tv News Al Jazeera January 15, 2016 11:00pm-11:31pm EST
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>> good evening, i'm antonio mora, this is al jazeera america. market tumble. how sinkin sinking oil prices ae affecting economies around the world. hotel attack on the west african nation of burkina faso. dangerous missions, an astronaut runs into serious trouble during a spacewalk, where a new report indicates nasa's future plans could be much riskier than the agency suggests. we begin with another bad day on wall street. which is having the worst
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two-week start to a year ever. the dow lost more than 390 points today all the major indices fell more than 2%. analysts blame the selloff on another big drop in oil prices. crude oil closed below $30 a barrel for the first time in 2003. john terret joins us. john this is the latest big drop in oil and big drop in stocks. >> a spree for commodities traders, today u.s. stocks sold off across the board on friday. the reason wall street is worried that too many commodity companies will go belly up now that oil is in the bargain basement. >> a sea of red driven by an ocean of black. investors are scared the low price will damage the global economic recovery. >> terrible start to the day terrible start to the year, the
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selling is universal but today the stocks that did so well last year got hit more than the usual stock. >> the problem is there's a glut of oil that's why it's so cheap, devastating for the countries trying to produce it. first there's overproduction by saudi arabia which has opened the spigot in an effort to hobble iranian oil which will start soon once sanction he are lifted following the iranian deal. while saudi arabia can take low prices for a couple of years, that is not case for nigeria, hurt by cheap oil, and wants an emergency session of the cartel opec. add to that the massive slow down in china's economy and can you see the problem, far too many countries at risk of going under. >> the markets are telling you that it's a reasonable risk that money was so easy by central banks for so long that companies got money that shouldn't have been able to borrow money, now
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the economies are changing might not be able to pay that money back. >> is there a perfect price for oil that will keep motor ifortss happy? >> most people think a price between 50 and 70 per barrel could work for everybody. >> long weekend, martin luther king, jr. day on monday, that's one of the reasons for the selloff as well, investors keen against holding worthless pieces of paper, in case anything untoward trading happens asian trading kicking off 8:00 p.m. eastern time on sunday. >> thank you john. discussing iran nuclear deal this as iran could soon reach a milestone in implementing the agreement. u.s. and five other powers are waiting for the nuclear watchdog
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to certify that iran has removed the core from a heavy water nuclear reactor. if that is the case many restrictions could be lifted. security forces in burkina faso are storming a hotel, assault underway at the building in capital ouagadougo, witnesses say two car bombs exploded before gunmen stormed hotel and took hostages. survivor told him more than 20 people died in the attack. government minister says 33 hostages including another mint has been freed. an intelligence monitoring group says an al qaeda affiliate last claimed responsibility. a research helicopter, carrying troops, collided with another helicopter near oahu overnight wp so far no signs of
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any of the missing service men. the navy coast guard and air force are all involved in the search with assistance from honolulu's fire department. federal lab shipped live anthrax spores to other labs. according to the report, the potentially deadly attack was occurring for over ten years. are courtney kealy has the report. >> 12 people could face disciplinary measures, with these mistaken measures by federal express. >> going back to at least 2004. after a six month investigation, into how live anthrax was shipped out from the army biodefense lab at dugway proving ground in utah the army's biotask force found no single cause. >> no single event, no single
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individual no groups of individuals are directly responsible for the inadvertent shipment of a small amount of active anthrax. >> but the report cited a culture of complacency, workers who failed to exercise due care in the performance of their duties. i.t. recommended that 12 people including the brigadier general who led the lab at dugway from 2009 to 2011 will be held accountable. it remains to be seen whether anyone will lose their jobs. the lab failed to irradiate the spores properly. the one protocol that did work required only minute samples of anthrax be shipped. the samples were so small even if someone were exposed they wouldn't get sick and no one did. but the report called for more scientifically validated testing
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to keep it from ever happening again. >> we will establish a standing dod biological review panel consisting of prominent scientists from both within and outside the department of defense and that review panel will review and veiled procedures for working with biological select agents and toxins. >> the amount shipped totaled 575 according to the cdc and according to a scientist it was potentially seed stock for biological weapons. antonio. >> courtney kealy reporting, thank you. water crisis in flint, governor of michigan asked president obama to declare a state of emergency to free up more aid pfs whit. white house press secretary jernts hajoshearnest explained. >> in terms of the science and
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the impact that it has had and could have on local populations, the department of justice has obviously taken a look at the situation. >> michigan's attorney general has opened an investigation to see if any state laws were broken. flint's water source was switched from detroit to flint river. flint is still without drinkable tap water. >> this city of 100,000 in one of the richest nations in the world has no potable water. >> the fact that we have to live like this it's unfortunate. >> michigan's governor deployed the national guard this week to deliver water, filters and water testing kits to the residents of flint where tests have delivered high level of lead. >> the real issue in front of us
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is how do we address it and how do we take care of the people ever flint? >> reporter: an unending stream of residents files into five distribution sites within the city for their daily supply. >> folks i think we have enough to take care of everyone. >> a handful of kits helped on thursday when a total of 32 volunteers were deployed to hand out bottled water to flint where 32% of the residents live in poverty. >> i was heartened by the resiliency of the citizens of flint. they had smiles on their face and obviously this is not a good situation but you know, resilient. >> reporter: problems were first reported after the city switched from detroit's water system in 2014. >> but i've never -- very rarely even used the city's water. >> you don't drink it? >> no not at all. >> lien turner told al jazeera in september, the water left her
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with a rash. >> itch, scratch, see that all right there? >> now she wants to know what took the city so long to act. >> i didn't do anything until hospital find lead in babies. now ladies be pregnant and babies ought to be affected. i have a problem with that issue. >> are you happy they're doing something now? >> yes i am. >> after months of complaints 150 flint residents and supporters descended on the capital in protest. this is where i all began. environmentalists believe corrosive water from the flirnt riveflintriver ate away at the s pipes. the damage to the pipes has been done. according to documents obtained by virginia tech university the federal environmental protection agency knew about the water contamination in april and wrote a mem about the proble memo abon
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june. john hendren, al jazeera, detroit. officials say they want to review fees charged to mining companies and the effects of coal mining on the environment. the hiatus does not apply to coal reserves already under release. around 40% of coal produced in the u.s. comes from federal territory. a new report says nasa's plans for the future might be riskier than expected. to drive home a point. an astronaut on the international space station found himself in a very dangerous situation. a medical trial went horribly wrong, what left six people in critical condition and what officials are saying about it.
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are warning of unexpected threats using commercial space taxis to put astronauts into orbits. the design for capsules for spacex and boeing fail to meet the nation's minimum safety standards. could cause delays to test flights scheduled for next year. the association found fault with launch plan mission to mars. we're joining by derrick pits, director of the fels planetarium in philadelphia. it seems to me there's a lot to be considered in this report, saying all relevant parties aren't talking to each other, pretty much implying that nasa is cutting corners on safety, is that fair to say? >> well, when you look at the report the report does indicate that there are a number of ways in which nasa isn't really
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chasing down to the nth degree all of the potential risks that might be involved in the design building and testing of components that would then be assembled later, antonio, into a launching system. and this is found to be extraordinarily critical because the report seems to indicate if nasa does not do a better job of integrating risk assessment into its management systems overall that this could result in putting some mission in jeopardy as they say, in the future, in terms of the safety of the missions. >> now the report also says there is no well designed plan for the u.s. to get to mars. now is that a big issue? because we're still more than a decade away from any possible manned flights there. >> well, the way nasa tries to describe it is that it's not a big issue because what they'd rather do is keep themselves a little bit loose in the sense that they want to be able to incorporate new technologies as the program develops going
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forward. they are trying to avoid locking themselves into one particular design now. but the difficulty of doing that is that these missions all take long lead times for development. and if you get locked into some development or design at the moment, it gives you the opportunity for high fidelity testing of those systems in an all-up sort of state where everything is all together. and this then leads to much higher levels of reliability and much greater margins of safety. so the challenge of trying to wait to do something later whether you incorporate new technologies is you don't have the time to do the kind of testing you want to do. if you're driving toward meeting a specific schedule deadline. and that in and of itself can cause problems. >> are politics part of the problem? nasa playing it loose waiting for a new administration. having burned in the obama administration scrapped the constellation program but on the other hand are they not going to
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get any support from congress? >> it's a double edged sword. they need to come up with a concrete plan they can stick to that will carry them through. the challenge is that every four years a new administration could change what the heading is for nasa. and compound he on this is nasa doesn't have the ultimate say on what its budgets from year to year. that's congress that does that so if congress doesn't keep that going forward that becomes a real challenge. >> talking budget there are limited funds and some have argued the u.s. is going to have to choose between ongoing support of the international space station or manned trip to mars, does that remain the as i? >> as what's happening, space program going forward the future space program, they don't have 100% of the budget they need for full development. that means that somewhere nasa is going to have to cut a corner someplace in order to meet the
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budget schedule and also meet the schedule deadlines as well and you can't run all of these operations, although the report does say that they are pleased with how nasa is managing international space station operations. but whether we put it all together it takes a lot of money antonio to actually run these programs. space exploration is expensive, it's hard and in order to do it right you need enough people and you need enough testing to make sure you can drive the risk as close to zero as possible. and that's an expensive endeavor. >> al jazeera space contributor derrick betts. thank you for being with us. >> healthy subjects testing a painkiller at a clinic in france whether six got sick. describing the situation as unprecedented. french investigators have
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>> the next president will set the thaition's course in a number of ways. one of the most important appointing new supreme court justices. al jazeera's libby casey has more from washington. >> nine justices appointed for life so their influence lasts long after a white house term ends. >> whoever controls the majority on the supreme court after this next presidency could control it for 15 or 20 years before a consequential seat starts to flip. that means we're talking about potentially two decades of what is possible in this country being decided by one vote in november of 2016. >> reporter: and presidential candidates are talking about that potential power and influence. >> there are few if any issues that matter more in this presidential election than the supreme court and what i can tell you is i have spent my entire life fighting judicial
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activism and there is no position i take more seriously than appointing a supreme court justice. >> we need to recognize something that has received almost no mention that this election which is in all probability the next president of the united states will make between one and three appointments to the united states supreme court. >> former president bill clinton appointed two justices both during his first term. two decades later ruth bader ginsberg has risen to become this court's most powerful liberal voice. she is close 80 and few of her colleagues are crows to that milestone. >> several of the other justices are in their mid to late 60s. >> george washington law school associate dean allen morrison. >> i can't.imagine justice
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scalia retiring, if justice ginsburg could hand on i think she come because she wouldn't want donald trump or ted cruz to appoint a successor. >> upholding president obama's signature health care law to striking down limits on federal campaign donations. republican presidential candidates are promising to nominate conservative justices, with an eye to gun control and abortion. they're going to want to get rid of citizens united so we don't have all this money coming in. >> ian millheiser says the real danger a divided senate unwilling to confirm the new president's choice for bench. >> you're looking at the possibility that if a vacancy opens up the seat could sit open indefinitely until you have a unity between the party that controls the warehous white houe
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party that controls the senate. >> a reminder that the 2016 election is not who wins the presidency but it's who wins seats in the u.s. senate. libby casey, al jazeera, washington. >> the world's biggest retailer is announcing big cuts, closing 264 stores worldwide, smaller express locations, in all about 16,000 employees are affect. walmart hopes to transfer many of those employees to other locations. closures will start at the end of the month. chipotle will briefly close down all of its 2,000 restaurants in the united states on february 8th. executives say they will hold a can company-wide meeting on how to better ensure food safety. hundreds have fallen sick after eating at chipotle restaurants
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in the last few months. decorations are down, christmas trees kicked to the curb but as jonathan martin reports from louisiana some of those trees are being put to good use. >> in new orleans the season is changing from christmas to carnival. but before the revelry comes community service. >> i'm a member of a dance group called the organ grinders that was founded in 2010 and not only do we do mardi gras parades, we do restoration projects. >> volunteers recently spent a saturday morning tossing trees into a boat and placing them into cribs built out of two by fours to create a marsh wall. >> with this wave energy strikes
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these structures so it's not striking the shoreline. it allows the shoreline to grow. what you see behind me is marsh. >> two miles of shore line in the bereteria basin, losing a football field of land every hour. it's a small but necessary contribution to combat coastal erosion. >> we need the large scale projects no doubt about it. our challenges are daunting. we need to get the sediment from the mississippi river, pump that and build up the land and use the mississippi river to sustain it. with that said we also need the smaller projects as well. >> reporter: and community involvement is needed as well. the program doesn't have a budget so it relies on volunteers including residents and the local fire departments to provide boats and labor. now in its 26th year, the program has recycled 750,000 trees and protected hundreds of
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acres of marsh land. >> it is a successful program yes it is as long as you ask maintain these structures and it gives the shoreline a chance. >> every year we use miles of coast land due to coastal erosion, we want the significant part of the state of louisiana, we have to do project like this to save and protect the coast land. and the aquatic life that comes with it. >> jonathan martin, al jazeera, louisiana,. exact spot where 19 innocent people were handing during the salem witch trials. proctor's ledge, now next to a walgreens drugstore. one researcher says verifying the site is important so people don't forget the tragedy. salem's mayor says the city plans to erect a memorial at the
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site. that is the program. ray suarez is up next with "inside story." have a great weekend. have a great labor day weekend. >> pull a sawbuck out of your wallet, there's alexander hamilton born and raised in the caribbean, he made his future as the fledging super power, two centuries of honoring men, campaigners hope to pull andrew jackson off the 20 and replace him with a great american woman. then
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