tv Headline News RT August 16, 2013 4:00pm-4:31pm EDT
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breaking news out of egypt where bloody clashes have erupted between security forces and morsy loyalists today alone scores have died bringing the death toll to more than six hundred meanwhile president obama has canceled a joint u.s. egypt's military exercise the latest from tahrir square. and defenders of the n.s.a. and its surveillance programs have said that these powers have not been abused but the latest snowden leak shows thousands of rule violations occurred in one year alone more on the expanding surveillance state coming up and finally bradley manning faces a potential ninety years in prison for leaking classified documents to wiki leaks they the government gives a rebuttal against the army whistleblowers defense more on today's events from for me straight ahead.
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it's friday august sixteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching our team and we begin with breaking news out of egypt where another bloody day of fighting has resulted in more deaths following the gyptian military's brutal crackdown this week on supporters of the muslim brotherhood islamised called for a day of rage today and again took to the streets and there are reports of clashes getting worse security officials in egypt say at least sixty people died across the country today in cairo mosques are reportedly overfilling with dead bodies more than six hundred people have been killed in clashes so far artie's belcher reports on the latest on the violence in egypt. is another chaotic day here in egypt and they said what me and supporters of mohamed morsi call the day of rage in ramses square which is in downtown cairo just off the screen and it's. absolutely massive
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the moment at twenty eight months he's converged on the square when they basically intended to set up a sit in by about how close to three pm gunshots could be heard it's automatic weapons and why four rounds i'm not sure exactly how it started it was coming from direction a police station could as became a police station need to ramses square but there are wildly differing accounts about who attacked first one side they're saying the missing brotherhood supporters have mostly fired on the police and of course the protesters are saying it was the other way round however you could hear these very loud gunshots coming from above from the side from everywhere including tear gas the protesters attempted to get rid of the effects of takeouts by by building bomb fires and putting the kind of says on them but to no avail people were scattered i saw protesters being ferried at the scene with very bloody head wounds it's not just the capital which the moment is that is it somewhat of a war zone there's also been reports of fatalities now to the north in the nile delta and yet that which is the governor as we've also heard at the top of these
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spending which is naples sayit in addition there are conscious in alexandria as well as tom says who is seeing this kind of violence spreading everywhere as the supporters of mostly either an altercation is with the with the police all with residents of the area so really what this is coming off the back of is of course wednesday's very bloody crackdown by the security forces on two sittings in cairo it's quite a serious situation here we're not sure how it's going to go particularly as the ministry of interior set the stating that they are going to now their offices to fire live ammunition on anyone that was attacking them and also state buildings so we could see these conscious escalate further and more fatalities as the day go on that was archies bill true reporting from egypt meanwhile the united states struggles to figure out its role in this quickly deteriorating situation as one point three billion dollars in aid is handed over to egypt every single year and considering that aid is now going into the hands of the egyptian military which is currently in control of. country's government in carrying out the senseless killing
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of protesters in the streets calls to cut off u.s. aid to egypt are growing louder senator rand paul argued the law is very clear when a coup d'etat takes place foreign aid must stop regardless of the circumstances with more than five hundred dead and thousands more injured this week alone chaos only continues to grow in egypt so mr president stop skirting the issue follow the law and cancel all foreign aid to egypt but could that actually do anything to answer that and more i'm joined by our terabit correspondent rima. rima welcome to the show so really just how influential is u.s. to egypt can it have any effect on the violence we're seeing today or would would cutting off aid be strictly symbolic as we should be giving aid to a government that is now killing its civilians in the streets i would say it is and it isn't maybe a year ago the u.s. aid to egypt had a lot more leverage u.s.
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had a lot more leverage in to than it does right now it seems by any account any person you talk to their answer is what does it do to us if they're giving us this aid which basically was given because because egypt signed this treaty with israel if they're the egyptians are saying this money is going to determine what our life should be like we don't want this money and we're seeing that a lot of countries in the gulf are now poor and then money into egypt so maybe it did have some leverage before but now i see that as very very very little influence in egypt especially and what we see now in a lot of people are writing that they gyptian they're not whether it's the military or the people do not care anymore and their latest actions show about when this started a few years ago in egypt the u.s. grudgingly asked mubarak to. step aside they grudgingly accepted the results of the
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election when the muslim brotherhood came to power and they seem to grudgingly accept what the military did a few weeks ago as in that mean they haven't been reluctant to call it a coup and they haven't cut off any of this aid what is the united states' role in egypt does it even have a role in egypt should it have a role in egypt i'm asking. well this is a very complicated issue does the u.s. have a role yes of course it does have or all in all the arab countries and everything that's happening in the arab countries that aid that there are support that they are giving to some of these countries the diplomatic support these statements this is support to the existing the regions in the country but is the u.s. telling the military or the muslim brotherhood what to do right now are they asking the muslim brotherhood to go out to the streets and protest are they asking them to be peaceful or not to be peaceful or are they asking the military to crack down on the protesters they way they are doing right now no and so far yes it does have
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a role in these countries and no it does not have a role in this country especially in egypt right now given the violence that's that's going on how does it i mean have we crossed a point where it's now impossible that any sort of power sharing deal or any sort of coalition government with the muslim brotherhood could be worked out to find peace or is this just going to is this violence going to continue until we are situations like syria i think only time will tell but what are the options right now on the table for egypt we there are the option of todd there is the option of talks of dialogue of negotiation between the qualities on the ground and there is the option of lebanon like or syria like syria like scenarios and it's up to decide which scenario they want to go other countries have tried to crackdown on dissidents on. opposition whatever you want to call it in this case and
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we've seen where that took those countries it's negotiations you diplomatic solutions that usually prevent country from falling into more chaos we have a civil war in syria we had a bombing in lebanon yesterday we have a wave of bombings in iraq recently what is ongoing violence in egypt i mean for the entire region egypt is. in arabic it's called the mother of the wald what happens in egypt a fact what happens are facts what happens in the rest of the arab affects what happens in the region as a whole and a lot of people worry that the instability in egypt will just mean more instability in the region stability in egypt will help stability in the other parts of the arab world should this crackdown that we're seeing in the egyptian military carry out should america's skeptical about the military claims that they still play a power over civilian authority after democratic elections they've made clear that
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they do not want to run the show in egypt they made it clear that they do not want to be part of the political life in egypt what we see now though is that this is part of taken of play and very big role in the political life in egypt we need to wait and see what the military decides to do afterwards are they going to play a much bigger role in the political life after they're done with their mission if you want to call it what are they going to do really determines what role is the military play in it into many people are skeptical now that the military is going and has been will always be the arbiter and inject they have done this for the past decades and they will continue to do that and a lot of people say what interest does it how does it help the military at this point to continue to play a big role in egypt if they do accomplish what they want to accomplish or what they said that they will accomplish and this will have to wait and see correspondent rima thank you so much. and now on to rampant abuse at the n.s.a.
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the washington post reports on edward snowden's latest leak in an internal audit the national security agency that reveals the spy agency breaking both internal and foreign intelligence surveillance court privacy rules thousands of times every single year the documents cover the first quarter of two thousand and twelve and highlight an increasing number of incidents or what the n.s.a. calls surveillance that inappropriately reaches american citizens these incidents are blamed on either operator error or system error now one week ago the president held a press conference on these and as a leaks and he made this claim about the program if you look at the reports even disclosures that mr snowden's put forward all the stories that have been written what you're not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs what your hearing about is the prospect that these could
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be abused now part of the reason they're not abuse is because these checks are in place. and those abuses would be against the wall and would be against the orders of the the fisc now this latest revelation showing thousands of abuses each year appears to contradict the president's claims documented abuses occurred at the n.s.a. as fort meade headquarters and other washington area facilities gov government officials said the number of abuses would be much higher if other collection centers were included not only that other documents reveal that the n.s.a. purposely withheld information of these abuses from oversight staff also the documents uncovered a program out of the n.s.a. that collected and stored both u.s. and foreign e-mails together for months before the fire as a court was even made aware of its existence and eventually ruled it to be unconstitutional one thing that still uncertain is just how many americans have been affected by these so-called incidents at the n.s.a.
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for more on what can be learned from these latest leaks i'm joined by amy stepanovich director of ethics domestic surveillance project and amy thanks for coming on so we hear of these abuses these thousands of abuses that an internal audit at the n.s.a. revealed what exactly are these abuses and as you said many of them are human operator error and that includes a wider range of things from typing in the wrong target not having enough information down to basic typos in one instance we saw that an analyst typed in two zero two is the area come rushing to d.c. and sort of to zero the country code for egypt and ended up sucking in all sorts of phone call information for people in the washington d.c. domestic you know united states persons in the washington d.c. area when they were meant to be sucking in god knows how many calls that were taking place in egypt so those of us who live in d.c. likely as a result of this mistake had our had our communications swept up and analyzed as well yeah and you know think about who lives in d.c.
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if this leak is going to be more interesting to some of the lawmakers than maybe some of the others. it because they might it has and probably were affected by it that's an interesting point you know unnamed official in this washington post article tried to defend the n.s.a. against against all these claims of abuse and they said you can look at it as a percentage of our total activity that occurs each day you look at a number in absolute terms that looks big and we when you look at it in relative terms it looks a little different in other words he's basically saying or she's basically saying we're collecting so much data that a few thousand abuses is a relatively small amount is that supposed to make us feel more comfortable about the program or actually frighten us even more two points actually for this to be made the first as the public version of these reports actually said the number of abuses was a small number not a small percentage it actually is a very large number it was a basic math you know number size is not the same as the percentage size and you're
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getting down to the numbers that seven to eight incidents a day which is. if there are many many times they're collecting information today maybe that number is small and in correlation but that doesn't mean that we should be assured that means that the n.s.a. is collecting all sorts of information and that there's so many chances for abuse to take place in fact they're saying that abuses are going up from year to year not down right it seems to open a lot more doors to questions and they go oh no we're this is a little small number compared to all the other stuff we're doing as far as the oversea side chain goes these abuses like the one you mention about washington d.c. inadvertently being swept up. officials were told to basically whitewash these to keep them away from oversight staff the washington post contacted senator dianne feinstein she's the head of the senate intelligence committee in charge of overseeing these programs and she didn't even wasn't even aware of this audit even existing until the washington post told her about it so how can any of this be
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considered effective oversight well it's not that's the i mean the basic answer is there is no effective oversight to face a court there's a one one party system they only hear one side of the argument congress is not effective oversight they aren't briefed on what's going on if they were they said that they could have had access to this report that they didn't know existed if they went to a specific secure room and didn't bring any staff and didn't bring any attorneys in to bring anything to take notes on and then they could look at the document that they didn't know was there this this is no way over say well staying on this is you we've also been told that oversights existing in the pfizer court which you just just mentioned i want to read a quote here by the pfizer court chief judge his use that u.s. district judge reggie walton this is what he said. the fisc the foreign intelligence surveillance court is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the court the fisc does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance and in that respect that this is in the same
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position as any other court when it comes to enforcing government compliance with its orders what is it about the foreign intelligence surveillance court that prevents it from being that necessary oversight well it's interesting that they say they're in the same position as a normal court because they very likely are in the same position but things don't play out the way that they would in a normal court in a court you would issue a surveillance order be it a warrant or some other undocument that allows police law enforcement to go out and conduct surveillance of an individual and eventually that individual will be supposedly brought into court and presented with the evidence against him or her and allowed to challenge the gathering of that evidence under the fourth amendment under legal and statutory standards you never get that chance in the fight as a court you never bring somebody into court there's never a opportunity to challenge the collection of this data so you never take that extra step to see if the n.s.a.'s i don't have any so when we hear about reforms to the
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pfizer court in the president mentions you know perhaps a privacy advocate and senators calling for a privacy advocate doesn't the reformists the real problem with the fires accord it has just one of the real problems which is that it's a you know courts are supposed to be a two party process is supposed to be adversarial and you have one person going in and presenting an argument there's nobody on the other side now having somebody on the other side isn't going to fix that and less there's an extra piece put into place to make it a meaningful adversary you have public reporting you have some sort of accountability so that person isn't just another green light to let these programs move forward and they can continue to throw up the oversight flag but just last question a few seconds here can we rest assure that these are just operator error screening these abuses or might there be some intentionality. well let's throw me out there so they they can define these as not intentional errors none of these are intentional but when you think about you know i've put in an area code instead of a country code where do you cross the line from being
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a non intentional air to being such gross negligence that you have to be said that you're acting intentionally are very close to it. that was a missed the part of it is the director of the domestic surveillance project probably program excuse me at epic now imagine for a second of all this information we've received about the n.s.a. didn't come from edward snowden but instead came from a sitting united states senator imagine if it or if it all came from ron wyden well it almost did it in interview released yesterday senator wyden who as a member of the senate intelligence committee was privy to much of the n.s.a. secrets so he considered spilling those secrets on the floor of the senate so that americans can know what's really going on and members of congress have what's called parliamentarian immunity a somewhat arcane rule that gives lawmakers complete immunity from prosecution for anything they submit to the congressional record and wyden told rolling stone quote
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this is a sensitive subject a lot of people have just said to me well you feel so strongly about these issues when you knew this why didn't you just go to the floor of the united states senate and just you know read it all into the record and of course anybody who does this kind of work thinks a lot about that you think about it all the time i can see why plenty of people would criticize me progressives and others recently ron wyden talked about the effects of snowden's leaks and how it's got everyone discussing the wonky details of state surveillance. you go home with a theme this is the. lunch room of the company people have asked the folks in the. barbershop. could never none of us who can see even getting a question about the five course at all and wake of snowden's leaks the n.s.a. is cutting its number of systems administrators by ninety percent to prevent future leakers but there's nothing the agency can do if fed up lawmakers decide to do the leaking themselves in the future. and it's another day in the sentencing phase of
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the bradley manning trial mrs arty video here from the trial today as the government rebuts manning's defense this week which included a statement from the convicted leaker himself apologizing for any of the unintended consequences of his disclosure and he continues to face the very real possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison or tease liz wall was at the trial here's her report. well the government's rebuttal case in this sentencing phase of the trial went very quiet today the prosecution only presented one witness and that was special agent david shaffer he wasn't present during this testimony but it was read out loud in court he testified throughout the trial before providing friends a computer analysis and his testimony today discussed a series of e-mails between manning and a friend as a friend by the name danny lark now the content of these e-mails were not discussed
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just that there was a record of the communication between the two where manning confided in him about his experience in the military we're not really sure why the government focused on these chats and may have something to do with the testimony we have heard from mental health professionals we heard just a couple days ago that this testimony said that manning was suffering from severe stress he was suffering from severe anxiety and was diagnosed with personality disorders including a gender identity crisis and that he felt alienated while he was stationed in iraq because he had no one to talk to about his issues at the time that he was employed by the brief rebuttal from the government today just a couple days after a very emotional day of testimony during the defense phase of the sentencing hearing we heard heartbreaking testimony from manning sister talking about how she was tasked with raising mandisa and both her parents were alcoholics and she talked
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about her mother's suicide attempt overdosing on value and it was after this testimony that manning took the stand and apologized for his actions and said that he was sorry sorry that he hurt the united states and coombs today gave a brief statement after court wrapped up and told spectators that that day was a very rough day but today manning is is in good spirits he said he said that he is likely to see. in the sentence in fort leavenworth kansas court is back in session on monday afternoon when we will hear closing arguments in the sentencing phase of the case then the judge well i'm mediately governments and deliberations we're told the sentence could come either tuesday or wednesday next week and as we reported faces ninety years in prison it's up to the judge how much of that sentence he is going to serve here in fort meade maryland liz while our team moving on
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space it's often referred to as the final frontier well one company is taking this to heart and giving earthlings a chance to explore the frontier of space one final time when they're dead yet celeste's this division of space services nk offers cosmic trips for your loved ones cremated remains and there are a number of options you can take the ashes up into space and have them return back to earth you can launch the ashes into orbit around our planet or even into orbit around our moon or you can take grandpa hanks ashes and blast them right off into deep space for more on exactly how they do this and why interstellar burial is the way to go i'm joined by stephen isley vice president of marketing and business development at space services steven welcome to the show hi sam thanks for having me so first off how did this venture get started how was it known that people might be interested in this. well i think you know if you look back at history we've
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always had this compelling innate purpose of looking up at the stars of connecting with the cosmos so it only seem logical that the next step would be to allow people one final opportunity to connect in that way and you know with the advent of commercial space flight being available more and more demanding questions came for hey what about you know the opportunity for a space pearl and to kind of come back go back to the stars from whence we came so what's the process by which this happens how or how are these remains are ashes carried into space and how are they released absolutely as so as you mentioned there are a lot of different options to go into space of course it's a compelling and unique way to celebrate the life of a loved one and what we do is we send a symbolic portion of cremated remains into these capsules that range from one to seven grams you can go up to fourteen grams and the capsules are then placed on
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board a spacecraft usually accompanied by another satellite or some other kind of mission and replace some board as a secondary and then there are launched on a rocket and placed in the space with the suborbital in which case they come back orbital to the moon and beyond which is our next mission called the voyager mission which will head and in deep space next to the sun now this might seem like an expensive last ride but getting buried on earth is not really cheap either with cost for funeral plots coffins gravestones you know plus maintenance how does getting shipped into space compare with earth burials. absolutely well i mean the costs range from a suborbital flight of less than a thousand dollars all the way up to about twelve thousand to go into deep space but remember these you know these opportunities really are about looking up about touching the cosmos you can track the capsules and the spacecraft when it's in space so you can always look overhead and you can see your loved one and it's you
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know people love it because they can look up and they can always know that their loved one or even for the living you know there's the opportunity to send your d.n.a. into space that you're part of the cosmos and you've made it up there in a unique way how many flights have there been so far so we've had twelve flights since one thousand nine hundred seven and that's just because there haven't been too many commercial launch vehicles that have been going but now with everything opening up with space x. and small launch vehicles there are a lot more opportunities and our goal is to launch about four times a year and more. humans have had many different burial rituals in our history involving fire and incineration from funeral pyres to viking ship burials where does celeste this is planned for space burial fit in culturally with these others i think it really speaks back to that kind of ancient times when people looked up to the heavens for answers and it was about that cosmic connection like did we come
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from there what do you know how do we get back and it was always that unknown but that you know this is that romanticism about looking up to the stars i mean for centuries for thousands of years we've been naming stars and constellations after loved ones and gods and demi gods and so forth and this is just ties into that modern version of that of people wanting to reconnect with the cosmos touch the face of the cosmos and also for the living of course to you know have a new and unique compelling way to honor and cherish their loved ones we have just fifteen seconds left should there be any concern that this endeavor may contribute to the worsening problem of space junk in orbit around the planet well we're very careful and mindful of that you know the actions aren't spread out it's all done in in a very you could say environmentally or. safe manner and so you know this is a it's a very tiny impact that will not impact orbital debris issues in the future after steven isley vice president of marketing and business development space services
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thank you and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com forward slash r t america check out our website r t v dot com for slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at sam sax stay tuned prime interest is next. oh. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then he glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture. the worst journalist a long white house of a day and a radio guy and a lot of elite minestrone click they all want to watch close to good you've never
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good afternoon and a welcome to prime interest simon perry and lori and i'm bob inglis. and let's get to today's headline. wellheads problems are coming to a four one k. near you at the so-called alternative investment space has been more and it's something that unsophisticated investors can purchase mutual funds once the domain of the retail investor are increasingly being used to make head along with their higher fees and guess what if the as you see every gets around to implement the jobs legislation which was passed over a year ago hedge funds themselves will be able to advertise their investment wares to the public or we can say is called yes. and we want to point out unintended consequences here.
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