mold free blog. projects a free media. dot com. it tales coming up. and trying to clean up and rebuild from hurricane sandy the new york and new jersey areas face a long recovery but will some businesses actually profit off this monster storm

that story ahead i. it's thursday november eighth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching our teeth. all right we begin tonight with the latest information coming out of syria twenty months more than thirty eight thousand people dead and still there are no signs that the civil war that has split this nation at it seems is anywhere near over several big events have happened this week that have the potential to trigger some sort of action first president obama won reelection and international leaders are now calling for quick and decisive action also turkey is asking nato for permission to line its southern borders with surface to air missiles which would effectively create a no fly zone in the region and british prime minister david cameron has promised president bashar al assad safe passage if assad chooses to step down but all of

this is unlikely national was granted an exclusive interview with the embattled syrian leader here's part of the exclusive interview where he talks about the potential fallout from u.s. intervention in the region. i think the price of beef and vision if you just happened is going to be more than the whole world came before because if you have problems here you can go to the throng of sticking out of him and stability in the region and coexistence it's a it will have a domino effect book from the atlantic to the pacific and you know the implication or put it on both of them i don't thing. to do with going. to go but you do so nobody can pick what's next now in that interview bashar al assad went on to say that if that he will live and die in syria raising serious

questions over whether he just put a bounty on his head since he essentially stated that there are only two possible outcomes to this conflict and are to internationals interview is getting a lot of attention the new york times wrote an article with the headline reading syrian president warns against a foreign intervention in syria and even c.n.n. is picking up the interview in its coverage but this was an exclusive interview given by bashar assad to russia today portion of it was released today not a surprise what we're hearing so far we've heard an entrenched a defiant syrian president bashar assad. meanwhile a landmark meeting was held in qatar today between the different factions of syrian rebels this comes amid growing international pressure for the movement to get organized if a transition is to take place now the ongoing civil unrest is boiling down to secretary and violence between the sunni majority and assad's group the alawite minority and in this interview

a big question assad presented was the possibility that fundamentalists will take will rise to power once he goes now will be airing that interview tomorrow afternoon on our what are not on our network so be sure to turn in. more information is coming out today regarding the trial of private first class bradley manning in an attempt to reach a deal with the government the accused wiki leaks or his defense team appears to be trying to work out some sort of deal with the government to get things moving forward again a statement released by bradley manning's defense attorney david combs said quote p.f.c. manning has offered to plead guilty to various offenses through a process known as pleading by exceptions and substitutions to clarify p.f.c. manning is not pleading guilty to specifications as charged by the government rather p.f.c. manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within or are a subset of the charged offenses the court will consider whether this is a permissible plea so if it's not

a plea deal manning is after them what is it and what are the chances that the court will accept this deal for the very latest on this curious case i was joined by josh gerstein white house reporter for politico. well it sounds like it's not a plea deal but it's more of a plea bargain offer from manning and his lawyers and there is a very serious charges manning facing including aiding the enemy which is punishable by life in prison in this case and so they're trying to basically make sort of an opening bid perhaps or maybe it's a middle of the game bid to put up some more minor charges or more minor offenses and see if the government might basically say well you know what if you're willing to plead to that that's good enough and the court can always project this or they can accept it and they can still try him for some of the other things that they have him for he is facing of course up to life in prison giving the twenty two counts but can you explain that to us as the viewers and to myself what's the point

of doing this if that the court can simply accept that charge in any way well i think the defense team here is trying to dramatize the way that manning has been charged a lot of people feel that the case is over charged meaning that based on what manning allegedly did here to charge him with aiding the enemy for posting something on the internet for example is taking things a step too far and i think the defense is either whether it's a plea deal or whether it's just sort of a public bid to emphasize the fact that manning is being punished too seriously or facing too serious punishment i think that's basically the gambit the defense is pursuing but you're right the court has to decide whether to accept this and then ultimately the military itself decides whether they want to press forward with the most serious charges that manning face so what good can possibly come out of this other than of course public sympathy. well it brings attention to others in the military that are outside the direct chain of command dealing with this case on

a day in day out basis that there is a way to resolve this without necessarily going to the mat with a full court martial it's also interesting that manning decided he doesn't want to be tried by sort of a jury of his peers of other military officers and soldiers but said that he'd rather be tried by a judge all of that is really interesting as coming out of this case of course things are still his they are still trying to figure all of this out but we know that the pretrial hearing that's going on right now is what to term and whether the court and prosecutors are delaying his right to a speedy trial so what were all this play in speeding up the trial or will it play anything at all. i don't think it will delay the trial but this issue of speedy trial is an important one you know it's put off for months and months and months more than a year basically as things went forward in the hearing that's been going forward today according to the blog reports and others we're seeing out from fort meade maryland indicate that the military's been trying to explain why we was there were something like eight or nine separate delays in the case and not all the reasons

seem to be great ones one that seems to have come out is that some of the people involved only wanted to work on the weekends because they didn't want to bring bring manning into these official government buildings during the week because people might gawked at him basically absolutely and i know that meanwhile i just want to touch cares a little bit meanwhile the seventh person was charged under the espionage act this week that's a navy linguist station in basra and named james hateful verger he was an allegedly . accused of copying intelligence files that were leased to stanford university and although president obama was reelected it doesn't seem like we're getting much of a change in terms of prosecuting these people a second term right. well so far we're not and i don't see that there's any reason to expect a dramatic change i think as you guys have covered extensively there has been now many more such prosecutions under obama than all previous presidents behind combined i should say and it looks like this pattern is going to continue and go

ahead and can you explain a little bit this espionage act that all these people are falling into i know that it was created during a world war one era so is it antiquated. well it's certainly very broad and you know most of it deals with espionage with taking military secrets or defense secrets and giving them to someone who's an agent of a foreign power but there is a part in it that's basically very very broad and elastic that says that if you take military or defense secrets whether you get them legitimately or illegitimately and you pass them on to another person and that can be anyone else who's not authorized to receive them you've committed a very serious felony and that's the provision that had been used very very rarely before president obama came into office and now as you say we've seen come up in seven different criminal cases some of it might simply though be the fact of the advent of the internet it is true now that it's a lot easier to put information out there that everyone be they friends and enemies alike has access to and i do want to focus on julian

a science of course bradley manning and julian assigns kind of go hand in hand when it comes to discussing the leaked cables that were hundreds of thousands of documents and also that that document or the movie the clip that made wiki leaks famous i put it on the map the collateral murder video so it looks like the information the latest information that we're hearing is that the grand jury is still investigating julian a songe can you talk a little bit about the developments in his case well there's a document that came out either yesterday or the day before out of the federal court in virginia that shows that there's still an ongoing criminal investigation into wiki leaks it sounds like the federal government plans to keep that investigation open probably until there's bradley manning case is completed you know if there were ever a plea deal with manning and the government it's possible there might be pressure for him to become a witness and to testify against julian and songe we heard earlier in the manning trial that there were some indications that assad had indicated he might be willing

to help manning break passwords to get into military computers so that's something the government still seems very interested in getting to the bottom of josh gerstein white house reporter for politico thank you so much for a.s.l.'s latest developments ok thanks. moving along now the pentagon announced today that iranian warplanes shot and unarmed u.s. surveillance drone over international airspace along the gulf last week the unmanned drone was not damaged however in the pentagon made clear that president barack obama and secretary of defense leon panetta were both informed of the incident as it occurred back on november the first pentagon spokesperson george little said that iran was warned through diplomatic channels adding quote the united states has communicated to the iranians that we will continue to conduct surveillance flights over international waters over the arabian gulf consistent with longstanding practice and our commitment to the security of the region we have

a wide range of options from diplomatic to military to protect our military assets and our forces and will do so when necessary now interestingly enough the incident comes a year after a cia drone crashed inside the islamic republic and less than a week before the presidential election well make sure to keep you up to date on this story as it develops. and still ahead here on our t.v. hurricane sandy has left behind massive damage in the northeast so which businesses will benefit from the rebuilding effort that story coming up next.

i'm lauren lyster. welcome back while the east coast is still picking up the pieces two weeks after hurricane sandy ravaged homes and communities and as if that superstorm wasn't bad enough the latest nor'easter may have slowed the process down significantly as fema and other government agencies tried to rectify the situation but out of the darkness from the damage and the destruction. a ray of hope a ray of economic hope that is private companies are teaming up with a public sector to rebuild infrastructure damaged by the superstorm everything from homes to tunnels to roads are all in need of repair along the eastern seaboard businesses will no doubt benefit from the reconstruction efforts and possibly the economy as well to discuss more about this public private partnership or to produce or rachel curteous joined me earlier. a few major ways

a public private partnerships can work in the sirkar the first way is that essentially private businesses take over for the government so for instance still essentially buy a road off of the government and after that they'll benefit say they'll they'll have to deal with all the repairs and things of that nature but at the same time they get all of the revenue from tolls and from any other sort of profit generating revenue like even. along the side of the road things like that the other way to do it is to actually have the businesses from the outset be the ones who build the roads to begin with and i think that's what we're going to see a little bit more in the wake of superstorm sandy seeing as these roads are entirely destroyed to begin with so instead of having a bond measure where in the government borrows money off of taxpayers to pay for these new roads what they'll do is essential to beat out those roads to businesses who will then do it and again take all of the revenue in from having built it it'll essentially be their road that they build for the sake of the government so talk

about what the east coast will potentially look like under these kind of this kind of partnership are we going to see tolls on every road and also i want to bring up the fact that if it is that these roads are going to be paid for by tolls is there really any difference between charging people taxes and these tolls that's a really fantastic point and i think that that's exactly how we've got to look at it so you're saying people are saying oh well we don't have to borrow money to pay for it but instead it's kind of a penny wise pound foolish policy because when the government issues a bond in order to pay something they continue to have control over for instance how much the tolls will cost over time as soon as you have something like a private enterprise taking over you'll see that that's not the case anymore they can raise the tolls pretty pretty much whenever they want they have something called non compete clauses which means the government say won't be able to build another road or bridge nearby because i'm a complete compete with the ability for the privately owned road to. raise revenue and things of that nature i want to bring up make up an example of something that

happened in two thousand and eight that was essentially a public private partnership that in my opinion has gone a bit a ride in chicago mayor daley in two thousand and eight centuries leased out all of the chicago parking meters thirty six thousand of them it's the third largest kind of parking meter group in the in the country they leased it out for seventy five years to a morgan stanley group that essentially assembled that was one point one five billion dollars which seems like a lot of money much of which was used to plug up budget holes and things of that nature so the daily could pay for public employees the issue is that new research coming out shows that over the seventy five years was actually happening is that. they're going to make the this morgan stanley group is going to make eleven point six billion dollars out of the deal altogether now the way they're going to do that is they've already boosted rates they're changing around the parking so that you can fit in more cars which is a good thing if you're really good at parallel parking

a lot of people myself included aren't so that's a little disconcerting and they're adding hours to that require fees often you know after six pm you're fine not to add in money that's not the case in chicago anymore another issue is that let's say i want to have a street fair i can't close off the street because by contract those parking meters have to keep running to make sure that this company is making money and rachel that's a really good example that you bring up however what i am saying and the different articles that are being written about this is that you know the states it's no secret that slaves states these cities are in some type of a budget crunch and that this storm only adds on to it but from what i'm understanding it could actually be cheaper for these private entities to make these public roads but you're arguing that in the induction the short term you're arguing that in the long term it can actually not be any for i think it's really difficult to determine the value say of parking tolls excuse me. parking meters of road tolls

over the course of seventy five years when you lent something out for that long of a period of time you have no idea how much money you could be losing and i think that in particular there's a lot of secrecy regarding these deals in the case of chicago for instance mayor daley proposed this idea only two days before it went to a council vote that's very little time for independent groups for the inspector general for people like that to actually go in and determine whether or not this is an effective deal for the people of chicago and i think over time we've learned that it's not that again over time they're actually losing a lot more revenue in order to plug up these short term budget holes and russia let's go and talk about what's happened to save the citizens have if any and as private public partnership you know well as i said before i think a lot of it is really guarded in secrecy not only the fact that these deals and contracts aren't presented until right before they're made actionable but another issue is that they're entirely written in legal leave they're written in jargon and it's really difficult for a normal person to look at this and say oh let me see this over time is not going

to cost us that much money or it will i think the analysis is very difficult to determine so there at least need to be more time given and i you know in the in the case of hurricane sandy there are people in new jersey in new york and all over the eastern seaboard who are certainly suffering right now so i think that time is of the essence in it i would think it would be hasty to immediately sign onto a really long term partnership with the business whose main goal is profit i mean let's face it they're trying to make money and the thing is when we're talking about infrastructure infrastructure is something that should be for the benefit of citizens so over time i think that the. maybe these two things aren't as aligned as we'd like them to be racial we only have about thirty seconds left but what you're saying is you're not necessarily opposed to the private sector stepping in and just to clarify but let me what's a little bit more regulation maybe with a little bit more extra nation i mean what's going on i but also the thing is investors only really want to invest in things that are going to be profitable that means that the government is selling off. things like say the eastern corridor

which are very profitable for private businesses but then say look at the midwest the government is going to have to continue to pay for all of those things new investors are going to come in the government is losing revenue that could actually boost them and still being in charge of you know roads and infrastructure that no one else is interested in paying for archie producer rachel curtis thank you for that and. all right well we've all heard the stories natural gas drilling contaminating ground water and sickening residents we've seen the videos where one person after another sets their tap water on fire heck we here at our t.v. have actually filmed that happening with our own cameras but it looks like the damage hydraulic fracturing causes might go even deeper than previously thought. well all the way down to the earth's fault lines researchers now say that this is the extraction method actually causes earthquakes hundreds of them this is the first time that the term causation has been instead used instead of the term

correlation when referring to how earthquakes and fracking are linked now you may already know that this method well how this method works but here's a quick refresher course natural gas companies come in and dig a well thousands of feet down into the earth's surface into the shale rock formation this can be seven eight nine thousand feet down below the earth's surface from there the company injects millions of gallons of water sanded chemicals into the shell rock formation under extremely high pressure causing that rock to crack or fracture and that process releases the natural gas bubbles to ryan's to the surface for natural gas companies to come and collect. but and the report by the british columbia oil and gas commission says that this fluid injected flows to the pre into preexisting faults and that that can cause them to slip that's creating an earthquake so to get to the root of this report mike loued wig reporter with truthout explained this process in the problems with fracking they're taking sand

in water and they're taking industrial chemicals and the pumping them deep below the earth may actually you know in the center already creating many earthquakes and they break up the earth to release the oil and gas but what we're seeing in this report here is that here if you have an area where there's some preexisting solve these liquids fracking liquids they use regular the rock can get in there lubricate them and cause series of other smaller earthquakes now in the past you know fracking has been linked to earthquakes in arkansas fracking wastewater injection cause earthquakes in ohio what the industry has repeatedly said is that it's very rare and compare the number of operations that are out there it barely ever happens or we're seeing here in this case this report is that it could be actually much more common than people thought we just haven't had the kind of psychological data to put it all together and of course we are starting to see some of that data come out one area in particular is in ohio can you go and talk about what they found

with earthquakes in ohio if you do know and where those epi centers for those earthquakes were located. right now about two thousand and ten to me two thousand one hundred twelve there are series of twelve smaller earthquakes with the final earthquake ranging about four point five on the record scale that was actually felt for miles around these all happened near youngstown and north eastern ohio now investigate these earthquakes later this summer and found out that regulators actually had to injection well it wasn't a fracking well but they were taking waste water from fracking operations and rejecting them into an older well they had headed to the highest pressure in a well known high on the ignored by logical data showing that earthquakes started to erupt in that area and they continued to allow the pressure of this well to increase until finally the governor had to step in and shut it down last january and so this this injection well of wastewater is actually allowing the waste water seep into a precambrian preexisting ball because the earthquake and we do know that just to

put that some perspective like that these earthquakes are all relatively small there between two point two and three point eight on the rector scale many of them are not even felt on the earth's surface and no damage has been caused to this point so why should people be worried. well there was some mental damage actually caused in arkansas and ohio and risk rates that were eventually linked to fracking after a lot of review and a lot of kind of going back and forth among state scientists and geologists there has been some minor damage but what we have to worry about here is that there's an industry that is moving and drilling much faster than regulators and as we can see with this report just coming out today much faster than science and so there's a lot of we still don't know and as it rapidly expands we have to wonder who is going to step in to make sure they don't cause some problems that are bigger than we've already seen maybe some shakeups that are perhaps more violent and also that our water supplies are in danger when you're breaking rock you're causing many earthquakes what can you know is it possible for these chemicals to migrate into

refers and into drinking water supplies and that is another big concern and i want to know from you from all your reports and from the people that you've talked to do you think this has the potential to have serious consequences in the future what are starting out of small earthquakes could they be potentially become big ones. i don't know these could ever become very big earthquakes i think it's possible that it's a very large. fault somehow gets lubricated and maybe geologists have mass is going to be could have something major but there are some areas of the country with histories of earthquakes there are active drilling happening right now so what is important is that we have a really solid it was full data and really so a geological oversight by regulators and you know by independent groups and like i do want to go ahead and bring up a graphic really quickly kind of showing where all of these fracturing sites are

within the u.s. most of them are in. pennsylvania some are in colorado texas north dakota so they're all over the place and if you see all those little black dots on your screen those are all this so called for accidents has happened not necessarily earthquakes but for accidents some cells of spelling and whatnot so given all of these areas i mean not very many of are happening in california california of course is where most of the earthquakes happen in in the u.s. so do these companies consider where these fault lines are or should they in the future will this research help them to figure that out. i think of it do consider where these fault lines are but you have to realize they're imperative to get the most out of their drilling as quickly as possible they're taking all the time to make sure their voting falls obviously they haven't i mean the fault was not avoided in ohio there's been small earthquakes you know measured here in british columbia and actually some of the drilling intensity zones like in arkansas are the

areas where historically there have been some massive earthquake so it's you know i can't speak for every single company we hope and they're all doing their job right but as you can see there's already been some accident so you know that has some cause for concern and you know arkansas is one of the places where thousands of very minor but thousands of earthquakes were recorded after intense shelling has happened there's been more problems too recently gas and drilling related disaster just happened where i am in louisiana where a massive five and a half acres called just opened up in the bayou and they had to evacuate under three people and that is that is an area that has been drilled for twenty years pennsylvania has been the drought that heavily for twenty years what company going to look like in twenty years i mean these are all the kinds of questions we have to ask myself mike we have only a fairly short time about thirty seconds left but i do have to get to some of the solutions one of the solutions that the bases oil and gas commission reported was simply lowering the pressure of the water being injected into the ground very quickly is that viable i think that could help but we really need solid

seismological data we need seismometers in every area where there's major gas drilling happening that did not happen in ohio it was not happening in british columbia but not having an r. and b. star we need back we need that data mike ludwig reporter for truthout thank you so much for joining us having me. all right well that's going to do it for the news for tonight but for the latest information on the stories we cover today and a few stories that we didn't have time to get to go to our web site www dot com slash r t america our web team is working very hard to follow the bradley manning case among others and if you missed part of our show today you are in luck we post all of our videos online in full you can find us on our you tube site and also on our web site r.t. dot com slash usa and don't forget to click comment and share our links with their friends we want to hear what you have to say what stories you want us to cover so tweet me at meghan underscore lopez and don't forget.