international at the very heart of moscow. coming up on our t.v. despite the fact that the sequester has brought harm to the poor and needy of our nation it looks like flight delays are what really gets congress moving all discuss this do nothing congress just ahead. in iraq the government has ordered nearly a dozen satellite t.v. channels to end their broadcasts this claimed they claim these channels are fanning the flames of sectarian violence while critics consider it a ploy to censor the press we'll tell you more coming up. plus it's been six months since hurricane sandy devastated the east coast as new york and new jersey residents continue to rebuild what's life like for those who lost nearly everything we'll tell you about that later in the show.

it's monday april twenty ninth five pm in washington d.c. lopez and you are watching r.t. beginning this hour reports are coming out that two ground to air missiles were fired at a commercial russian airliner flying over syrian air space according to the russian news agency interfax an unnamed source within the russian government confirmed that syrian authorities informed them of the incident the plane a charter belonging to normal when the airlines was originally in route to the city of cazan which is located in the republic of tar stan the flight which was reportedly carrying around one hundred sixty passengers was not hit that's according to a spokesperson from russia's agency for tourism r t international correspondent lucy catherine off has more. it was a norway and airbus a three twenty we know that it had landed safely in its destined destination which is the city of commons on one of the russian republics that was leaving the resort city in egypt there had been something like doing

reports about potential missiles but that is not something that we've been able to confirm all we can say is there was some sort of an incident and according to russian officials the pilots themselves had reported seeing some sort of military action that they felt could be a danger to the plane and they reportedly took a base of actions but russian officials have said that they're going to investigate this issue and try to get to the bottom of it we have to keep in mind of course that over the past more than two years now syria has faced rather dire state of civil war where the embattled government of president bashar al assad has been growth fighting a growing insurgency various groups are rebels who have been rebelling against the government it's been a serious state of civil war with that has claimed seventy thousand lives and of course heavy weapons on the ground both within of course the military of president bashar al assad and also with the rebels there have been some reports of anti aircraft weapons in the hands of the air the rebels we will of course keep you updated on all the latest as the details come in that was our tease lucy catherine

off reporting. well for months now we have heard of how crippling the dreaded sequester was going to be for the u.s. that was the point of it after all to force congress to play nicely and come up with some fiscal solutions but up until this point other than canceling white house tours and the annoyingly long lines outside of capitol hill the sequester has had very few effects on those inside of the beltway that was until last week when airport delays resulting from job for a lowe's at the air traffic control towers spread from new york to d.c. and then across the country now the well to do business people would have to wait for their planes after a couple of days of delays and escalating humerus a last minute f.a.a. bill let's. really flew through the legislative branches to stop this from happening the bill allows f.a.a. to actually shift some of the two hundred fifty three million dollars to the air traffic control system away from an air or improvement fund now it was passed three

hundred sixty one to forty one in the house on friday just hours before many of the congress members actually cut a plane home for recess the bill is passed so quickly that parts of it were reportedly hand written and there was a typo in it a typo that is now holding up the legislation from landing on president obama's desk so why our long airport lines the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back to talk more about this stray from the sequester artie's financial team perry and boring and bob english joined me earlier in the studio and i started out by asking bob if this f.a.a. bill is a sign of things to come. probably and i think it's an evidence of the lawmakers self serving this i mean one hundred twenty five thousand homeless people how many of these guys a risk a risk of wildfires how many of these guys have head start programs that their children are in answer probably none yet they also and these are pretty airplanes in the rich constituents also flying these are planes and they need these airport

control towers so i think they are simply doing what's in their best interest right here and that yes there is more to come and i would not so this bill actually transfers two hundred fifty three million dollars from the airport improvement account to the f.a.a. operational account operational account is the largest portion of the f.a.a. budget and that includes the salaries of the employees that work for the f.a.a. so this bill was really just to keep for lows happening at the f.a.a. and the f.a.a. was required to reduce their budget by fifteen point eight billion dollars with the sequester ation that was an about a five percent off the top cuts and we're talking about two hundred fifty three million dollars i just being moved from one account to another so it gives the agency the authority to move funds around so they didn't have to cut. in allow them to cut in other areas that aren't necessarily as critical to airport security and travel safety and that was exactly going to be my next question is if they're just shifting money is it really affecting sequester all of that much because it's not

a lot of flaws to the f.a.a. this allows the agency to move the funds around within the budget the f.a.a. doesn't always have this as a tory authority to do so and this bill gave them the authority from the appropriations committee to do that. it's going to increase cost by about two million dollars over ten years now in light to mind always a lot of money to me but we're talking about they started with a fifteen point eight billion dollars cut and the reason why there is an additional cost because we're talking about salaries and there were some short term issues when changing salaries around like that so in my opinion i don't think it really is doing the sequester are going to pose a signa. it by gerry increase and the so that one hand we have the f.a.a. being allowed to move their own money around on the other hand we have the agriculture department and what they're doing is they literally pretty much hold the meat industry hostage by saying that they are going to have to furlough employees and

shut down all meat industry for at least eleven days not necessarily the point when days and it was actually there was a sparring that went on between agriculture secretary tom vice act and representative steven king if we can listen to that and then get your his opinions . i would ask you if you would be willing to do and just ask you this submit to this committee here recommendations on what you'd like to see written into the c.r. to give you the flexibility necessary so that the meat industry no longer has to be concerned about the backup that could be caused by furloughs of meat inspectors well the answer to that question is relatively easy congressman just give us the resources that's not the option mr secretary as you well know that's what i was you all are making that's a choice you all are making bob right now my question to you is is this what it's going to take me to get any kind of progress holding something and adding an agency an industry hostage in order to get progress in congress i think so but it's only incremental change that we're going to get here in the big picture and this is

something that we're going to be talking a lot about on our new show is really takes what it really takes to affect change here is when short term interest rates rise and that's something that the federal reserve has telegraphed for the end of this year and when that happens the government is not going to be able to deficit spend as it is right now a lot of programs are going to have to be cut and in much greater magnitude than we're seeing right now this eighty five billion dollars sequester is nothing in terms of what's to come all right and i understand you guys have a new show coming up prime interest area and tell me about it well prime interest is a finance and economic program not going to be necessarily reporting on a daily statistic what happened in the stock markets where more are going to be focusing on the details we're going to break down these complicated issues get into the fine print to bring your wife and your prime interest as it applies here finances and the economy and bob tell me how this show is different than every other financial show out there why should people be watching you first we're going

to cover different topics we're going to explore things like shadow banking and money market reform which might seem so tara but we're going to break it down for viewers and we're going to make it interesting we're also going to take the stories that the mainstream media covers but they just miss her. example is a myth global had we had we been around unfortunately there there was another shore road during the time that covered it was rather well but most of mainstream media doesn't cover financial events in a way that's relevant to the customers of the of the futures industry or the banking industry we take that perspective we're looking out for the viewers here well welcome to the r c family i just want to put up a rise in the information to for our viewers their show prime interest will be on it premiers tomorrow at four thirty and will be on weekdays at four thirty pm eastern make sure you tune in you're not going to want to miss our new financial team are two of parian boring and bob english thank you and you. still ahead here on our team t.v. stations in iraq are going to the iraqi government has suspended the broadcast

license of stations like al-jazeera and baghdad t.v. is this another case of government restricting press freedoms well ask that after the break. up in the field that you will find it here if you're looking for relevant stories unique perspective from tom once again.

here's mitt romney trying to figure out. a lot of that thing that the americans call. yours and. you. know what might. want to featuring the only liberal the current. solicitor. general of the structures from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm abbie martin and we're going to break the set.

up. on now to news out of iraq the fact is there is no news coming out of the country it seems that operation iraqi freedom didn't show up freedom of the press as well iraq's communication and media commission announced this weekend that it was pulling the licenses of ten news stations including al-jazeera this comes in the wake of weeks of bloody clashes between sunni protesters and the shia led government the government says these stations are spreading misinformation and invoking the violence nine of the ten stations whose licenses have been revoked are sunni stations the other is funded by iran so are our birding back to the days of saddam hussein when press freedom was scarce in the country r.t. arabic correspondent. and georgetown journalism professor christopher chambers joined me just a short time ago to weigh in chris began by explaining what it means for the stations have their licenses pulled. well it's just it's essentially the iraqi

c.m.c. is like our f.c.c. and fell swoop they've basically cut the legs out under these all of these networks the biggest you know the outsider being of course biggest outsider being al jazeera and some local patients as well and have a license you can operate so they cannot really move around the country move around the country reporting. even even even responding sources and that's you know and so when you cut that feed off then you cut off the internet as well because those stories cross platform so they're going in the water basically and so when we say that they're cutting and taking away these licensing privileges to help me and the p.r. to understand exactly what that means it means that they will not be able to report in the country but the the airwaves they cannot block them right because they're coming from internationally right well yeah i mean they they can't basically they can't operate i mean that they can't they can't not only can they not go out with they could probably talk to sources maybe informally they cannot broadcast anything they can't really operate certainly any crews going out and doing packages and the

studios you know you would do hear it or a t.v. remotely they cannot do you know the the airwaves of the radio frequency spectrum that's free but if you're not producing anything it might as well but there might well be a dome over the country at this point here or now remind the iraqi government claims that these stations are provoking sectarian violence that's a legitimate claim or could it be that even pro porting objective really is promoting this type of violence. i think it really speaks a lot of things here this the situation and that this incident in particular the fact that there is this shii. channel out of the ten channels that were those licenses where provoked the government will tell you hello we're not doing this just because they're so new we're doing this because they're misleading there because they are spreading misinformation but at the bad time that one is funded by the iranian government in iran true and a lot of people claim and say that they're running government as an ally of the

maliki so the maliki will say i am also shutting down one of the channels that people say is one of my allies i'm doing this because these people are reading the spreading misinformation so for him this is he might have. a legitimate. argument here but the fact is that the freedom of the press in iraq is at stake just the fact that ten channels are closed down because of their reporting which many people will say is not objective many people say is objective but that is not the that's that's not the main issue here the main issue is if you report things that we don't like that we shut you down and press talk about what the stifling of the press means i mean the country itself just came out of prevention elections of the first time that they've had prevention elections since the u.s. last twenty fourteen assault to be a big year in all molecules and running so what does this mean stifling the press

well it means it means it's it's stall to find for iraq i mean you know the people need this information to be a democratic country you have to have a free press i mean that the there's no compromise there and it's it's ironic for al-jazeera as well because this was a network that was almost a chronicle or of arab spring i mean there's going to classic one thousand century american muckraking that create you know that helps. the arab spring and now you have the situation where you know they're cut off from a country you know so they have some growing pains that they're going through today one from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood like that and there's a question now whether the emir's money is because it's helping to soothe that situation or making it worse so you know they have some internal issues that they have to deal with so it's better al jazeera and it's bad for iraq come out and see the winners here rima we only have a short amount of time left but this is the first time the iraqi government has

actually shot all the media is there any indication how long this can last what it can mean and also what kind of. in the future we don't know how long it will last and i don't think even the iraqi government knows how long it will last they probably took this decision until the situation is calmer in iraq and then they will weigh in on what they need to do next in terms of reopening these channels or just keeping them close this really has a lot of ramifications not just for iraq actually but for all of the region when one government does one thing other governments usually follow so when one government things it's ok to either shut down channels or allow or not allow journalists reporting or not reporting this will tell people a lot of things and usually just the facts the whole reason however in the iraq the situation is already boiling there is a really bad situation going on and this i many people i was reading articles just

before i came into the city and a lot of people said that this was just help inside more violence a lot of people will see this as another attack against. specific people not necessarily so nice but you know people who are not necessarily in line with the rejean and this will just help incite more violence and there's been a gears of this information coming out and not coming out we also saw a lot of information not coming out during operation iraqi freedom where was the press coverage of that you know and anyway it's a very interesting story we're going to continue following it as it develops georgetown journalism professor christopher chambers an r.t. arabic correspondent remop thank you guys for weighing in. well it's been six months to the day since hurricane sandy rocked the east coast it was the storm's wake that actually killed one hundred forty seven people and also displaced one hundred sixty one thousand families from their homes from states from new york all

the way down to new jersey they suffered the billions upon billions of dollars in damages there have been some notable improvements in relief efforts but for the families affected by this mega storm recovery has been slow and stuff or thirty nine thousand people are still displaced in new jersey and some parts of the disaster area have been left untouched and now even more bad news mold is infesting the houses that fell victim to the storm and even femurs new flood mapping system is causing problems for the residents for a look at the recovery efforts from the ground my a gal min is the policy coordinator at alliance for a just rebuilding and she joins me now hi there can you explain a little bit more about the ways that sandy. relief efforts are being put into this hurricane sandy area and how is it being just or in your or unjust. well the relief money from the federal government hasn't come down yet the city and state have had to apply through what's called the action plans for much of the

federal money that's going to come specifically for housing repair and rebuilding so the work that's gone on so far has been put together primarily by the city and the city created what's called a rapid repair program which went in and did repairs to people's homes to restore electrical service and heating but it did not address mold and it hasn't. it hasn't fixed the mold problem and as a result there are a lot of people who are living in housing that has been deemed safe because it has electricals and heat restored but in fact people are getting sick from mold there was a small private program that was created with the assistance of the mayor's office that had two thousand slots for people to get more repair. the problem is that there are about eighty thousand units of housing that were in the flood zones and many of those reports more than fact community groups have recently started doing

surveys to figure out who has mold because the city really hasn't done that and they're finding that people with lower incomes who haven't been able to hire contractors to do mulder mediation or who have tried to do it themselves haven't been successful in getting the mold out mold is actually very difficult to remediate and as a result they're either having to do the work multiple times or they're living with mold and they're getting sick the second problem that we have is that the city and have both put people up in hotels because their housing was unliveable and they have started to sort of push people out of hotels has been reportedly telling folks that their homes are safe to go to so they won't be any hotel stay service for them anymore when in fact their homes are still moldy and the city actually had a deadline of today to evict people from hotels and they've fixed. and did it for a month but they haven't put in place long term housing vouchers that will keep people out of homelessness so there are some serious gaps in the services that are

being provided the one other issue is that we're quite certain that the city has vastly undercounted the number of people who are in need of assistance people who are undocumented or even who didn't have leases because they might have been living in an informal units weren't able to get assistance so there are some very big holes a lot of big holes if what you're saying is completely accurate that says there's a huge hole and numerous areas around the sandy relief bill was famously held up in capitol hill but now that it's passed harsh critics like new jersey governor chris christie have toned down their rhetoric here's governor christie talking about the president and super stand storm sandy relief recently. who said the president kept every promise they made and the fact is that that's what i was saying if. i was i was asked about how was the president doing and i say he's doing a good job he's kept his word and so everybody knows that i have about ninety five percent level of disagreement with brock obama on the issues of principle and

philosophy but the fact is we have a job to do and what people expect are people they elected to do their job and since that time i have to say everything that they promised they would do they've gone. you know my and he's saying one thing obviously you're saying another he went on to say that it takes a long time for this kind of reformation rebuilding to happen but at the same time as i mentioned earlier thirty nine thousand people in new jersey alone are still homeless so what do you think of his comments. i actually don't in this particular case disagree with governor christie i don't think that the issue here is with the federal government the federal government i mean there was a huge issue with the sequester and the delay of the funding but the funding that's coming through federal sources to the city and state actually has come elative lee quickly and it comes with some really important transparency and accountability requirements for example the federal funding that's coming through the department

of housing and urban development takes a lot of lessons from hurricane katrina and requires that half of the money be spent for low income people and that all of the money be allocated in a way that accounts for for whether plants are going to displace people from housing particularly low income people and people of color and immigrants or whether it's going to support their return the question is just will the city and the state actually it here to those to those requirements and make those plans and in the city you know we have a mayor who's whose real focus has been on sort of big ideas competitions and public private partnerships that end up putting resources more in private hands than in public we have in the process of trying to develop this sandy recovery plan some some of the real accountable accountability issues still a long and stubbornly slow process for those families that are looking for relief and policy coordinator at the alliance for a just rebuilding. thanks well here's

a strange story for you california authorities how forcibly removed a five month old baby from his parent's care after the couple took their baby out of the hospital the parents took the baby to the sutter memorial hospital in sacramento after baby sammi displayed flu symptoms the nurses at the hospital reportedly began giving the baby daily doses of antibiotics the doctor later admitted that the baby should not have been given those drugs at all the baby also has a heart murmur and doctors began talking about open heart surgery for this little one wanting a second opinion and displeased with the care he was already receiving and alex nichol led actually removed baby sammy from the hospital without filling out the proper discharge forms as a result the baby was taken by the child protective services are to international actually caught up with the parents and here's what they had to say. been shocked when they walked in the door and just they all of them in saying it's just let us see you saw on this he's so kay and i said i'm holding him in my arms he's so ok

you can take a look and they're saying give me your child and that's when they took away no paper and not so ever they've been providing and they just walked out of the door was any reason given behind the nine eleven call from the hospital after you took your own child to another hospital or second to opinion i mean have they given you any reason whatsoever. they say to send them urgency that he's almost dying that needs medical treatment and that he needs that needs to get back to the hospital immediately. do you believe this. no you was fine he was laughing he was eating he was a normal child normal baby to go home and he was released from the from the other hospital and we took him to the doctor released to be do statements so the parents are basically good to go home with their baby the b.b.c.

from their arms very interesting now taking a step back facebook and social networks they are a way for you to get support and you said facebook shut down the page that you set up to get support for your case did they give you any reason why they closed down this page no i think it has everything to do with the government we had a lot of support we got a lot of prayers a lot of people who were there you know just praying for us and all all side in the first facebook page a blog called facebook basically my sister in law called facebook no answer every question as she was asking them there was no answer coming back we opened a second facebook page for support same thing happened again your child hasn't been a lot home in four days going to kills me i don't have my baby of me at nighttime i just visiting him like been visiting him three times today for an hour and you're leaving at seven o'clock of again the hard going home your baby's not though if you

know you're just feeling empty there's some missing something in your in we're just waiting for tomorrow's day just to you know like coming in this court hearing good news taking your baby going home or going to a different hospital. a judge is hearing the custody case this afternoon in sacramento the facebook support page is now up and running as well we'll keep you updated on the court fight right here on r.t. . and now for the world of sports where yet another barrier has been broken today in be a center jason collins became the first professional male athlete in a major american sports team to come out of the closet as being gay in an exclusive piece in sports illustrated he said quote i didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major american team sport but since i am i'm happy to start the conversation i wish i wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying i'm different if i had my way someone else would have already done this nobody has which is why i'm

raising my hand collins who is thirty four has spent twelve seasons in the n.b.a. playing for six different team most recently of the washington wizards already his announcement has gotten everyone from n.b.a. marquee names like kobe bryant to the boston red sox and even bill clinton actually commending his decision while being the first athlete on a major sports team to come out of the closet it's impossible that he is the only gay male athlete in the coming weeks and months and years we'll have to see who else follows jason collins as lead and that's going to do it for now i'm meghan lopez the right here at eight pm eastern. wealthy british style stock.

market. can. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on. world. science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered.