it's. on the. european union members are in disarray about the n.s.a. scandal the latest snowden leaks reveal that the agency intercepted information from the embassies of european allies and beyond more on this up ahead. and edward snowden remains in russia and that's a maybe longer than originally planned but the whistleblower still faces a roadblock in getting asylum into ecuador we'll tell you more as this story develops. millions of protesters fill up the streets of egypt demanding the resignation of president mohamed morsi and new elections more on the unrest in egypt in today's show. it's monday july first four pm in washington d.c.

lopez and you are watching r t well let's begin this afternoon with the latest u.s. admissions when it comes to the white house surveillance scandal over the weekend the german newspaper der spiegel and the guardian reported that the n.s.a. has been eavesdropping on officials in the european union by bugging their offices that's according to documents released by former n.s.a. defense contractor edward snowden and this has sparked a lot of outrage in the international community with german leaders like german chancellor angela merkel and european parliament president martin schultz demanding an explanation secretary of state john kerry attempted to pacify some of the international criticism by promising today to look at the claims that the n.s.a. bugged eve the e.u. mission office in new york and its embassy in washington but then he went on to say that every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs of national security undertakes lots of activities. yes to protect its national

security and all kinds of information contributes to that all i know is that it's not unusual for lots of nations but beyond that i'm not going to comment any further until i have all the facts and find out precisely what the situation is so is that justification enough for the alleged us spying political commentator sam sachs reports. the spy game has changed used to be a world of moles shady briefcase exchanges and honey traps now it's a world of blanket surveillance across pretty much the entire planet through little more than a tap on the world's internet and phone communication lines some help from willing internet service providers and massive storage facilities that could be capable of

holding a billion phone calls a day we're reminded of this thanks to more revelations from edward snowden who's released documents showing that the united states is engaging in rampant spying on key allies around the world particularly the european union as the guardian reports one document lists thirty eight embassies and missions describing them as targets it details an extraordinary range of spying methods used against each target from bugs implanted electronic communications gear to taps and cables so the collection of transmissions with specialized antenna along with traditional ideological adversaries in sensitive middle eastern countries the list of targets includes the e.u. missions in the french italian and greek embassies as well as a number of other american allies including japan mexico south korea india and turkey and it's alleged that the n.s.a. bugged e.u. offices in washington d.c. at the u.n.

and in brussels you see with new technology spying has become a lot easier. think of everything that went into setting up a spies say at the german embassy during world war two the planning the training the buy offs the human lives put at risk if the mission gets exposed the fear of being crossed by a double agent a world of constant paranoia this is now the stuff of hollywood the real spy game today is just a tech geek at the n.s.a. listening to everything you don't even need to install a secret hidden camera anymore you just tap into the computer cameras that the embassy staff have bought for themselves you want to know what makes a certain ambassador tick to eventually gain leverage over him and his government well you know longer need an inside man to track his movements figure out his likes and dislikes you no longer need to send in some sort of female or male seductress to get him to spill his secrets and bed nope nowadays the n.s.a.

can just look at his web history find out what sites he logs onto frequently oh he likes going on chat roulette well i'm sure that could be exploited for something thanks to technology there are no limits to the spy game anymore it's as vast as the intercepting and storage capabilities allow it to be but just because the technology allows the united states the wealthiest and mighty a superpower on the planet to spy on everyone else on the planet from allies to enemies should we do it. can this still be considered legitimate spying in our nation's best interests or is this something else altogether something that's only been addressed in disto big science fiction novels and not international statutes yes the old school spy game with all its limitations is gone the new spy game created by the n.s.a. is here in so far the only limits on it are whether or not it can be kept

a secret in washington same sex are two for more on the international reaction from the revelations that the n.s.a. might have been bugging european union offices they feel and the head of the roughly newsroom in berlin has this report. there has so far been no comment from the u.s. in response to this latest round of revelations that have been published over the weekend by the spiegel which revealed that. half a billion communications including phone calls text messages and e-mails monitored the n.s.a. program each month and as in germany alone now the german justice minister has been absolutely livid she has described the tactics of the n.s.a. is similar to the tactics used in the cold war the german chancellor angela merkel has said that she feels alienated which you know is obviously very curious as to why germany has been targeted by the n.s.a. program the n.s.a.

have stated that there is a very few countries which have been excluded from that program including the united kingdom new zealand australia and kind of so questions are being asked the why germany has been specified as a target and some official in germany has commented that of course the us is known for costing a wide net you know target whoever they want under the war on terror so our german citizens now also being treated as terrorists under this and i say programs of course it's not just germany that is reeling from these latest revelations there's been outrage across europe so it's not just the u.s. and german relations but indeed the entire trends that relationship between europe and the united states that is under threat that was lizzie feel in the hand of the upline islam room in berlin. in moscow an anonymous russian official told the l a times that n.s.a.

leaker edward snowden has now filed for asylum in no fewer than fifteen countries snowden who has been in limbo in the moscow airport since july june twenty third had previously filed for asylum in iceland and ecuador iceland did not reply and ecuador says that he has. to be on ecuadorian soil such as on embassy grounds in order to apply snowden cannot leave the airport since he has no visa to enter russia and no passport to buy a plane ticket out so it would seem as if he is in a catch twenty two however today russian president vladimir putin might have offered the leaker a window of opportunity here's what he said at a press conference this afternoon concerning edward snowden i must repeat myself he is not a russian agent and he is not working for us and we're not working with him he's a free man if he wants to fly somewhere he can do so if you want to stay here there's only one condition he has to stop his work but it's undermining our american colleagues as strange as that may sound coming from me so what's next in

this edward snowden saga joining me now for more is r t correspondent mike the. medina thank you so much for joining me now we are just getting word that all of the fifteen countries that he filed for asylum with one of them was not russia do you know anything more about this. well hello there megan well the information we have been receiving throughout this day is indeed rather controversial and of course raises a lot of questions well first of all according to non confirmed reports adverse no event has applied for asylum in fifteen different countries however it being names of the countries where he might have applied for asylum are not named yet and whether russia is on the list of those countries as not yet confirmed this well while mr snowden might have handed to the. international airport which is based here in moscow where he has basically been stuck in

a transit zone since twenty june now he might have handed he's awfully cations to a russian official and there are also some speculations that. you might have applied to. some of the countries which are here and their representatives are here for the gus exporting countries for him which is a very big event as there are a lot of global players on the commodity markets here plus even as well in president as well as to believe us president are both here in moscow for their official visit so there are some speculations that he might have applied for asylum in those countries as well very interesting can you talk a little bit more in-depth about president putin's comments today. well rice as you've mentioned before president clinton has. adverse noton may. only on one condition if he stops any activities against the united states he also underlined that russia is not going to actually dies at her

snowden now he said. adverse no one is not a russian agent and russian russian intelligence services never worked with before were n.s.a. contractor now he said that after snowden could actually choose his final destination and go there but he said that he has no information when this is going to happen now he said that russia never actually anyone and never is going to and there is no extradition treaty between the two countries so maybe now how is the russian public responding both to ad words snowden being in that country and as well as how american officials are dealing with this n.s.a. surveillance matter. right well it is really just really a very big news here in russia and it's been making the headlines throughout the week since as i said before the twenty third of june i've recently been

a rival into a major international airport and of course it has provoked a lot of different discussions and raised a lot of questions among the russian population. here average day from different news outlets just snowden is being stuck in a transit zone and that the u.s. government has revoked his passport so basically he can get a russian visa and leave the airport nor boy. get on to a new destination so that has a problem a lot of discussions and a lot of questions as well as russian human rights activists are stepping now in support. and saying that he should not be x. rayed. to the united states and some of the russian officials saying the extradition of a political refugee is morally unacceptable so we have been receiving a lot of different responses but most of them or in the interim in supporting

personally been very interesting. thank you so much for joining us r.t. correspondent in moscow. let's turn now to another government whistleblower who is facing a much different fate than the one edward snowden is dealing with at the moment the trial for first private first class bradley manning resume today in fort meade maryland is now in its fifth week prosecutors after a court martial are focusing on the two hundred fifty thousand state department diplomatic cables that manning handed over to wiki leaks prosecutors could wrap up their case as soon as this afternoon and then it will be the defense's turn for more from fort meade our to correspondent liz wall. well today marks the fifth week of bradley manning's court martial here in fort meade maryland today the prosecution called their last witness to the stand before that we heard written testimony from commander gives him a blow i mean he is an expert on islamic militants and considered an expert on al

qaeda now he testified that al qaeda uses the internet to research potential targets and to gather intelligence he also said that al qaeda uses web sites that were quote sympathetic to its goals we also heard what's called stipulations that we've heard these types of stipulations throughout the trial now these are established facts agreed upon by both the prosecution and the defense the first that relation was in regards to adam gadahn he was in america and that eventually converted to islam and became an operative for al qaeda as a translator and cultural interpreter for osama bin ladin according to the backside it's a day that don was involved in a video about served as a propaganda and recruitment tool for al qaeda parts of the video key use that were obtained on the answer to secrecy website wiki leaks specifically of an apache helicopter airstrike infamously dubbed collateral murder also brought up as stipulation of fact today found in osama bin laden's compound in pakistan after the

u.s. raid afghanistan war logs that were released by wiki leaks now all of this relates to that aiding the enemy charge the most serious charge that many faces the prosecution has been trying to prove that manning and wiki leaks co-founder julian assange on work together to get u.s. secrets on the internet secrets that were then obtained and used by the enemy to harm the united states according to the prosecution manning says he leaves secrets in order to reveal the truth about u.s. wars abroad and in no way intended to intended to aid the enemy the prosecution is expected to call their last witness to the stand today that last witness is daniel lewis he is a defense counter terrorism expert during cross-examination the defense try. to discredit this witness some of his testimony today was done in a closed session and now as this trial progresses the big question is has the prosecution presented enough evidence to prove the most serious charges of espionage and aiding the enemy these are charges that if convicted carry

a life sentence without parole and i've spoken to many of many supporters here that see him as a hero for shedding a light on the government's dark secrets important to note that since the trial is focused on classified information some of the trial is done in a closed session where the media and the public are not authorized to hear what is going on here in fort meade maryland liz wall r t well we all know how nerve wrecking the first day of a new job can be and the new u.s. special envoy to guantanamo bay clifford sloan has his work cut out for him so as a partner at the prestigious scott an arts firm in washington d.c. and has served in both democratic and republican administrations in the past secretary of state john kerry recommended sloan to the post which is started today in the midst of a lot of controversy the hunger strike at the detention facility is now entering its fifth month this week latest estimates show there one hundred four out of one

hundred sixty six detainees being held at the facility are currently participating in voluntary starvation more than forty of them are now being force fed and that's not the only issue that sloan faces new information is coming out this week about a yemeni detainees who was found dead in his prison cell last year the seventy nine page military report made public this week by truthout investigative reporter jason leopold's freedom of information act request reveals that god not farhan abdul latif boarded medication and he had been for scribed that medication for mental illness now he used those drugs to actually commit suicide he just did two dozen capsules of a drug known as an vaca the. now is how he collected and hit those pills for so long the report also reveals that i've known for hahn abdulla latif showed numerous signs of a desire to commit suicide the report said he wrote dark poems with suicidal themes asked for suicide pills from physicians and more numerous recommendations were

noted for guantanamo bay officials to prevent this type of event from occurring in the future it will be up to cliff sloan to figure out where or guantanamo to go tunnel beg goes from here including persuading country is to take an inmate's that have been approved for release the special envoy position has not been filled since january when daniel fried was reassigned to a different position. protests in egypt have swelled so much that the size of the demonstrations is now bigger than when the public was demonstrating against longtime ruler hosni mubarak back in two thousand and eleven yesterday in the june thirtieth protests are being called the biggest in egypt's history with the egyptian army estimating that millions of protesters took to the streets and they continue to fill the streets day after day in a festival like atmosphere and tough where square at night after night dozens of those present protesters turned violent smashing windows throwing molotov cocktails

into buildings and squaring off with police. at least sixteen people killed and more than seven hundred eighty were wounded sunday and monday during the demonstrations egypt's army has now given president mohamed morsi and his government forty eight hours to respond to the demands of the protesters or it says it will step in and restore order for the very latest coming out of cairo which turned out to bell true. strew ordinary seems a caustic injury hundreds of thousands come back to the streets for a second day of protest against president mohamed morsi as you can probably see behind me there's a huge gathering share the president to promise me sounding trances and have a machine think they say enough's enough the president must say this comes just after a statement by the ministry he said that and that the president comes up with a solution that will fulfill the demands of the people in forty eight hours they

will. create to make money for the future of egypt many people here are interpreting this as a military intervention and this is the nation one of our people a policeman a minute you can get in fold it up and they can bind and seen a number of people die in fashion leading up to this i think demonstrations on the other side people are saying that the ministry when they were in power by the one year all that was in the barak step down had an according human rights records on the phone to democratic change and we're still seeing a divided egypt very tense scene say in massive massive demonstrations in support of it speaking to protest and in the protests at the day they told me they seen no change in the last year since the president to power but they talk about a failing economy assuming no job opportunities for nick you have an abortion. rights crisis when it's human rights abuses on the part of the state and phenix to which are in the police force the promises the president morsi made when he came to

power you have nothing to do and therefore he's incapable of running the country you also complain about the islamist organizations a part of the missing brotherhood saying they have taken the monopoly of power and this is not democratic it is a mix with their part to also staging a sit in just a few kilometers away from where i'm standing now i say that the president was democratically elected and they will stand by him and they he said food finish his four years in power and they undemocratic to expect him to step down either with a snake statement from the ministry to basically putting most even. he refused to moan to the people which is that you resigned or the ministry intervene i think we're going to be seeing possibly presidential elections very very soon that was artie's bell true. it was the deadline president obama had been warning american families about for over a year today congress missed its deadline to decide on how to act on student interest rates those rates have now doubled putting even more financial strain on

american college students here's a look at what happened today interest rates on student loans was at three point four percent but as of today it has doubled to six point eight percent so what does that mean financially well it means that the average student will be taking out loans that will actually pay about two thousand six hundred dollars more with that interest accrued this rate hike will affect seven million students across the nation but it will not impact people who already have student loans so what's next well for a deeper look at the numbers i'm joined now by robert apple bomb he's the co-founder and executive director of student debt crisis dot org robert thank you so much for joining me let's start off by talking about the financial impacts this will put on students could it deter some students from attending college. absolutely it could as you know the rates have doubled and if congress doesn't act to reverse that then college students are going to be facing one thousand dollars per year per loan in

additional costs on top of the already skyrocketing cost of college now what we do know right now is that congress is on recess for july fourth for independence day also that this three point four to six point eight percent rate will actually affect subsidized stafford loan program which are people that are already find it facing financial constraints as i understand it so it doesn't look like congress is going to address this issue at all or can it be retroactively taken back considering the fact that most students don't apply to loans and soul august or september that's right last thursday i believe the of coalition of democratic senators came together to offer a another one year fix that would apply retroactively i believe they plan on voting on july tenth so assuming that that vote happens and it passes and the president signs it then we're back to where we were one year ago which would be to just

extend the one three point four percent interest rate for another year and then next year we'll have this fight all over again so are we just kicking the can down the road here i mean we're having this fine time and time again and before you answer that question let me play exactly what barack obama said last year around this time that you just alluded to we can't control every economic had one that we face but this is something we can control this and we can do something about stopping student rates from doubling of the end of the month as something we can do right now to make a difference in the lives of all the american people. so there are still ten days for gardeners do the right thing so deja vu what can we do to stop kicking the can down the road you know i really don't know what it's going to take to make congress do its job we have a student debt crisis in america with one point one trillion dollars of outstanding

student loan debt and we're only making the problem worse we need comprehensive student loan reform that addresses all of the inequities and hardships that are faced by student borrowers so i really don't know what it's going to take to make congress do its job stop putting band-aids on it and stop kicking the can down the road now we've already talked about the losers here the losers are obviously the people that are taking out these loans that are experiencing these interest rate hikes will be experiencing these interest rate hikes talk about the winners here. well unfortunately the who are the winners really is the the department of education they're projected to make fifty one billion dollars in profits off of student loans in the next year old alone and that's without the rates doubling so now with the rates doubling they're going to make that much more now. i don't know about you but i don't believe that the government's role is to profit off of the

backs of students the government should be helping extending a helping hand to those who want to seek a higher education to better themselves and to better contribute to society and instead they're making it harder to obtain an education and we're basically pricing the middle and working classes out of a higher education now robert you're an advocate for forgiving the student debt altogether but i want to know from you how about working is it actually financially viable considering the fact that student loan debt is greater than credit card debt in this country right when i first became involved in the issue of student loan debt i did propose that we forgave all student loan debt as a means of stimulating the economy that was four and a half years ago obviously the president and congress didn't take my advice and so you know at that time the outstanding student loan debt was about seven hundred billion dollars today it's one point one trillion so in just those four and a half years it's grown by that much and it's just growing every day so i don't

necessarily think that forgiving all student loan debt is a necessarily a viable proposal but it's certainly something that could jumpstart the economy and give a helping hand to those who are trying to better themselves and we just have about thirty seconds left yes or no is college worth the cost right now. just yes or no yes it's worth the cost robert after obama executive director and director of the student debt crisis dot org thank you so much thank you for having me. and that's may do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america and don't forget to check out our well our web site for the latest and greatest information coming out from all the stories we cover and much more artsy dot com forward slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez don't forget to send me your comments stories suggestions and feedback i'm always listening and chances are i will respond to you stay tune prime interest is

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good afternoon and welcome to prime interest i'm bob english here in washington d.c. here are the stories we're tracking today well times are changing for switzerland once the safe haven bank country apparently do sure there's. no officially a dwindling asset itself and it's not longer go to private financial asset haven according to bloomberg the amount of swiss assets under management shrank by twenty five percent over a five year period apparently the problem is if you're trying to help us clients of a taxes and then you send your client list to uncle sam wealthy americans will not want to do business with you big surprise and let's not even get into that pesky euro paid but don't count out the us dollar just yet because argentina has a brand new bond program financed by well the greenback itself.