coming up on r.t.e. in egypt hundreds of problem worse the protesters have died during a massive crackdown by government security forces with the death toll likely to rise the future of the nation now looks even more chaotic the latest updates ahead . and u.s. drone strikes in yemen have seen a drastic uptick now it's reported that one of these strikes killed a top al qaeda bomb maker well look at the u.s. drone war in the country coming up. and where do you get your drinking water from odds are that you are buying it off the shelves full of at the bottled water industry and how it is cashing in later in tonight's show.

it's thursday august fifteenth four pm in washington d c i meghan lopez and you are watching r t well we begin this afternoon in egypt the death toll from clashes between pro morsy supporters and the military have soared this week as the situation in the country spirals out of control. at least six hundred thirty eight people have been reported dead as a result of this unrest according to the egyptian official health ministry another three thousand seven hundred seventeen people have been injured but don't get too attached to those numbers they are likely to rise as violence continues to plague the country the situation has become so on stable that president obama took time today to address some concerns of his own united states strongly condemns. the steps that have been taken by egypt's interim government and security forces we

deplore violence against civilians we support universal rights essential to human dignity including the right to peaceful protest but while we want to sustain our relationship with egypt our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back as a result this morning we notified the egyptian government that we are canceling our biannual joint military exercise which was scheduled for next month. now despite the military's attempts to raise two of the problem or say protest camps demonstrators continue to gather in the city squares across cairo. as an egypt what the latest the latest reports we've just had the supporters of ousted leader mohamed morsi have attacked governor building here in the capital just in giza which is on the outskirts of cairo they are obviously extremely angry following yesterday's bloody onslaught which some hundreds die the security forces who

promised to do a peaceful dispersal all of the supporters of move in and sit ins basically opened fire for several hours causing a huge death toll so there are also expected to be marches later this afternoon run by the missing brotherhood and the supporters of morsi who basically are rejecting the way that the security forces treated them and saying they will not be intimidated they want to continue protesting intil mohamed morsi is reinstated and the constitution now i just came back from a morgue which is where the protests are starting with families who are identifying the dead they are as i said extremely determined and very angry up to losing their sons and husbands and brothers so we're looking really at a very very tense atmosphere here in egypt as the security forces go head to head with the muslim brotherhood and supporters and we're seeing such bloody scenes really unprecedented in the recent history of egypt certainly the use of live ammunition in such a extent by the security forces in addition civilians are increasingly armed and so

there have been reports of mostly supporters is particularly in the giza camp firing back at the police and also civilians in terms of residents attacking supporters in addition we've had this new twist as you said of sectarian violence dozens of churches have been run raided and torched including christian buildings and homes leaving many to be that this escalate this could actually escalate into its own kind of battle itself to a sing a massively divided country civilians increasingly arms as well i think terry on issues on the horizon. the moment people are wondering that this might actually descend into a full blown civil war. in cairo for us and bell has been live tweeting her reports out there with some extremely graphic descriptions of what she herself has personally witnessed one tweet reads i can't tweet pictures as they are too graphic brain spilling out of skulls charred corpses teenagers who lost a section of their head it's just a testament to how volatile the situation has really become. meanwhile you menees

are recovering after a barrage of u.s. drone strikes that killed thirty eight suspected militants in the country a strike on saturday was the ninth attack in two weeks and one of those attacks may in fact have killed one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world that being abraham siri he is the master bomb maker for al qaeda in the arabian peninsula he is the man that is behind the attempted assassination of a top saudi counterterrorism official in two thousand and nine he's also behind the failed christmas day underwear bomber attack as well as terror plots involving two cargo planes in two thousand and ten now u.s. officials say that this man the one that you're looking at is the reason that you go through all those invasive security screening and pat down processes at the airport and they are afraid that he is passing his craft on to others now if the drone attack was in fact successful this would be a catastrophic blow to al qaeda but we simply don't know if it wiser if he actually

died yemen remains a focus for washington after a terrorist threat information prompted the u.s. state department to close a number of embassies and consulates across the middle east and africa earlier this month all still we just don't know if there was anything. open we don't know if there is anything that was related between some of these threats and these closings the talk all things yemen i'm joined now by yemen analyst. dani and she also writes the blog yemeni at dot com and cora courier she is from pro publica and she can eliminate us on the u.s. policy on these strikes so thank you guys so much for joining us let's start with you talk about the significance of these drone strikes does it have an effect on how yemenis you do you want to salute i think in the past ten days there have been about drone strikes nine drone strikes right now and what's happening is i'm seeing

. yemenis hate america more and more and i'm talking about yemenis who actually went outside to know about america have studied america at some point we just don't understand why the country has to be droned eight times in ten days i think a lot of people are scared they're speaking out of fear they don't know what to expect next from the u.s. now cora what do we know about the thirty eight yemenis killed in these strikes they're called suspected militants by the obama administration but what do we really know about their links to terrorism. well it's important to note that they're called suspected militants generally by officials off the record sort of anonymous comments we rarely rarely ever get official acknowledgement that the u.s. was even involved in the strike that it was a u.s. drone strike as opposed to a yemeni air shake for example so you really in terms of official numbers you don't get anything from the u.s. government what we do have is pulled together from these off the record comments and by from the on the ground work of journalists and activists increasingly in

yemen and some other interesting thing is that despite president obama having promises to have more transparency here in the u.s. we have really not seen very much but you have an interesting perspective because you can provide both the american perspective and the many perspective are they getting any more information coming out about these strikes i actually have to follow u.s. media when i'm reading about drone strikes when the drone strikes happened didn't cover it at all there was an award handed out to people who can catch or capture any of people it was only broadcasted on yemeni television at nine pm then it was mainly on american and english news websites and i feel like a lot of yemenis don't really know what's going on why is that don't they have interest in what's going on i mean if something was happening in the back of our neighborhoods we would know well they want to know they want to know but there's a lack of transparency from the government when the first drone strikes started i mean in the past ten days the any president was actually here in washington d.c.

meeting with president barack obama and so many people until now didn't have a yemeni official come and speak to them on national television calming them down or letting them know what's going on and cora as i have mentioned president obama promised some type of transparency have we seen any of that involving these most recent strikes or anything in the future in the present days of him actually following through with that promise. well the administration is now tending to speak more openly about the broad program of targeted killing a you know in the big speech president obama's big speech in may he laid out the sort of new guidelines indicated that they were now going to be stricter criteria for when a drone strike could be taken but just in recent days again we've sort of retreated to the tendency that most of the details that we get about what's going on in yemen are coming in sort of off the record of statements from officials the president was asked on friday about the uptick in drones and his strikes in yemen and his

response was well i can't discuss specific operational issues so that tends to be the response i've been trying to track pretty closely what happens after civilian deaths are alleged in yemen given that this is again another area in which the administration promised greater transparency and generally again they will talk generally about it they've said that there's now a standard for near certainty that no civilian will be harmed in a strike but after the fact they generally refuse to comment on any particular strike not some all one of the reasons that they were that we believe that they were really going after yemen was because of evoking all the miry which is what i mentioned. is what shows what i mentioned earlier but was there any kind of confirmation that we know of them them targeting how can we really know if he is dead or alive at the moment i don't think we're going to get that i think we have

to wait until the end of august because a lot of the bodies tend to be charred when they're droned so we're going to have to wait to see who the people are you know that there are thirty six casualties from these drone strikes i don't know if all of them are going to be a cure if you odds are there are a lot of casualties in there and what can you elaborate on how the people of yemen view this man the master bomb maker i don't think they view a.q. a.p. as a big. as a big. terror threat in yemen itself because yemenis more than sixty percent of the population is living under the poverty line there's sectarian problems going on in the region the country half the country needs to cede so when it comes to a.q. a.p. they're not really operating in yemen they're not at the moment they're not the biggest threat in the eyes of the yemeni people very interesting now you're a news outlet pro publica trying to determine whether the u.s. was giving out condolence payments to families of innocent victims of drone strikes in general and also more specifically of these yemeni strikes this is the response

that you got from a freedom of information act request that you sent out it says that u.s. army major general karl horse responded a thorough and good faith search was conducted at thirty three pages were located after a thorough review i have determined that the information is exempt from release in its entirety so are there any other ways of determining whether these payments are being made and are you happy with this response or are you planning to appeal it. well the dia de also told me that they just they told me straight out a spokesman told me that they are not making the d.o.d. has not made condolence payments in yemen or i actually asked also about somalia given that not not very recently but there have been u.s. direct actions in somalia so they've told me just straight out that they're not doing it there that contrast directly with what cia director john brennan said in february in front of during his confirmation process he said that the u.s. does where appropriate for strikes outside of afghanistan will will sometimes offer

condolence payments it was not a very specific statement he said it in his confirmation process we don't know whether he was referring to the cia it could have been referring to pakistan there's a little on the ground evidence that these payments are actually happening they are they've now become embraced as a tool in afghanistan they've been widely used there nearly a million dollars in the last year in fiscal year two thousand and twelve were given out for roughly three hundred payments. so and really what those what those payments also brought in afghanistan was a way in which when you you would get a sense of these both the scale of civilian injury and the relationship between the civilian population and u.s. soldiers we obviously don't have soldiers on the ground in yemen that makes for a different situation sure and as you go forward with this we are asking you to keep us informed so that we can keep our audience informed of everything that pro publica is trying to do in terms of this boy request kora career and national

security correspondent with pro publica and also some donny she's a yemeni analyst and the creator of the web site yemeni dot com thank you so much thanks while it was going to happen anyway we've heard that a lot lately when it comes to reigning in or critically reviewing the national security agency's surveillance program first from president obama. no i don't think mr snowden was a patriot as i said in my opening remarks i called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before mr snowden maybe as leaks. now we are hearing a similar story from the n.s.a. itself army general keith alexander recently announced that the n.s.a. will fire a ninety percent of its system administrators in order to reduce the number of people with access to classified information most of them are contractors but again edward snowden's leaks had nothing to do with it except to speed up the application

date instead we've put people in the loop of transferring data security networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing the intent of what we're now doing is to come up with ways that limit what people can take what data they have and how we can monitor that straight from the mouth of keith alexander right now there are currently a one thousand system administrators who helped run the agency's network the end result will be a quote more defensible and secure agency. well ever heard of the saying that the best defense is a good often some companies are taking that monster to heart when it comes to digital hackers turn the channel just about any station these days and you hear about hacking from baby monitors to computers and even cars a study of fifty six large american firms found that there was a total of one hundred in two successful cyber attacks per week in two thousand and

twelve alone that's a forty two percent rise through your will for now with three quarters of those attacks and hacks are a direct result of weak passwords or stolen user names or a combination of stolen usernames and passwords in order to stop these hacks or at least to learn more about the people who are conducting them a number of companies are using some of the very techniques that hackers themselves use to recover stolen data and one way to do that is called a honeypot server basically the plan the firm plants false information in its systems to trick data thieves the honeypot server is a decoy that gathers information about intruders instead so. finding fire with fire but can these companies really don't have the hackers and is it even legal well let's get today to today's tech report with the founder of s.s.t. blue he much when he got on he move thank you so much for joining me first of all is this even legal suit to hack back and if it's legal is it ethical. the term that comes to mind when you say hacking back is vigilante justice or an eye for an eye

and at the end of the day we have historically always thought of those things as blatantly illegal and the fact of the matter is even if you're under attack a corporation hacking back is going to engage in something illegal but there's actually a bigger thing that's a bigger issue not just an ethical one early illegal when you're a legal one and that is when you attack a hacker you are actually declaring war against that hacker and their forces and coming back at you are much more than you will ever have because hackers can be coming in from ten different countries that they've already had. these that they're waking up and as a security guy inside a corporation what you're really doing is hacking a. victim that they've already victimized so you're not going to get anywhere number one and number two you're going to do something illegal and number three you to declare war on a hacker and that's even worse than just putting up your defenses and focusing your

time your money your energy on that and there are a lot of things that they can do that was going to be my question you know i mean how smart is it really to go head to head with these hackers especially when they have a community itself says that the very best people that work within the community won't work for the government or for companies because they simply don't pay enough so is it possible really to hire the best of the best and to outsmart digital thieves well hackers and you'll see this in through hacking groups like anonymous they organize very quickly and they do truly find the best of the best who have all sorts of reasons for attacking companies so from an internal corporation perspective what you have to do is something that a lot of people don't like to hear in the boardrooms of america although that conversation is increasing more and more and that is put security first put that on the budget because it's a requirement it's something that you just have to do and from a business perspective think consumer your consumer will trust you if they feel

confident they can use your company and not worry about losing their information and then if you do that raise those salaries bring in more bring in or bring in companies like us we had going from the outside we get hired to do what's called white had hacking and a lot of corporations to do that engage in hacking themselves using a good guy and when you do that then at least you know where the vulnerability is you can go fix it and you can do it before the hacker finds it and then do it again in a few months because things change in networks and you want to be constantly ready you can never let your guard down so focus on security rather than opening pandora's box when it comes to hack attacks is there any examples of specific companies that are partaking in this hack attack. well if they are they are not to be talking about it because it is illegal but in terms of the the legal side of it many many companies and there's a definite upward tick in this area are hiring white out hackers to attack their

networks we've seen the number of requests coming to us going up we're seeing people who do this for a living they're getting hired a lot so if you're a white had hacker and you're capable of doing this there's a definite you know business potential out there for you and to do it is you know we're in a strange way it's actually good to do it this way because if you know your network too well it's kind of like your house you know where everything is and you miss the obvious one or you miss the one that's behind the other window that you didn't know about but when we come in we think like bad guys and when we think like bad guys but we're truly good guys we actually will find things that you may not find and that's why it's actually a good thing to do and finally he will you kind of touched on the consumer side of this a little bit earlier but this is ultimately a battle between the hackers and these companies so how do consumers fit into this and how can they protect themselves if they. have this kompany ok well think the headline major corporations customer data has been stolen by hackers if i'm one of

those customers the first thing i'm going to think is wait a minute we give you all this money you make all this money what happened why is my customer info gone and do i trust you anymore so from a consumer relationship building from an affinity perspective long term relationship with your customer customer retention all those things you learn in the business schools of america if you're not focused on protecting that network you will have an impact on your bottom line and your revenue growth and that from a corporation perspective is not only just the right thing to do to protect your customer but it's the right business thing to do and i think wall street would like that your boards were like that your investors would like that so there's all sorts of reasons to put security first he mentioned founder of the s.s. keep lou thank you so much for joining us thank you for. now an update on a story that we reported on in early july california state lawmakers have pledged to come up with legislation that stops for sterilization of women in prison this comes following a report by the center of investigative reporting into the number of female inmates

were saving a tubal ligation over the past five years here's how the communications director for justice now describes the widespread use of this procedure we have confirmed that since two thousand and six the kofa department of corrections and rehabilitation has illegally sterilized at least one hundred forty eight people and there is reason to believe that. two hundred fifty people people were sterilized during labor and delivery since the ninety's. now these procedures occurred at two california prisons the california institute for women in corona and the valley state prison for women in law former inmates accuse prison medical staff of coercing women who they deemed likely to return to prison in the future and get them sterilized this was a direct indirect violation of prison rules and state lawmakers are confronting the problem head on they said quote when we first heard of this issue we acted quickly

and strongly because we all understand that this is about fairness and dignity this is at the core of basic dignity and human rights we need as a public safety committee to send a clear message to all californians that we will not accept less as of right now no legislation has been introduced but lawmakers say that the tax will include more oversight and education for prison officials and doctors about federal law. well you may have heard the phrase why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free but what about something with a little slack toe some talking of course about why our american consumers have drank their way to number one the united states is now the largest consumer market for bottled water in the world are to correspondent on a stasia churkin a looks into the bottled water craze and whether it's money that goes down the drain. going a day without water is hard to imagine. but so was paying

a lot more money for the same thing that comes out of a tap the. americans are the number one consumers of bottled water in the world our success is based on buying people with what they want but why are people paying so much more than they have to cook the bottled water industry simply be tricking us part of the wire is a huge get you know when you buy bottled water you're paying hundreds if not thousands of times the cost that you would be paying to simply access that all the way the flow is almost half of bottled water is in fact just tap water. tap water that's just filtered by corporations instead of the consumer to home ads with the alluring glaciers on bottles and gorgeous celebrities make bottled water seem so much better. just. to illustrate people are like children you know you show and also the they probably design it so

people like to hold it they sure like their beautiful people or rivers coming down long term so you it's all about health so yeah it is a weird total fools but if you can experts it's a common misconception that bottled water is more pure and safe than tap pure marketing companies are making billions of dollars in selling this product that's more expensive than gasoline at this point to people and so they they definitely benefit from people thinking that tap water is not as safe as a why or. why because they simply can get away with it. the think outside the bottle campaign is one of an increasing number of groups challenging the corporations for the past three decades the bottled water industry namely coke pepsi and that's really have attempted to convince. the only place to get clean and safe water is out of a bottle no it's not the private water industry is really aggressively pushing.

to put public water that every human right into private hands work in countries where pollution is high people have no choice but for americans there certainly is experts the consumers just need to be more informed tap water is actually more regulated by the environmental protection agency then bottled water is by the three drug administration well recycling is supposed to make consumers feel better in reality plastic accumulation is at a peak seventy five percent of bottles and up in our landfills oceans rivers lakes you now see them you know littering the landscape and they get only twenty five percent of them and up recycled and i think most people think that that rate is much higher in times when energy and water resources are growing scarce the pacific and found that the equivalent of thirty two hundred fifty four million million barrels of oil are used in a year by the bottled water industry and this is the equivalent it would fuel

between one and two million cars a year this will keep up unless perceptions change. and we have a population growing so we're going to buy more and more bottle of water and more and more brenna coming in every day pure the pure of the water with it it's not just bottled water low it's like water with water with activists it's time to break the myth and for consumers to change habits before water is a human right is lost who is it that we want to be providing our water is. that our. water profit or is it in fact that we want our own democratically governed. to be the ones that are providing us water if we take into account the huge price markups for a product that's available in most polls as well as the health environmental and regulation concerns it might be a good time to stop and think does one really need this considering life on earth existed without plastic bottles just

a few decades ago or is the trend just too resistible to stop the flow and. new york. i meghan lopez stay tune prime interests next. at least to.

my.

lead. good afternoon and welcome to prime interests i'm perry and boring than i am bob english and let's get to today's headlines with. patting himself on the back right now at least with respect to consumer price inflation which came and i precisely the two percent official fed target but for those of us who don't eat food or drive a car and the number was a bit smaller one point. that previously burning towers himself in front of the fed and having one of the best inflation record of any fed chairman and water air and how do you did unfortunately some other economic data was released today specifically regarding manufacturing and that has sent the stock market tumbling surveys one by the new york fed the other in philadelphia disappointed greatly.