no longer number one china has surpassed the u.s. when it comes to trade what does this mean for the u.s. economy and our standing in the world find out coming up. and a new york police officer is going to jail after raping a teacher but the law doesn't call his crime great now the victim is fighting back a look at her case and the status of the violence against women act. there is a huge debate taking place here in the u.s. over fracking states are trying to regulate the industry that some say could be a goldmine for new energy for america but do the benefits outweigh the cost will dig into it coming up. it's tuesday february twelfth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our tea. well it's like the balance of economic

power in the world is shifting china has surpassed the u.s. as the world's largest trading nation here's the figures from the last year recently released by the commerce department we're talking about imports and exports in the year two thousand and twelve as you can see the u.s. totaled three point eight two trillion dollars china was at three point eight seven trillion dollars is this now another sign of china's growing economic influence meanwhile in russia the central bank has gone on a golden shopping spree this according to a recent report from bloomberg the country has added five hundred seventy metric tons of gold to its reserves in the past decade making at the top buyer in the world so as other countries continue to strengthen their economic competitiveness is this a sign of a weakened u.s. dollar and if so what does this mean for the u.s. i'm joined by gerald celebs a publisher of the trends journal now for more gerald nice to see you so china as

a g.d.p. is half of that of the u.s. so how does a country with a much smaller economy have a larger trading volume china is in the business of business in the united states is in the business of war. china's energies and talents are going into making more at lower prices and exploiting it around the world that high profits while america's energy are going into military industrial complex and making sophisticated weaponry waging wars see you can't do both it's either you know it's guns or butter i didn't make that line so the united states has lost its competitive edge because of its military expansionism and secondly it's as though the whole nation is living with attention deficit disorder

if they go back to nafta back in one nine hundred ninety four when it was first pushed through many people warned that this was going to happen it was that great sucking sound it wasn't only going to come from mexico it was going to come from around the world as u.s. manufacturing shipped as jobs overseas to cheap labor countries to bring the product back and sell it at a markup so it's very easy to see and the consequences were predictable so it's no secret that the u.s. a large chunk of the u.s. budget goes toward military spending and a lot of people say that this is what's propping up the economy but you're saying this is doing the opposite. oh absolutely you know there's that there's that mentality that still exists you know america in the world you know the depression ended when world war two started and stupid people say things like we need a good war to get us out of this you know which of course is an oxymoron but the

defense budget goes to a very small group of individuals it's a monopoly in those industries and when you look at the real numbers liz defense and defense related spending is over one point two trillion dollars. so we see china now number one the world's biggest trader and as a result china is becoming a very important trading partner for many countries so at this rate will european countries be doing more trade with china than with other european countries well you know europe is not out of their depression by the way they don't call that a depression in spain with twenty six percent official unemployment same in greece very high numbers in portugal and italy you know they're not going to be doing a lot of trading with anybody because there's also the currency war problem as you're seeing the value of the euro going up that these they're exploiting products are going to be more expensive to buy and you seeing at the same time with the new

prime minister of japan abbay say to the bank of japan print more money buy more buy more government treasuries and and securities and lower the value of the yen so we could sell more products now where there is a term we mentioned china now the biggest trader russia now the biggest buyer and there is this term it's coined the brics we're talking about brazil russia india china south africa can be they are this group of emerging economies can we expect this group to continue to grow and if so how will that impact the global economy as as we know it. the problem with a number of the bric company countries is that there's also the export ing is show so if economies slow down you take brazil for example they're a big natural resource export or so of china's if the europeans and the americans aren't consuming that means brazil exports less product into china and of

course india or russia of course also big a big natural resource export or and then you have slowdowns coming from india and china and south africa although they're now a brick nation again a very small player but natural resource exporters so if the europeans and the americans aren't buying the giant chinese aren't making the indians are making and the natural resource nations aren't export and so we see this continuing to slow down the brics aren't going to build it up and arresting gerald always interesting to have your way and that was gerald celente a publisher of the trends journal and director of the transit research institute well now to what a serving k. is coming out in new york a woman by the name of lydia cuomo is trying to redefine the word rape in the state last year she was waiting for her ride to school on her first day working as

a second grade teacher and that's when a drunk off duty police officer pulled up pointed a gun at her and then raped her repeatedly while the perpetrator the man you see there former officer michael pena was convicted of forcing anal and oral sex on the victim but that's not rape that's because in new york in new york anal and oral rape is not considered rape under the law. well she believes quote rape is rape and is using her experience to change the law in that state and she told the daily news quote i had witnesses i had d.n.a. i had my own testimony i had two cops i had them saying we admit he sexually assaulted you and i didn't get the verdict i needed the first time and that just highlights to me the problem in the system for more i'm joined now by independent journalist amber lyon amber great to have you here in the studio so much so rape is rape that's what the victim says but not in new york how is rape defined there well

the problem is that and new york state they only consider valid penetration to be rape and in the case of libya situation she says that she was forced to commit oral sex and anal sex and considers that to be rape but according to the law that is just sexual assault so right now she's seeking legal justification because you can imagine the horror she's been through and now the courts aren't even recognizing that that's rape and she's got to try to explain to people that it's only being considered sexual assault and not rape in this case and unfortunately was this is the case nationwide in almost every state so no you don't you're going to be weak in this snow only eight states recognize oral and anal sex as as being legally considered rape so what do they consider in those states just penetration so i guess just a form of sexual assault or just not as serious. accusation of rape and you can imagine these women they feel any any type of assault to that extent especially and

is rape but the courts aren't recognizing that and that's what libya is really trying to change in new york for not only for herself and her own justification but for future victims of sexual assault can you talk about how this victim lydia cuomo is now trying to change his definition of what exactly she trying to do to make sure that no other woman faces the same ordeal after already you know being under these to. circumstances well right now she's boldly and you can imagine it's very difficult for her to talk about this publicly but she is coming forward showing her face showing her name explaining that this happened to her and she's headed to albany to try to pass the rape is rape bill which includes oral and anal assaults as being considered rape and she's really hoping that new york state will recognize that those are crimes as that make victims feel as horrifically as as what they consider to be rape at this point well just this afternoon the senate passed the violence against women act how does this bill address the issue of violence against

women what for decades the violence against women act has been key to not only offering support for victims of assault sexual assaults and physical assaults but also offering women a way to to feel confident to come out and expose the perpetrators and it is created key programs nationwide to offer support for for these victims and according to advocates the violence against women act is responsible for reducing rates of domestic violence against women also for increasing rates of women who feel confident enough to come forward and expose that they're being abused and so we do see support in the senate but not so much progress in the house what is the hold up there well the problem all comes down to rape the rape and sexual assaults that occur on indian reservations what happen is that the violence against women act says that tribal courts can charge non-native americans for assaulting or

raping native americans and advocates say that this is needed legislation they say federal courts are far they need these tribal courts to really be able to prosecute these cases they also say that if you assault someone you deserve to be held responsible and republicans were saying that it's unconstitutional to. it's in tribal court so there was a hold up there but it looks like those amendments are going to stay in the bill and that this will pass with enough republican support and democratic support to eventually be signed by the president of course native americans domestic violence is a huge problem among that population so this bill does aim to help them but it looks like that's the problem there and if you talk to advocates native americans there are two point five times more likely to be assaulted sexually assaulted then than average americans so this is a key issue that the violence against women act is focusing on this round and advocates say that's a victory enough that this is being discussed so well

a victory today what do you think is in store for this victim in new york that trying to change the definition of rape there or do you think she'll be successful or successful in her and over there are high hopes so far heard her team and supporters say that she is winning at this point because she's getting people talking about that i don't know if you knew that this those forms of assault were not considered rape but before i started investigating this case i didn't know that so many states across the united states don't consider. rape in oral rape to be rape even know what value at least as majority of people i think would say yes that that is indeed rape and amber is winning in that case by just getting people to talk about it and i think she feels successful absolutely amber great thank great to have you on here that was an ally and she's an independent journalist. we take a look now at the method to extract natural gas known as fracking and that's when gas companies come in and dig

a well thousands of feet down into shale rock formations from there the company injects millions of gallons of water sand and this mixture of chemicals under extremely high pressure and this causes the rock to crack or fracture and that releases natural gas to the surface for energy companies to collect well proponents of fracking believe it's a critical step for america's path to energy independence on the other side of the debate are groups concerned about the environmental and health risks the practice poses today in california state lawmakers are holding a hearing about that regulating the practice for more i'm joined now by ronald bailey a science correspondent reason dot com welcome ronald so over there in monterey california drilling could bring and bring in fifteen billion barrels of oil and this is making gas executives very excited but what about regulating the practice to make sure it's done safely and sustainably well in fact it does seem to be

already well regulated for safety in the united states no cases yet been confirmed contamination has occurred because of this you can process of course any industrial process could have through use an exchange really what you've had is well. because of fracking but because they were well designed to cause problems but it was not a problem with fracking at all it was just bad design wells and that can happen and needs to be watched very carefully and i think that we're going to be doing so above but right now in california there's very little regulation fracking received an exemption from the clean water bill and that means oil companies don't have to reveal what chemicals are in the mixture they're at they're using for fracking so why isn't fracking held to the same standards as other practices. well among other reasons is as you pointed out in your video what's happening is that the tracking zone where you're actually going to be extracting oil of the natural gas from is

ten thousand feet below the surface water is typically the water cable if you will aka firs are probably no greater depth than two thousand feet so you basically have eight thousand feet of impermeable rock between the water and the fossil fuel resource so essentially that's already a huge protection there that the water tables are protected if that will so well designed secondly most of the most of the stuff you're putting in the wells as fracking fluids many percent of it's ninety five percent of it's water the other five percent of it's pretty much sand and you have a small amount of other chemicals to keep bacterial growth and to allow for some if you will. and of things like salts sodium chloride things like citric acid now there are some things which should be monitored and take and take care of but if you look at the california right regulations the way they're designed is they're not revealed necessarily to the public but they are revealed to the to the

regulators the regulators will know what the company why not reveal this to the public. well their argument is that a lot of the stuff is trade secrets that they don't want their other competitors to know exactly how it is that they are able to do more cheaply if you will frack as compared to their competitors. only there i think what's going to happen is that we won't even have to worry about the california regulations because the e.p.a. a u.s. e.p.a. the national e.p.a. is already designing regulations that will apply across the country that i think will satisfy most the concerns that people have environmentalists are very worried about this practice and are worried about these chemicals that the community the public has no way of knowing exactly what's in there that that it can contaminate the water supply and you know impact americans health so we're talking about the environment and our health and well being is that a fair concern of course you should be concerned about your health you should also

keep the risks and in perspective here again there are no examples of where the fracking fluids have harmed someone's health in the united states at this point we just don't occur but again there's just no example of this so you have to keep it in perspective there are other things that people should be worried about and in fact this shouldn't be killing the golden goose in this particular case fifteen billion barrels of oil could help the. economy enormously as you know the unemployment rate in california is much higher than the national rate around ten percent and this could be a boon to that state's tax base as well as to implement people you know certainly a lot of oil that we're talking about but i think the worry is that where we extract this oil in a safe sustainable healthy way of course drilling for oil and gas is popular is a popular trend these days can we expect the practice to expand in the u.s. and if so what will the long term effects of the. the long term effects on the

economy will be of course wholly positive essentially what you're going to be able to do is provide cheaper gasoline cheaper electricity from the use of natural gas and you'll be able to boost economic growth in that way and provide jobs with regard to people still again i think what you'll find is that the risks are much smaller than a lot of people are pretending they are particularly environmental community the reason that if i may say so the road mina community brings up house raised is not so much because of the health service but because they don't want to stay burning fossil fuels and we should be more honest along those lines the main reason they're running at these health risks which i think are exaggerated is because they would rather use renewables solar wind and that kind of thing and not have us produce oil and that's a big debate we should have that debate but you shouldn't hide behind fake health risks in order to make that debate certainly a heated debate and appreciate you ronald weighing in on it that was ronald bailey science correspondent add reason. not

a controversial bill resurfacing in congress the famous camp bill allows the government to run at least six military installations when a national emergency is declared these emergency centers would be run by fema under the command of the secretary of homeland security a few years ago a similar bill was presented in congress but it didn't go anywhere over concerns that the broad language can lead to sweeping unchecked government power now another version is back up for debate and bob english civil liberties activist and blogger joins us now for more welcome there mr english hello so i didn't pass the first time around why was there resistance to it well a fellow by the name of leave rogers began writing about it and raising some alarms concern over the broad sweeping powers that would give the depôt department of homeland security and kind of caught fire and just died. it just died because people were afraid of what this could lead to exactly there were concerns that

there were parallels to the japanese internment facilities in world war two that we saw and for practical purposes the financial mess was going on in there were other things to be dealt with at the time ok so there were concerns over the vague language it didn't pass now there's this new version of the bill what's changed well they took out the vague language so that the centers are specifically set up to house shelter even educate people for extended periods of time but they are limited to that specific purpose ok so of course this whole of it this legislation is meant to be enacted in the event of an emergency but what exactly does that mean what is the definition of emergency especially when it comes to this legislation and when would it be enacted sure we have to go back to one thousand nine hundred eighty two the stafford act bill to actually get the definition of emergency and

this covers things like tornadoes floods hurricanes natural disasters but it also gives the president to declare an emergency to avert the catastrophe which raises the issue of pretty preemptive this ok but there's also this is the goal here is to mobilize resources to have this plan to prevent a tragedy from happening but also a reaction to it right yes a reaction and that's where some of the concerns for civil liberties activists comes in because it's a slippery slope once the government has this power and all these centers are set up and it's at least six maybe more probably more there is a real potential for the abuse of power here ok interesting you know we have we have this map that shows how the u.s. would be divided in the event of an emergency if we can pull that out there there it is so this is how the u.s. will be. i added into districts you see ten of them there this is according to the

national emergency center establishment can you can you describe what this map is what exactly does that mean i mean it doesn't really make sense in terms of states as we know them but what is this classification system what are the purposes it doesn't look like the map that you and i saw in elementary school not all the sections effectively the u.s. has been cordoned off into these different districts and so these new emergency centers will be spread out throughout the united states in most of these eventually and it gives seem a and the department of homeland security jurisdiction over what goes on in these in these places during a time of emergency ok oh i want to go into what because this act of does makes. some specific examples some exclusions us at some limitations i should say so the national emergency center establishment act what it does not do it does not

authorize any federal officer or employee to force an individual to enter a national emergency center or prevent an individual from leaving a national emergency center so bob it looks to me like there are some safeguards their favor you don't like it you can leave well i'd like to think so and this was actually one of the other things that was changed in this new version of the bill they added this but if you read what they're saying you know federal officer or federal employee that doesn't cover members of the military and since these are going to be installed in decommissioned and existing military bases you're going to have people from the military there so i would think they will have people namely the military who would be able to force people to stay there or prevent them from leaving if that is what they want to do now for some of the civil liberty advocates like yourself and others like you that are worried that this could be a precursor to. government overreach what would satisfy your

what would make you more comfortable with this piece of legislation i guess do you think that the language in it should be clarify that there is that it's not so vague so that it could be interpreted and abused ideally it would be withdrawn but if i were to if i were forced to live with it i would want the restrictions on keeping keeping people in. and in fact to anybody not let the states or even local governments have the ability ok but so we're talking about emergencies we're talking about disasters we're talking about chaotic situations where some order hopefully will well the goal there is to be established and you know some are going to say desperate times call for desperate measures so it doesn't ring true for natural disasters and cases like what do desperate people in the government do in those situations like i said i think it's a slippery slope and we don't really need people in power with these vests weeping

powers to begin with unfortunately there is moral hazard involved here too where people really don't take care of themselves anymore a plan for these emergencies when they have the federal government and other governments ready to step in and we saw what a great job happened in sandy and in katrina so like i said moral hazard. mr english a very interesting and thank you so much for for weighing in that was bob english civil liberties activists and blogger thank you. now imagine you're going on a hike taking in the scenery when you notice a helicopter following you until it stops and parks right in front of you well that's exactly what a woman in california says happened and she caught the whole ordeal on camera. circled me. when you were encircled gobby really low. so just go with us. through landing or work. as well as you can see the helicopter was

hovering above the desert and san bernadino the hiker that was captured felt like it was getting too close for comfort turns out her gut feeling was right the helicopter actually lands in front of her the officer comes out and confronts her asks her what she's doing and demands her id which is not carrie and once she runs a background check on her and it tries to search her but the hiker resist saying she does not consent to a search. well the woman there. excuse me the woman was cleared she says she wasn't doing anything suspicious no word from the san bernadino police on what they were looking for and why the officer used a helicopter to monitor and stop the woman and we're going to leave it off there but for more on the stories we've covered you can also check out our you tube channel that's youtube dot com slash our team america and our website our t.

dot com slash usa will be right back here in a half hour. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that the americans call . a dollar. i'm sorry i missed the guy who cares an awful lot of money comes from you sir are a fool. and their terrorist cells in your neighborhood don't want to give us a defeat terrorism they are limp all the crisps template. consecutively but it's because it's going to spring to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells us and facials that garbage he calls it breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that.

mold with. technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia. the future covered. there is is trash to get rid of. but it's also a treasure. worth fighting for. and a trap was no way out. of

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