coming up on r t in a surprise move the defense in the bradley manning trial rested late this afternoon our team has been covering this trial from the beginning and we're at fort meade today for the courtroom drama. egypt remains in a state of chaos while pro morsi protesters filled the streets arrest warrants were issued for muslim brotherhood leaders more on these developments and what's next for the country in turmoil and more than two years ago the fukushima power plant disaster started now the plant manager fighting to keep it under control has died while radiation levels have increased more on the legacy of up in today's show.

it's wednesday july tenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax you're watching r.t. and we begin with major news in the bradley manning trial the defense has rested its case the private first class is facing twenty one charges including aiding the enemy for his role in providing wiki leaks with internal state department and military documents and one day after attempting to have some of the most serious charges against bradley manning dismissed in only three days into their arguments the defense has now rested i spoke with our correspondent lives waller earlier from for me in maryland with the latest on the trial. did that come as a surprise sabba happened at about two point five this afternoon after some of the most compelling testimony we have heard yet in this trial and the after that bradley manning's attorney called for that as resting his case that in fact is resting his case because after the third day of testimony and the defense phase of

this case just had witnesses testify. in the defense phase and that's less than half of what we were expecting so a lot of big developments in this case and moving along much quicker than we thought what it would what is this compelling testimony that you just spoke about that preceded the defense or decision to rest the case today. yeah this guy he's being described as the star witness in this case he has a harvard professor by the name of a you know kind of bank learner here shaping up to be a key witness we're going to tell you a little bit about him he is a harvard law school professor teachers teachers communication law intellectual law has done extensive research on the wiki leaks organization the history of the wiki leaks organization and really spoke about what this organization is all about because you've got to remember that the prosecution is alleging that manning aided

the enemy the most serious charge of aiding the enemy and the way he did that was handing over information classified information hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistle blood whistle blowing web site wiki leaks the prosecution is saying when manning did that he knowingly aided the enemy by putting the information on the internet for the enemy to see now what this witness did today was kind of talk about the credibility of wiki leaks he said that before this document dump before bradley manning released these war logs wiki leaks was considered a legitimate organization they partnered with the traditional outlets like the new york times like the guardian but after these leaks you saw that the perception of wiki leaks changed dramatically and really interesting what this professor said was that this was due in large part to the rhetoric the rhetoric of the government associating wiki leaks as a terrorist organization or as being linked to a terrorist organization and after that is when we heard this evolution of wiki

leaks being considered legitimate to be a. link. to terrorist organization so he was able to support us professor was able to kind of debug this claim and talk about how wiki leaks is actually a legitimate part of a media as it is today so less about what wiki leaks was actually doing and more about how the united states government perceived what wiki leaks is doing. the defense has rested now three days after ten witnesses you said what happens next in this case. what happens next in this case we are there and the defense announce that they are arresting x. case and the prosecution said that they do intend they did announce their intent for a rebuttal case so what's going to happen is we are going to return here in for me and on monday they are going to discuss the possibility of this robot they're also

going to discuss these four motions that fence filed for motions to dismiss some of the charges that manning face says one of those charges that the defense is trying to dismiss is this charge of aiding the enemy this most serious charge so that is going to be discussed on monday if in fact there is going to be a rebuttal case that is going to continue on thursday so that'll log this trial if not say i could hear closing statements as soon as tuesday and that case wrapping up a lot sooner than we predict it and we'll stay on top of it thanks for the update our team correspondent was well. it looks like the n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden may be narrowing in on an asylum option speaking to reuters on tuesday the guardian's going to greenwald who published odin's leaks so that venezuela was the most likely choice for snowden there with you each which has been assisting started as well so that venezuela's asylum offer has not officially been accepted. again given the eagerness of the united states and allies to capture

snowden going so far as forcing bolivian president evo morales his private jet to land in be searched on suspicion that snowden may be aboard perhaps it's best to keep any asylum plans secret until asylum has actually been reached speaking of the dust up over morales his private jet that incident itself has sparked a huge amount of international resentment as snowden's leaks in a quest for asylum have countries in south america want the united states to know they haven't forgotten about it r t correspondent marina portnoy iowa has more as the world waits to see which country edward snowden will pick as his new home r.t. spoke exclusively with ecuador's foreign minister ricardo patino about the n.s.a. whistleblower and the fallout following his revelations now ecuador is the first country to ever see plane application for asylum from snowden and the court

initiate an emergency summit among south american states after a plane carrying bolivian president evo morales was grounded in vienna last week it was grounded according to reports on suspicion that snowden was on board in route from moscow now president morales is plane was denied access into the airspace of some european union nations and was reportedly search by the austrian security forces foreign minister put seno says the unprecedented violation of international law should prompt more countries to offer their assistance to snowden. after the incident with a bomb around us we have no doubt that snowden is being pursued at an international level i'm going to jingle countries to offer him asylum ecuador is also considering this option but it will be better if it's not just three countries that come forward to offer him protection but ten twenty or one hundred states ecuador's foreign minister told r.t. that he was thoroughly surprised at the scale of the u.s.

surveillance system in particular that programs were created to indiscriminately spy on people and friendly states in europe now pitino said he was also shocked that instead of being persistent in demanding immediate explanations from the us about its pervasive spying some european countries allegedly work together to ground the plane of a world leader and put the life of libya's president in danger it's just outrageous if it had been a european leader or the american president it would have triggered a war if any latin american country had done this then troops and fighter jets would have been sent in to rescue the leda you can just discriminate against countries so that some nations see their international rights observed while others are ignored by the foreign minister of ecuador argues that the plane incident indicates that europe he says now functioned as america's backyard

a position that latin america has rejected to serve and that was our chief correspondent for an important. meanwhile the egypt's military stranglehold on the muslim brotherhood continues to tighten today prosecutor prosecutors issued arrest warrants against muslim brotherhood leaders as well as several other officials within the party the individuals were charged with inciting violent clashes outside the republican guard headquarters that left more than fifty people dead on monday and hundreds more injured meanwhile the united states continues to weigh its options in egypt as one point five billion dollars in foreign aid hangs in limbo depending on whether the u.s. government officially declares what happened in egypt last week as a military coup but if egypt loses out on this u.s. it there are other partners in the middle east willing to pick up the slack on tuesday saudi arabia and the united arab emirates two of the wealthiest monarchies in the gulf pledge eight billion dollars in cash and loans to egypt's new interim

government so just what sort of influence might all of this outside cash have on the continuing revolution in egypt and is the united states which is routinely found itself on the wrong side of the egyptian people close to being shut out of the country altogether earlier i spoke with both r.t. arabic correspondent rima. and in egypt r.t. middle east bureau chief paula slayer i asked i started by asking paula just how volatile the country was today. the situation here is incredibly volatile the focal point at the moment is on these promo see supporters who are gathering in the hundreds of thousands in front of the. mosque as i speak to you we're hearing word of a planned demonstration tonight they plan to march from there to the presidential palace in your member back on monday that's where more than fifty one people were killed in what the muslim brotherhood is calling a massacre is a lot of anger of a particularly in light of

a racist warrants that were issued today wednesday they were issued for the lido of the muslim brotherhood his deputy and two of the party leaders some nine top muslim brotherhood officials there are currently investigations into some six hundred fifty muslim brotherhood supporters now most of them have been released four hundred fifty of them that there are some two hundred that are still being held in custody and all of that is being perceived by the muslim brotherhood in the pro morsi supporters as a crackdown on the brotherhood and it's evoking a lot of anger. all of the newly appointed prime minister so that he wants to bring in muslim brotherhood party members into the cabinet how might the muslim brotherhood react to this sort of offer and. you know the muslim brotherhood has rejected this outright they say that the whole process is to try and form some kind of interim cabinet and the interim government is eagle and we hear the same kind of rhetoric coming from the muslim brotherhood

that we've heard from the beginning and that is that they'll have nothing to do with the interim president and any kind of negotiations to try and push forward some kind of political roadmap what we are hearing from and so is that he wants to within the next fifteen days amend the constitution he says there will be some kind of referendum to ratify it within the next four months they will be parliamentary elections at the beginning of next year and a presidential poll following that it's also important. it's not only the muslim brotherhood that's projected to be alex salafist a new a party which is the second largest islamic party here has also withdrawn from the talks following monday's killings in which as i say fifty people were killed we're hearing also a lot of criticism from the thirty five groups long t.v. and national salvation front and to mohamed el baradei they say that they were not consulted and they say that they have real problems with some of the articles in the decree so you have a lot of political me working going on behind the scenes but a lot of anger and

a lot of questions being asked as to whether or not this new government can be set up with the timetable we have been given that they hope to do it within the next four days i want to bring you into this now the muslim brotherhood is part of the military in egypt is playing a dangerous game and shooting a democratically elected government was at the same time trying to pave the way to new elections and also not. having the muslim brotherhood incite violence and start a civil war basically how does the military walk this tightrope. very very very carefully i would say i don't know if they managed to walk it through all the way through yet we've seen signs of them not being able to completely convince all the parties to actually go ahead and listen to the new interim president and just the fact that some of the organizations and some of the people on the ground people who were the leaders of the doing thirty it's revolution are now saying that we do not

want this constitutional declaration we do not agree to the new government this starts maybe a new division in the egyptian society and i would say and a lot of egyptians that i've been talking to are saying that maybe the most dangerous of all of what's happening right now is the fact that the egyptian society is becoming more and more polarized. given that this kind of happened through two thousand and eleven the military government mubarak paved the way for elections which led to the muslim brotherhood when he was elections here we are now with the military deposing the muslim brotherhood and paving the way to elections do people on the ground rima believe that the military is going to hand over civilian authority in the next few months like they promise. different feelings i would say first of all let's remember that in twenty eleven the egyptian military actually did give away the power to the elected government they actually behaved

that way before the elections so and they made it very. their made their case very strong that they do not want to take part in the political life in egypt however just the fact this is a lot of the a lot of. people are saying just the fact that they are the ones who actually took the decision to also mohamed morsi from his palace tells you that he was actually running the political life in egypt it's the army they have they took one side of the people who are out on the street we remember on june third. if we had millions and millions of people who were anti morsi but we also had. hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who are in support or just things supporting mohamed morsi and they took one side of the equation and that tells you who is really running the show in egypt and maybe they're not going to take quiet in the political life but they are the ones who will be making the major decisions according to many

people just thirty seconds that we have left one point five billion dollars in u.s. savings in the balance other gulf states are pledging billions to help this new government what influence is this outside money having on this on the power right now in egypt. well as you can well imagine these pictures that count coming in from saudi arabia the united arab emirates and kuwait have been greeted with a lot of anger by the muslim brotherhood in the pro morsi supporters they believe that it's giving it to them a seat to a government that we should not have any kind of digits and see the parallel to that me just say that i've been trying to gauge a lot of reaction both among pro and anti morsi supporters he said be the united states and you can there's a lot of anger and this goes across the spectrum people feeling that the u.s. backed see they've been back to. them what they particularly want the united states to make a statement in terms of what is happening now they feel that very much washington

is remaining on the fence and obviously you want these morsi supporters to say to have washington call it a military coup on the other hand you want him to say that it's not so the science the pledges of support base also a lot of anger that the united states and have some countries are not actually making any kind of statements and remaining on the fence. those words here because it's fun and. the kneejerk are to middle east bureau chief thank you both. now on to afghanistan where the u.s. military is trying to figure out what to do with a thirty four million dollars base that is never really. been used and will likely never be located in southwest afghanistan's helmand province the massive military base was completed this year come with a high tech operation center a briefing theater spacious offices and anything else you'd need to fight a modern war in the country the only problem is this modern war in afghanistan is supposed to be ending in fact the base was designed to accommodate

a staff of fifteen hundred but currently there are fewer than four hundred headquarters level staff on it and even though military commanders said there was no use for the facility all the way back in may of two thousand and ten just three months after the army requested funding from congress it wasn't till this spring this spring that they decided to put an end to the project promptly aborting the installment of millions of dollars of computer gear but too late to do anything about the lavish furniture being delivered in crates to the ghost space with the demolition of the base likely the only option now the inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction said in a report quote cigar is deeply troubled that the military may have spent taxpayer funds on a construction project that should have been stopped whether it's this costly empty base in afghanistan a war that supposedly ending or the millions allotted to upgrade facilities at

guantanamo bay a prison is a prison that's supposedly being closed one has to wonder can our military industrial complex ever just let anything go. ultimately the big winner here a british contracting firm known as earth an environment which secured the construction orders despite objections from military commanders on the ground the big loser here american taxpayers who saw another thirty four million dollars go up in smoke in a war that's already cost more than six hundred billion dollars and provided little to show for it. now we are more than two years removed from the raid that killed osama bin laden and still several questions are unanswered not just about the raid itself but also about how the heck the world's most wanted man was able to evade capture for so long by how doing out in pakistan these questions are made a bit more complicated considering that pakistan is

a nuclear power bordering the u.s. war in afghanistan and often subjected to the ongoing drone wars across the middle east and north africa and the pakistani government made an effort to answer some of these questions and a three hundred page report which was kept secret at least kept secret until this week when it was somehow obtained by al-jazeera and made public so what exactly can be gleaned from this report r t correspondent erin aid has more. according to a published copy of the official pakistani government investigation into osama bin laden's life and death quote gross incompetence and collective failures by pakistan's political and military leaders allowed the al-qaeda leader to evade capture while living in pakistan for years now the report referred to as the abbas abad commission is a scathing critique of how and often the net pakistani political and intelligence infrastructure allow the world's most wanted man to live in pakistan for nine years

six of them in a compound in abbottabad less than one mile from a pakistani military academy now pakistan's military and political leaders were furious about the action taken by the united states and set up a commission to examine one how the u.s. was able to execute a hostile military mission which lasted around three hours deep inside of pakistan and to how pakistan's intelligence still intelligence establishment apparently had no idea that an international fugitive with a prominence and notoriety of osama bin laden was residing in their country now the task force was set up soon after u.s. forces killed osama bin laden in may two thousand and eleven and the results were initially suppressed by the pakistani government but leaked to al-jazeera which published the dossier on its website earlier this week the report relied on testimony from more than two hundred sources including senior senior military and political leaders and also referred to interviews with osama bin laden's family who recount the navy seals killed the al qaeda leader now the report says quote

culpable negligence and incompetence at all levels of government can be more or less conclusively established now it's important to note that the dossier doesn't explicitly say any of the top leaders or officials were complacent with the taliban al qaeda or bin ladin or in helping him hide out in the region but the implication is that perhaps there were some rogue officials who knew and kept quiet so the commission also issues a scathing critique of how the united states government handled the situation by essentially taking matters into their own hands and by key. the pakistani government in the dark about the operation it also notes that there was a vast network of cia operatives in pakistan who were trying to track down bin ladin and that the network exists without pakistan's knowledge at all and was a result of quote nothing less than a collective and sustained dereliction of duty by pakistani military political and intelligence leadership now despite the light that this commission has shed on its own country's systemic mismanagement within its ranks the us is still slated to provide pakistan with over one billion dollars in foreign assistance in two

thousand and fourteen from washington d.c. i marinate r t. this week we learned that the manager of japan's crippled fukushima nuclear plant a cell yoshida died from cancer his illness reportedly had nothing to do with the radiation levels at the fukushima plant that he worked in around the clock alongside a group of men referred to as the fukushima fifty trying to contain the nuclear crisis in the days in the months following the earthquake and tsunami but although mr your sheet is cancer can't be traced back to fukushima how many others in japan may contract cancer in the future that can be traced back to fukushima on tuesday radioactive contamination of groundwater at the plant surface a levels ninety times greater than they were just three days ago so what effect is the ongoing fukushima nuclear crisis having in japan and what lessons should we be learning in the united states kevin campuses here he's the radioactive waste watchdog at beyond nuclear

kevin thanks so much for coming on thanks for having sam so let's start in japan what's the latest when it comes to fukushima when it comes to japan in the short term as far as getting the situation of control under control and then in the long term when it comes to what sort of health effects we might see from from all these dosages of radiation over the last few years well the best word i can come up with for what's happening in recent days and weeks at fukushima daiichi is haemorrhaging of radioactivity and the scariest part of all is that they don't know where it's coming from but ultimately it's coming from three melted down atomic reactor cores and severely damaged if not entirely destroyed radiological containment structures that's where it's ultimately coming from but why it's getting out now in such a hurry all of a sudden is the big mystery and this is despite the fact that they have growing tank farms that are stretching now off site kind of into the hillsides holding test countless hundreds and thousands of tons of highly radioactive leak contaminated

water some of which we know are also leaking so what it looks like is that this leakage at. a faster rate or a slower rate has been going on for over two years at this point in this really is a crisis that the world has never confronted before the sort of nuclear crisis that i mean we've had nuclear crisis turn over all three mile island this one at fukushima is different. so they're kind of flying by the sea their parents trying to contain and here we are more than two years past it and you say we have these tanks now being lined up how long can this continue to go on. it seems like an impossible situation and you know what tokyo electric is trying to get away with is convincing the government the people in the area the fishermen especially that releasing some of the contents of those tanks might be an ok thing to do and they haven't gotten away with it yet intentionally releasing but what's going on is unintentional it's out of control leakage pathways that they claim not to even know about how much of the fukushima disaster was caused or at least made worse by the

design of the plant itself. and if that's the case if it was made worse or caused by the just this design should we in the united states be concerned because we have plants of similar design as we have twenty three identical designs to fukushima daiichi in the united states operating including the oldest reactor in this country oyster creek new jersey we've now seen on live television two years ago what these things are capable of in terms of the explosions in the meltdowns they knew as early as one nine hundred seventy two at the u.s. atomic energy commission that this design of containment was too small and too weak and yet they continued to license these things and we've lived with a game of. russian roulette in terms of the safety risks for forty eight act for forty years now these are also building designs that include putting these waste pulls at the top of the building which is proving to be a pretty big problem in the clean up fukushima that's the other issue that we hope will never drop but it's it's precarious at this point you know for at fukushima

daiichi could collapse if there's another big earthquake and the cooling water in the high level radioactive waste storage pool could be lost suddenly within hours that waste could be on fire the situation in the us is that we have multiple times more waste in our pools than is contained in you know for and they are vulnerable to various natural disasters or terrorist attacks or accidental drops of heavy loads that could drain the water away or potentially earthquakes and as other natural disasters i mean fukushima that was caused by an earthquake a tsunami that came through. how many plants in the united states are in similar precarious situations on fault lines or on the coast certainly or flood flooding zones i think we had one. i forgot which state it was last year that came dangerously close to being flooded while fort calhoun in nebraska has now been shut down for over two years since april of two thousand and eleven because of the flooding out there the damage that was done to the underground facilities and just

like in japan we are looking at the. imminent restart of that reactor despite the damage done and they don't know how bad it is underground so in japan they're trying to restart reactors despite fukushima daiichi we have dozens scores of reactors in various vulnerable situations to natural disasters we did recently moved to have reactor shutdown at the sent off for a nuclear facility last month. how much of that was do you think was influenced by what we saw happening in fukushima if at all or is this just kind of a one off here we are being careful about nuclear power in this instance while letting all these plants continue you know relatively unchecked in dangerous areas where there has been a groundswell of concern among the american public post fukushima because now folks have seen on live television what american reactor designs are capable of but i should hasten to say that there are watchdogs in california who have been in the trenches for for decades out there watchdogs and alfre and the nuclear regulatory

commission was not the one who shutdowns and alfre it was the utility itself the n.r.c. was doing all it could to keep this utility viable but it was the intervention of groups like friends of the earth and grassroots groups who just signed a very bright spotlight on the damage at that facility and show that it was dangerous to eight million people if they ever restarted that thing in the last ten fifteen seconds what is fukushima done for the movement two for the no nukes movement well i think you know the fall out they hit the united states that is still going into the ocean has shown people that the food is contaminated to an extent and people have to be careful what they're eating and people are getting involved on the local level the nukes in their neighborhood there are fighting to shut them down to the camps the radioactive waste watchdog at the nuclear thank you so much thank you and that does it for now for more on these stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out our website r.t. dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter sam sax or see it.

well. science technology innovation all the least developed from around russia we've gone to the future covered. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harkin welcome to the big picture. what defines a country's success. faceless figures of the.