well coming up on our t.v. thousands around the world are planning to say no to genetically modified crops marches against month santa are being planned for over thirty nations and activists will voice their their support for changes in the food industry like labeling of genetically modified foods we'll have a preview of this global event just ahead and in california a thirty three year old man died after half a dozen police officers kicked and beat him with clubs footage of the incident was captured by some bystanders that it was confiscated by authority more in this case and what's ahead for the officers involved coming up. as another sign of the u.s. is crumbling infrastructure a bridge near seattle washington collapsed with cars plunging into the water and some were injured but the bridge was found to be functionally obsolete more than

a year ago a look at this incident and the nation's infrastructure woes later in the show. well it's friday may twenty fourth five pm in washington d.c. i'm margaret how well you're watching our t.v. . starting out this hour at the march against monsanto activists have announced a global protest is set for may twenty fifth the focus monsanto's reach in the global food supply will protesters scheduled to take place and more than thirty six countries including the united states in california nick barnaby one of the organizers said that they're looking to inform as well as protest against the proliferation of genetically modified foods we want to spread awareness and we want to start from the ground up so you know the very very you know the easiest thing you can do to know it's in your food is to grow your own food you start there at

the very top is you know where we want labeling on a ban but i think we should work from the ground up to have the best results while other organizers around the globe have similar intentions and greece organize a rebirth of spoke about how critical the protests will be and austerity plague southern europe she said it months and who is working very hard to overturn e.u. regulations on obligatory labeling and no doubt they will have their way in the end all of this following congress's passage of the so-called month santer protection act an amendment granting the biotech legal giant immunity in the united states earlier i spoke with r t correspondent on the stasia turkana who filled us in with the latest. well margaret march against month santa was a global uglow grassroots movement which is going to organize these worldwide protests taking place throughout the weekend all over the world we're talking about they're saying that this is going to span over six continents in up to fifty countries with four hundred global marches with as many as two hundred thousand

participants in the united states alone in about forty eight states different action is going to be taking place so all of these people planning to flood out onto the streets throughout the world to speak out against this biotech giant accused of producing genetic genetically engineered food and agriculture accused of turning a blind eye on the health consequences that the food that they produce can have on people throughout the world because this is a fact a global corporation also accused of the enormous lobbying power that this corporation has in washington for one where the amount of money it pumps into lobbying allows the passage of certain acts such as the monsanto protection act very controversial extremely criticized but also block any acts that would allow liebling g m o's in the united states so certainly all of these issues but just more generally also people want to bring more attention to what it is that they're

putting into themselves what they're eating and how they can prevent huge corporations such as monsanto from creating health consequences for people throughout the world what sounds like labeling is definitely a major issue here so i want to talk to you about these protester goals you know obviously this is a march against the biotech giant lunch santo but participants present themselves as a part of a much larger movement now apart from speaking out against months into are there any other goals that they have in mind. absolutely i mean these hundreds tens and hundreds of thousands of people coming out there not just walking out onto the streets to talk about you know being against jim oh. and monsanto they do have the more narrow goals of pushing through labeling g m o's in the united states they're also asking for things like further scientific research on the health consequences of genetically engineered genetically modified food so we're not just talking about

monsanto particularly they're talking about these particular steps that the u.s. for example is yet to implement but also the more broader scale of bringing these issues to the attention of masses throughout the world and promoting not just with this march as planned throughout the weekend but also promoting a better food culture throughout throughout the world ok so i want to talk to you briefly about the power that month has in terms of congress and how they affect it so considering the lobbying power that corporations like monsanto have here in washington do you think that this global market is going to achieve any tangible results. margaret that's you know a very good question because certainly monsanto does have immense immense lobbying powers immense powers in general when it comes to politicians in washington because we do know of course that you know not just the blocking of gitmo liebling but also the certain connections they have very close ties with some people in washington

d.c. we do know that one of the people that coauthored coauthored the monsanto protection act actually received thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions we know that a justice in the supreme court's got nominated there after being an attorney at monsanto so certainly lots of these ties are of a big concern to people and many activists are saying that basically this is one of the things that also needs to be tackled and exactly how many people come out onto the streets and exactly how much of an impact in a loud voice they will have is going to determine whether or not certain policies will be implemented to reflect the opinion of all of these people but so far this has been a major battle and certainly the activists against monsanto even though protests have been numerous throughout the years because this is of course a corporation that's existed for over a century tackling a giant like that is certainly a very complicated matter and whether or not it's going to happen is going to take some time for us to find out ok so we're running out of time here but i just want

to get your opinion you've covered the occupy protest movement before is i understand that now do you expect a lot of the same people an act of a snail to show up for this march it's very likely margaret because you know some of these issues are very intertwined the issues that were brought up by occupy wall street and certainly you know the ninety nine percent versus the one percent the power of the corporations on in washington all of these things are related to monsanto and all of these things were expected for people to talk about throughout the weekend certainly so i'm sure the occupy wall street movement is definitely going to be part of this crowd tomorrow and says here we have to leave it there think you so much for that that was going to. well the beating of david silva a father of four in california central valley garnered national attention after it was reported the deputies took away the cell phones of people who witnessed the confrontation between silva and kern county sheriff deputies the sheriff announced the cause of death was hypertensive hard to see critics say that law enforcement is

trying to cover up details of this death and now the f.b.i. is involved regardless of what the video shows the beating has already highlighted a growing fear minority communities have towards law enforcement artie's remember windows has been following the story. the memory on the floor and your pleas of more frantic nine one one calls document the final moments of david silva his life grainy security video shows what is believed to be several kern county deputies repeatedly striking silver for too long the kern county sheriff's department strikes first and ask questions after the shutdown a young bloke claims the death was an accident the result of hypertensive heart disease and that silva fought deputies mr silva continued to fight he said when they would try to hold him down he would bump them off he was simply covering up and trying to prevent injury to himself as these blows and dog bites are being

inflicted on cones as this alleged beating is part of a troubling trend of police misconduct and is seeking justice for the father of four a magic. learning not only that your father died but that he died in such a violent way david silva came to kern medical center in order to get help from mental health services that's according to the silva family attorney he then came across the street into this neighborhood this is where the deadly confrontation happened as you can see a memorial has been set up where it's believed that silva took his final breath now many in his neighborhood said that they don't want to speak to us on camera or simply said they don't know anything he speaks volumes about the new fears that the community has for law enforcement on full no no stop please me and i know it's not right but you don't know who to trust now me they can push we've got to let the said this is among the several immigrant families who live near the scene where

civil died she did not see the beating but after hearing what happened she was a lot more concerned for her own safety yes i'm worried i can't go out at night so comfortably and before witnesses say that the deputies confiscated their cell phones and some of the video of the incident is now missing. the cell phone video which was released by the current county sheriff appears to show several officers over a man who was crying in pain imagine your last memories of your son or your brother. of your father are his screams and cries for him. while the f.b.i. has begun to investigate the circumstances of civets death his case is not drawn the outrage that was seen following other lethal police encounters. the death of kelly thomas prompted street protests as of the killing of charles

hill in northern california well the civil family seeks justice it appears for the moment that the fear of police is keeping this agricultural town quiet in bakersfield california in the r t i was an earlier by r.t. correspondent remember linda who had this to say about the case sure margaret well it was on may eighth when david silva at the age of thirty three died following that confrontation with police now it's reported that he had gone to the hospital for help at the mental health department he crossed the street and ended up passing out a neighbor's yard deputies were responding to a call of an intoxicated man and at some point there was a. some sort of aggressive move either by the deputy or by mr silva no the sheriff yesterday has come out and backed up his deputies trying to say that silva was the aggressor and that the deputies had to use their baton on him have

a deputy say that it was excuse me what does it say that it was the deputies who were the aggressors and that they used excessive force against a man who was on the ground for such a long time ok i want to get to that sheriff's statement in a minute but first i want to ask you so the latest developments in this case as i understand it now can you talk to me about that you know what's happening now is it just a he said he said or is any any headway being made. sure well this could start to cause a lot of controversy because some of the witnesses who took a video of the incident say that deputies had taken their cell phone cameras so there was this these accusations that there might be a cover up over the deputy says that there is no cover up and that it was mr silva who was the aggressor now yesterday sheriff don a younger came out and said that the cause of mr silva's death was were not the injuries caused by the deputies but instead it was hard disease and that the matter

of death was accidental however the civil family is very unhappy about that announcement they said that they were expecting the sheriff to be unapologetic cover they say they're still going to be pursuing justice in this case and they plan on moving forward filing of federal complaints for wrongful death and civil rights violations ok so i understand it that many people were several people at least got their cell phone cameras out and recorded exactly what happened of this man is there any specifically maria melendez did she get her phone back and if so was the evidence still on it. that's right well maria melendez is one of the witnesses who say that she videotaped the incident however these phones were returned and there was no video of the alter cation on ms melendez says phone now another witness who videotaped the incident his video was released and it doesn't show deputies. hitting mr diaz directly however you can hear in the

video mr di is screaming it appears. a great amount of pain so right now the f.b.i. is still looking at some of the evidence to see if anything had been erased ok so i want to taking out of the bakersfield sheriff's department i understand that the bakersfield sheriff he did release a statement on this case what did he have to say about you know mr silvis death here. oh well anyway he tried to say that it wasn't anything that the deputies did that contributed to him to mr silva dying what they say is that mr silva was the aggressor and that this heart disease was caused by. you know prior high blood pressure prior drug use his overweight so he's obviously trying to deflect some of the attention that the deputies have been receiving in recent days following this beating however since

witnesses are still saying that their story doesn't line up with what the deputies are saying there's still a lot of uncertainty about exactly what happened we're still waiting to see if more videos and more audio recordings will be coming out in the next coming days because i understand that there are other nine one one calls which also contradict the story that the deputies have been saying in the media i see so basically they're saying it was a heart condition and not the baton beating or the dogs ok the f.b.i. as i understand it become involved in this case had they reached any conclusion at all on their side. sure well i gave the f.b.i. office in sacramento a call today they weren't able to give me any concrete details as far as which way their investigation is going to however they will say that it is active they were able to return the phones they're starting to look at the forensic evidence to see if anybody either the deputies or the witnesses you race anything from the phones

are also looking into whether the deputies there in current county committed any sort of federal crime so they're still taking a look at this and now activists after the announcement that the sheriff gave saying that this death was accidental in his words now some activists there in the area are actually are asking the department of justice to step in to make sure that there isn't me for cutting you off we have to leave it there are a lot of valuable information that was r.t. correspondent rym uncle indo a large portion of interstate five just north of seattle washington last thursday night sending two cars and their passengers plunging into the frigid cold skagit river below well luckily everyone survived the collapse and the events were eerily reminiscent of another bridge crumbling into downtown minneapolis during rush hour back in two thousand and seven artie's magen lopez brings us the latest on

america's crumbling infrastructure. we've got a lot of cars whizzing biases you see it's going to be slow going for a while it was just a normal thursday evening in seattle tired workers union home on the interstate five bridge now as god says there are other ways to get to the highways i five and i ninety of course when suddenly two of those cars that were driving over that beautiful skag that river ended up in it we have breaking news tonight b i five bridge over the gadget river has collapsed without warning a large section of the fifty eight year old bridge collapsed reportedly caused when a truck struck the side this is gotta stop we are bridges can't fall down we can't have a collapsing infrastructure that kills people hurts people. leaves us unsafe that's just not the country we promise to be over the course of the last fifty years the u.s. has experienced one bridge collapse after another some of them resulted in dozens of deaths others in relatively few from ohio to florida minnesota to alabama

headlines of infrastructure tragedies have captured headlines and even our nation's capital can't escape from infrastructure disasters in fact i was standing here on fourteenth an extreme just about a block or so away from the white house and if you look over here you'll see what washington d.c. is dealing with this is a massive sinkhole that opened up in the middle of the street so as you can see it's not just our bridges that are suffering from our infrastructure collapses it's also our roads and our waterways so with this long history of tragedy was there any way to predict the interstate five bridge collapse well let's look at the facts the bridge was built back in one thousand fifty five when it was inspected last year it had a sufficiency rating of just forty seven out of one hundred but that low rating isn't out of the ordinary for american infrastructure and that's because we're being lap by the rest of the world in fact the american society of civil engineers has given the u.s. a d. plus rating when it comes to overall infrastructure for twenty thirty and the group

predicts that. it takes some three point six trillion dollars by two thousand and twenty to fix this growing problem though a new bill was introduced in congress today called the partnership to build america act but that bill could take months to pass and the fact is that america's infrastructure has a long road ahead of it before it can go into cruise control in washington meghan lopez r.t. r t as meghan lopez joins me with more hi there magen what happened in seattle well it was just an average day as i had alluded to it was seven pm on thursday when this bridge out of nowhere collapsed and they say that i was caused by an eighteen wheeler and was actually carrying an oversized load having struck the side of it now this bridge was built back in one thousand fifty five it connects canada to washington state and it is huge in terms of commuters so do one thousand people actually use this bridge every day seventy one thousand cars so because this bridge collapse it caused a huge disruption is in traffic ok so do this bridge have any past history of

safety issues at all any indication that this could happen absolutely it did back in two thousand and ten according to federal safety records skag that bridge was found to be functionally obsolete and that's a very important term because it means that this bridge has very big dangers that are attached to it now also in two thousand and eleven the list of structurally deficient bridges from the washington department of transportation said that this bridge had was had major deficiencies in it but they had pointed out the problems on the bridges deck itself and yet nothing was done and it was inspected but nothing was actually done to fix this so this bridge itself is going to cost fifteen million dollars to fix they're trying to figure out how first of all they're going to free money in order to fix it and second of all what they're going to do whether they're going to repair it we're going to reconstruct it and what's going to really happen with it ok picture want to where they didn't do anything if they knew talk to me about america's infrastructure specifically in terms of bridges in general how are we doing across the board if you could just tell me

about that. well according to a lot of experts when it comes to american infrastructure particularly focusing on bridges we're not doing well margret we have six hundred and six hundred seventy six zero seven thousand bridges in the us most of them average forty two years old and a lot of them have potholes and then they have a lot of other things in them now the federal highway administration claims that we need about twenty point five billion dollars annually for the next sixteen years in order to replace them that's up sixty percent than what we're spending on bridges right now in the u.s. overall bridges are just a small part of our infrastructure here talk to me about the broader scale overall how are we doing not well according to the american society for civil engineers in the u.s. is a d. plus and margaret a d. plus is the good news a d. plus is higher than we were last year in the previous years we were in a d. minus so we're moving up a little bit but we're just not spending that amount of money now i want to bring up a graphic to show you why we're not spending this amount of money and how far down

it's actually gone so you guys are looking at a graphic on your screen right now and what you're seeing is that huge steep decline that's how much money we're spending on infrastructure right now so during the recession we actually spent about three point three percent of our gross domestic product according to the organization for economic cooperation and development on our infrastructure now we're actually spending between one point seven and two point three percent of our g.d.p. over the last twenty years so we went down significantly and a lot of that is doing with has to do with washington trying to keep a tight budget but the other really important part of this is this not only federal spending it's the fact that the federal spending trickles down into these local economies who are having to govern fix and maintain these bridges and they just don't have the money is it just not being allocated or is it an issue of they're not putting it where they should be putting it why it's not being allocated margret first of all president obama has asked for five times to actually have money more

money allocated to. infrastructure works like bridges like rows in like waterways five times over the last five years he's seen very little in terms of that so it's a matter of not having the money and a lot of that comes back to the economy and you know president obama back in march the most recent one was in march he asked congress to provide twenty one billion dollars for infrastructure construction and he hasn't seen that one yet all right so i want to take you now to our waterways because i understand that we need some work there too in terms of the waterway aspect our water system infrastructure talk to me is is money going there you know how's that do way that's not going there and if there is any indication in my story today i was outside and there was a sinkhole that happened in washington d.c. and this is just shows a larger problem when it comes to our roads our bridges and our water infrastructure and the problem can be broken down into a few things first of all we're not spending very much money second of all we have a growing population so that means we're using it we're using things more and

expression when it comes to our pipes now when it comes our pipes the average pipe age is seventy seven years old most of them happen to be one hundred years or older now the problem is these pipes are created so long ago that we don't know where they were planted we don't know what materials they were made of we don't even know how far down in the ground they are so we have one one burst pipe burst after another in the us spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of clean drinking water into the streets each and every single year magen ok we put the blame on somebody here if it's not the federal government is it a state issue you know who's passing the buck or is that it just a universal problem do you think i think it's a universal problem and i think it boils down to the fact that we just don't have the money that we're just not allocating the money it's not that we don't have it we're just not allocating the money to the places where we need to be allocated and just to go back to some of the water infrastructure so you can understand. how big

of a problem this is because this is a topic i have been studying for quite some time now we have to have an fifty thousand water pipe bursts in the u.s. each year and as i was measuring we don't know where they are and it's all because there's just so much population and it's just really hard to determine what we can do to fix our infrastructure so much information meg and we have to leave it there thank you so much that was our t. correspondent megan lopez president obama gave his reasons for the u.s. deployment of drones and fraud yesterday well in a major speech regarding america's counterterrorism efforts as well as restating his intentions to close down the detention facility at guantanamo bay well it remains to be seen how obama's new comprehensive drone strategy will affect the counterterrorism debate yet the white house believes that its newly minted guidelines will serve as a way to bring clarity to its drone program is that the case for our team is political commentator sam sachs explains in november of two thousand and twelve

a cia drone strike in yemen killed adnan al qada use accused of being an operative with a q a p one of those associated forces of al qaeda are those details are still murky now a year many political analyst told mcclatchy news quote it is inconceivable to imagine that al qaida he could not have been taken into custody alive and i'll quote his brother was interviewed saying quote we could have made sure he turned himself in that no one was guilty of any crime then arrest him put him on trial since the german war began there are thousands of stories just like this as many as five thousand perhaps more people have been killed in targeted drone strikes from the air but also includes a civilian death toll perhaps into the thousands though it is very difficult to know for sure but in his speech on thursday the president unveiled what the white house calls a new presidential policy guideline for targeted drone strikes it was signed by the president this week. this is apparently brand new and white house officials say

these brand new guidelines have evolved over time and represent quote the codification of the highest standards that the administration has pursued in the course of the last several years and that is meant as a baseline to guide us going forward now the details of this new presidential policy guideline on targeted killings are still shrouded over the white house did provide a glimpse into some of these guidelines and they include a near certainty that the terrorist target is present near certainty that the noncombatants will not be injured or killed an assessment that capture is not feasible at the time of the operation and an assessment that no other reasonable alternatives exist to effectively address the threat to u.s. persons but the question is do these new guidelines change anything after all previous guidelines laid out by john brennan as recently as april two thousand and twelve did not save adnan al qada from a lethal drone strike even though evidence is pretty clear that he could have been

captured alive nor did they save the hundreds if not thousands of innocent civilians killed in drone strikes since the program began so again what impact may these new guidelines have and we do know that drone strikes and civilian deaths are down around the world in fact that white house officials attribute to these new more stringent guidelines so does that mean drone strikes carried out in the past several years under the obama administration like the one that killed adnan al qaida are no longer permissible under these new guidelines announced by the president in his speech on thursday well if that's the case then that is a small though important policy change that could eventually lead to more significant targeted killing policy changes down the road and it also indicates that pressure coming from the left to pressure the president experienced firsthand when medea benjamin of code pink interrupted his speech thursday is working. but is it too little too late with the mid-term elections looming followed by the lame

duck phase of his presidency brock obama is running out of time to explicitly and legally rein in the kill powers of the executive branch powers that a new president may or may not have the same zeal to use while stalking the planet with killer robots in washington same sex party well if you're heading out to the jersey shore for this long memorial day weekend you may want to think about bringing your own booze during a sting operation swell inspectors found numerous businesses passing off cheap alcohol for top shelf prices the investigation spanned a year and included a collection of one thousand bottles of vodka gin rum scotch whiskey tequila from bars across the state one investigator says government will make you sick some establishment for passing off dirty water for premium priced liquor one place was mixing together rubbing alcohol and caramel coloring to match the scotch well the

attorney general of new jersey had this to say i don't drink rubbing alcohol in my house and i just designed for very specific purpose to rob and not drink. while the bars and restaurants face a suspension of their liquor license and could lose their licenses if there was enough aisle ations so if you're heading to the bar in jersey this weekend better be careful what you drink that's going to do it for now i'll see you back and aids . hello and welcome to cross talk for all things are considered i'm peter lavelle suicide bombings sectarian strife set.