our top story this hour a massive comp last kills at least of fifteen people including children outside a hospital in the libyan city of benghazi. police in the you are so hunting for a group of gunmen who went on a shooting rampage you were in mother's day parade in new orleans injuring nineteen people. and spyware made by a british has allegedly been used to snoop on activists in bahrain we hear from a rights campaigner was raising the alarm over the intrusive surveillance methods being deployed in her country.

international news live for most this is all she with me of all of our hello and welcome to the program now a car bomb exploded in libya's second largest city have been ghazi the blast went off in a crowded area outside a hospital and our correspondent paula see you has more now on this how that paula so what's happened and what's the situation in benghazi right now. well from the reports we're receiving as many as seventeen people have been killed and dozens wounded including children there are of course fears of the death toll will further rise what we do understand is that the car bomb exploded in the car park of the main emergency our jealous hospital in the eastern libyan city of benghazi according to the libyan deputy interior minister he totally destroyed a restaurant and seriously damaged nearby buildings now doctors inside that

hospital say that it is there was only one body that arrived intact and that makes it almost impossible to immediately established than establish the number of people who have been killed i witness so say that people were hysterical they were running about people were literally picking body parts up off the streets now people are angry i've been following tweets by libyan activists online and there's a lot of calls within the social media for libyans to take to the streets and express their anger and march and demonstrate but they're almost just as many calls for libyans to stay at home because the situation outside is not safe at all what movements are also tweeting is that while we have seen a string of attacks on local police stations over the past few days in benghazi this is something completely different to attacking and bombing a crowded hospital which is of course a public place now the security situation in libya has remained precarious ever since people milligan leader moammar gadhafi was overthrown on sunday they were two

bombs targeting a plane dollars eat police stations they have also been a five attacks in total over the last month on benghazi police stations this comes amid an increase in foreign stocks withdrawals on sunday the b.p. oil giant announced that it was pulling all non essential stuff from its libyan operations and this was based on the advice of the u.k. foreign office on friday evening washington announce that it was pulling some of its nonessential indices staff out of the country and it was also pushing e.u. based rapid intervention troops who are currently based. germany on high alert the u.k. foreign office has also announced that it's removing some nonessential diplomatic staff because of security concerns and political uncertainty over the last few weeks what we have seen is that in the seas both in tripoli and also libyan ministries has been blocked by militia who have been demanding a north banning gadhafi officials from government now we've also been receiving reports that there are links that have been established between jihadist operating

in mali and those operating in libya and that the french intervention in mali pushed jihadists out of mali into libya and increased security concerns inside libya no doubt that is what we're witnessing now marty correspondent middle east correspondent i should say polis here with the latest on the blast in the libyan city of benghazi part of my thanks indeed. and to discuss this further i'm now joined live by joe political analyst patrick having some from twenty first century wired dot com patrick thank you very much for joining us there have been a string of a toxin libero over the past month is there anything the government that can do to improve the security situation that. looks very similar to the situation we used to seeing in iraq. right now just by the nature of this. crowd in hospital. is going to create

a new. tax relief stations sort of a strategy of instability that we see you know for the years look at how long you're going to have to achieve there and it's still not. you don't worry i think we're living in a situation here in libya. we know all the groups recently surrounded the government ministries in tripoli is that a danger that radical groups could seize power by force that. yes this is always a danger in libya and one of the reasons this is the case is because there's been a heavy amount of active by western intelligence agencies during the. for libya in and out there are you know course that culminated with what we saw on benghazi last fall but the u.s. had gone in and tried to eliminate some potential leadership in the.

libyan government it's a broken off each militias basically. these are the life some of those groups over the last two years or so but it's a recipe for chaos and you know it's really sad because libya has got a challenge in order to have some semblance of law and order and government in the country right now in the middle east correspondent also mentioned earlier the attack on the french and the same tripoli last month was seen as a reprisal for the french intervention in mali do you think that'll preachin has contributed to instability in the media. yes it's also possible that you know that the whole north african region is awash with various islamist radical groups and i'm sorry to say that this is a u.s. administration that is allied itself with the islamicist and they're having trouble taming the monsters to be created the use these long groups in order to achieve

victory in libya nato is also there doing the exact same strategy in syria so we'll be able to see if you want to have any indication of what it might look like if nato and washington and london and paris are successful in top of the sort of regime look at what's happening in libya now it could be destabilization of groups splintering rather than muck basically it's a terrorist playground of libya and the exact same thing if they topple the a sort of syria all right jeff political on this patrick hanging so thank you very much for talking to us. and you can track all the latest developments in benghazi on our web site dot com have got on this have video footage there and eyewitness accounts from the scene of the blast police and the use iana hunting down several gunman who opened fire on a crowd during mother's day celebrations nineteen people were injured in the broad daylight a tongue chairing

a street parade in new orleans that's now get the latest from all she's marine outport not who's joining us live by that merida how the police made any progress in the investigation. well so far they have been no arrests announced but we do know that the new orleans police department has released grainy surveillance video they released that early monday morning showing a possible suspect in connection to the mother's day parade shooting in the footage you can see the crowd suddenly scattering in all directions with some falling to the ground it appears as though parade goers are running from a man who turns and runs out of the picture and the person is wearing a white t. shirt and dark pants the image isn't very clear but police are still hoping that someone will recognize the perpetrator and notify investigators police posted a series of still images from that grainy video on you tube as well there's also been a ten thousand dollars reward offered for information leading to the arrest and indictments

in this case now law enforcement officials believe that more than one gone was fired sunday afternoon now by sunday evening a law enforcement officials were speculating that at least three people were connected possibly to the mother's day parade shooting an f.b.i. spokesperson characterized the shooting as street violence with no connection to terrorism now the victims from this shooting includes ten men seven women a boy and a girl both ten years old the church the children were reportedly grazed by a bullet but they are said to be in good condition at least three victims however were seriously wounded now our viewers might remember from our initial reports on the story that shots erupted as hundreds turned out for the traditional new orleans mother's they were made sunday afternoon participants walk and dance down the street in a second line procession behind a brass bands now police officers are routinely interspersed with the marchers but

that clearly wasn't enough to prevent the mayhem that unfolded on mother's day and of course incidents like this always spawn calls for tougher gun control is the government taking any real actions on they say sure. well so far on this specific issue there is no no federal state coming out but this is connected to the ongoing debate in the united states over gun control a debate that has this country essentially divided look what us president barack obama wanted to do with his legislation that failed in the senate was that he wanted to enforce tougher background checks on people that were attempting to buy a weapon now if investigators in new orleans ultimately find the weapons that were responsible for the shooting and they find out that those weapons were not registered were not were not sold to the people that use them or the people that use them got them illegally that goes back to. the gun control debate that goes

back to what's many want to do in strengthening access to firearms is have the proper procedures for people who want to buy a firearm so it's not clear yet if these guns that were used were illegally obtained but if they were that speaks to the debate that is ongoing in the united states that is sensually still getting a lot of attention but not much traction when it comes to enforcing more gun control he's marina live from new york marina thank you very much indeed. the idea that britain would be better off outside the european union is gaining ground in prime minister david cameron's government the defense secretary has now joined the education secretary in saying he would vote for the u.k. to leave the bloc if a referendum was held right now all she's sophos reports now from london. this is going to look to many like the prime minister struggling to maintain control of

discipline amongst his own party and even the e.u. if you know he seemed very senior figures within his own party education minister michael gave come out and say that he feels that there could be benefits to leaving the event that sentiment echoed by the defense secretary philip hammond he said that he'd vote to leave if the referendum were on the basis of our relationship in britain with the e as it stands today you know rather embarrassing for the prime minister of course because he's in the us at the present time to press for a trade deal between the e.u. and the us that he claims could bring ten billion pounds that the new benefit to britain now they become and the prime minister that surely had a statement where he said when he responded to these statements from senior figures and he said that he does seem to think there's a swing in the town even before the negotiation has started now this is in

reference of course to his speech at the beginning of the year where he promised that if the party with a student with a majority in the twenty fifteen general election that there would be in out referendum by twenty seventy all to those who renegotiation of britain's relationship with the remember a lot of people amongst his own party included i want to see a substantial repatch relation of powers from the e.u. but of course there were many unanswered questions predominate they would actually be considered a failure because of course if there's no guarantee whatsoever the person would i get that renegotiation of a relationship that's going to be a lot of questions about the prime minister is only thirty within his own party this isn't any problem the split of the new issue is an old problem for the conservative party if you can imagine that the other parties right now are going to be absolutely gleeful so this whole family squabble is that once again being played

out so publicly. and let's now get more on this from christopher klug who's a senior finance lecturer at notion them trying to unify state mr klock thank you very much indeed for your time now do you think this puts extra pressure on david cameron to hold a referendum on the e.u. membership before the next general election twenty fifteen. yes i do i do believe it's more pressure i think you know the most most of the pressure has come from the results of the local elections that were held here when twenty five percent of the british public to play you know obviously they want us out of the e.u. and i think now now cameron has to listen now yes. the british prime minister also says a free trade area between the us and the e.u. would boost the u.k. economy all these plans realistic. so you'll have to repeat the question i'm sorry of course also david cameron british prime minister says

a free trade area between the us and the e.u. is the u.k. economy are these plans realistic. we would i don't understand what you're saying they would bridge the u.k. economy i can hear what you're saying i'm sorry we have about growing here sorry that i'm. ok ok i should say that fifty eight percent of britain's exports go to the continent right is there a danger that the e.u. kerry could lose some of that market if actually if leaving b e. no i don't i don't believe for one moment no i think that we run you know approximately thirty to fifty billion pound trade deficit with europe and i think the idea that the e.u. would impose tariffs and taxes upon goods is absolute nonsense i mean why would you want to hurt your biggest customer so i actually think you know it would clear you british jobs that we create demand and it would create a lot more prosperity if we were to leave me you know the economic facts of the

matter and everything else that's being touted around them so you can stay. no accurate. if recent were to abandon the e.u. at a time of crisis wouldn't that cause major problems in the u.k.'s relations with the eurozone members. you know the use having a crisis because the us having a crisis and it's not it's not doing the right things i mean you know it's their responsibility to sort things out the government in this country has implied to them continuously over the last few years that they need to sort their problems out and how to do it but unfortunately you know with the euro crisis in brussels are doing absolutely nothing but they should be doing to sort their problems out and it's really not britain's problem and i think britain is right not to be dragged into the mire with the rest of europe. also we know the u.k. independence party has a growing support base of the tories starting to come around to their vision.

you know i think some of them are i think the real risk here is that they don't because you know that the tories that i've heard speaking since that initial results have indicated that they think it was a protest vote and i think it will be extremely dangerous for the conservative party to think that twenty five percent of the british electorate only voted for ukip protest i think the cat is out of the bag about the true cost of being partly you to the people of this country people are voicing their opinion and they want something done about it now either the conservatives will act now or they risk being out. all right christopher clarke from north. to business school thank you very much. thank you. and also had a bahraini activist says a u.k. mates highway is being used against human rights campaign is in the gulf states and you can hear from her after the break.

manufacturing consent for determining a foreign policy concerns. those who in washington in the halls of power in western capitals drive foreign policy decisions particularly when it comes to iran israel and syria is american foreign policy in the country's own interest you know sometimes you see a story. 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. welcome to the big picture. on. the news today violence flared up. these are the images being from the streets of canada. giant corporations are

today. this is as he welcomed by the government in bahrain has used surveillance software from a u.k. based company to spy on a leading rights activist that's according to documents filed in the london high court by one of the founders of the rights group bahrain watch the manufacturers say the program is designed for use in criminal investigations but privacy campaigners claim that technology is being widely abused the program named fin spy can perform a wide range of surveillance operations it works by infection your computer and then recording your skype conversations and social media activity and it can also take screenshots without your knowledge and access all the information on your hard

disk drives groups in our hope that dr shahabi is a witness statement on the spyware can force a judicial review on the british government's failure to investigate where the technology is growing and she spoke to us earlier on this and she said that the use of digital surveillance has been spreading in britain and in bahrain ever since former u.k. police officer john the aids became security advisor that. emails were disguised as if they were from journalists and were from other activists and then after we discovered after two months investigation of a technical analysis to try and. investigate what kind of information and what this software actually does we discovered there was a company called gamma international which sells this software to foreign governments so we assumed and we given the circumstances in which i received the e-mails and the nature of the e-mails this was a suspect this was sold to the bahraini government but we also know that the

servers. received this information from the software is actually based in bahrain so the servers are currently in bahrain and they're being updated in bahrain which means that this is further evidence over the past two years particularly british advisor john yates joined the bahrain security services we have noticed the increase in the use of surveillance in the use of c.c.t.v. and the use of digital surveillance and there are very targeted arrests and infiltration amongst protests activists that happen using the latest technology technologies and this is all happened since following on from the hiring of the recruitment of john yates and most of these companies that provide all of this technology are british now we know of at least thirty six so being maintained worldwide so now the this is a global operation graeme international has sold this software to at least twenty five governments and the use seems the use of the software seems to have no any

type of restriction so this is turning into a global phenomenon and it's run by the private sector so we're looking increasingly at the commercialisation of digital surveillance which is even scarier because it's very difficult to regulate. europe's finance ministers are signing of billions of euros of bailout loan today heavily indebted greece's counting on a huge load to prop up its ailing economy cyprus has already got big green light for the first three billion euro installment of its bailout agreed in march after tense negotiations with international lenders greece has been relying on cash injection for the past three years and it's now banking on getting another age trollish worth four point two billion euros it's also seeking approval for a further installment of three point three billion euros later this year and despite the greek government's claim that the money is bringing the economy back on

track many believe the country's paying too high a price for that help as i say is meant in a culture reports. as been three years says greece was granted its massive bailout by international lenders since then the harshest charity measures have driven the economy into the ground but some claim that the risk hope on the horizon for grace and that it's about to turn a corner let's see now how greece's economy fares today compared to what it looked like in the last full year before it needed rescuing starting with the country's output g.d.p. an indicator of the standard of living that's plummeted almost fifty billion euros in the last three years while government data has surged by forty five percent so where does the optimists sound while the good news these measures have improved the country's budget deficit three point eight percent to put that in perspective it's now very close to the bigger so that's why the european union but for the greek

people though of the most alarming trend is the unemployment rate that stopped twenty seven percent mostly the country's youth and that's going to get worse four thousand civil servants are being laid off this year alone with the number is set to triple by the end of the next year one expert says no matter how the number is set up now the money will still have to be repaid the greek government. image. it budget deficits by simply slicing the public investment. continuing continuously delaying that statement about its direction so in reality if if the greek states. were everybody all those with which they have. this issue so that's why they insist that it does i mean listen it is up to them to remain within the norm in the.

sense not to really prove that. so all the real aspects of the. government's agreement the issue of policy is the what is your recession the very big question the elephant is a room of this size this. is you know bailout agreement earlier in reality do they have in greece. and during an astonishing six years of recession is also having a harrowing consequence so is science in greece which used to be the lowest rate in euro are rising rapidly mostly among the middle class troublingly people have taking their lives in public hanging or shooting themselves or even self-immolation while politicians and economists shuffle the figures as the people of greece being the price with their livelihoods and their futures and some other news making

headlines across the globe and fast without afghanistan where a roadside bomb blast has claimed the lives of ten civilians have left many others injured in the southern region have come to harm the victims including three children were in a truck which hit an improvised explosive device they were on their way to a funeral of two are those of to others who died in another explosion last week no group has claimed responsibility so far however in april the taliban threatened to renewed violence and what they call their annual spring offensive. while in bulgaria opposition protesters armed with tortures have clashed with security forces and broken through police lines during post-election riots in the compass all safia they lection was of shadowed by widespread indications of bad fraud and most of the opposition are contesting the results which gave the former prime minister's party victory a step down and made corruption allegations and mounting economic turmoil just ten months ago. and up next gas and crossed over discussed the impact of american

foreign policy on conflicts across the planet. the illusion of safety trumping you're right seems to be the main political theme of post nine eleven america i noticed pushing the keep you safe at any cost of lot more than new york billionaire mayor michael bloomberg who recently had to defend his stop and frisk strategy after giving a speech to police brass stop and frisk is the practice of just being able to search anyone in new york at any time for any reason with your hands this kostopoulos style practice has been in place since two thousand and two but thankfully was finally recently to be unconstitutional by

a federal judge you know the fourth amendment all the talk about no unlawful search and seizure seems pretty clear to me why did this take so long to figure out bloomberg despite that silly constitution thing stands firm with this policy recurring if you end street stops looking for guns they will be more guns on the street and more people will be killed it's just that simple well to that i would say if you stop nazi style first kings of random innocent people there will be more freedom on the streets it's just that simple but that's just my opinion.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle manufacturing consent for determining a foreign policy consensus in washington in the halls of power in western capitals drive foreign policy decisions particularly when it comes to iran israel and syria is public opinion constructed to fit the interests of special groups and lobbies and is american foreign policy in the country's own interest. to cross-talk american foreign policy i'm joined by my guests in washington judith kipper she is director of middle east programs at the institute of world affairs and we also have flynt leverett he is a professor at penn state and author of the new book i'm going to run why the u.s. must come to terms with the islamic republic of iran there's just a.