after the passage of the month santa protection act there is even more news from on santo besides a bill giving protection from certain putra lawsuits their stocks have also seen a serious rise more on that coming up. plus new york today has become the scene of some food for thought fast food workers in the city have gone on strike for better wages we'll explore their list of demands and what's happening just ahead. and a shield of justice may soon be raised to protect those whistleblowers a gathering of activists and attorneys pledged to stand up with anyone for brave enough to expose the corporate and government corruption more on that coming up. let's thursday april fourth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm margaret hello you're watching our t.v. and the top of the show today a follow up to the story we've been covering the so-called month santer protection

act you may remember it's not through congress was signed into law more than a week ago by the president this was a little noticed provision of a larger bill to fund agricultural spending over the next six months and essentially gives the genetically modified crops in question and the companies who manufacture them immunity from court intervention even if they it's a public health risk since we started following this story some other al that's a followed our lead take a listen let's at least hear some of congress there's no doubt robust discussion on this controversial amendment critics are angry about how it was passed snuck into a huge agricultural bell without review by a committee. that's going to shelters attached this language protecting genetically modified food makers into a bigger unrelated bill. and that's at all yesterday month santa announced its quarterly earnings the world's largest seed maker of alle that its profits rose

twenty two percent in the second quarter looks like there's something other than g.m. acquiring growing and that's months and us profits. month ingo is the only food company in the public eye today marks a new effort from fast food workers in new york city to create the largest strike in fast food history according to organizers fast food forward it looks like they're going to be around four hundred strikers from seventy different establishments there a so why are they walking up the job at these chain restaurants and why today of all days i'm joined by reverend eric c. jackson he's the assistant pastor at first that discovery church hi there pastor jackson by giving me good evening so these fast food workers what exactly are they protesting well they're protesting for a fair and just wages. you know because of the fact that. really workers who work in fast food restaurants or are paid a living where it would be a decent wage oh you know the workers who can barely take home one hundred dollars

a week and many of them rely on public assistance or won't be of those who are rumpus from corporations or some of the walkies people in america certainly so are these protesters are they getting anywhere that gaining any steam with this i think it's really care to blow up like it is carol to be i hope legislators zero to realize that this is an important issue that the general public in our community who cares about this is a serious issue that means our judge certainly so there's something rather significant about today you know they're doing this today of all days why is today so significant. well today is so significant because this is the day that the reverend dr martin luther king jr one of our great civil rights leaders was actually assassinated and ironically the reason why he was assassinated he was there is to see and he was protesting that he was organizing for the rights

a fight for wages for the sensation workers i say so you know the u.s. the food industry it grosses here in the united states two hundred billion dollars a year in the average fast food employee you know they only make around eleven thousand a year in salary why do you think we're seeing this disparity among what they're bringing in versus what they're paying their employees well i think one of the reasons is because of the fact that many of the employees don't have the opportunity to really challenge the employer for a fair wage because of the fact that if they do make a woman they can risk losing their jobs they can be fired almost immediately and have someone else replace replace them almost instantaneously say so workers in the industry you know they're making i guess around half of the poverty level and we see a lot of them who are surviving on public assistance although they're working these full time jobs why do you think this is happening you know talk to me about that

well if you question him certainly so we're seeing these workers who are earning you know essentially half their taking on the celeb and thousand which is half of the poverty level here in the u.s. and there are essentially surviving on public assistance to feed their own children why do you think that we're seeing this type of issue here now. i think we're seeing this type of issue here because of the fact that you know their employers the employers are really just getting away with doing whatever they please but we'll get whatever working they want they want to give their workers whatever they are feel like giving them and i feel like if the employer if there was pressure put on the windows corporation and there was a actually in other fast food chains to actually say that you know what you know you have to give all fast food workers a minimum wage of about three people of an hour i think that would ensue a lot of. sort of the results a lot of the struggle that's going on i say so not

a lot of government accountability when it comes to these fast food places that's for sure so what i want to ask you and talk about are these protesters and specifically what's happening on my i understand that they've gotten a hundred eighteen thousand signatures you know where do we see this going are they garnering any type of traction in this wage war all but definitely think it is because that right now one of the big issues especially new york right now is to raise the minimum wage and now be the people talking about a putting the fast food worker issue into the proposal of the wage bill so i mean it is catching traction and attention i say so what can you give me a list or sort of explain the demands other than the wage issue for these people. you know that's really really it goes just beyond the wages but also for a people working environment for the workers because many of the workers this is a pretty common thing for them to come home with the burns with the scars of it also you know many of them get sick on the job they're not paid they be paid low

say so a number of issues when it comes to employ certainly so also when the fat we're talking about the fast food industry you know they're one of the biggest offenders of chemically processed foods here in the u.s. so from my understanding you know we've been talking a lot about month santo's corporate profits going up and these food giants are essentially not in check when it comes to their social obligations be it what they're feeding their customers or what they're paying their employees can you talk to me a little bit about why these companies are not being held to the same standards it seems like everybody else is. what i think one of the reasons why these companies are not being held to the same standard i mean that's pretty you know it's no secret that many of them have also you know when you have that amount of economic influence that also leaves you have a good clue fluids as well they have many lobbyist that are a washington maybe

a lobbyist that are. able to advocate on their behalf while the workers don't have that same capacity to. their rights and their issues and their interests i say well thank you so much sir i appreciate the interview that was reverend erik c. jackson the assistant pastor first baptist calvary church. i've been stung by jellyfish yes they do hurt but that might be useful the researchers that virginia tech college of engineering are betting on it they've unveiled a robotic jellyfish yes you did hear me correctly they've nicknamed the creation cyro and get this it's over five feet tall and tips the scales at one hundred seventy pales in a news release the school says that the robotic jellyfish is a larger model of the robotic jellyfish the same team of researchers unveiled back in two thousand and twelve now both robots are part of a project funded by u.s. naval undersea warfare center as well as the office of naval research the purpose

of these robots you ask the surveillance and monitoring of underwater environments so they claim this includes a study of aquatic life mapping ocean floors and monitoring ocean currents so if this amazing technology only going to be used for aquatic life i guess only time will tell however what we don't know at this time we have to worry about jaws on the beach and we also have to worry about now if governments knew robotic jellyfish could also be lurking underwater. well it's been two days now since a palestinian prisoner they must sirah had died of cancer as he was transferred from an israeli detention center to a hospital he was sentenced to life in prison since two thousand and two for supposedly assisting hamas only to later be diagnosed with cancer he was sixty four years old when he passed away his death a spark major unrest in a region already fraught with tension and claims of medical negligence and the

question of who's culpable it still looms artie's arena gosh flukey ghosh the co reports. we are in downtown and there are clashes going on between the idea forces and the protesters and i have to say most of these protesters there's about a hundred hundred fifty of them so not everybody who was at the funeral actually went to protest but let me just take us step away for now and you can see what's happening behind me now a majority of the protesters see they're lining up along along the wall there the idea forces are on top of the building on the right and also also in another building at the end of the street behind the tree and now it's looks like for most of these people who are actually rather young i would say a majority of them are teenagers and they're very early teens there has been exchange of rocks which they were throwing at the idea of forces they were rude they were met with. rubber bullets as well as flash grenades and tear gas canisters from the idea forces there has been running since between gaza

and israel there have been numerous protests like i said to the scene you have been killed in northern in northern west bank so this looks like it's going to continue for some time this is what this is what's happening in hebron in this is the hometown of the mentally just died in israeli prisons and she was able to cora love for a life essentially ninety nine years for his ties with terrorist organizations rather blood to when his health started to get out the palestinian officials have asked israeli officials to release him early and according to israeli officials the people requests and processed fast enough and he died before that release could come and of course his death just heard this anger among palestinians who have long been protesting the the fact that there are literally thousands there's almost five thousand palestinian prisoners in israeli jails right now and one hundred of them have been there for more than two decades and a lot of them actually have not have not received the proper handling of their

cases they've never even been charged with anything just basically put in the jail and slam their behind bars. well that was r t international correspondent irenic a loose car reporting still haven't heard t.v. obama administration has gone after numerous whistleblowers so far have no fear the whistleblower defense league is here we'll tell you more after the break. hello potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. that we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston properly or today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more cattery down to the low and there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. d.c. it is going to pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout what's been like hillbillies like to be driving lessons something we're just seeing

here exceptional. let me let me i want to let me ask you a question. here on this board is what we're having the debate we have our night. this time it was just a bad thing to get here in a situation where the united way to talk about theory let me. the same story doesn't make good news. no puff pieces some tough questions.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of. news. are you know what kind of they're terrorist cells but i don't want to wish to defeat terrorism the only liberal democrats. you're really going to. going to support you to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that facials that garbage you call that breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that.

so. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know. welcome to the big picture.

well if there's something strange many don't feel good in the neighborhood you're going to call the little fellow or defense league that's here as critics of the current administration's approach to clamping down on government leaks content use some of decided to do something about it to a kind of garner over this excessive prosecution there's actually more about this i was joined earlier by jay lenderman an attorney at letterman define l.l.p. which is a part of this group and i asked him to explain just what's behind all this well what's behind this is the. ministrations unprecedented prosecution model of whistleblowers people that would seek to shine a light on the truth and expose that to the public are getting prosecuted like never before in history so there are actually it's a it's a crisis and a oblast of demand for this so that's what you know give birth to this organization and say so the whistleblower defense league that you and others have launched seem

to challenge government prosecutions of whistleblowers what do you expect to achieve with this j. . well what we would hope is that the government backs off and allows people who do know more than try to expose the truth to actually do that. information is important and even more important as we get into the digital age and it's this massive commodity that doesn't belong to the government it belongs to the world and as long as the government keeps trying to clamp down and make it so that people can bring information in truth to light there's going to be a dire need for our services well there are certainly been a record number of people charged under the espionage act and act that comes out of world war one in fact a total of seven people under the a-bomb ministration alone many of those that were on this list gave information to journalistic outlets not foreign governments do you think that this approach will deter anybody who is trying to report these

abuses within the government. well i think that's part of the reason behind the prosecutions is to show the next person that would have these ideas that this is not something that you can do and and with impunity however our presence in the presence of other organizations like us and the physically the fact that there are lawyers out there willing to give backing to people that would stand for the truth would i would hope encourage people to do that these people that have been prosecuted under this act should not have been the john kiriakou and thomas tricks of the world are not criminals these people are your i see so you know building on that this just in yesterday documents released by the partnership for civil justice fun they reveal that law enforcement agencies like the f.b.i.

for example have been actively monitoring activists i'm not sure the part about or not but what does this mean for a journalist covering these stories to cover movements like occupy well it's so i see it as a shot across the bow for those journalists like little warning shot saying listen we're here we're surveilling you're not going to know we're here but if you do something if you publish something we don't like if you get too close to these people if you are truly embedded with them we're going to see a prosecution and you see that with with the matthew key is that the case that i'm i'm representing prior to the formation of this who was a journalist and who was imbedded in in. anonymous chat rooms i mean should they be worried jay i mean is this something that actual journalists should in fact be worried about. well yes and no i would hope that journalists wouldn't be worried about it because if you worry about it you're not as effective and as carefree in

doing your job the way you need to do it we give you the support you need we hope or at least we seek to give you the support that you need just simply do your job which is to report the truth to report what's going on however the reality of the situation is that journalists and everyone it's a natural thing to be concerned with the federal government comes around what's going on so we hope to kind of put this back in balance and let the journalists get back to work doing what they do best which is journalism let's see well jane i have to ask you are there any are there any interesting calls or tips that you'd like to share with me. well. so far the only thing that the whistleblower defense league has been working on publicly. is the government in connection with the barrett brown case issued a subpoena. to an american company for his essentially one of his journalistic

projects that he worked on called project the m where they're now in addition to prosecuting him prosecuting his mother and getting a conviction they're now trying to go after his his work his journalism essentially and the people that that assisted with that so you know we've only real short while we've only been talking about this project for a couple of weeks we've only really been public or just since the beginning of this week this motion was filed and already we're seeing in action the government trying to suppress journalism now project subpoena density works on trying to just bring it's a wiki which just brings information about public and private partnerships with respect to security. you know spying snooping and those things was a very important area for the people to know about and we're glad the. w.b.

deal has gotten involved and that i'm not personally involved because of my previous relationship representing barrett. you know i hate to stop you there we've run out of time but that was jay lederman thank you lawyer lederman divine l o p well even the a whistleblower john kiriakou is sitting in jail right now for having described u.s. interrogation techniques such as waterboarding calling it torture his supporters aren't having it in fact they are have put a demand forth that he be set free if they're taking it to the white house by way of petition asking president obama to pardon him for his actions now carry out his spoke to us here at r t just a few months ago and he's currently in prison in libretto console pena where he started serving his thirty month term back in february twenty third team no friend of cariocas offer to deliver the petition to the white house chief of staff denis mcdonough and the petition started by the progressive on that action community

firedoglake it's already garnered more than six hundred thousand signatures since it was published wednesday morning now the online group hopes to deliver a powerful message to this petition and all of the petition may not be as powerful as torture itself which forced the someone to do or say something the online community has vowed to not stop fighting for him in quote in the name of fair justice in this case. well it's a bird it's a plane wait it's a flying saucer the fascination with u.f.o.'s has always played an outsized role in the americans magination so creatures from another world have taken center stage in movies and films alike however there could be any truth behind these this concept of life on other planets laurie harf and us from the resident asked do you believe all the hype.

one of my big fears theories ever is the one about the us government having knowledge of us both because oh my god how awesome what with that would be if it were true not the whole they're keeping it a secret part but the part about there being aliens that would be on. ok so the f.b.i. recently released an explanation of the most popular file in the f.b.i. involved which is their on line catalog of documents released under the freedom of information that the most popular file is a memo dated march twenty second one nine hundred fifty written by a guy named guy how tall the f.b.i. field office had at the time it was addressed to day edgar hoover and it was about a story that was told to an f.b.i. agent by

a third party who reported that three flying saucers were recovered in new mexico so the most popular f.b.i. file is the one about the us government's knowledge of the systems of aliens that makes them there aren't that many interesting have to be added by i was out there you know but what doesn't make sense is that people would still believe the government knows about u.f.o.'s after reading the day a memo because it is a document of seriously bad reporting it is merely an account of a second or third hand claim that was not verified enough to even investigate it's an account of an incident that is akin to your ornery drunk uncle calling up the pentagon and then not to mislead reporting that his neighbor who we hate has a secret store of plutonium in his basement just to get him in trouble and then the poor shlep at the pentagon that has answered the call has to write it down just. for due diligence sake due diligence and excessive paperwork and bureaucracy that's what this memo is kind of like and it's the most popular document in the f.b.i.

vault why because it talks about eight leone's and lots of people want to believe that the u.s. government hand them any government scrap of paper with the word alien on it must be proof right. the moral of the story is that just because there's an f.b.i. memo about u.f.o.'s and nine hundred fifty doesn't mean that the us government has a private stash and with both someplace don't take every sentence you read to be proof of the fact you want to exist is special effects and to start with something like one guy heard from another guy that some other guy that his brother knows said take the time to sort out fact from fiction look for well credited sources and actually process the information before jumping to conclusions in other words question more even if it means having to make your theory about with pows remains unproven which. tonight let's talk about that by following the time

that had been. well eight months pregnant and being tailed by a cop for refusing to lay on the ground those events unfolded late last week in a parking lot in springfield illinois it was all caught on tape take a look. at . the police say listen the white her boyfriend frederick thomas were resisting or. rastan actively fighting officers white told the local t.v. station in st louis she never touched the officer awareness to the scenes that

white requested not to lie on the ground face down because of her pregnancy now the police were initially called to the parking lot for a minor car accident and and a dispute between drivers i guess we'll have to wait for that surveillance video to determine just who is telling the truth and here's the bigger question should an officer ever use a taser on a pregnant woman police and the company who makes tasers says that using the device is safer than the alternatives but is it safe enough the pregnant woman and her unborn baby are fine so far but white says she felt her baby shaking for several hours after being tasered well that's going to do it for now for more on these stories we've covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america for the latest and greatest information coming out from around the world check out our website at r.t. dot com slash usa our digital producers are always working hard to connect you with the world and with news stories so check it out don't forget to leave us your feedback you can also follow me on twitter it underscored j underscore how from all

of us here at r.t. have a great night. looking pretty down to the feel good blog you won't find it here if you're looking for relevant stories unique perspectives on top of my skin diary. well. science technology innovation all the list of elements from around russia we've got the future covered.