coming up on our team mass arrests in chicago more than one hundred thirty people taken into custody at a protest over plans to close all fifty four public schools report from chicago just had. left are being closed for two weeks banks in cyprus finally reopen r t is on the island nations report on the financial crisis that's having ripple effects are around the globe. and too big to fail one u.s. senator thinks the massive banks here in the u.s. need to be broken up is he right question more. it's thursday march twenty eighth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching. started off as our protest coming out of chicago

in response to school shutdowns after announcing the closing of fifty four schools in the city of the largest single closure in the history of the united states parents teachers and students have to the streets to voice their disapproval to this latest measure designed to help close a one billion dollars budget deficit artie's on a saucer is in chicago with more. record single school closure in u.s. history versus the people. chicago the third largest city in america plans to shut down fifty four public schools by autumn this year and makes us feel like we are not important to anybody that makes us so much harder for us to get an education thousands of protesters flooded onto the streets of the windy city to rally against this measure on wednesday one hundred sixty demonstrators were arrested including this organizer we're talking about a number of school closures that has not been paralleled in this country's history

other than hurricane katrina a total of sixty one school buildings including this one are targeted currently teaching thirty thousand students and amounting to ten percent of all elementary schools in the city chicago officials say the step is key in closing a one billion dollar budget deficit the district says it will save five hundred sixty million over the next decade though the transition will cost approximately two hundred thirty three million but parents teachers and students refuse to accept this. activist and parent sabrina moore he lives in a home with eleven children she calls the closures racism ninety percent of the schools are in african-american communities where is our kids going to go to school they go to cross through terrible neighborhoods again first of neighborhoods even though the final vote on the mass closures and the cuts. teachers wages won't come

until be end of may and the schools will be shut until august this is already a bright example of the need of a system overhaul if budget gaps are being filled at the expense of the future of children and r.t.e. chicago illinois. so what does this mean for public education moving forward to talk more about this i was joined earlier by karen lewis president of the chicago teachers union and i began by asking her who were among the over one hundred people arrested last night. they were members of the community they were people who work in schools from lunchroom ladies to parents and members of our local school council . all right we know that some of the protesters are angry that that anger is being directed at mayor rahm emanuel for the school closings why is that. because america has said he had a number of school closings that he wanted to see done and it didn't have much to

do with the specifics about the issues surrounding the school. one of the things that people have said in the past is that it is impossible to do this without sending children into very dangerous parts of town and that each school should be taken care of and dealt with on an individual basis before a mass closure like this happens. i'm sorry i'm sorry to interrupt that and i was just going to ask you because we're seeing these pretty heated protests you know some of our colleagues teachers coming together can you tell us what exactly you're demanding and what would you like to see change certainly the first thing is that we want to clear moratorium on school closings and tell the chicago public schools has put forth its facilities master plan they require that by law so that we know exactly what the plan is to move forward they have not done this in the past so

we are asking that they do that which is we're actually going to have to probably change the law to have that done and so that's one of the steps the other issue is that we want that the hearing around each school not be sham hearings and part of the problem is that the mayor has complete and total control of what happens in the school so it is he still wanted was responsible for the policies in addition we have had school coping for the last twelve years. they have not saved money they have not improved educational outcomes for children this is a bad policy that is only amplifying itself now most act most of the million dollars a year out of a six billion dollar budget it's not a lot of money when you look at it now there isn't a lot of anger there is some anger there is anger on both sides and also there is anger directed at the teachers union and they say that you're protecting your own

jobs at the expense of the city's economic future and that of the school that is the fact that they are experiencing a huge drop in enrollment so what's your response to that accusation first of all the drop in a roman is has been overstated they've had to pull back on those numbers because they're absolutely the good thing about the chicago teachers union is that we have a research department that has proven that the number using using by the way should congo public schools own statistics they started this thing there were one hundred forty five thousand children who no longer were going to public school when in effect that number is thirty thousand so they keep moving and changing every time we call them out for a law that they have to change and go on the defense and come up with some other set of criteria are you saying that chicago doesn't have a budget deficit because they're saying that they have

a one hundred billion dollars budget deficit and. address that they're claiming a one billion dollar deficit every single year they come out with what we call the press release deficit. in eight of the last ten years they've actually had surpluses but they started talking about a huge budget deficit that in effect did not exist then they come back and say when they actually do the blodgett they have another number. but when that budget is correctly audited it comes out to not having. a huge deficit at all so this is something that the board of education has been very very clever at doing. karen appreciate you coming on the show and telling us about your struggle over there in chicago that was karen lewis president of the chicago teachers union thank you very much for having. president obama this week signed into law a bill that could have huge consequences on the future of food in the country the

agricultural appropriations bill has been dubbed the monsanto protection act by critics of the agricultural giant that's because a provision in the law protects genetically modified seed patents from litigation over health risks so if you get sick too bad you can take it to court since being signed into law tuesday more than two hundred fifty thousand people have signed a petition to president obama is that the law quote is unnecessary and an unprecedented attack on u.s. traditional view congress should not be meddling with the judicial review process based soley on the special interests of a handful of companies. what's in the bill critics are angry about how it was passed snuck into a huge agricultural bill without review by a committee a law only remains in effect for six months but opponents say this is an example of giant corporations trumping the health and safety rights of the average joe and

that's not the only food news turning stomachs the f.d.a. is on its way to approving so-called frankenfish artie's margaret howell has more genetically modified fish with spare parts is inches away from our food supply chain the f.d.a. is giving general electric the go ahead on an application that's been pending now for two years so what is the so-called frankenfish anyway well it's the biotech industries genetically engineered fish that grows twice that of the of the normal rate of a real fish that means it goes into the consumer market faster and at higher rates this lab animal is loaded with questions of science just can't answer the biggest one how does this affect the health of somebody who eats it here's what we do know the lab test of only six of these fish showed an elevated level of the growth hormone i g h one which has been linked to breast colon and prostate cancer with the f.d.a. is approval this will be the first genetically modified and. allowed in the u.s. for consumption this is important because this fish it sets the regulatory

precedent for every g.m.o. animal after it consumer watchdog groups say not so fast a concern that she shares with them this modified fish could escape into the wild survive and actually reproduce there they say that they were only going to create the female salmon for now with three sets of d.n.a. instead of the normal two rendering the fish infertile and ninety five percent of the cases the non-sterile fish may still reproduce with real fish in the wild creating untold amounts of damage in the environment. without human labeling consumers would not be able to avoid the new fish when it arrives in grocery stores and fish markets to really want to eat something that's genetic integrity is so questionable the company making it is afraid it will reproduce with a real fish. the next time you're at that fancy work at a grocery store about to purchase an expensive piece of salmon you may want to ask yourself is this fish actually fish and washington margaret how old are to you.

and out of cyprus a small island nation in the mediterranean that has compelled the european union to rethink its policies are the international correspondent tay's arcilla brings us the latest. you can see behind me that is the bank of cyprus there has been a lie that had gathered before the baghdad open but i have to say that the people there have really remained calm and also the fact is there are a lot of media here if you can just pan there is a lot of media here and the people there the crowds have gathered also just to see what is going on so it's really quite hard to gauge who is actually going to the back and who is not but as far as the live right outside the bank they have been hoping i'm happy that the bags of finally opened after two weeks and also have to know that a lot of them are older people they say they don't have a.t.m. cards so they have to actually go into the back together their casual let's just talk about the restrictions that have been imposed those capital controls the first time in the euro zone now the people here can only get three hundred euros per person per day per bank and also if anyone is traveling out of cyprus they can only

bring a cash amount of one thousand euros maximum and if they are abroad and they want to charge of their credit cards the maximum limit there is five thousand euros now really for the for many for the past two weeks people have been cash strapped and they tried to make the cash and had a fit and all of this of course we know is it falls under that e.u. i.m.f. plan bailout plan of cyprus agreed agreed upon so this is being imposed in order to get the ten to billion euro deal now as far as the european leaders are concerned they think that this is saved the country from bankruptcy but the people here many of them really feel that they did not get the best solution that they could get and i've been speaking with a lot of locals and here is my report like many in cyprus. this is simply stunned at the speed and manner with which the banking crisis in his country seems to be spiraling out of control he shows us his wallet no cash a little lottery tickets a single parent unemployed and caring for his sick mother the unraveling of

cyprus's financial woes couldn't have come at a worse time but. my mom all of your life is coming up on you make of plans for the. people in the younger. of your country and. so you stand there with an influence a sentiment echoed throughout the tiny island nation with scenes like these becoming a daily occurrence another day in nicosia cyprus another protest though this one in particular is a gathering of the police of the country's largest lender the bank of cyprus but they worry that the company is headed for collapse and they may eventually lose their jobs the many cypriots and told me that they are well aware that this is just

the beginning of a long hard road i believe that. europe. germany sprawl because we are a small economy they felt that the consequences would be minimal what they don't know is that the president has been said and what happened today in cyprus can easily happen tomorrow to italy to france. to spain we just want to be left alone to pick up the pieces and get on with our lives. part of europe here european union says profiles and for. paying the money to the european union to help. the other two countries you may. have a problem or. as economic drama continues with politicians and bankers drawing a painful measures to execute the euro zone i.m.f. back bailout plan it's all too clear to ordinary cypriots who is going to be

bearing the brunt looniness as mother for example had a monthly pension cut from one thousand one hundred eighty nine year olds to just over one thousand a month ago why they cut from people who have special needs they cut from their people for his part allies the question all separates would like answered as well does or sylvia r.t. nicosia cyprus. still ahead on our team breaking up is hard to do especially if you're a big bank but one u.s. senator wants to make that happen more of that coming up. the same story doesn't make it news. no policy says tom hanks.

the money interview the financial collapse in the u.s. two big banks that are too big and have too much power now at least one senator is trying to change that senator bernie sanders says he plans to introduce a bill that would break up the big banks he says if it's too big to fail it's too big to exist i must say that i was really startled when the attorney general of the united states recently suggested that it might be difficult to prosecute wall street c.e.o.'s who can big crowing because of the these stabilizing effect the prosecution might have on the financial system of our country in the world in other words we have a situation now where wall street is

a lot of ollie too big to fail they are too big to jail. well sanders vale would give treasury secretary jack lew ninety days to come up with a list of banks and insurance companies that he sees as too big to fail and within a year those institutions would have to break into smaller pieces from our and as i was joined earlier by our producer bob english i asked him if this meant too big to fail was on its way out. on the way out i think too big to fail is just getting started more properly probably in the seventh inning stretch here what sanders is trying to do is notable and perhaps a bit commendable he's the guy that got the mini audit of the federal reserve a couple years ago along with ron paul but like you said what he's trying to do here is within ninety days designate some of these institutions as too big to fail well dodd frank already tried to do that and we're going on three years and we still haven't compiled the list likes to see in the federal reserve and some other agencies so the big banks are still getting

a pass right now yeah well one senator in addition to mr sanders there that that has taken notice of this and senator elizabeth warren here she is on the floor grilling ben bernanke on this issue if we can take a listen to that. well i didn't go to the question about too big to fail that. we haven't gotten rid of it yet and so now we have a double problem and that is that the big banks big at the time that they were bailed out the first time have gotten bigger and at the same time their investors believe with too big to fail out there that it's safer to put your money into the big banks and not the little banks in effect creating an insurance policy for the big banks that the government is creating this insurance policy not there for the small banks we've now understood this problem for nearly five years so when are we going to get rid of too big to fail. yes you heard it right out of elizabeth warren

that these banks have gotten bigger so what kind of resistance do you expect this bell to face. epic legendary i'd like to think that but i don't think that's going to happen because this bill unfortunately is dead and that on arrival look who they're they're going up against some of the most powerful institutions financial institutions in the world bank of america goldman sachs j.p. morgan chase these are the same guys who got their goldman sachs friend hank paulson who was treasury secretary to go to congress and force them into blackmail them into a seven hundred billion dollars tarp bailout these are the guys who went to the federal reserve and got sixteen trillion dollars in guarantees and loans these are the guys i created which is a phony fraudulent title registration system that led to innocent people getting foreclosed on and they're really not having to answer for any of this so i have to think that this probably isn't the right time for this bill when well the right time i think we're going to see market forces eventually force short term interest

rates up and we're seeing that these now heavily leveraged institutions once again they've taken on all kinds of new derivatives and bets and whatnot they're going to be forced into one of the biggest deal leveraging this of all time and that's going to force what i would call over a. committee to go reckoning fortunately or saying we're going to have to face a day of reckoning before any changes happen yes i guess as you say too big to fail looks like it's going to stick around at least for the time being above english thanks so much for coming on the show that was our team producer. well dozens of prisoners on guantanamo bay remain on a hunger strike and today marks the fifty first day detainees have gone without food they say they're protesting the mishandling of their belongings including copies of the koran military officials say they're protesting the fact that the base is still open despite president obama's promise to close it well as you can imagine the pro prisoners health is getting worse with each day and attorney for the detainees spoke to r.t. about their physical state here's what he had to say. i've never seen and center in

all my five years of coming to guantanamo bay i've been to guantanamo bay more than fifty times i mean he talks about you know he's forgetful. he's in a bad physical condition it's hard to focus the complains of headaches he's weak he went from one forty seven down to one hundred seven pounds so he was fully one third of his body weight and he continues to lose weight i can't you know advise you on whether or not he's prepared to die but i can tell you that after eleven and a half years of the waiting to have charges an opportunity to defend himself yes it's very hopeful to hear anyone out of the bank especially in light of the fact that there is no movement any way shape or form to get anybody of the hundred sixty six individual that out of here even the eighty six cleared individuals are in no way in the process of getting relief from here so this conflict raging here we've been robbed of all processes we were told that we would get military commissions well you know we don't even have tried to let alone an opportunity to get him out i

represent him only because the former administration the bush administration was willing to leave him to try our least try but that stands now he is a he has no charges for me to defend i can't go to withdraw take you call the state department complete complete fun story of my client today he said it best to take my died back when president obama declared indefinite detention definite detention is the concept that men will languish in animal cages for the rest of their lives without ever having an opportunity to defend themselves now when the leader of a country comes out and says indefinite detention will be applied to guantanamo bay well that's when you died the fact that he still happens to be breathing is mostly trippy. that was u.s. air force lieutenant colonel barry winger and he is an attorney representing a guantanamo bay detainee. libby's times of seaquest ration it's time to buckle down and get rid of wasteful spending right some decisions you made

decisions congress is making makes you wonder if congress really has adopted this mindset take the missile defense program the project contracted by lockheed martin is a joint venture with italy and germany the system boasts its hit to kill missiles and other deadly tactics but according to the department of defense the three hundred eighty million dollar program doesn't work the office of the secretary of defense says quote the meads program has experienced a number of technical and management challenges since its inception in the mid one nine hundred ninety s. and while the program has shown market improvements in recent years it has been unable to meet schedule and cost targets back in two thousand and eleven the defense department said they didn't want the missiles because they didn't need it couldn't afford it and it didn't help national security so why are taxpayers still paying for it earlier i was joined by steven miles coalition coordinator for win without war. that's right i mean i think needs is exactly why the pentagon's budget

has just exploded over the last decade as you point out this is a program that the military says it doesn't want that congress has overwhelmingly said they don't are interested in funding it anymore but here it is twenty thirteen we're going to be spending a couple hundred million dollars on it what it really gets down to is how parochial interests and how the dysfunction that exists between congress and the pentagon can really keep these programs going for long after everyone agrees they should anyway i guess it's just so strange because this is a program that has got all these all this money these these missiles would go towards a partner defense and they're saying we don't need it but congress is still saying you need it and we're going to spend money on it it's rather than this is this is not the first time that congress has said we're going to spend money on weapons that you don't want the military routinely says there's weapons we don't want just this past year they once again said we don't need any more tanks congress as we would like to do to buy some more tanks it has a lot to do with parochial interests and jobs and other kinds of concerns but at the end of the day this is how we get to the place where we are which is the

pentagon budget that's exploding and dysfunctional relationship all right well air defense is saying that it's not at this project and others are not helping national security you know i wonder who does it benefit well it certainly benefits the companies that make these weapons that. absolutely lockheed martin in this case makes the program and they make lots of other large ticket items like the f. thirty five that have questionable records of cost explosions being behind schedule and even questionable need for the twenty first century and the types of threats we face but these are large companies they have lots invested in these programs they have lots of money on the line and at the end of the day all that translates when it comes out the other end with contracts that just keep going and buying weapons that the military doesn't even want what about jobs because that is the justification that we hear time and time again is the fact that these programs create jobs enough to keep them alive well the first thing to remember is that the pentagon is not a jobs program we have a we have a military to keep america safe and that's what our military should be focused on in the decisions we make about. military should be focused on what's needed to keep

us safe but it does create jobs are a it any time that any time the government spends money it creates jobs but the question is how many jobs are created and the truth is that if you spent this money in any other way out of the federal government it would actually create more jobs so if we're talking about is how many jobs can we create we'd be much better off if we spent this money on education if we spent this money on health care if we spent this money in a number of different ways but again the pentagon is not a jobs program and that's not the basis we should be making these types of decision at the end of the day of out of these lawmakers i can have to answer to their constituents if their constituents are going to be the ones that are going to lose their jobs that are lawmakers are going to keep pushing to keep these programs in place right well they're going to answer their constituents in a number of different ways and they're also going to have to answer to their constituents why they've been talking about cuts to programs like social security and medicare why they're cutting back on vital services to the government and one of the main reasons is because of the runaway budgets at the pentagon and one of the reasons as we were just saying for that is because we keep buying weapons that we don't want that don't work and that we don't need and so it's time for

politicians to come to terms and make these hard choices that we need to make to keep us safe in the twenty first century and also do it in a way that protects their constituents what do you think it will take for lawmakers to to make these hard choices i mean right now or in a time of sequester. what i think is now the time i think it was duration is going to be a forcing mechanism you know the pentagon's announced it's going to be doing a major strategic review of the first thing secretary of defense hagel has announced and so it's time that they're starting to be some of this talk of making these choices and so he goes straight and hopefully will force us to make a series of decisions that we haven't made in the last decade and hopefully that can be one good thing that comes out of this otherwise horrible situation because right now what everyone's looking at places to trim the fat a program like this isn't that something that is obviously going to go on the chopping block this is this is absolutely the kind of thing that should get your go on and we should look at other programs that the military says it doesn't want to get in like the m one abrams tank we should look at programs that maybe don't have as much utility in the twenty first century with weapons like the f.

thirty five that were designed to defeat you know to fight against the soviet union in a cold war that ended twenty plus years ago and. decisions and types of conversations we need to have and then we will still have a room that was seven miles coalition coordinator for a win without war. no funny take on a puzzling story a couple days ago over we reported on how tennessee lawmakers were freaking out over what they thought was a muslim foot bath built into their capitol building turns out it was nothing more than a mop sink the political comedy show the called airport took notice take a look just spite lawmakers best efforts show ria has managed to work around in the state capitol building men's room when the tennessee state capitol underwent renovations one sink in particular became the subject of controversy and clark was approached by a number of state legislators fearful that the new saying was a muslim but bad oh yeah the muslims are always washing their feet it's supposed to

be so they're pure when they pray but we all know the cleaner the feet the softer the creep. goes on tell moch the state lawmakers demanding answers about what they thought was the muslim saying he goes on to say that a mob is nothing but a beard on a stick and calls his mob prop some up bin moppin. bare of course was poking fun at absurd examples of islamophobia but we're glad they took notice over there called their report. now most of the time journalists bring you stories today the b.b.c. became the story. this video shows employees of the british broadcasting company striking outside of the company's headquarters. what was the walkout about budget cuts in a legit workplace bullying among other things just another example of the new do more with a.