in the big night the country senses. the world's most wanted terrorist could. end up next day on a show with no i mean koskie from our washington studios plenty installed today from the record number of suicides in the u.s. military to what's holding up this still falls reduction agreement on the secrets problem of obesity in america. we're going to be allowed to show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey are coming live out of washington d.c. and today's show starts with shocking news that army suicides are to record numbers for the month of june the military's been working hard to try to curb depression and suicides and soldiers but with the statistics we have to ask if the military really is addressing the problem next we're going to ask what do we do with the obesity problem well some experts think that parents need to be charged for neglect

so is that a good idea or will that just lead to a nanny state we'll debate the issue during the show and today marks the sixty fifth anniversary of the first nuclear test so how's our world changed since that fateful day our correspondent christine will have that story and then the start treaty which is currently being debated in the u.s. senate believe it or not has some republicans not wanting to play ball so why would they want to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world well something tells me that has to do with the upcoming elections and it's friday which means we're talking to the slot skis so we'll get their take on everything from the facebook movie to levy and bristol getting hitch that's all the end of the show but now let's move on to today's top story. a new report released by the army shows that there have been record suicide rates for the month of june in fact soldiers killed themselves at the rate of one per day last month making it the worst month on

record now seven of those soldiers killed themselves while in combat in iraq or afghanistan and ten of those who took their own lives had been in combat and been deployed two to four times now these numbers are scary as the u.s. continues on in its longest war but do we only blame our current conflicts or could military culture itself be part of the problem well joining me is adam koch cash veteran and congressional candidate he's in new mexico right now adam you know my first question here is why do you think these rates right now are so much higher you know how do the veterans that are currently fighting or that have just returned compared to those from vietnam or say from world war two. well thank you very much for having me on to talk about this really important topic and it's very complicated suicide is a complicated issue what it is it takes to put someone to the breaking point where they decide to take their own lives now in contrast to vietnam we did have from that war as many suicides as combat deaths we have already surpassed that number in

the global war on terror and the stress keeps at it up and you pointed out some very interesting numbers about this month's report but i think those numbers also reveal in the inverse there that she did not state some very interesting factors although twenty two of those thirty two suicides were deployed veterans or people who are currently deployed that means ten were not and that the stress that is being placed on the military the failure of military organizations and culture to address this really does reflect that but it is complicated and i think the relationship there is that it's a very confound factor when you go to war and you experience the kind of stresses that lead you to express disorder combat stress various things that make it hard to adjust or make you inclined to suicide dramatic experiences things that haunt your memory upon your dreams things of that nature are compound it when you come home or

you're still in theater and the organization that you expect to help you is not there to help you and it's not just the culture but really the organization and what they're capable of doing and what they're not capable of doing right now that they should be in terms of providing support to returning veterans so you could theoretically put a force such as our military which is still i believe the best in the world through what we have experience now in the global war on terror and be able to take care of them in a reasonable way that would keep these suicides minimal but when you have these stresses come in a way that the military never anticipated and the v.a. never anticipated and congress never anticipate. in terms of funding for the v.a. and taking care of troops in the coming home that is really the compound fracture that i think you see here exacerbating that and failing to catch up or rather keep up with those stresses being placed on the military today that affect active duty they affect reserves if they people who have been deployed and they have people who

have not been deployed but i don't tell me this i mean you yourself obviously are a veteran how much of it does have to do with the military culture of one where you know i read the currently the military is trying to provide counseling they're trying to provide therapy but this isn't exactly a culture where you can easily admit that you need help because it's not automatically seen as a weakness of the us doesn't that hurt soldiers too that they can even go to get help because of what there's a perry or is what their their peers will think. well there's a couple of elements to that and i do believe that the culture is changing very slowly and part of that problem there is something that will be inherent to military organizations you are training young men and women to go out and kill other people and put their lives on the line to protect this country and defend stand up for what they believe in order just follow orders and do what they're supposed to do so there's going to be inherent with that sort of culture of much

she's know of not asking for help and suicide issues are just one place where it's very readily apparent and you have a lot of these guys unwilling and ladies who really need the kind of counseling and help to prevent suicide and they're not getting it so in a way that's inherent and in a way that's exacerbated by the military command structure not doing everything that they're they really should be capable of so yes you can change the culture specifically as you introduce certain organizational mechanisms you know and they've been doing these things for years and this is a constant struggle for our military and i think there is a real role for congress to step in and make sure that these programs the support troops that are doing these problems are well funded but you know they put out videos all the time that say hey you know when you come home from iraq and afghanistan don't kill your wife and kids and commit suicide please and i mean

literally they're they're like that they're just this over the top ridiculous message that doesn't connect with the troops and so the army has to continually keep it open develop in a way that keeps up with the organizational culture as it develops from the ground of had i'm sorry that's really quick i mean we're going to you say there needs to be the proper organizational mechanism in place that these videos which i've heard not only for me are over the top and they don't work but why do you think that would work i mean obviously this is a very complicated situation so throwing money at it won't fix the problem. right well that's the million dollar question and part of it has to be creating programs or adjusting the programs in such a way that they're more accessible or culturally acceptable and part of that has to be the way you present them to the troops and simply having a video produced that looked like it was done in the sixty's just doesn't relate to guys who are my age you know twenty eight or guys who are sixteen. seventeen eighteen years old in some cases least eighteen to be coming back from combat

totally different world and so the people addressing these problems will always struggle to figure out where those people are coming from so one of the things that we see in as an historical example that's very important is how the transition back is handled logistically for troops coming back from combat now when i was in fallujah we had a little counseling session with with a chaplain and a therapist while in country about some of these issues and it was helpful it was definitely helpful but by contrast the world war two when you were coming back from either theater you would spend up to a month on a ship with other veterans talking about your experiences and having that time to settle out whereas now there's often a shuffle hey you're when you're going on a plane you're going back to your new assignment you're doing your paperwork you're mean met with your family oh and by the way you're going back into training for another tour so how are they going to jostle the deployment of definitely definitely do seem to be something that's that's a bit of a problem also itself a very sad situation and something that needs to be addressed adam thanks so much

for joining us it's a pleasure talking again we're taking a quick break but there's much more ahead on today's show the government wants to create an elop trying to help record every one of the country by two thousand and fourteen but there are some serious flaws with their plan to find out why their records won't be accurate and should parents be held responsible for their children's weight experts in england are calling for those parents to be charged with neglect if their kids are obese so could america be heading that. that same road soon i'll sit down with nikki and amanda marcotte to discuss the potential nanny state.

new federal regulations have been issued this week saying that all americans should have an l. of trying to help record by the year two thousand and fourteen now the measures are all part of president obama's stimulus law signed into effect this year or last year excuse me but there are problems with this new electronic health record you see it one necessary part of it is recording the body mass index of every single person and the point of taking every individual's b.m.i. is to evaluate their weight and height to determine whether or not they're obese down a good plan i mean we all know obesity is that epidemic proportions in this country but the method of measurement is we run into a little bit of a problem the government believes that b.m.i.

is the most accurate way to calculate whether or not someone is overweight or of normal weight but many studies out there have prove that the b.m.i. is not always the best indicator for example let's take n.f.l. quarterback peyton manning you know he says he's five feet by six feet five inches tall and weighs two hundred thirty five pounds so if we calculate is b.m.i. those numbers come to twenty seven which falls under the overweight category which i. i think we can all say is definitely not true i mean this guy is a professional athlete and what about arnold when he was mr universe he weighed in at two hundred and thirty five pounds and six feet one inches and his b.m.i. was thirty one which is considered obese i would think that then there's a limbic somewhere michael phelps and six foot three hundred sixty five pounds of the body mass index of twenty point six that's teetering between normal and

overweight status as well i'm pretty sure that this guy is the most fit person on the planet so again overweight i don't think so and of course how about one of the n.f.l. finest to row in there isn't just known for his mouth but also really beautiful body now he's six foot three hundred sixty five pounds oh and his b.m.i. is twenty eight which is considered way overweight ari so i know you guys are saying at home you're probably thinking those guys must be the exceptions they're professional athletes they're bodybuilders but not quite you see we decide to round up some of our own staff here at our teeth to put the average joe to the test so first over here we have him our ip guy he stands at five feet eleven two hundred fifteen pounds and brings in a body mass index of thirty so ten would be categorized as obese now i think it's pretty obvious that this russian hunk here does not deserve that label so now let's

move over our let's move compared him to our graphic designer rick who is six foot two hundred thirty five pounds and has a b.m.i. of thirty one now these two gentlemen here are one point off from each other both are considered obese now just clearly looking at these two it's very easy to tell that the measurement is not what i would call accurate so is the government's attempt to create a database of america's health lot of the stars. from the looks of it i'd say that is definitely possible. are let me make a very quick correction there is actually ways two hundred twenty or palin's vision is so good sometimes our doubt speaking of concerns over obesity whose fault is it that a child becomes obese many child health experts blame parental failure over diet and exercise and some in the u.k. are now going as far as suggesting that parents be charged for neglect which brings

us to the larger debate at hand should the government step in to cure obesity can they hold bad parents accountable can they ban sugar and salt or would that be a nanny state coming a little too far and reaching into private lives all while ignoring its own faults well joining me here in the studio is nikki kirk allah from the winston group and from our new york studio i have amanda marcotte blogger for panic on our start here with you know the government these child health experts are saying that this really this is a medical issue this is someone's life here is they have concern for it because obesity is not something to be treated taken lightly so if they can step in when there's physical abuse then why i couldn't they also step and if there's you know think you could call it medical abuse when you're not helping your child be healthy and in fact you're just making them completely overweight what what concerns me about classifying this is abuse is that it sort of pushes to the back part of the

very serious cases of abuse we have finite law enforcement dollars we have finite health care dollars and i would rather see abuse cases going after people who molest children people who legitimately are neglecting children not taking parent children out of the homes of parents who give their kids fast food now amanda what do you say do you think that kids who are probably being raised to leave and lead an incredibly unhealthy life probably die young should that be counted as abuse should the government be able to step in there. i have to agree with. most cases and i really don't think that's a good idea but i don't think that that means we should just wash our hands of the situation i think there's other ways to attack the problem of poor nutrition poor exercise in the larger population save ourselves some money on health care without attacking individuals and event individual parents who might just be very good parents whose children are a little heavy we could for instance regulate how much salt sugar is in the

corporate made food we eat. well as salt sugar those are all things that contribute to being overweight to being obese so is that ok for the government to regulate or you know in this weird gray area here where how far is too far what's next and forty unfortunately i think that does start to go too far because at the end of the day i would like to think that people could be held responsible for their own choices i would like to decide what food i eat and what's in the food i eat and not have that choice made for me because once you start taxing things like that that's highly regressed that one in chicago they implemented a bottled water tax a few years ago and that just proportionally hits the poor and that you know these are people that can least afford it at that point so i would i would prefer to see money go towards education and encouraging people to make wise choices but at the end of the day i don't think taxing a product is the best way to go but if we're talking about children here children can't go and leave read the label and see everything that's in the food that they're about to be fed because they're children they don't have

a voice they don't have a choice over what they eat these are the parents ultimately that are responsible and are the ones that are giving them this food amanda give comments on the. yeah i agree it's not only children i also think we have to think of what people are eating in the lack of exercise they're getting is something that becomes our collective problem because we end up having to pay the massive health care costs that are attendant to diabetes heart disease things like that since we have to pay . the cost we should have the right to regulate to at least try and attack the problem with regulation i just fundamentally don't see this is being the government's responsibility no where in the constitution does it say anything about regulating our food choices and i'm sure you know that it will be argued through the course of interstate commerce you know that we do have this large health care program now that we are all sharing the burdens for but i just i think that we have if we have a government of limited means you know that we can do effectively things in a target a way and not be very broadly going after food choices of our citizens. well i

agree that we are a government of limited means and i think that's part of the problem we only have so much money to spend on obesity related health care costs such as heart disease and diabetes it's a whole lot cheaper to prevent medical problems than to cure them well what do we also have a government however that allows corporations to perhaps genetically modified foods to put a lot of chemicals in foods that we know are not good for people and yet they choose not to regulate that and that in essence we have a population that's eating food that the government knows is bad for them i mean it's this vicious circle here where i would actually take it a step farther back and i would say that we have a government that has given tremendous subsidies to farm industries that message that maybe necessarily should not be receiving the corn syrup industry the sugar beet industry these people are getting more money than they should and they're good and accordingly that money is going towards loading up food with unhealthy components so i would i would prefer to see those subsidies on the table so that

small farms are not disadvantaged relative to corporations like that so that. food for mcdonald's is not that much cheaper because it's you know because of all the processed ingredients in it but who is really the bad guy here i mean the government's ultimately deciding right who they want to give more subsidies to who they want to give more money to and i would rather they stay out of it. i think i think we should. rethink our subsidies situation but i don't think that's. going to be enough because we're sort of genetically and culturally predisposed to eat things with a lot of fat and a lot of sugar and a lot of salts in them and then less we take large cultural measures to somewhat modify that we're going to continue to face these problems you could raise the price of a mcdonald's meal by two or three dollars and it would probably sell almost as well . you know we taking the joy of size fruit does this taking toys out of the happy meals like people are now trying to do is not really going to stop kids from eating

them does that make it any less appealing. i think kids are going to they're going to want to sort of regardless but at the end of the day this just seems to me like this is a giant social engineering exercise and that makes me very very nervous i don't really want to see the government telling me what i can or can't eat period do you think that we're headed that direction i don't want to write as you it's. just had a man but corporations are involved in and so are doing the same kind of social engineering they are loading food up with salt and fat and sugar and they're putting toys out there and they're doing everything in their power to manipulate your behavior away from healthy choices that you might otherwise make so i feel like you're talking a competition between government and corporations but one of them the government we in theory at least own i mean i would i would love to see this choice go back to parents i would love for parents to make more you know to be cooking at home or to be controlling their children's portions to be in more involved in their children's lives i just i think this is

a decision that should be kept as low and as local as possible and not be made at a federal level while part of the problem there these days especially though where we are we're in a recession not every family has the money to go out and they don't even actually have access to a whole foods because it might be thirty fifty miles away where you have fresh produce on the table and all that you might have available to you is cheap processed food and that's really i think the problem in america is that we just don't have good food available to us so i want to thank you both ladies for being here very much and i don't go anywhere there's still a lot more to come on today's show today marks the sixty fifth anniversary of the first nuclear test but anybody realized at that time how that nuclear bomb would change the face of war correspondent for christine for is out will join me with that story. the british soil. is not on. the.

market. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines. was a report or treat. well today marks the sixty fifth anniversary of the first nuclear test as a test that led to the nuclear arms race and the unveiling of the most deadly form of warfare in the world are to correspondent christine for south tells us about this fateful day and how this most deadly weapon still shapes politics today. it started with a pen and paper a letter written by albert einstein to president roosevelt in one thousand thirty nine explaining the need to act quickly developing and exploring your anian fission roosevelt did act and as several nations in europe became entrenched in the second world war the united states propelled itself into work on developing

a nuclear bomb tens of thousands of people worked on it the largest corporations in america were recruited so it's not something that can really be done in the laboratory here. instead a large bomb weighing almost ten thousand pounds was assembled at a top secret facility in los alamos new mexico the nicknames of the two bombs that ended world war two one was called little boy and that was a uranium fueled what them and then fat man the fat man or implosion bomb used plutonium instead of uranium at the center of it and initiating device encased in a highly explosive shell that made the blast wave go inward and five thirty am on july sixteenth one thousand nine hundred forty five the test was carried out by four three. one. it was the beginning of the atomic age and of the arms race.

people. who cried. robert oppenheimer was the scientific director of the manhattan project three weeks after the test in new mexico known as the trinity test the uranium bomb was dropped on hiroshima three days after that on august ninth the fat man was dropped on nagasaki a few days later the japanese surrendered and the pacific war was over the action itself of colossal importance but experts say the ability to develop and test became the driver of the arms race the british got it the french got the chinese. the indians the pakistanis now the north koreans. tested to is the reason why countries tested over the years has been primarily to develop new and more deadly

types of nuclear weapons to demonstrate their power and to send signals to one another signals like this one sent by iran the signals that even today steer relations and shift the balance of power around the world christine for r.t. . well christine's here in the studio to tell us a little more christine like you said sixty five years ago today that was the beginning of the nuclear age you can say do you think that we're getting any closer to do it and ingrid we see it in our lifetime well it's interesting there are so many people who have studied this day extensively and who have studied the meaning of this day extensively and there are people who say the end of the cold war and various treaties that have been signed by some of the major world powers sort of ended the major threat at least of the nuclear age but we also see things like north korea testing and iran wanting to acquire and enrich uranium and

scholars of this say there is no way that that the nuclear age is over is that the only way that it would be over is if the leaders of the major world powers recognize that there's no longer a need. the main reason that people have you know these nuclear bombs is just to tell other countries we have them it's not because they intend to use them of course i don't think countries are responsible enough these days to say oh you know we really don't need to have a nuclear war so let's not have these bombs now everybody wants the biggest the scariest toys weapons whatever you want to call them everybody wants to try them instead of to say someone else tried it out first then i'll just learn from their experience i think no matter what you talk about everyone always wants to learn on their own unfortunately now you know when you were researching this story was there anything that you found that really that shocked you the scared you that you were in awe of there were a couple things that i thought were really interesting number one every single

country that ever tried to build a bomb did so there was no countries that were able to they devoted the resources they devoted the people they devoted the time and basically as it was explained to me it was just a science project and when you had all the science you know just physics and they did it another character i think was really interesting was you saw him in the report very briefly mr oppenheimer scientific director of the manhattan project in addition to having a great mind for science was often found quoting john donne quoting a lot of poetry to talk about this and when he was talking about you know looking back on this day in one nine hundred forty five the test he quoted you know hindu scripture from the bhagavad gita and he said. a line from there that was really interesting he said i have become the death the destroyer of worlds. from about script from that passage and he said you know i think looking back that day we all sort of felt that way but that was really interesting not really understanding the implications of what if what had happened until after it already dead it's very

eerie to look back and think also it is other words where he said some people were laughing and some other people were crying because i think looking at what you've created you also know the damage perhaps that this that this could do because you created a monster sensually and it was one of those things you don't know for sure if it's going to work a lot of the people with the uranium they knew it's going to work but with this plutonium bomb you just don't know and when it does and when you see the crazy impact that it has it's pretty shocking yeah definitely as well sixty five years and christine for joining me in the studio coming up in the show we have a very sexy to a time when i say pam anderson she's mad that her homeland won't show her picture we'll give you details on that in just a moment and the u.s. senate is talking about the start treaty today but looks like republicans are being russia haters we'll bring you that story after the break.

and i again this is all see a quick trip to the headlines. three ethnic chechens have been arrested in fronts charged with conspiracy to commit terrorist attacks are suspected of links to trenchant minutes and don't believe to be behind several terrorist stunts including the moscow metro bombings and. the six to five years since the u.s. carried out the some successful test of an atomic bomb blast in the new mexico desert was just on the altar.