coming up on r t u.s. attorney general eric holder played a larger role in the media investigations that he first let on now house republicans are calling for his resignation as holder tries to many times with journalists the latest developments coming up. calling a truce the two largest gangs in on duras apologize for the violence that they've caused are these just words or will we see a reduction of crime in the murder capital of the world we'll speak to person who's got more insight on this. wal-mart has pled guilty to years of dumping hazardous waste in california is this just the cost of doing business or will the corporation change its ways or look at this issue in the today show.

it's wednesday may twenty ninth five pm in washington d.c. hi meghan lopez and you are watching r.t. we begin this hour with a critical look at the freedom of the press in the u.s. just this week we discovered that attorney general eric holder not only knew about the probe of a fox news reporter that he's the one who signed off on it the justice department subpoenaed telephone an e-mail records from fox news reporter james rosen over unauthorized leaks regarding north korea but during a capitol hill hearing on the matter just about two weeks ago holder mentioned nothing of the sort now top republicans are calling for his resignation meanwhile president obama has renewed his first term commitment to create a media shield law it would help journalists protect the identities of their sources but the obama administration has arguably spent years weakening media rights or to correspondent was wall takes a look at what this law really means for reporter rights. scrutiny over government

snooping on the media like never before to take it this far really is unprecedented first the justice department came under fire for secretly tracking phone calls of associated press reporters now it appears the department has taken their media monitoring a step further tracking and obtaining a mails of fox news reporter james rosen they didn't just want to see who he was calling but they want to read all the e-mail and to do that more easily they decided to treat him like a coconspirator someone who was engaged in the conspiracy to violate the espionage statute greg lazily represents the reporters committee for freedom of the press with the backing of dozens of journalists the organization sent a letter to the justice department demanding answers and expressing quote displeasure with how this incident was handled and demand that any similar actions in the future be handled with greater consideration of the news media's first amendment rights and it's not just the media that wants answers now members of

congress are questioning remarks attorney general eric holder made where he denies having any knowledge of prosecuting journalists with regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material that is not something that . i've ever been involved in heard of or would think would be a wise policy it turns out holder personally signed off on a search warrant that labels fox's rosen as a coconspirator in a national security leak now some lawmakers say the new revelations contradict what he said before congress under oath in a letter to hold our congressman james sensenbrenner says quote the media reports and statements issued by the department regarding the search warrants for mr rosen's e-mail appear to be at odds with your testimony before the committee and today holder announced he will meet with some washington bureau chiefs to talk about the d.o.j. as guidelines. regarding the media ironically the meeting will be off the record

amid the scandals there's renewed interest in an acting media shield laws these are laws designed to protect the press congress tends to focus on an emergency in front of it or something that's really politically and politically sensitive so they haven't been willing to focus on a shield law lately now that to incidents like this of occurred it really does force them to focus on it the obama administration has voiced support for passing media shield laws to the extent this case is prompted renewed interest about how do we strike that balance properly and i think. now is the time for us to go ahead and revisit the legislation but even media shield laws have exceptions when it comes to national security investigations and the justice department maintains that both cases raise questions of national security this leaves critics doubtful that such laws would have protected reporters or their sources in either of these cases and

washington this was artsy. well have you heard the news there have been a lot of them are circling around r.t. america as of late so it's time to set the record straight take a look at these headlines larry king to host a new political talk t.v. show and others about the new addition to our to america that's right folks r t is proud to announce that starting in june award winning journalist larry king will be joining our political team here's a sneak peek at what viewers can expect. i would read that as questions to people because it seems that instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why i confine my feel larry king no right here on our t.v.

question more. as an extension to his show larry king now in a place on or a t.v. mr king is creating a new original show exclusively for our team called politics with larry king well it shows will be recorded in our studios either in washington d.c. or in los angeles and will be broadcast on our team america they will air during our evening prime time mr king's journalism career has spanned fifty six years he has conducted more than fifty thousand interviews and is ready for more but i don't expect this new show to be anything like what you have seen in the past larry king will push journalistic boundaries to bring you the political news that you need to know we are very excited about this new addition to our team so let me be the first to say larry welcome. to honduras now where local residents might be seeing the

light at the end of the tunnel for years the country has been known as the murder capital of the world but this week the country's two rival gangs issued step do you separate statements actually calling for a truce representatives from the. gangs spoke from within the san pedro sula prison we're now seeing their violent ways to talk more about this ray of hope for a lot of americans who have become so accustomed to living in the crossfire i'm joined now by adrian pyne she's an assistant professor at american university and author of working hard drinking hard adrian thank you so much for joining me so first off can you expand a little bit more on the gang violence in honduras and what this truce would mean to this country well it remains to be seen what the truce will mean for the country because it's really the government's response that will that will that will determine that the truce between the two gangs is certainly important but above and beyond the gangs violence aimed at each other the real determinant of violence on

a broad scale has been state violence against gang members and many other sectors of the population that have been identified as resistant to the say one way or the other so there's been resists violence against teachers teachers unions there's been violence against campus seen peasants indigenous peoples all of whom have been in one way or another struggling against the violent policies of the state and there are also been state sponsored death squads that have been really targeting gang members and so what the gang members are asking the state to do they're coming together is the two different major gangs in the country and they're saying that the state needs to provide training so that they can get gainful employment in honduras and that of course requires for there to be jobs available but it's also asking the state to end its death squad activities and to stop. we're getting and harassing gang members for for death and for other forms of violence and we know

that president one hundred one president lobel actually came out and supported this this truce well let's talk about how realistic this truce really is i mean the people that are making these truce is the ones that are coming out and saying it's going to be there are the ones that are in prison not the ones that are out on the street right now so how likely is it that the ones that are outside on the street still on conducting their gang activity will listen and hear to the things that the spokespeople representatives within the prison system are saying there's a lot of fluidity between the street as we might call it and in the prisons in honduras there's daily hourly communication between gang members who are out there on the streets and gang members inside prisons and a lot of the you know the gang hierarchy if you can call it that is within prisons and so certainly you know this is the way it was negotiated in the door and it's been very successful but of course wonderous and el salvador are different contexts

and that needs to be kept in mind and there's also they're also dealing with very different governments a government that is on the left somewhat on the left in her and that has you know a revolutionary history and a base where is there's a very right wing government that was put into power by a military coup that was supported by the u.s. government in in honduras and so the way that the governments respond will also impact whether or not these truces carried out within prisons will be able to be effective in neighborhoods around the country and speaking of el salvador let's take a look at some of the numbers that compare the three different major countries in latin america this is a look at how many there has actually been in terms of murder rates. el salvador and guatemala and you can see on the door took a major dip after two thousand and eleven that is when the gangs call that truce although it's very. murky to say that that is the exact cause of that or that those

numbers are accurate officials say they are but the u.n. tends to disagree now if we can reveal to the next slide i'll show you something else this is the number of murders in the murder capital of the world that being on doris eighty five to ninety one killings per one hundred thousand people twenty people dying violently every single day in that country and. that's one hundred sixty nine people per one hundred thousand people so the crime rate in that city in particular are very high so it doesn't help solve it or offer a ray of hope you were just speaking about it but does it offer a ray of hope that the hondurans need in this case absolutely you know i think hundreds can take any hope that they can get one of the important things to note though on that chart that you saw that you just showed was that the increase the. cbest increase in killings in the death rate homicide rate in wonder as happened after the us supported a military coup in that was carried out in june twenty eighth two thousand and nine

and a large number of those killings have to do with the state of impunity that exists for the very members of the military in the police force who are. leaders and guess what operatives in honduras and so you know the violence is goes much beyond gangs in honduras and has to do with the total usurpation of democracy whereas in el salvador it's a different story so it certainly is a ray of hope and it's definitely a good sign that gang members are taking this responsibility but also that they are taking political action and calling on the government to stop being violent against its own citizens because that will be good for everyone in honduras absolutely adrian find a system for faster at american university and author of the book working hard at dying hard thank you so much for joining us. last week during his highly anticipated foreign policy speech president obama laid out his strategy for dealing

with national security issues both abroad as well as right here in the last part of that hour long speech dealt with the twenty two thousand and one law known as the authorization for the use of military force the president defended the law as it is currently being used for drone strikes but president obama made it clear that his ultimate goal is to update and then repeal the law altogether and fight terrorism without keeping the country on a quote perpetual war time footing our to correspondent margaret howell takes a look at the u. meth in its current form and how it has revolutionized the way that the u.s. fights wars the authorization of the use of military force to act or the a u a matter for short has come into the limelight recently signed by then president george w. bush only after nine eleven this joint resolution grants the executive broad powers for preventing future terrorist attacks saying quote that the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations organizations or persons he to determines planned authorized committed or aided the

terrorist attacks that occurred on september eleventh two thousand and one or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the united states by such nations organizations organizations or persons well twelve years later president obama announced that his intention is to readdress the a you in math in congress last week unless we discipline our thinking our definitions our actions we may be drawn into more wars we don't need to fight or continue to grant president's powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states so i look forward to engaging congress and the american people in efforts to refine and ultimately repeal there you are a mess mandel. i will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further so what

exactly does the a u m f make possible anyway well here are a few things that might not surprise you number one the bush administration used the a u a math as a legal framework for torture and legal documents drafted under attorney general alberto gonzales the mouth with cited as a justification for the use of force on individuals with specific foreign policy knowledge number two the a you a mess keeps get moment jed's while the doesn't explicitly give the president detention authority the resolution was interpreted to allow the bush administration to open guantanamo bay that detention facility for suspected foreign terrorist in two thousand and two and eleven years later it remains open while the length of time a detainee can be held is not specified holding enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities is just part of the necessary and appropriate force congress granted the president under the a u a math now with over one hundred detainees on hunger strike there to protest their extended detention president obama has said he wants

to close gitmo yet still this administration continues to rely on the a u a meth as the legal basis for keeping it open number three the a you a meth makes it legal to spy on you warrantless surveillance and wiretaps have recently come to light again all in the name of national security interests but most recently it's been used by the supreme court and the government in response to challenge the amendment both bush and obama have relied on this to authorize everything from warrantless electronic surveillance of u.s. citizens and wiretaps. the a math acts as a shield giving some of our government's actions protective status which means you may not even know about them now whether or not the existing version of the a math is still suited to the nature of the threats we face isn't clear what is clear though we'll be hearing a lot more about this soon in washington margaret how. well wal-mart is famous for rolling back its prices to provide consumers with quality products at competitive

prices but it turns out that while the company was protecting consumers pocketbooks it was not doing the same for the environment the company has pled guilty to criminal charges of dumping hazardous waste in sixteen counties across california wal-mart will now pay more than eighty one million dollars in fines for negligently disposing of waste the illegal dumping of fertilizers and other hazardous material occurred between two thousand and three and two thousand and five but it took nearly a decade twenty prosecutors as well as thirty two environmental groups for law mark to plead guilty in a san francisco court state investigators caught wind of the dumping when one of them witness a wal-mart employee pouring bleach down the drain wal-mart said those employees were improperly trained to handle the hazardous material but this is not the first time that wal-mart has been accused of such crimes for more i'm joined now by bob english he's a producer at prime interest and rachel courteous producer thank you both for

joining me so are you rachel let's start with you go into greater depth about what exactly happened and what walmart pled guilty to. walmart employees essentially were getting rid of hazardous materials things like fertilizer bleach nail polish remover things that are proven to have a bad effect on the environment and they were disposing of them by as you said before either pouring to the drain putting them into trash bins or otherwise just putting them directly into the sewer system so these goods were generally damaged goods products determined to have bad packaging things of that nature. that were that they were unavailable that they were unable to sell so instead they were just disposing of them in a way that the government deemed reckless and actually in a way that the government deemed violated six counts of the clean air and water act in california in the sixteen california counties as well as in missouri one count of violating the federal insecticide fungus side and dentist side act all their very big words bob but wal-mart's first quarter revenue for twentieth artane was

one hundred forty fourteen point two billion dollars what does eighty one million dollars realistically mean to a company that makes this much money doesn't mean anything and does the crime fit the punishment here well of course the eighty one million dollars is just pennies in the bucket for wal-mart they have a ton of cash like you said one hundred fourteen point two billion dollars in revenue but their long term problems are being actually solved by this when you have these legal settlement settlements and we're seeing this in the banking industry to these banks are getting rid of their reps and warranties profit problems these settlements are a boon because they allow this eight year process to come to a close and in the bigger picture i would ask why is it possible for a corporation to be filed criminal charges against it i mean corporations are not people are they i would say that the supreme court would say that they are god this is just my personal opinion and i'm going on a philosophical rant here but corporations are made of people people violated the law why are why are these court wires the government not going after the people who

did the in the other lead the the government is going after the corporation that did not have the leadership in you know the leadership that allowed people to not be trained to properly get rid of these hazardous materials that they knew they were selling and in addition the leaders are people who are sure the leaders are people but they work as part of a larger a larger institution and certainly i could understand why you're saying you know this if you would million dollars is ultimately coming out of shareholder money right there isn't actually any money coming from from the people who are making these decisions i don't really agree with you know jail time but one thing that is significant about this settlement versus. a lot of the other financial settlements that we've seen is that wal-mart did plead guilty when we look at what a lot of the financial institutions have done they've been able to settle for you know a certain amount of money millions even sometimes billions of dollars but they've never had to admit wrongdoing they've never which means that none of their crimes have really been investigated or put on the public record in a meaningful way meaning you're just setting it up to happen again in this case the fact that wal-mart did say that they were that they were guilty means that they've

acknowledged that this is that this is a problem in that if it happens again they'll be even more intense punishment for them but this is not the first time that this has happened now bob obviously wal-mart as rachel said has pled guilty and agreed to that settlement of eighty one million dollars is an example of government regulation at work i don't think the government regulation is working in the environmental protection agency is another revolving door bureaucracy we see the same people heading in and out of all these agencies and it's really a failure of the public trust that we give these entities that are supposed to actually protect people they oftentimes do the opposite they just give cover for large corporations to go about their business as usual usual i mean what we saw with the b.p. oil spill the deepwater horizon in the goal of was there was a seventy million dollars artificial cap on liability now what about encourage b.p. to do take on excessive risk now let's play devil's advocate here for wal-mart there was no specific environmental impact that was found in order to be related to

these types of dumping that happened in sixteen counties so should there have been a crime at all should they have admitted to a crime if there was no evidence while there were certainly evidence that they were that they were dealing with hazardous materials and that they were actually causing harm with the crime that they committed was a necessary that they cause harm it was that they violated the clean air and water act of that they violated the insecticide fungicide and dentist side act meaning that they improperly hand of all these hazardous materials allowing for the potential of there being an environmental impact so it was that kind of risky behavior that the. breaking the law in that they acknowledged listen we plead guilty to this but to go back to your point about the p.a. what's really fascinating is that the way that wal-mart has decided to handle this in terms of you know this new training that they're having to make sure that employees are dealing with hazardous waste is that they actually now have a part of their company that's filled with former e.p.a. employees which surprises yet it speaks to that revolving door so these former

e.p.a. employees are helping determine exactly what wal-mart's policy should be moving forward and to get them out of a g.m. perhaps. correspond emirates our producer rachel courteous and prime interest producer bob english thank you guys for joining me ok glad to be here well imagine there's no poverty it's easy if you try but i'm not talking about the beatles legend john john lennon's one nine hundred seventy one hit song a growing group of academics say that the solution to poverty is simple get rid of country borders paul nyack is a grad student who founded open borders dot info and he says a global open border movement would cost nothing and improve the lives of millions of people and boost the world's g.d.p. but is this really a simple as just opening the borders or should we really look realistically go along with this plan and can we expect other countries to screen a same quest reports as congress debates immigration reform there's one proposal you won't hear on capitol hill what if you just open the borders and let everyone

go where they want in fact by one measure if we allow people to move around the world world g.d.p. per capita would double basically eliminating poverty overnight not exactly the conventional wisdom but the argument seems simple enough if people could move to where they're more productive global productivity would rise and poverty would fall if you closed borders to people. that's just like preventing free trade in people and it's a much bigger. goods control and immigration are probably the biggest distortion we have on trade. that double the g.d.p. figure comes from harvard economist lant pritchett who says that when it comes to increasing global productivity quote the gains from labor mobility just swamp everything else on the table he puts it like this the flow of goods in capital is already pretty open but if you completely liberalise trade in goods you get a worldwide gain of about one hundred nine billion dollars if you completely

liberalise the flow of capital that game would be about sixty five billion dollars and gains from complete labor mobility would be one thousand times greater sixty five trillion but he says let's put open borders aside increasing migration by only three percent would still result in a one hundred seventy billion dollars gain and that's more than rich countries spend in total on development aid worldwide so it works for people who might need jobs but what about the countries they go to well this is where things get muddy well economists agree that on the high skill and immigration doesn't pose a threat at the lowest skilled and the arguments get much more complicated as there is some risk that wages would go down although it become more difficult for people to find jobs in the types of occupations which in which they compete with with immigrant workers so for people doing those jobs there is some evidence that there may be a negative impact to demonstrate that negative impact people often point to another

harvard economist george boris who found a three percent reduction in wages not annually but over a period of twenty years and even better i said quote the methodological arsenal of modern econometrics cannot find a single shred of evidence that immigrants have a major adverse impact on the earnings and job opportunities of natives of the united states. however most citizens don't vote based on econometrics. and in a democratic country voters have the final say here's how gary johnson the two thousand and twelve libertarian presidential candidate explains his views for immigration we should make it not open borders position from the butt but make it as easy as possible for somebody that wants to come into this country and work to get a work visa compare that to the libertarian party platform as recently as two thousand and four which called for quote the elimination of all restrictions on immigration the abolition of the immigration and naturalization service and the border patrol

once you start trying to sway voters the purely economic question starts to get sidelined i think it really comes down to whether you think people have the right to move and whether you think countries have the rights to keep them out i think the moral argument in favor of open borders is really very strong and that why should where we are born why should that accident of birth determine so much of our lives and you are stuck there you're literally imprisoned there because other countries won't won't let you out the u.n. conventions give people the right to move within their countries and also guarantee the right to leave your country because that's not an unconditional right it depends. on having someone willing to willing to take them will future generations judge us for our unwillingness to open our borders nationalism is considered ok in the way that racism and sexism are not so it's ok to think no we

don't want those foreigners or that they we don't want foreigners taking our jobs in a way which if we said this about race or about sex would be considered you know beyond the pale in washington d.c. greenest and placed. well no matter where you are on the planet no matter what flag you pledge allegiance to or what ethnicity or religion or gender or sexual orientation you fall under there is one for. that has vowed to gather all life forms on planet earth throughout the ages that is the fear that one day an asteroid will come crashing down to earth and a bullet or a to our existence just like the dinosaurs one hollywood walk out buster after another has shown different ways humans can deal with it like building arks and drilling a hole in an asteroid naturally nuking it out of existence but nasa has a new plan that is worthy of a golden globe get this a lasso why asked month the obama administration unveiled its twenty fourteen

budget proposal which included a one hundred five million dollars plan to lasso an asteroid toeic toward earth place it into the moon's orbit and claim the space rock for the united states of america nasa says that the benefits are obvious astronauts will have a chance to conduct mining operations test technology for missions to mars and research strategies for deflecting future world ending asteroids among other things the mission could eventually cost upwards of two point six billion dollars but for those of you who are scratching your heads and wondering how in the heck dragging an asteroid toward earth will actually help us avoid a collision don't worry nasa says it will only drag small asteroids into our orbit and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez the breaking the set with abby

martin is coming up in just a half an hour so stay tuned. download the official publication to yourself choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites. if you're away from your television just doesn't how would your mobile device you can watch on t.v. anytime anywhere. hello and welcome to cross.