medal. u.s. airman spencer stone was hurt in that attack. aljazeera.com is where you'll find all those stories and a great deal more. aljazeera.com. >> a volatile day for the stock market. the dow climbs back after falling a thousand points at the opening bell. receiving france's top honor, three americans played for stopping a gunman on a train. and a new round of wildfires, the weather could make the situation worse.

this is al jazeera america. ali velshi will join me in a memo. catching their breath, the dow down 242 points, that's still a significant number. >> uh-huh. >> the dow fell a thousand points at opening. this in response to a selloff in china. shanghai's exchange closed down over 8% over fears that the economy is slowing, seems to be the case, no doubt about that, oil prices are plummeting too. they are at a six year low. ali is here. when you saw this, what did you think? >> you and i talked on friday after the markets closed. down tick with high velocity. >> more selling. >> the only thing stopping the market from going lower was the

clock. we knew asian markets would open lower, we didn't know the rate it would down tick. erasing all of its gains for the year, it's been down a lot lately, it was a hot market. as the sun moves fast, europe took another big hit and it reopened. what you saw was a finishing off like that this morning. i've never seen a selloff, a thousand points! >> but what is this about? >> it's not about -- it used to be the stock market if you walked out on wall street, and around the country there was a reflection between what was actually happening in your country and the stock market . >> right. >> this is something else, the stock market is not about profitability. the american companies are very, very profitable. the economy is growing, they are actually going in the right direction. interest rates are low and

housing prices are strong. the economic fundamentals are in place. >> not about quarterly earnings whether this company is performing well or not. >> it's about where your money sits. in a normal world, some is in stocks, bonds, gold, commodities. because the fed has kept interest rates low for so long, there's no gain in bonds. only place you make money is real estate and stock market. this stock market has been going strong since march 9, 2009, that's when it hit the bottom after the recession. over the course of the last six or seven years we would have seen a few pull backs, we saw one in 2011. markets need to correct. stock markets always go up over time, but they need to breathe and correct. >> is this the opportunity? >> it's not there yet. >> there's an official -- >> 10% is the number. the high we set in may.

we're not anywhere close to a correction, but this morning it looked like we were going down that road. we're not there yet. some experts say there's more to come. what you saw today, thousand point plunge and people started buying back stocks thinking it was overdone. >> i need to you drel home for r me, this market doesn't reflect what i'm calling reality. it's a wall street, main street disconnect. >> it's paper money moving around so to speak. >> yes. >> if you invest properly in a diversified way, something that is like the s&p 500, we look at the dow because it's got a great scoreboard. but the s&p 500 is 500 of the most significant companies. half their revenue more than half comes from outside the united states.

this isn't an abstraction. if things are not happening positively in china or india or europe or the middle east where oil prices have really affected economies there it is the reality of your stock holding, you're going to suffer for that. you remember oil pricings were down significantly. >> yes. >> low income people pay less for their energy, fantastic, maybe it even helps the economy because they've got extra money but at some point it gets so low, you see an american company declare bankruptcy, lay people off. these are prosperous jobs. in north dakota you could earn $100,000. those jobs could be going away. >> what do we do now? we opened up our statements, what's happening in our 401(k)? >> a professor on air this morning said you should have been out of this market already, and if you aren't, go out now. that's when the market was down

1,000 points and now it's down 240. the average retail investor has to chill out a little bit. we have written a few books on this. >> you've written a couple. >> when the market is down 1,000, which is very exciting, my response is you should be diversified, that's boring. the answer is boring. there thereitherein lies the ru. as you get closer to retirement rebalance. when things have got hot, you've made a lot of money that you have many times in the last six years, sell those stocks and invest in something else. >> ali appreciate it. >> all right buddy. >> josh earnest was asked about this whole situation a while ago and if the president has phoned the president of china. here is what he has to say.

>> the president hasn't made any phone calls on this matter but the president as always is updated on developments in the economy and he has been even while he's been on vacation. >> let's get to mary snow at the new york stock exchange. tell me, set the scene for me. >> if you look behind me you'd be hard pressed to see any visible signs of any fear or panic. what traders are pretty much describing this as overreaction to china. the markets taking their cue this morning. now, right now the dow is down 275 points. to give you a sense of what the atmosphere has been like here, that actually comes with a sigh of relief that the market is only down that much. there has been a feeling that, as you and ali were just talking about that the market was due for a so-called correction at some point and there was a feeling that traders were bracing for this. for some sort of correction.

>> right, right. >> certainly there's not that sense of fear and we talked to a trader earlier today to see that the dow lurks lower at a thousand points even was describing it as a controlled fear. but certainly there was a lot more sense of urgency earlier today than there is now. >> hmm. i think you're going to have an extended period of volatility. we don't really know what the chinese economy is doing if it's growing. how do we price that demand equation into what u.s. companies do? it's going to be difficult for a while. we don't know what our own fed or other central banks are going to do in light of this happening. it's different now. >> that was stephen gillfoy, when i asked him what people can expect or brace for over the next couple of weeks, no one can really predict what the market

will do but certainly there is a sense there will be a lot of volatility over the next few weeks. >> mary, got you. you're back with me at 4:00, what the markets may do. the sell jofer began ioff began. adrian brown has more from beijing. >> reporter: the share selloff began within minutes of the shanghai stock exchange opening. recovering only slightly. some of the world' world's biggt companies are list offed here. the government announced a new and risky intervention to try to prop up the market but it failed to stop sliding. >> how account markets reacts, one two three for five, the market dropped for five days and

never rose back. >> many borrowed to buy shares and are now being forced to sell those shares to pay back the loans. >> translator: the chinese market aims to eliminate the middle class. after eliminating the middle class the middle class won't have any purchasing power and the market won't be flourishing. >> reporter: worse still, the value of their pensions which could be at risk if the market's decline continues. >> translator: i think the government consult this problem properly. the government won't spend all the pension money on the stock market. >> the government is assuring the investors but everything it's done so far to rescue the market has failed. since june the shanghai index has lost 30% of its value and analysts warn the decline is likely to continue. once more the drop in chinese shares dragged down shares across the asia pacific region.

the fear, the slow down in the chinese economy is worse than what the government is letting on. the hang seng closed down more than 5 points. the regional's biggest stock market, tokyo, ended up 5% as well. australia suffered its biggest one day fall in four years. down by more than 4%. what all these markets desperately need, but don't have, is investor confidence. adrian brown, al jazeera, beijing. >> and be sure to stay with al jazeera america, we'll be live at 4:00 earn 1:00 pacific for the closing bell. north and south korea have reached an agreement aimed at defusing their conflict. a mine that injured two south

korean soldiers at the dmz, last week there was an exchange of artillery fire in the area. france and britain honored four passengers on a train. alex, spencer, anthony, and a brich man, legion of honor medal is the country's highest honor. stopping a terrorist on a train to paris. >> we are here to honor four people who saved lives and gave an example of what can be done in tragic circumstances. >> john terret has more. >> when most of us would ran away, spencer alec and anthony ran into the line of fire.

>> ambassador jane hartley brimming with pride, over the three americans, airman first class spencer stone and his boyhood best friend, alex, are being lauded as heroes in france along with anthony and two other passengers, one british one french. they noted someone with an ak .47 in their train car. >> alec grabbed the gun out of his hand while i put him in a choke hold. it seems like he pulled out more weapons, left and right, he started jabbing me with a box cutter. >> on the radar in three countries for having ties to radical islam and for having

traveled osyria. his legally illegal team says he's just a homeless man who found the weapons in a bag. >> translator: he says he planned to hold up the train then shoot out a window and jump out to escape. >> reporter: that's unlikely say the three american heroes who saw the cache of weapons up close. >> to the point that he was just trying to rock the train: it doesn't take eight magazines to rob the train. >> reporter: but they admit it was fortunate the shooter seemed unsure how to handle the weapons. >> it was clear he had no firearms training whatsoever, and if he just got lucky and did the right thing, woe have been able to operate through all eight of those magazines and we would have all been in trouble. >> reporter: it's possible no americans have quite this welcome in paris since the end of world war ii. john terret, al jazeera. >> thick smoke from rage

wildfires in the pacific northwest is starting to clear. that's a pretty mixed blessing. once the smoke lifts the humidity is expected to drop, which means a rise in temperatures and fires could flare back up. stephanie sy has more. >> firefighters across the west are getting new help to stop fires that have so far consumed more than half a million acres. president obama has approved a request for federal disaster declaration, that means more trucks and tankers to attack the fire. something locals say are needed. >> they're tired, it's hot it's windy, they're watching lots of ground be lost, they're watching some homes be lost. and that you know that just adds to it. >> reporter: there are more than a dozen big fires burning now in washington state, covering more than 900 square miles. that includes a fire in the

north central part of the state where mechanic steve surgeon lost most of his new business. >> i had just started a scrap iron business. you know i've got a pile of scrap iron here that wasn't burnt by the fire. i now have business. >> reporter: fire officials have down graded some of the evacuation notices allowing some people to go back to their homes only to discover there's not much of a home to return to. >> i called my kids one of my girls and said we can't -- we don't think we're going to get out. and that we love them and tell everybody we love them. >> stephanie sy, al jazeera. >> ten years after hurricane creentd, trying thurricanekatria project had a helped make things worse in new orleans.

>> ten years ago, this week, hurricane katrina struck. many blamed a man made shipping channel called mr. go for leaving a shipping channel right into the city. marita davison from "techknow" is here. >> when mr. go was built, many were saying mr. go must go.

the mississippi river gulf outlet once duplicated the surge superhighway, a 76 mile artificial channel built for commercial shipping. john lopez is a member of the mr. go must go coalition. also a consultant for the army corps of engineers. >> it was based on some sort of cost-benefit they projected by increased use of navigation on the channel. that might seem kind of ironic because it's built right adjacent to the mississippi river. it showed some advantage but in reality it didn't pan out. the use of the panel is very small. >> because mr. go cut through precious wetlands that acted as a buffer, there was immediate concern. >> locals very heroically trying to fight to get this thing changed. >> we are at the part of the

mr. go channel that's called the funnel. at katrina, a lot of water rushed into the gulf, concentrated here and pushed into new orleans and surrounding communities. in 2009, eight different scientists linked mr. go into the most violent flooding in st. johns parish and lower 9th ward. >> had iwould it be clear that f mr. go had not been there the impact would have been less? >> most definitely yes. there would have bem fewer peoplbeen fewerpeople killed. >> congress timely agreed. mr. go was deauthorized and the army corps of engineers was

deauthorized. >> phil torres joins us, mr. go was originally built to increase, we just heard a moment ago but never really lived up to those expectations of commercial shipping. why is that? what happened here? >> yeah, you know this thing was originally designed to be a shortcut. but in the end, mississippi river had been used for centuries already, infrastructure was there, massachusettmississippi river wd and no mr. go. pretty big waste of money. >> and it destroyed miles of wetlands, right? >> yes, it put a price tag on it. but we're talking about 27,000 acres of wetlands destroyed, hundreds of thousands of miles of coast land were affected too. and this isn't just plain nature we're talking about. these wetlands actually served as a buffer to protect new

orleans from storm surge. that destruction made the effects of katrina much worse. >> deauthorizing mr. go, restoration is desperately needed right now. what's the holdup? >> absolutely, everybody agrees it needs to be done. but they've already spent $14.5 billion upgrading the engineering to restore the wetlands. in the end, it comes down to money. is the state going to pay for it, is the federal government going to pay for it? there's a lot of back and forth going on right now. >> phil, good to talk to you. be sure to watch "techknow" coming up today on al jazeera america. rebuilding okinawa. coming with a bit of controversy. controversy.

>> for decades, tens of thousands of u.s. troops have called the japanese island of oklahoma nawaz wokinawa home. as roxana saberi reports not everyone is happy about it. >> reporter: in a oklahom okin

village they're protesting. >> they could take us into another war, other country's bases were likely to target us. if we build another base here we could have the same problem. >> across the bay the place where the new base is supposed to be built. there are plans for multiple runways, helipads ammunition, fuel depot, and docking huge ships. opposition becomes louder and sometimes breaks into confrontations. u.s. presence is needed, officials say, to keep tensions between china and north korea rising. but the organizer hoor wants the u.s. there wants theu.s. to lea.

>> that means we could be a hub for international trade and cultural interactions. >> reporter: it's about a 60 mile drive south from hanoko where the new base is projected to be from the old base. he can see the new base from his route, he gives his estimation of a an osprey flying overhead. setting off alarms. >> they should take them back to america. >> we just finished speaking with a spokesman who couldn't go on cram cam ra but th camera, sd

critics of america's presence here a vocal minority. we did find a handful of supporters just outside, scraping tape off the fences stuck there by protesters. >> translator: having the american bases here helps keep the piece in asia. >> reporter: at restaurants and bars like this one, most customers come from u.s. bases. we'd heard some okinawans complaining that drinking leads to rowdiness and fights. >> they get in trouble for it, their unit suffers. >> reporter: on the record the u.s. military told us it will keep trying obe a good neighbor and japan's government has suspended construction on the new base for a month to hold talks with local leaders. but the family says they will keep fighting their battle. >> i'll keep doing this until they stop construction of the new base and even if they don't

i won't give up. >> the news continues live from london. >> this is al jazeera. >> good to have you along for this al jazeera newshour. this is something we'll be studying in detail in the next 60 minutes. south korea reaches agreement with the north, amid fear of rising conflict. leaving macedonia, looking for a new life in european