coming up on r t the white house ramps up pressure to strike syria today it won support from top republican congressional leaders still many others are not convinced it's the right thing to do a live report from capitol hill in just a moment. and eighteen she and the da are creating a big controversy bigger than the n.s.a. scandal it turns out for the past twenty six years the telecommunications giant has been handing over tros of phone call data to government more on this revelation coming up. and putting business before people that's the shared sentimental monk homeowners in north carolina after state officials approved a proposal that could force fracking on their own properties.

hello there it's tuesday september third four pm here in washington d.c. i marinate and you're watching arctic. will congress vote for military intervention in syria is the question on hand on capitol hill where secretary of state secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff right now address the senate we start our newscast today with the latest developments on syria the white house is trying to sell a strike on syrian president bashar al assad's regime the administration has been trying to persuade skeptical lawmakers and meeting with strategically important republicans on the hill president obama announced on saturday that congress would convene after the long weekend to discuss the syrian matter today he met with key congressional leaders in the white house cabinet room which included john boehner house democratic leader nancy pelosi and senate republican leader mitch mcconnell were they were among those at the meeting and this is what he had to say. that i've

had a chance to speak to many of you and congress as a whole is taking this issue with the soberness and seriousness that it deserves is greatly appreciated and i think that the kates of the decision for us to present this issue to congress the top or republican in washington house speaker john boehner said today that he backed president barack obama's call for military action in or said quote the use of chemical weapons is a barbarous act it's pretty clear to me that the united nations is unable to take action meanwhile in an exclusive interview with french newspaper they for garro syrian president bashar al assad challenge the u.s. to come up with quote a single piece of evidence that he used chemical weapons and assad said this quote the middle east is a powder keg and today the fuse is getting shorter whoever is doing the accusing must come up with proof we have challenge the united states and france to provide

a single piece of proof obama and all along haven't been able to do so even to their own people. now today top members of the cabinet testified before the senate foreign foreign relations committee to make the case for intervention in syria our chief political correspondent sam sachs is live now on the hill with all the latest now sam based on what you heard in this hearing what are the main concerns senators have and can you gauge where their support is today. right well this is the first in a series of hearings this week related to military intervention in syria you know in the senate there's generally more support for this action than in the house and you could see that in the hearing today you saw both chairman of the senate foreign relations committee senator menendez and senator corker show support for the president's plan and really on the committee you only have senator rand paul and senator joe manchin who showed some concerns about military intervention there but

despite the support you know there are concerns that want to be raised to senator corker said why syria what is it about syria that if we don't. attack syria over using chemical weapons how does that harm our national security interests and secretary of state john kerry said this in his opening statement kind of in response to that. we know that assad would read our stepping away or our silence as an invitation to use those weapons with the beauty and in creating impunity we will be creating opportunity the opportunity for other dictators and or terrorists to pursue their own weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons. so in other words if we don't strike off this chemical i'm sure my golden future dictators are there the word ayatollah is used to use similar weaponry now senator menendez on the on the committee was concerned about the scope of the authorization there was no specific

mention to limiting boots on the ground u.s. boots on the ground he pressed senator kerry and kerry finally somebody said look we're not going to do boots on the ground we can imagine a scenario in which syria just explodes but still we're going to do everything to not put boots on the ground now sam what's the schedule over the next week or two and what's the timeframe here when will votes they held and how soon might we see a strike if we do see one. sure well today we have the senate hearing there's going to be a in the house there's going to be a foreign services or foreign relations committee hearing tomorrow and then they'll be a series of classified hearings for members where they can look at a lot of this evidence that was presented in some of the war plans that the administration has drawn up of congress isn't fully back in session until next week and will probably have even more hearings than some votes right off the bat next week congressional leaders have promised an early vote on this so you've heard secretary of defense in the military say look we can attack as soon as as soon as

we're given the authorization so you can assume that once votes next week if something passes then you could see an attack right after that. now here is the authorization which says in part quote the president is authorized to use the armed forces of the united states as determined to be necessary and appropriate now given that we know this now what are the chances that this war authorization can pass congress. well rains we see i mean the senate as i said is a likely place for its passage in the house it's not so sure as senator rand paul said there was fifty fifty chance of passing if you look at a lot of the members of the house who have come forward and said that they don't support so you can see some crossover interesting between the vote from from a few weeks ago from last month but you also have some problems with republicans like peter king who generally support this sort of action in syria but are upset that the president is even going to congress to begin with and that he might vote no on that so the president has an uphill battle to get this to get this through

the house if it doesn't pass the house if it passes the senate doesn't pass the house you can see the president might even have some wiggle room there to to still strike on his own because nothing is going to be brought to the floor that is going to fail leadership's going to make sure that the house is not going to vote down something so you can imagine a week from now two weeks from now nothing passing out of the house and the president saying look i tried to get congress on board with this they are still debating it it's paralyzed as he said the year insecure. councils paralyzed and then decided to go it alone on this action but that all remains to be seen. now some like you just said the president has been getting criticized for even going to congress with this and members of congress like senator john mccain and representative peter king argue that he has the power to act without congress so why even ask for congressional authorization to begin with what do you think about this. that's a good question and i think the fact that the u.k. had a vote on this and it was voted down just just last week francisco drawing

a vote on this in the in the coming days i think optically it looks better for the present if you appeals to congress he said that it would be stronger with congress' support behind this but i don't think he's made it he has not made it clear that he's not willing to go it alone if congress doesn't doesn't give give their permission on this so i think it's just to give him some cover i mean this is any time you're going to engage in military strikes against another nation it could turn messy as you want to as many people behind him as possible especially since these other countries aren't exactly lining up behind it either. that was our two political commentator sam sachs. and in los angeles anti-war demonstrators took to the streets on saturday and propre in protest of the proposed u.s. military strike in syria hundreds marched in downtown l.a. in a mostly peaceful demonstration r.t. correspondent ramon go into was there covering the protest and brings us his full report. here in los angeles

a massive amount of people have taken to the streets to rally against u.s. intervention in syria earlier president obama said that he's going to wait for congress to give him approval to intervene militarily however that's not much comfort to the people here a lot of them still very skeptical about the evidence that the u.s. government has presented to show chemical weapon use in syria. of chemical. bomb and destruction and saying. that they confer. confirm that using one of the one race but i mean i see somebody in america the united nations that's there and if they haven't even heard anything yet they cannot produce the evidence to justify the attacks they don't have the support of the international community to launch the attacks and they know they don't have the mastic support to launch the attack and so they're in a political crisis trying to figure out what to do not wait decisive for people to be in the streets and people out on the war stand with syria i guess that they're

going to show and there is no proof until now who did it because as you know are twenty years ago a single man did it and that took you in the subway the prospect of intervention in syria is especially troubling for syrian americans and other americans of middle eastern descent still have some dark memories of past american interventions that have been in the way. people and to pay them a hard. time into my family. we only see units on the side of a goodish and assad design is the side of. the double value you believe in equality at stade you don't believe it to us and the middle east this rally was among several health throughout the u.s. and around the world in los angeles among galindo r.t. . and other news. now we knew that the national security agency wasn't the only

government agency keeping piles and piles of phone data on its subscribers but now thanks to some new documents obtained by peace activists we know about the drug enforcement administration's hemisphere project and that they have been keeping tabs on every call that goes through an eighteen to switch dating as far back as nineteen eighty seven know that database goes even further than the n.s.a. records and unlike the n.s.a. eighteen to use data includes location information and fact telephone company employees are actually paid by the government to sit alongside agents and supply them with data the american civil liberties union says that public private partnerships of data gathering data together it raises fourth amendment concerns over the justice department says hemisphere merely streamline the process of getting access to records maintained by the phone company now here to discuss this issue is heidi big ocean executive director of the national lawyers guild now heidi

this is just the latest database we're hearing about stores american cell phone data can you put into context for us what this means. revelations of hemisphere are rather breathtaking given the scope of the records that a.t.t. is making accessible to da agents and by the fact that the government is actually paying eighteen thousand employees to sit next to police officers and agents and assist them in their job. they're using administrative subpoenas which are not run by a judge a few years ago the justice department inspector general actually said that the f.b.i. has been abusing administrative subpoenas using them saying that they're necessary in the war on terrorism but i think the trouble with this program is a the government is paying eighteen t. to do things that the government would not lawfully be able to access itself it's we're lying once again on private corporations to do its intelligence but there's

no oversight to the process. now heidi in your legal opinion is this legal i think that n.s.a. spying and hemisphere skirts the law and probably based on the depth of the program going back twenty six years being able to access our records of phone calls from two decades ago and doing it out without judicial warrant and oversight to me makes it very questionable legally given that the f.b.i. itself has said that the inspector general has said that it's misused i think that's cause for alarm now after the n.s.a. revelations one proposal on capitol hill was to actually have private companies rather than government agencies store customer data how does the discovery of this hemisphere project kind of complicate that solution. well i think that we've seen such

a close partnership between government agencies and private corporations and we've seen how the private industry has really burgeoned as the surveillance apparatus has increased the problem is that industry is not accountable to the strictures of the u.s. constitution and unreasonable searches and seizures and we don't want to give them carte blanche to hold our records and then possibly tamper with them but we also want to make sure that if they work with the government there's proper oversight transparency and protections so that really the government is accountable to the people and to the constitution. now already reuters they came out with a report showing that the da was using american citizen american citizen data from databases like this and then obscuring the trail of evidence during the trial of the trail of where they actually got that data does that conflict with a person's right to a free and fair trial most definitely using what we call secret evidence that it

really amounts to and then creating the fiction of a narrative of how that information was gathered violates the right to a fair trial violates the right of the person involved to really confront the sources of how that information was gathered that's troubling and i think the revelations of this latest program raise the question if the deal is using him in a strait of subpoenas how many other government agencies are we know that they have been under the patriot act for years. to gather personal information access to medical records financial records i think we're seeing day by day more of the iceberg being exposed now heidi everyone knows that cell phones have just become an integral part of our lives how can we as citizens protect our own privacy while using a cell phone well if you're concerned about location privacy then if you have the kind of cell phone that you can remove the battery from some people do that they

also have been said to be able to listen in so if you care about your privacy when you're having a talk at a cafe just take out that battery i think the lesson people are learning is that if you really want to keep something private you have to have an in person conversation not on cell phone not on computer and just be aware that virtually every transaction you make is being gathered collected sold to third parties and then accessed in the future which is troublesome. well thank you heidi that was heidi because an executive director of the national lawyers guild thank you for your input thank you. and in the mid atlantic it's been a grim scene along the coast this summer after dead dolphins started washing up on shore now especially here in virginia beach now this is where the largest number of dolphins have made landfall now genetic test point to a virus playing

a major role in the massive dolphin fatalities archie correspondent megan lopez has a full report. nine am and most beachgoers are just waking up in the tourist town of virginia beach but the virginia stranding response team is already in action this is by far the most serious event that i've ever seen this group is responsible for sea life for coverage in the entire state of virginia and they've been working on the mystery of dolphins washing up on the shores of the atlantic we have one bottle nosed dolphin stranding that we just got a call for about ten minutes ago the responding to a call from a local resident we have no why where today a team of three packs a stretcher cart and genetics kid into a trunk and heads out. a twenty minute drive takes them to a remote part of chick's beach and they're halfway on the shore but not far enough to escape the wrath of the waves. our first dead dolphin of the day it's

a boy with the noun the whole carcass immediately the group gets to work photographing the dolphin measuring its length counting teeth and assigning it a number this is probably older get that old worn look see this dolphin is case number one two two two actually given the size i would definitely say the older it's a site that would sat in most beachgoers but for these researchers it's another opportunity to get to the bottom of these mysterious deaths are there some good information either right as the team drags the dolphin back into the truck and loads it in another call comes in another dead dolphin reported the team heads off to find it up and soundly east coast hundred dollars. happened washing up on the shores particularly here in virginia beach now experts simply don't know what is causing all these hundreds of dolphins to die but scientists say that dolphins in particular are a good measure of the health of the ocean so having all these carcasses washed up

on shore certainly isn't a good thing any time you see a marine mammal like a bottle is often in trouble that's concerning because they're they're mammals just like you and i it's kind of devastating really to see it and certainly it's not a good sign for the ocean environment back at the lab another group begins an autopsy to find some possible answers to these mysterious deaths. that plague scientists have been flying in from across the country to help the smell here is almost indescribable a mixture of fish and rotting flesh the smell sticks to your skin and clothing thanks to a thick blanket of humidity up to this point over two hundred ten dolphin carcasses have washed up on virginia's shores this summer four times the amount of previous years but after months of tireless research ocean scientists think they may have finally discovered the cause we don't know all the factors we do know that this dolphin morbillivirus is the primary agent that seems to be causing this event but

but there could be other complicating factors you know we know that these animals are exposed to a lot of different pollutants in the water they're stressed as a result of that whether that has any implications in this event or not it's way too early to tell but it is concerning it's the same disease that killed over seven hundred dolphins between one nine hundred eighty seven and one nine hundred eighty eight but the problem is that even with this diet. those scientists can do to stop the spread of the disease the bottom line is in something like this this is a this is not only a wild animal population but it's a wild animal population that spends its entire life at sea and living under water it's impossible for us to actually do anything out there to really alleviate this so even if it is the morbillivirus causing this all scientists can do is wait for the dolphins to wash up on shore and they were expecting many more before this disease runs its course in virginia beach magen lopez r.t. . and the landowners in north carolina may soon be forced to sell energy companies

the rights to the natural gas underneath their properties and rally last week state officials they approved a non-binding proposal which proponents argue would protect local residents from the uncommon from being uncompensated for gas inadvertently extracted from their own property now environment environmentalist on the other hand they argue that the fracking recombinant recommendation forces property owners to sell the natural gas under their homes whether or not they even want to joining me now from raleigh to discuss the issue is terrorists a victim juris is with the not excuse me the north carolina sustainable economic development and is teresa not theresa treece so can you characterize this proposal for us. yes that i'm with blue ridge environmental defense league actually but yes i've been following this issue almost since its inception with the study group and . what what was decided last wednesday essentially was to keep

a law that wasn't put in place in one nine hundred forty five that was designed for conventional gas and oil development which is very different than the hydraulic fracturing that we're talking about today and. and designed because to do just like you just mentioned to protect landowners from folks you know from their next door neighbor sucked in their resource out from under the under the ground and that doesn't happen in a tight shale situation. so there's some real question about whether we even need to retain this law or not and what can happen now is that if your neighbors of the gas companies. and the government decide that you're in a drilling unit and that they need your piece of the past so to speak. to you make things more cost effective to prevent wastefulness as they say they

can force you into selling your resource and as you mentioned you know whether you want to or not you know for whatever reason you don't want to do it whether you want to wait until the price goes up whether you like to save that for your children or grandchildren or whether you just don't just don't have a moral reason for not doing so and this study group could have recommended that we repeal the statute and they did not do so. and they've just left the door wide open for you know for the oil and gas industry to come in and make people. you know sell their gas whether they want to or not now at this point this is just a nonbinding proposal it's not a law what steps need to be taken for this proposal to become law. well my understanding is that some pieces of it will go to the for mining and energy commission for incorporation into some of the rule sets that they're developing but

the north carolina department of environment natural resources will be taking the recommendation to our legislature. and it's anybody's guess you know what will happen at that point. another thing i want to point out is this this does two things besides you know establishing the ability for this violation of property rights to occur it also gives the land man and the gas companies a big stick to approach people when they're considering whether they want to lease or not to say well you know you can either lease now or we can make you sick and so it's just patently unfair and you know there's even folks who have leased their land to gas companies already who don't feel that it's right. to be for them to be able to tell their neighbors what to do so it's it's very sad it was

a very very disturbing incision now the news and observer newspaper they said that this proposal has a very good chance of becoming law what do you personally think. like i said i think all bets are off. i would think. it would be my feeling that conservatives in particular property rights proponents and others would be very very concerned about this because. you know eminent domain also comes around comes along with the gas industry but this is just this is a little different because this is a private industry that is going to the government and using the might not blessing of the government to take you know they they do reimburse you but to to make you sell your resource whether you want to or not and you know you can't reimburse people for peace of mind and you're talking about folks is home and in lake county in particular. even with the high recommended percentage you're still talking about

the few controlling the manny and it's just very concerning i work pretty closely with landowners in that area. you know major argument for fracking is that it will generate jobs in north carolina what is your response to this i feel like that that argument is overblown we have a small resource here we have a small play additionally a lot of the jobs are transit and there are folks who come into town and they do what they're here to do in their contract work first and when they're done they leave and so i don't feel i just from what i've read and what i understood and what i've studied i don't feel it's going to be a long lasting. if any economic development strategy for north carolina and it's going to have negative costs such as road damage infrastructure problems

social services and so on that may not be considered so it's really hard to think that it's going to be a big moneymaker for the state thank you trees that was to raise vick live from raleigh north carolina you're welcome thank you for having me. and finally your parents might have told you that storks bring babies to their families but one egyptian arrested a bird after some suspicion of foul intentions now this is a stork that an egyptian fisherman brought to a local police station after noticing the electronic device attached to its feathers egypt has become increasingly volatile since democratically elected president mohamed morsi was forced from power by the military leaving citizenry's seven sons concerned about foreign influences now the egyptian fisherman was convinced convinced that the stork was spying on behalf of another government so he did of course what any concerned citizen would do when he conducted a citizen's arrest however authorities found that the verge was actually being

tracked by french scientists interested in the storks migration patterns so not a clandestine story after all which makes sense considering we've learned that spies would rather use your cell phone data than attach some data to a bird i marinated we'll be back here at five o'clock with more serious. technology innovations all the developments around. the future are covered. wealthy british.

markets. can. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's culture no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on r g.

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