the islamic state group targeted the west for recruitment. we bring you to a north american that bout the pitch and died fighting. wajahat ali in for antonio mora, those stories and mar ahead. sh -- more ahead. >> syria's president bashar al-assad is starting his third term after a victory last month. sham. >> bashar al-assad says western and arab states will pay the price for terrorism. >> a setback in tikrit. government forces retreating

after facing heavy fighting. iraqi forces are trying to recapture areas claimed by the islamic state. >> why isn't more money put into autism. mother. >> there's a huge autism tsunami hitting the stage budget. >> cody calafiore is taking -- california is taking drastic measures to lift the state out of drought. >> anyone hosing down driveways or keeping fountains running could be fined $500 a day. >> there are pockets of extreme depravation where they are out of water and jobs. >> syria's president bashar al-assad walked the red carpet receiving an enthusiastic reception an a swearing ceremo ceremony, marking the start of a third term. he refused to character es the conflict in his country has a civil war. it's killed tens of thousandsers

displaced millions. and now recruiting foreign fighters. iraq struggles to form a new government. the islamic state formerly i.s.i.l., continues to gain ground with a social media campaign. brian joins me, counterintelligence research and former director of research at west point. good to have you here. syria urges western countries to end their support for the rebels and focus on defeating the islamic state group. obama and others sounded the alarm about how concerned they are about western recruitment. this is an example. >> i was like any other regular canadian. i watched hockey, went to the cottage in summer. fished, hunted. i liked out doors, i had money, sports, family and good friends. i had colleagues. it's not like i was a social

outcast, wasn't like i was an anarchist or somebody that wanted to destroy the world and kill anyone. i was a good person. people. >> that's andre. he was a 24-year-old canadian who left to fight in syria. he appeals to brothers saying moou handlinga dean are regular people. is he appealing to the french or the main stream. >> when you look at terrorists, one of the shocking things about them is they seem like regular people, until they decide to do something violent. it's not just jihadis. they didn't join the islamic state in syria and iraq. so you know, that framing is not all that surprising. clearly that is a propaganda video designed to attract other westerners. folks in western europe. english speakers.

that might be tempted to go join, you know, i.s.i.l. or the islamic state as they calm themselves. what he's trying to do is basically say look, it's okay, even if you don't have training are are not prepared for this environment, i made the leap and you can as well. unfortunately that is going to - he's going to have success with that. just to be fair, the person on the tape, he wasn't a normal or nice guys, he was arrested twice making. >> this is something you see with other folks that have joined jihadi organizations, they dabble, looking at an arkists and others. it's not that surprising there's something surprising that when people are drawn to the violent groups, there are two people, one they are attracted to an ideology, they are rejecting the social norms that they are in.

sometimes you see them bounce from one counterculture ideology to another. that's the case here. >> you have been following this since 9/11. how does it refer to al qaeda, they posted 40,000 troops as they took mosul. the second-largest city. are they more sophisticated. >> i think the general outlines of the way that these sorts of organizations use social media changed as technology changed. after the invasion of iraq, with the ability to upload large amounts of video, you saw video posted rather than tem online. from there there's a move to foreign websites, where they are back and forth between the organizations and their followers. and with the civil war in syria, it came at a time where twitter and facebook really this taken off. and that is what you see the islamic state and other militant organizations in syria releasing

material through the vectors. what happens there, and what is interesting is that that gives potential followers direct access to people that are on the ground. and, you know, whether it's - recruitment to any organization, whether it's a - you know, green peace or, you know, to be a red cross volunteer or to go to iraq to fight, the way you recruit people is to have someone that has been there, done it, stand up and say i was like you, you should join me. >> you mention on the ground in iraq. islamic state group fighters control large areas in iraq and repelled efforts by the iraqi military to take back territory. they are trying to get the home town of tikrit back, and they failed. this goes on as iraq struggles to form a new government. is i.s.i.l. gaining power. >> yes and no. on the one hand the coalition of sunni groups that has aligned

with the islamic state is entrenching nz the north and west of iraq. the longer that there is a stalemate, the more there'll be tensions in the coalition that the islamic state aligned with. and many groups, whether tribal or other militant networks formed out of military officers, they will not put up with the extreme understanding of sharia for long. the coalition will crack eventually. >> both of us should feel honoured or scared. we have been controlled by the islamic state group. they targeted me. after a show we did earlier, where we talked about glen's latest report about the n.s.a. surveying leaders, i tweeted about that, and they responded with a tweet saying: one of your quotes was

featured in an i.s.i.s. congrats on that, i guess. they are paying attention to what is said about them. the question is for what purpose - recruitment. intimidation. at least they called me brother, so i'm probably coming out better than you. crusader. you. >> i think what it shows in these cases is that these folks say they don't care about having an external validation. it's not true. they do want the external validation, and from folks with credentials like mine. the reason they quoted me and my co-author is we basically said these guys are getting stronger, they are a power in the middle east and we have to deal with them. i.s.i.s. is saying even the bad guys, reversing to me, believe we are powerful. and it's that that they are trying to use to recruit. it's the spectre of them having

success on the ground that i think is most dangerous here. the theo logical justifications are weak. they've been attacked on those by a huge spectrum of the muslim community around the world. what they rest on is that they are advancing on the ground. they have power. >> brian, keep tweeting safely. great talking to you. >> good to talk to you. we turn to a threat between a link up between al qaeda and yemen and the islamic state. they are collaborating with yemeni bomb-makers to build explosive device that is can be placed on a laptop, cell phone and carried on a jet plane. attorney-general told the news i think we are at an attention time. >> it's more frightening than anything i think we have seen. people with the technical know how and people that have a

fervor to give their lives in support of a cause directed at the united states, and directed at its allies, and it's sl that gives us -- something that gives us extreme concern. >> tim joins me from washington d.c., a former fbi agent, someone who has conducted counterterrorism investigations in the north and south american. he's president of a mission. attorney general eric holder says "it's a dangerous time." do you agree. >> absolutely, no question. it situation now - al qaeda is in the arabian peninsula. there are several hundred since 2009. when you add in al qaeda in iraq, i.s.i.s., islamic state in iraq and syria. you have very, very well trained

and hardened fighters with incredible hardware. to take the technology and know how and expand it around the western world with the capabilities that aqab is sadding to the picture, secretive bomb making, things secreted in bomb devices. one of the reasons we had the threat, so these - this mixing of the smaller ideological group in the arabian peninsula, and this war-fighting machine in iraq and syria is a terrible threat. >> the george w. bush was criticised for failing to heed warnings, and the intelligence chief, of an impending attack two months before 9/11. are attorney general eric holder's warnings as concerning as that or should we not get into the hyperbollizing or fear mongering of. >> the attorney-general is saying what he's saying for a reason.

he's privy to a great deal of intelligence that streams through his office. for him to come out publicly and say what he sis, there's room for concern. the issue that i.s.i.s. has is that they are prooccupied taking over territory in iraq. they want the region, and i believe they'll march on the border of jordan or saudi arabia next. they are preoccupied. they are not looking to push the influence outside that area. long-term they would be. i don't know if that means a month or 10 years. the threat is real. what the timetable is i don't think anybody has that intelligence just yet. >> you mentioned syria. attorney-general holder was having a meeting with european ministers and said the primary focus was 7,000 foreign fighters in syria and iraq and have e.u. and american passports and can

travel with impunity. do we need to track all these people to feel and stay secure? >> i think we have to. if there's a lesson, the 19 hijackers, coming under student visas and other programs violating videosa and rules and recommendation, staying behind the visas and immigration status that they had, if any, if we don't look at the people with passports that travel in the west. if we don't look at them, they are foreign fighters trained in a ses poll of fillisation. what is -- civilisation what is going on in i.s.i.s., with the rapes and sexual jihad in mosul and torturing and killing people that disagree or don't join them. that's not something we can mitigate. it's not something you can tolerate. this is an ideology that believes women should be subrogated and western regions is

haram. >> we have 7,000 fighters going to syria, we have the islamic state group in iraq, boko haram, the threat - but do we have the it. >> we have the resources. whether we want to delegate to this cause is a different story. people have seen the number of years that passed. we are back to a september 10th mentality. we need to realise that the threat never subsided. it has existed and slowly grown up again. the president a couple of years ago was saying al qaeda was on the run. but al qaeda is not the only islamist extremist group that the. >> islamic state group acquired nuclear material from a science lab in mosul. could material like that be used in a dirty bomb and could it be smuggled on board a plane?

>> to answer the first part of that question. absolutely. we are not talking about highly enriched uranium. it was a lower level, 2:35 or something else taken from a lab. it could have been medical isotopes. we don't know if they took over hospitals and there's radiation samples that they co is taken. the threat of a dirty bomb is ream. it's taking a raid logical element, an isotope and dispersing it with a conventional explosive. whether they get it on to a plane, i'm not sure. there are detectors in most we were airports, and the level of explosive, you need a large quantity. but, the last story you discussed about the border - if we have that open a border, where tens of thousands of people cross every week, what is to prevent these individuals taking a dirty bomb or the

elements cross the border. >> airports and governments have been alerted to the possibility of an airborne attack. how much more difficult does it make for al-qaeda are and the arabian opinio arabian off. >> it doesn't harden their intention. it may re-route their plans. if they wanted to come in and attack using an airline, it's difficult. if there's ipp tell or word -- init will or word leaked for assets or signals intelligence, we react like t.s.a. did, where they asked counterparts around the world to monitor closely electronic devices coming in, making sure they were operational and not dummied up, filled with explosives. if we shut down that avenue, it doesn't mean the intentions epd. the bad guys maybe will go to a third-world airword where

security is not as good or try some other means to quote inside the united states or find another airline. >> thank you for your time. "consider this" will be right back. >> israel's invasion of gaza continues tonight. >> we have been hearing a lot of tank shelling coming from where we are, here. >> every single one of these buildings shook violently. >> for continuing coverage of the israeli / palestinian conflict, stay with al jazeera america, your global news leader. when you run a business, you can't settle for slow.

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>> stories that impact the world, affect the nation and touch your life. >> i'm back. i'm not going anywhere this time. >> only on al jazeera america. are social media stocks another bubble. fed chief janet yellen gave an ear yes warning, coming in the fed annual monetary report: . >> not to friendly to facebook and twitter. they felt the effects after her comment. let's bring in polly. and we are joined by social media producer harmeli aregawi. let's go to the money. what has been the impact on the market comments. >> everything went into the red. y, lp fell. everything was going into the

red, and stocks closed for the day. this was an immediate impasse, it wasn't close to anything we have seen in the pass. it had a distinct impact. >> stocks go up, stocks go down. facebook is doing better than initially when it came out. twitter is getting there. why is she saying they are stretched. overvalued? >> we need to look at privately held companies that the public companies are purchasing. facebook may not be overvalued. it has fallen from $69. they purchased what's up for $19 billion and are yet to return the profit. that's where we look at the ov overstretching. the privately held companies, that public companies are investing in. >> harmeli aregawi, what have you seen. >> wednesday treasury

secretary jack lew asked if it was appropriate for the head of the fed - if it was appropriate for her to comment on the stocks. >> i think it is appropriate for us to comment on policy and friends, not on individual market movements. >> polly, how do you interpret lieu's comments. >> what he's getting to is the 1996 comment which we heard. in that he said irrational ex-uberance. that was a quote. with that she's doing something similar, not putting out facebook and twitter. she's looking at the market as a whole. for her, in her position, social media companies are broad. she may a company with sn intense presence in with the facebook and the twitters, companies on social media. she's speaking about a trend, not a specific country.

that would be appropriate. >> what about the fact that social media is a relatively new industry, according to estimates from a research firm. social media and revenue will triple. participation. >> it does act for a participation. and for a lot of people they are looking at the ad dollars, the new customers, for her she has to look at profits in real time. whim people might join, they may fall off. if you look at my space, they adjusted for profits. they were booming and great. they have to look at market trends in the past, and how it will change over time. >> we have seen a lot of spin from social media confinements. a lot are refineded of alan greenspan's quote that many thought was about the.com bloom. it was tweeted:

what are the social media giants saying? >> it's a good argument that they are making saying "look, we are going to change and adapt, and we'll be as big as banks. right now we are small." they are growing more rapidly than the tweet shows. they say we are not the banks and tech, but they are growing rapidly. last year we had 39 biotech companies, the year before, 12. while she said small, it's not that small and it's boom k, it's the biggest growth spurt. >> you said booming, do we fear a social media burst, the bubble hiperbally. >> it's hype eshally. we are not seeing anything on the cusp. five years passed before the.com bubble went into effect. it's something to remember. she's not saying pull out your

stock. she is saying this is something for us to be aware of and the companies need to take this as a warning that they need to show the profits, and argue why they are worth the $19 million. >> thank you for joining us. >> california is in the midst of a drought of unprecedented skill. now in its third year the drought is the expected to cost the economy $2.2 billion in 2014. meaning the agricultural sector - scientists fear the drought will continue for a year. how will that impact the rest of the united states across the country. joining us now from sacramento is timothy quinn. he served as the executive director. tim, i was born and raised in california. look, we are no strangers to droughts. water restrictions, brown lawns, green painted. this is common. how bad is this drought compared past?

>> it's unprecedented. last year was the driest year on record. this year the third driest year. this is the third year of this drought. our economy has grown, reservoirs are nearing empty. we are heavily regulated. this is my third drought. i have certainly never seep to this bad. -- seen to this bad. i don't think it has been this bad. this is un% depth. a -- unprecedented. the drought will cost more than $2 billion, coming from the agricultural sector. california grows a huge amount of food. how will this affect food prices throughout the country in. >> not a lot. in the future if it gets worse, it will have an impact. it grows 70-80% of many of the fruits and ven table that the americans consume. farmers in the central valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions, it would

be worse, except they are turning heavily to groundwater. they lost supplies, turning back to pump five feet. the groundwater runs out. they can't do that. if we have a dry year, it will be worse for california agriculture and for the american consumer of food. experts are saying the drought's impact on groundwater is a slow-moving train wreck. why should we be concerned. >> in california we need to be concerned because the groundwater is a life line for the future. we use a lot of surface water and groundwater. the drought did not create a groundwater crisis in california, but it made it worse. we are dealing with a drought of surface supplies, and we have crisis conditions in the groundwater basin and we are working on that issue. >> there has been a response that the state water resources

control board approved of an unprecedented measure allowing officials to find people up to 500 per day for wasting water. too harsh or totally necessary. >> we believe it's totally necessary. by the way, it's stronger than what you sud. they are ordering local urban agencies of a certain size throughout california to impose mandates on the waste water during a drought like this. it flat shouldn't be ug a hose to -- using a hose to sweep the driveway, use a broom. they are requiring water suppliers to ipp voke mandatory -- invoke mandatory actions. i think this is going to galvanise the california public the way we need to galvanise them. it's a serious situation. they have not gotten it yet. the state water resources is going to force everyone to take

the route more seriously. >> in january governor jerry brown calls on residence to cut water usage. water usage has gone up by 1% what can be done to ensent vis people to use less water. happened. >> i want to emphasise if you look at the data. earlier this year we were just bombing aware, and water use was not responding. they know that they have a serious problem. and water use here is down by 13% compared to the last couple of years. what we are looking for mere is more and more californians to become aware of how serious this drought emergency is. they will. with every urban water supplier they are quoting mandatory reductions, californians are about to get it. when they get it they save water. my wife and i have been doing

navy shores, not flushing the toilet and have a brain lawn. by the time we get to august, a great many calve jans will do the same thing. >> you can't expect people to not flush the toilet. but a lot of communities have been praying for rain. some have expected rain. drought? >> we hope we'll get a good rain. some el ninos are wet, some dry. i believe in the max um hope for the best. plan for the worst. timothy quinn, let's pray for rain. thank you for your type of. >> thank you very much. >> consider this will be right back. >> it's a chilling and draconian sentence... it simply cannot stand. >> this trial was a sham... >> they are truth seekers... >> all they really wanna do is find out what's happening, so they can tell people... >> governments around the world all united to condemn this... >> as you can see, it's still a very much volatile situation...

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you and your friends may have great chemistry, do you pick them based on science. researchers from yale and u.c. yale found friends have more d.n.a. in common with each other than strangers. they studied 2,000 people. their works suggest friends share the same genetics as fourth cousins. if you didn't know, that's a relation though your great, great, great grandparent. let's go deeper with benjamin in austin texas, a research associate at the research of colorado's behavioural science. people say their friends are like their family, how does that - how does the reach back that up. >> so these researchers took a database, and there is an extensive measure of the genome. several hundreds of thousands of

the make-up. researchers look the at pat respects, creating a measure that with any two respondents you can compare how similar they are. you can say friends are more similar than non-friends. >> researchers found the most similarities existed in people's genes handling the sense of small. are friend drawn to similar smells. if so, why and how? >> you know, i think that honestly i don't think anyone can answer that question. it's a preliminary finding. their hypothesis about pheromones and this could be related to food and the preparation of food and how they are important biological defenses we have. but i think that's probably a pretty early finding. i don't think we should worry about that one. >> the interesting part of the

study found that human ef lugs sped up over the past 30,000 years. is our social environment really an evolutionary force? >> that's an interesting conjecture. i think there's a lot of - i feel like everyone will agree that life seems faster and the pace of life sped up. whether it - you want to extrapolate from there to the idea that evolution is speeding up, it's a tougher cell. the researchers make convincing case. >> we talked about the similarities in genes affecting the assistance of smell. what -- sense of smell. what we found is it holds true for genes containing immunity. explain that. >> there's science that suggests that people can be amino compatible. differences in the immune system can be beneficial. that you can buy the benefits of two different immune systems and get the advantages of both.

>> you know, the study - some people on social media tweet at us saying is the study offering on excuse as to why people don't mingle with those diverse and community. >> yes, it's important that people know that's not the case. the study is conducted in an ethnically homogenious sample. it's white respondents, done for technical limitations, there are technical difficulties working with diverse data sets, leave researchers to use with ethnic homogenius data sets, it's not the case that the researchers are not cueing we have a proceed set of friends. this raises red flags for the findings, is it too limited in scope. if it is limited. we should be careful been

extrapolating the findings based on 7 billion people that live on the arth. >> there's no reason to think this may exist, the finding may hold true in all places. it's not a representative dataset. it may not hold true in all of the u.s. what is compelling is they do an interesting thing where they replicate the finding within the data they have. it's a scientific argument as to why there may be something there. your research that people tend to chooses spouses in relation to dna. goons? >> there's an echo. it will be interesting to look at whether of the genetic pathways through which we seem to select friends influences our mate selection. research. >> you may be smarter. thanks for your time. >> we'll be right back with more

"consider this". >> al jazeera america presents >> i'm not a genius, but... i feel like that kid that doesn't need to go to practice. >> 15 stories one incredible journey edge of eighteen coming september only on al jazeera america

>> i'm ali velshi, the news has become this thing where you talk to experts about people, and al jazeera has really tried to talk to people, about their stories. we are not meant to be your first choice for entertainment. we are ment to be your first choice for the news. % our next guest a true power player on tv, the president on "scandal", now he's running a show with a look at the justice system. goldman is a creative force behind "the divide." antonio mora sat with tony, let's check out a clip. >> movie reel: get out of here,

stay out of this and stay away from my mother. >> d.n.a. sample will take less than 20 scans seconds. >> what do you care? >> i don't know you at all. you want to die, that's your right. i don't like it when the law is manipulated by people who think the law can be manipulated. like my father... >> tony goldman is the creator, executive producer and directing a bump of the episodes. you know him best on "scandal." great to see you. >> good to see you. >> you are a busy guys, president of the united states part of the time. you just got reelected. ism thank you. >> i played a recently. you played bad characters. >> it was disturbing.

i find dark people interesting. >> so you are not a typical scary guy. that's why it's interesting to cast me in those parts, to find the opposite facets of very twisted characters. >> you are involved in a new show, the first scripted show. watched the first episode. terrific. it's based on the innocence project, founded by barry and peter new field. which did an incredible job at freeing people using d.n.a. why did you decide this was something you wanted to do. issue? >> i made a film in 2010 "conviction", that i directed. with hillary swanking. it was a true story. a man spent 18 years in prison for a crime she didn't commit. his sister became an attorney to get him out.

with the innocent broent and d.n.a. evidence she got him exonerated after 18 years. i got close to her and barry and pete. i was fascinated with the innocent project and moved by the work they do in every story of all their cases and thought these stories need to get out. i wanted to shine a light on the work they are doing. but just they are so dramatic. at the end of the day, what i do for a living is to try to tell great stories. the bonus is when you shine the light on a social issue like reforming the justice system. >> full of great stories. >> yes. >> the divide has shades of conviction. again, you are involved with the innocence project actively. >> i support them as much as i can. and involved by telling stories like "divide", and

"convection", there's artists and john grisham and i are on the committee. >> i read they are getting 3,000 calls, they have a 6,000-plus backlog of cases and d.n.a. has been ipp cred ubley effect -- incredibly effective it is exionerating a number of people. >> i don't know if you saw a study by the national academy of sciences, they did a detailed analysis and forgive me if the numbers are wrong, but 10-15% of people incarcerated are innocent, and on death row the number is 4% or 5%. that's a lot of people. cracks. >> the innocence project in addition to exonerating people on d.n.a. evidence is making barry and peter and and their connected organizations are doing a lot to reform the cracks in the justice system so people

don't go to gaol wrongly. >> they are treeing a lot of those people and in many of those cases they are taking the d.n.a., convicting people who were the criminals, it's a double positive. this happened in louisiana. a guy was freed. prosecutors agreed to retest dna evidence after 17 years on a rape charge, an attempted rape, and they found that he was innocent, they pointed through the d.n.a. database, which the incident project helped happen nationally. they found the guy who did do it, and was, in fact, in prison for another crime. >> so the divide is not just a legal tv series, you are focussing on the characters and how the system affects the people. >> what the show is really about is it centers on one case, where the da of philadelphia made his career on a racially charged capital murder case and just as one of the two guys in prison

are about to be executed a young woman from the innocent project uncovers a piece of evidence that unravels the whole thing. what we look at is the way that a crime destabilizes and derails the lives of so many people involved. the da, his family, reputation, this young woman, her stab, the surviving victims, the innocent convict. and all the grey areas they are in with is another pol 'emmic. it's look at the grey areas, and it extends to nugsal morality and personal morality how we look at this. >> it's compelling. it draws you in. it's successful. we have to talk to you about being the president of the united states. you have always been involved politically. i know you were a president of the creative coalition. and that's something you have been interested in.

this led you to be more involved in washington politics and met states. >> fascinating. i've been a political jurpingy, had been to washington and played many parts in the white house. i've ben a chief of staff, press secretly, special advisor to the president. now i get to be the man himself. so then, yes, this year at the white house correspondent dinner i had the privilege of meeting approximately barack obama. it was sure reel. >> how was the experience. >> surreal is the best way to describe it. you walk up to him. he says, "hello mr "", or going on a tour of the white house and people gone "the president's here", and i'm looking around me. >> congratulations on "divide", and "scandal." new episodes of "divide" premiere 9:00pm eastern.

that's outline for now. check out our website aljazeera.com/considerthis, google+, facebook and we are on twitter. see you next time. welcome to al jazeera america. i'm del walters. these are the stories we're following you. concerned for the safety of international investigators in ukraine. gaza under fire. the death toll goes up on both sides. a medal of honor for a soldier who faced certain death in afghanistan. you're looking liveht