did. so given this study and given your place in it so to speak by appearing on this show, would you make sure that your children watched this show or at the very least old episodes of it? >> definitely. i think that, you know, it's a very good educational way to open the conversation. i get feedback from moms all the time who have teenage sons or daughters and they say thank you for the show because if it wasn't for your show i wouldn't be able to sit down every monday

or tuesday night and talk to me kids about sex. it makes it a lot easier for parents to use us as subjects and talk about it and i think it's the same for me. i will be able to show my children, you know, what i went through. and really hope them understand ways to prevent them from being in the same situation. >> reporter: we have about ten seconds. are you glad now that you did this show? is it everything that you thought it would be when you first decided to do it? >> absolutely. i always said if i could just prevent one pregnancy from happening and one child from going through what my son is going to have to go through then i feel like i have accomplished something and i definitely with the study now i definitely think that happened so i'm very glad. >> i really appreciate you joining us and telling us your story, thank you very much and good luck with your young family. >> yep, thank you. >> reporter: ahead in our final thoughts this evening from classics to politics we will

take you inside a museum where cartoons are treated like master pieces.

♪

on friday we told you about a controversial auction in dallas, sacrificing one of africa's highly prized and endangers black rhinos to save one and there is more too it. on saturday the safari club sold a permit to hold one old man and black rhino for $350,000. the money will go towards conservation efforts which houses the largest number of black rhinos and they say the auction discounted the life of the black rhino and right now there are 4,000 black rhino in the world, a sharp decline from 70,000 in the 1960s. and finally tonight for centuries cartoons have been clever and controversial like a depiction of mohamed outraged

the world and they are increasingly revered as art and al jazeera john hendrin went to columbus, ohio to see how a new home of a museum preserves the largest collection of cartoons and comments. >> reporter: on top of the urban landscape is a new kind of temple for cartoons. >> and this for example is from 1798. it's a cartoon called pudilis and features a fight that took place in congress. >> reporter: the cartoon library and museum treats cartoons and comics the way the u.s. library of congress treats jefferson and chausse, seriously. >> they can give their collections of paper to ohio state and they will be preserved and exhibited and made accessible to researchers. >> reporter: from classic comics to political cartoons. >> this is a fantastic roosevelt

and richard nixon. >> reporter: one part museum and one part cartoon university where scholars from around the world study the weighty practitioners of light literature. >> and it talks about novels but this is the material that everybody had in their hands and these are i think important visual artifacts of an era that need to be, well, taken seriously. >> and you came all the way from hanover. >> all the way from hanover, germany. >> reporter: in the temperature controlled vault are 45,000 books of cartoons, 67,000 journals, the world's largest collection of cartoons and comics, in 1843 the british punch records the first modern use of the term cartoon and the calvin and hobs collection and the peanuts cartoon charles

m.schults. >> i like the peanuts strip, i do, the way it was drawn. the captioning. it's just timeless. >> reporter: in his original drawings of dick tracey. the collection includes 300,000 original works of art. there would be more but the originals were often tossed out after they were photographed and reprinted for the newspaper and so now a standard original by an artist like charles m.schultz may be worth 10s of thousands of dollars and this from 1951 is priceless. it illustrates stereotypes. >> there was a sensibility in how we portray minorities. >> reporter: and controversies all drawn together in a new home of their own. john with al jazeera columbus, ohio. >> reporter: that's it for us on america tonight and we will have more america tonight tomorrow. ♪

this is al jazeera. ♪ hello there and welcome to the news hour, i'm in doha, our top stories this hour, egyptians are voting on a new constitution that could give the military even more power. elsewhere violent protests. [gunfire] also ahead more violence in south sudan, hundreds died in a ferry accident trying to get to safety. we will have an update from