coming up the supreme court face a special patent case today what's the patent for human genes you know the kind that make up your d.n.a. blue best agave whether or not corporations can truly take ownership of the building blocks of life. and the people of venezuela elected a new president over the weekend. hand-picked successor nicolas maduro won in a razor thin victory more on the election results coming up. plus an in-depth look at the current state of our u.s. economy from hedge funds to what's happening with the stock act our special guest les leopold will give us the big picture on the u.s. economy. it's monday april fifteenth four pm in washington d.c. i make a lopez and you are watching r t well we begin this hour with breaking news out of boston there's been some type of explosions at the finishing line of the boston

marathon news of the blast started appearing on twitter just before three this afternoon then numerous photos from those in the area started appearing online w b z a local t.v. station in boston said numerous people have been taken from the scene on stretchers as well as in wheelchairs many of them having lost their limbs fox news is reporting that the three people have been killed so far but we caution you those numbers could change witnesses have said there were two explosions just a few seconds apart the explosions happened about three hours after the winner of the marathon had crossed the finishing line but they're still runners on the course so just a quick recap there's been some type of explosions in the boston area at the finishing line of the boston marathon we will continue to follow this story and update you on any developments throughout the evening and for up to the minute updates go to our website our to dot com slash. usa. now the point of patents is to make sure that

the people who spend time and money developing a new product can get an opportunity to profit off of their hard work but what if a new product is part of your d.n.a. the patent for it anyway that's right today the u.s. supreme court heard a case about whether a biotechnology company called myriad can patent a human gene linked to ovarian and breast cancer myriad claims that discovered this gene meanwhile a group of scientists doctors and patients argue that the company's patent put the kybosh on affordable testing and the potential cures for cancer so at what point should people put their health put the health over profits or are the two in a have a billion or twined r.t. correspondent lizzie wall is at the supreme court with more. well the big question at the supreme court today as whether or not you can pass a human genome sounds like a simple question but it has been done and quite complicated the plaintiffs in this

case are medical societies and patient advocacy groups the cases against the biotech company called a myriad genetics now this company has patents on two g. and called b.r.c.a. one and b.r.c.a. two testing for these two genes the mutation of these two genes can determine if a patient is at risk for developing breast cancer myriad says they spent billions of dollars over the span of decades on research in tests and identifying these gene in the but opponents of these genes in say that no one person no company has the right has the power to the human body and they are saying that doing so is preventing and blocking other companies from moving forward with their own research with their own development and possibly creating treatments to breast cancer we haven't had breast cancer patients coming forward saying that the patents on these genes have prevented them from getting the test that they need and leading to a possible diagnosis and getting the treatment that they need now the question

today is whether or not the supreme court. can consider isolated g. and a product of nature typically we see the supreme court siding with and with patent laws but today it played out differently and that is because we are talking about the human body we haven't had justice sonia sotomayor your saying that the leaves of plants or gold naturally found in nature that they are made in nature that they are naturally occurring and therefore you can't put a patent on those substances so. it seemed as if the justices were leaning towards the plaintiffs in this case now we should point out that times on human genes they have been happening for decades so a decision in this case could have huge implications on medical research for decades. and decades to come a ruling in this case is expected before the end of summer and for the supreme court here liz wall r.t.

well just six weeks after a long time venezuelan ruler although chavez passed away voters headed to the polls to elect a new leader at this past weekend and what is being described as a razor thin victory chavez's handpicked successor nicolas maduro won the election sunday night beating opposition leader in the u.k. so i don't ski fifty point six percent to forty nine point one percent motto now begins a six year term and he already has a lot on his plate from the country's energy ventures to its economy international correspondent tessa has more the campaign has not been long but neither has a big short on passion well we're here in the district that really has support for the. so-called successor as you can see from all the graffiti here the people really having a very festive attitude and a lot of them selling paraphernalia haley get shot this is really a bastion of chavez support many people tell me of the kind of benefit that they have gained for fourteen years of having chavez as president talking about

education talking about the social mischa's which really is a cornerstone of his popularity at the people here are very enthusiastic about giving their opinion about why they support chavez let's talk to the gentleman over here and put him. on. he was chosen by. the same revolution we can go forward with but with we can do nothing it's clear that for many people here who were staunch supporters of chavez a huge part playing here is the loyalty they have. voting for nicolas maduro while over on the other side of the city where here in the district where the main opposition candidate is the governor and expected that he has a lot of support here most of the people that you see now on the street here have told me that they have indeed voted for to listen when you asked him why they did so the word that really comes so repeatedly from their answers is they want

a change or let's talk to one of those who actually voted for. why did you. vote for a couple years because. he is the only one to give us a better future i don't know. so as you heard her say actually that opinion is repeated in resonated among the supporters of they say that they again they want change from after fourteen years of chavez and also it's noticeable that a lot of students and a lot of younger people who are also coming out to destroy a supporting him and voting for him a new man is now at the helm and he inherits child this is socialist legacy a country with some of the world's largest oil reserves and also a nation plagued with longstanding problems such as crumbling infrastructure and double digit inflation of which its citizens are all too aware the lack of security

is killing us and statistics prove many people have died at night you can't leave your home this is a serious problem. i want change by corruption that's the brahman in venezuela the corruption the base of the broken economy. everything old brawling that have been it's really the corruption the oil price the high. the government you know. probably it's spending so we are in a lot of that we now know the winner but the narrow victory has left venezuela polarized the new leader to faces an uphill battle not just to mend the country's economy and improve living standards but also to match up his charismatic predecessor who casts a very long shadow not just within the country but beyond its borders as well just our cilia r.t. . and for more from caracas i'm joined by our to international correspondent.

hey there tessa now venezuelans woke up today with a new leader how are they responding. i'm sorry i lost the connection. that's all right we're adding a little bit of technical difficulties hopefully we'll get tessa back in just a minute but let me talk for a minute about google chavez and what he is actually meant to venezuela he was actually in the power of venice with us since one thousand nine hundred ninety nine and nicolas maduro has a lot on his plate as i was saying earlier in order to really take over this country now he won by a very thin margin as i mentioned earlier a fifty percent margin to forty nine percent and it's really tight critics right now are actually asking for a recall and now as i mentioned. there's a lot on venezuela's plate right now obviously venezuela is in monumentally

important when it comes to the oil infrastructure itself critics actually said that if that's would have won that election he would have essentially cut off oil to cuba which would have crippled cuba's economy considering the fact that venezuela is one of the few economies that venezuela is one of the few countries that actually supports cuba right now as you know there's still a very intense embargo going on in the part of cuba now meanwhile venezuela has a lot of other things on its plate as well it's going to an economy that's struggling to recover but also there is the bric nations and the fact that venezuela is in very much a latin american renaissance in venezuela could play a huge part in the future looks like we have a test are still a back test are you there and if so can i ask you what are venezuelans waking up to this morning yes i am.

well right now it's the results of these elections are really being heavily contested by the opposition such a slim margin less than two percent and computing this who is the main opposition he sees not accepting these results and he's actually calling on his supporters to go out and protest if nothing is done or nothing is change is calling for a recount which nicolas maduro who is who had to lead this campaign and had the results he says he's willing to have a recount the final whether they will actually go how far they're going to go if this is going to become a legal battle that we have to yet to see that but this is clearly the opposition is contesting this they are not accepting the results and this election was unexpectedly close as you had mentioned now i have to ask you obviously nicolas maduro was a huge supporter of chavez he said some extremist kind of comments in the past he actually called chavez the son of christ when it comes to the accent of christ and

comes the poor and now it is a model is alexion essentially an extension of chavez's policies beyond the grave. well is that that's actually in part what had helped him when he was running a campaign really where who chavez was at the core he says he wants to continue this a bully very and revolution and those who had supported mug little basically were voting for google chavis however that also was something that had turned some voters against him they say that model had does not have his own personality they he is not to go chop is clearly and they don't know if he if he he is at the helm he will actually continue the kind of a revolution that chavis was the leading so it was a double edged sword for him and clearly the results which appeared to be very very close clearly it showed that this kind of strategy that he had adopted had played both in his favor and against his favor but yes google chavez was a central figure in those voters who had voted for model where is voting for which

office and obviously as i had mentioned earlier to our viewers while we are waiting to get contact with you what chavez as been in power since one thousand ninety nine and he actually as you were saying he talked a lot about chavez in his re-election campaign but i have to ask you chavez is gone now and obviously the u.s. and president obama have a lot of criticisms for about chavez is there a possibility that relations will heat up between the u.s. and then a swell of now that john this has gone. yeah that's interesting because of the fourteen years of chavez it was like a cornerstone of this anti imperialism if you will and to us sentiment and let's not forget that under chavis. was a foreign minister and he had had some dialogue with the u.s. state department it was sort of the back door on dialogue and he had signaled that he may be willing to a change this foreign policy towards the u.s. that has to be to be seen because it could also pose a conflict on those hard core supporters of chavez who who look at dutch office as

a legacy as a confrontation with the u.s. so how is he going to manage wanting to improve possibly relations with the u.s. versus appeasing that base that the base that had remained loyal to him because they were loyal to chavez and his policies and we will have to see in the coming days weeks and years how nicolas maduro actually shapes his policies whether he will follow the chavez best or actually define himself differently r.t. international correspondent tess are still alive from caracas venezuela. well it's become something of a laughing stock to transparency advocates the stop trading on congress tional knowledge act better known as the stop back stock act that is was supposed to clear the way for a more open government when it comes to wall street and the potential for insider trading it was an act a little bit over a year ago but the new legislation that was just passed and signed by president obama early this weekend essentially took the bite out of this law here's how now the stock act was supposed to force the executive branch the legislative branch as

well as military leaders and congressional staff members to publish searchable financial disclosures online but critics call the act an invasion of privacy and a threat to national security interests as a result the act was delayed over and over and over again until today the new rule is that the data has to be public but not necessarily on the internet and not necessarily in a searchable database in other words security through obscurity to talk more about this and everything about the economy i'm joined now by les leopold he's the author of how to make a million dollars in our hi there lessons so let's start by talking about the stock act that went into effect today what is the point of this actual law if we've taken the bite out of it well the point is public relations the point is to try to make it seem as if the disclosing without disclosing ok so what does it do any more does it do anything other than bolster the reputation and it's hard to argue that it

does that even if it isn't it well we don't disclose it we can't get our hands on it but you know what's really behind this is a much more serious problem. people are supposed to go into public life in order your serve not they don't they're not supposed to go into public life in order to make a ton of money so when you think about there's no reason for them to have these complex financial portfolios to be nothing to hide to begin with so i think this is a you know they want to they want to make money you know what's the point left of having it as having this obscurity through secure security through obscurity excuse me i mean it's still available so if it really is a threat to national security interests then why not close the documents altogether . look they're coming up with excuses to the lay the implementation as long as they can and they'll come up with another excuse a year from now when they're supposed to implement it in the year after that because they don't want to disclose it's embarrassing just like it was embarrassing to governor romney in the last election but at the same time we have congressional

members that are signing on to this bill this act saying that they don't want this information to be public but it is directly against the congressional members their staffers and arguably the executive branch and the executive branch sound first so how can we expect them to roll fairly and with no bias on this law when they're the ones that was entering hurt i don't think we can expect them to rule fairly i mean that's one of the problems with the credit credibility in general we have this incredible interlocking network between washington and wall street and other large corporations as well and that has to be broken up the disclosure laws would help but they don't go nearly far enough they should not be able to amass these fortunes while they're holding public office ok so let's talk about your new book now in your new book at is the millionaires dollars and million dollars in our book you talk about that hedge fund gift errors and the ways that they not only make

business but the business lies in breaking the rules and lying can you explain how how you got to this conclusion in this book well i wanted to figure out i came across a statistic that kind of blew my mind when i found out that the top hedge fund earner made as much in one hour as the average family made in forty seven years one hour equals forty seven years a lot of money that's a lot of money that's very impressive so i want to figure out well one how did they do it to do they really produce an economic value for the society and economy for all for all that money and when i explore those two questions what i found out was . a lot of what they do is bear. legal some of it is outright illegal and certainly the rest of us with think that much of what they do is is just an ethical cheating and i started. i just stumbled into one method after the other from insider trading to this high frequency trading to the. manipulation of

media you know feeding you a false rumor so i can make money on the side from my hedge fund and i think we've given them a free ride the reason i wrote this book was to mystify it so that the rest of us can figure out how do these these are the richest of the rich they make one hundred times a thousand times more than c.e.o.'s normal c.e.o.'s make what are they doing how do they do it how does it benefit the economy the answer is it's dangerous one of the most amazing one i stumbled into was this. they actually design products. so that they will fail securities are designed to fail so they can collect the insurance money and. no place else in capitalism is that allowed slowly but let me ask you what makes hedge funds unique i mean obviously the financial crisis of two thousand and eight showed that big banks like bank of america citi j.p.

morgan chase goldman sachs etc were lying both to regulators as well there as to their customers so what makes flying of hedge fund managers really that unique or is it where you're making a good point hedge funds exist also inside of the large financial institutions they call proprietary trading desk but they're basically the same thing what makes them together what makes them incredibly unique is there are unbelievably dangerous to the rest of the economy they are the ones that are outside the banks are have very few regulations on them so and what they do is basically proprietary so we don't know what it is they're doing we don't know what markets they're jumping in and out of we don't know how the details of how they could be destabilizing the economy we don't know until after it happens and i think something's got to be done about it now one of the people that you actually brought up is going to say host jim cramer he was a hedge fund manager for quite a long amount of time and he talked at length and to the surprise of

a lot of people about just what he did when he was managing this fund but to date he is one of the only people that is talking about this so why know how can we find other evidence as to how can we learn to regulate against or prevent this if no one else is talking about it and there's very little evidence well first of all he didn't start talking until ten years after he knew he was the one that was he basically says you shouldn't be in the business unless you're willing to cheat and he just says that how we are starting to catch some of them based on their insider trading you know they've. wired them up they've got people to quote about seventy people so far. on those things it's very hard to catch them but the way you catch me connects with our previous conversation you catch them by shining a bright light on them when you shine a bright light on them then we start to ask the basic questions about what whether

what they're doing is legal and some of it is definitely an ethical and should be held lot so that's what the book's about and it is on the bookshelves right now how to make a million dollars an hour less leopold off thank you so much for joining us thanks for having me. well if you're anything like me then your smartphone is probably permanently attached to your hand it's practically another limb except one that can do much much more from the first days of the phone outreach has begun to expand beyond our home across our neighborhood to across the country and around the globe and now even beyond that smartphones have revolutionized the way that we see and interact with our world but this cell phone renaissance is certainly not over yet developers are now crossing signals with the medical field this is an ultrasound device run by a smartphone it was invented by a mobile health company known as maupassant today and it brings the world of digital imaging to your smartphone or tablet now if you think that's impressive you

ain't seen nothing yet to talk more about this digital revolution i'm joined now by . lonnie i hope i said that right and he is the editor gadget thank you so much for joining me so can you first explain about how this technology is something that is commonplace as your my cell phone how it is revolutionizing the medical field so the smartphone as we know when the i phone came out we were all very excited about how that's going to revolutionize things like finance and you know because people start trading on their phones to publishing but health care is one that didn't immediately go impacted but now it is because sensors are become cheaper and we're able to collect a lot of clinically relevant data just using your i phone as the processor or android phone. and a few other cool gadgets that you can add on and i understand you have a few of these cool gadgets yourself what did you bring us yes i brought a couple of gadgets to show you this is the muscle pulse oximeter and so pulse oximeter collects your oxygen saturation and you actually just plug this into your phone and it's an i phone it's an i phone yeah exactly right and so it gives you

your beat beats per minute your heart rate as well as your pulse oxygenation and that's important for patients who may have things like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or palmeri for grossest as well as people who want mountain climbers who operate in low oxygen environments this one has gone a lot of headlines this is a lot of heart monitor and so it looks like a case and you essentially just plug your phone into the case but if you were to hold it we can do a demo if you like chair why not hold it like this and just hold your hand steady so one on each exactly like that and i'm going to turn on the phone i have attached to this other device which will show you in a second and this is quite sure one lead e.c.g. . your heart is operating there like this is essential while you can see a right there right you know and this is essentially revolutionizing the way that we look at us and so that is quite an impressive thing what else would you bring us right so this i already have my phone attached to it so this gadget right here is actually you know a lot of ophthalmologists use it it's called

a solemn scope from walter allen and what they've made novelty years they have a case that your i phone plugs into and i have mine right here and it uses the phone camera to take a picture of somebody and i think we actually have one of those pictures jonathan we showed that picture i think it was my are a little bit earlier today i know it's very easy to take pictures there it is i mean my i right and so you can see the back of your eye and obviously track track if there are any problems but you're pretty normal that sounds good to me i hope you would tell me anything on air nothing was wrong ok we're talking about all these different medical devices and the way that they revolutionize technology these are things that can be used. anywhere and that have really brought doctors this much closer to understanding the human body and hopefully hopefully cures to a lot of different things but let me ask you i mean obviously these things are wonderful to have yes but where is the line between the patient having this and a doctor who is certified who knows what he is looking for having these devices and

will it deter patients from actually going to the doctor in the first place when so i hope not because i'm a medical student as well and i want to draw. the money and so i don't think we're going to reach a state where patients are just collecting all of their do so this week a ted med actually here in d.c. we're having a big conference where showcasing ten of these devices some of them are things patients can and will use at home things like collecting their weight which is pretty easy to do and they can do it accurately as well as their blood pressure and actually it's a better thing for health care if these patients are tracking that those statistics because rather than just getting one time measurements once a year they're able to get longitudinal measurements which give us a better indicator if they have high blood pressure or they're obese and things like that but there are some devices like this. which i don't really see patients really using like i mean how many how many patients will take a picture of the back of their own eye and then send it in i see them being used by trained health care professionals in low resource settings but i think what we want to make sure is that patients are empowered but not not empowered to the fact point

where they don't think that they need professional medical help i'm sure and let me ask you one more question now obviously when it back oh and cigarettes came out in the beginning nobody really knew the health consequences of them obviously we learned differently now when cell phones came out we heard that they could cause cancer there's a lot of evidence that doesn't say that but there's some evidence that might yes or no could this potentially have long term effects on us so i can't prove that i can say yes or no i'm a been trained to sort of equivocate on that as a medical student but i think that there you know we'll get more data on it i don't think these devices will or a shift of july editor at mega at gadget thank you for joining us thank you and that's an idea from the news for this hour come round at five pm for no more news an in-depth interview is. oh this land. by conflict.

has changed. a modern islamic nation. and a peaceful one the stone islam is first of course a secular law a second. fashion. and so. in place of. traditions still a mando cannot go on the catwalk in a swimsuit. just a republican controlled see. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

more news today violence is once again fled up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are today. time.