coming up on our t.v. talks of u.s. military intervention may be shifting the international community is now seeking a deal where the syrian government hands over its chemical weapons that an updates from capitol hill just ahead and of the public may soon see more of the n.s.a.'s inner workings the u.s. government is expected to reveal the secret decisions of the pfizer court while more and more tech companies pressure the court for permission to divulge their requests an update on the n.s.a. secretive surveillance coming up and if you didn't get any sleep last night you're not alone millions of americans are developing new sleep disorders and with them a new dependency on big pharma a full breakdown on how these sleep friendly drugs are ruling the nation later in the show.

it's tuesday september tenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm lynn neary david and you're watching our t.v. we begin tonight with syria where the conversation on potential military action may be shifting a diplomatic solution is now on the table with syria out formally accepting a russian proposal to place. provision of the international community however earlier today france's foreign minister told reporters his russian counterpart was not enthusiastic about the binding un resolution on syria that would provide a framework to control the country's chemical weapons stockpile russian president vladimir putin said this of the proposal certainly this is all reasonable it will function and will work out only if the u.s. and those who support it on this issue pledge to renounce the use of force because it is difficult to make any country syria or any other country in the world to

unilaterally disarm if there is military action against it under consideration in another new development the syrian foreign minister said this afternoon that president bashar al assad's regime would sign the international chemical weapons convention syria was one of five countries that did not sign the treaty in one thousand nine hundred three he told a lebanese television station quote we are ready to fulfill our obligations in compliance with this treaty including through the provision of information about our chemical weapons we will open our storage sites and cease production we are ready to open these facilities to russia other countries and the united nations we intend to give up chemical weapons all together with the prospect for a diplomatic resolution senate majority leader harry reid announced yesterday that he would postpone a crucial vote to authorize military action meanwhile today the house of representatives continue to debate the issue the house's armed services committee held a hearing earlier with top administration officials r t political commentator sam

sachs went to the hearings today and brings us more. for the third time in a week secretary of state john kerry defense secretary chuck hagel and chairman of the joint chiefs general martin dempsey took to capitol hill today to make the white house's case for military strikes in syria the harm the house armed services committee behind me is hosting the hearing and unlike the previous hearing last week there is an actual nonmilitary solution on the table it's the russian proposal which reports indicate that the syrian government has agreed to to hand over chemical weapons stockpiles to the international community and have them destroyed secretary of state kerry address this latest proposal this cannot be a process of avoidance that has to be real has to be measurable tangible and it is exceedingly difficult i want everybody here to know to fulfill those conditions but we're waiting for that proposal but we're not waiting for long but at the same time

kerry didn't back down from the threat of u.s. military action in fact said that a possible peaceful solution was made possible only because of threats to strike the only reason the i said regime as even publicly apparently consented to the russians that they'd be willing to do something having never admitted they had these weapons is because there's a threat of force is in front of them now there were more concerns from lawmakers about the scope of a potential strike secretary of state kerry reiterated again that this will be a small action it's not iraq it's not around it's not a years war what i was doing was trying to point out to people that we were engaged in a strike which we have again and again and if you want to take my comments in their entirety i have said this will be meaningful it will be serious. the outside regime will feel it because it will degrade their military capacity but compared to iraq kossovo libya it's small it is not any of those things for now though approval

from congress for military action is on hold the senate was supposed to hold a vote tomorrow it's been delayed senate minority leader mitch mcconnell came out today opposed to strikes and a new resolution is being drafted in the senate that calls for diplomatic solutions first before any military strikes are permitted now that may be able to attract more support in the upper chamber unclear when or if there will be votes in the house this week or next week but this russian proposal may have legs president obama met with french president obama and and agreed to work with china and russia on the u.n. security council to come up with a resolution compelling syria to hand over its chemical weapons and all of this comes just ahead of the president's planned primetime address to the nation tonight to make the case for syria stripes how all of this latest news has changed the president's calculation and desire for action remains to be seen but for right now

a military strike in syria looks less likely this week than it did last week but things still are moving very quickly here on capitol hill sam sacks our team. while sam sachs was on the hill this afternoon he also tried to ask secretary of defense chuck hagel a few pointed questions to syria table if assad says he's going to retaliate doesn't that immediately escalate the conflict moving forward. here. only water. but if he says he's going to retaliate then you're going to make i'm sorry doesn't that turn it into a war. looks like secretary hagel was done with questioning for the day. last night president obama offered his most positive comments yet on the syrian crisis and the russian plan for the international community to take custody of syria's chemical weapons the news came out of the multiple interviews that were granted to different network and cable news channels and although there were six

different anchors doing the questioning our t. found that each of the interviews were based on the same talking points take a look. do we want to be involved in another war the answer is no people are of or wary about it understandably and they have seen the consequences of this less decade they think in terms of blood and treasure it has not been worth that it's not what they expected when they signed on to the iraq war back in two thousand and three i understand why a lot of the american service system that think the polls are clear i've read them is this is not iraq this is not afghanistan this is not libya i'll explain this is not iraq this is not afghanistan this is not even libya this isn't like iraq it's not like afghanistan is not even like libya right now the american people are not persuaded right now members of congress we're just getting back still have questions so we're going to have time to have a good deliberation in congress we will pursue this diplomatic track my preference

consistently has been a diplomatic resolution if we can resolve this without military conflict that is my great preference my central goal throughout this process has not been to embroil ourselves in a civil war in syria i think we should explore and exhaust all avenues of diplomatic resolution of this if we can exhaust these diplomatic efforts and come up with a formula that gives the international community a verifiable in forcible mechanism to deal with these chemical weapons in syria that i'm all for it is important for us to put on the ground every diplomatic channel that we can and we are going to run this to ground but we're going to run this to ground i have instructed john kerry to talk directly to the russians and run this to ground it president obama will address the nation if the evening at nine pm eastern time to further clarify his thoughts on intervention in syria and we are t.-y. have special coverage of the speech here is what you can expect. i will seek

authorization for the use of force from the american people's representatives in congress as we have. the world is wondering whether it out of her brothers. were really rallied against us or benefited very i. think in. theory. that. a lot of people who are really going to wait for something like this administration has failed to show me the direct threat to the united states of america i'll let. her know that. i feel quite. know what's at stake here is the way to resolve this. so that's nine pm eastern right here on our team make sure to tune in. well we now

know who stands to gain the most from a military strike on syria financially speaking that is its of course the defense industry which has already seen a rise in its stock prices since u.s. officials first started talking about military action in fact boeing general dynamics and lockheed martin all saw huge gains immediately after august twenty first which is the same day a chemical attack took place in the country but frontline meant to get the big bucks is raytheon a defense company that began to see a huge surge after the obama administration was quoted as saying that an attack would likely include tomahawk cruise missiles the same missiles that raytheon produces the company's stock additionally climbed on august twenty sixth the day u.n. inspectors arrived in syria to investigate the use of chemical weapons in fact raytheon saw a chair jump to seventy seven dollars and ninety three. cents which marks the highest

price for its stock in the last fifteen years but it seems what goes up must come down because as soon as discussion of congressional opposition to the strike began reading on stock began to slip back down perhaps making it clear which side the defense industry is on when it comes to the syria debate. and today the justice department released eighteen hundred pages of new n.s.a. related documents they were previously secret decisions of the foreign intelligence surveillance court however the information has finally been released after a long running freedom of information request submitted by both the a.c.l.u. and the electronic frontier foundation the documents indicate that the national security agency violated its own internal guidelines in tracking phone numbers it collects in bulk under its domestic surveillance program the documents also show that the n.s.a. presented a false information to the surveillance court about the violation in fact u.s.

district court judge reggie walton who oversaw a u.s. spy court almost shut down the government's domestic surveillance program after he quote lost confidence in the ability of n.s.a. officials to operate it in the right way judge walton gave a blistering opinion in two thousand and nine over the officials who had been accessing domestic phone records for nearly three years without quote reasonable articulate suspicion that those people really even connected to terrorism later that same year our justice department lawyer reported that in some cases it appeared the n.s.a. was distributing the sensitive phone records by e-mail to one hundred eighty nine analysts many who were not approved by the intelligence court to see them this information is exactly what senator ron wyden was referring to when he spoke about this very issue back in two thousand and eleven as a senate intel. committee member he was worried about the programs but couldn't say

anything he said then quote when the american people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the patriot act they will be stunned and they will be angry earlier today i was joined by a lizabeth going teen who co-director of the liberty and national security program at the brennan center for justice and i first asked her for her take on what senator wyden was foreshadowing i think as americans now know that the government has interpreted this authority which on its face looks fairly narrow the government is allowed to obtain records from third parties like telephone companies if. that those records are relevant to an authorized foreign intelligence or international terrorism investigation and the government and the fines the court have interpreted this authority to allow the bulk collection of all americans telephone records that really doesn't look on its face consistent with what the statute allows and so i think americans were. shocked to learn that their own telephone records are being

treated as relevant for counterterrorism purposes absolutely well the a.c.l.u. filed their way a lawsuit shortly after ron wyden said that and why i wanted to get your take on why you think it's coming out now why two years later we finally having these documents released a combination of reasons part of it is that the disclosures by edward snowden forced the government to try to get ahead of some of the some of the additional disclosures that it knew were forthcoming it had to try to spin what was coming out in its own way or to put it in a nicer way it legitimately wanted to explain maybe some of the already set that had been released and so it had to engage with its own series of disclosures that it otherwise would not have wanted to but there's also the fact that the court in these in these four cases freedom of information cases was putting pressure on the government and not buying the government's justification that everything had to

stay classified without any review and do you think this is part of a growing trend to see more sort of transparency within the five the courts i think we'll see more transparency where transparency is necessary i think the government's hand was forced in this case by the snowden disclosures and by the courts in these four year cases i think as long as the government's hand continues to be forced we'll see more disclosures and more transparency otherwise i think it's up in the air whether that will happen sure and you know many people defend the secrecy of the five accords by saying if you make a transform parent means that they can't do their job accurately what do you make of that argument well looking at the at the opinions that now have been disclosed it's pretty clear that it is possible to. he's out some of the operational details that need to be kept secret legitimately so from some of the legal analysis that the public has a right to see so i think that that principle should inform what the court does going forward absolutely and of course now we know that four different tech companies facebook microsoft yahoo and in my head and i'm flipping the last one but

they're all seeking permission to disclose information about how users are being spied on do you see this as a p.r. move or do you think this could be real you know basically elicit real substantive change both i mean i think the companies have quite an incentive to try to burnish their own image as advocates of their customers privacy i think their image has been tainted by some of the revelations that they cooperated in some of the n.s.a.'s active activities but at the same time these disclosures if they are permitted would be very important in terms of helping the public to understand what kind of surveillance is going on and how their own communications and transactions are being and you think they will be that these requests will be granted do you think it's likely i think it's possible they'll be granted at least in part and i say that because the director of national intelligence has on his own agreed to release some of the same information that the companies are seeking to release but even if users did know the extent to which their data was being compromised do you

think that that would stop them from really using facebook or google or do you think that we're we're too intertwined with these services with these web sites at this point to really back away and say i won't take part in that anymore i think there are companies that might offer alternatives to consumers in this country but i think really it's the international population that a lot of these companies are focused on because they want to be able to market their services to people in europe who are wary who have different privacy standards frankly and are dismayed by what some of these companies have been doing in cooperation with the n.s.a. so i say. in a way those are some of the markets that the companies are most concerned with and lastly i want to get your take on something we only have a minute left but apple just unveiled their latest i phone and it has this really i don't know if you heard about it has this feature where you can sort of now it scans your your fingerprint and that's how identifies who you are. obviously a little problematic i mean do you think there will be pushback or should be

pushback to that future i is going to sit around in a relationship i'm sorry considering the relationship between apple and the n.s.a. i assume it's a voluntary feature and i would hope that people are aware of their rights and also aware of some of the risks before they decide to scan their fingerprints well said well thank you so much for coming on i really appreciate your time elizabeth co-director of the liberty and national program at the brennan center for justice thanks so much experiment. got sleepy while apparently many americans do not in fact between fifty and seventy million americans suffer from some kind of sleep disorder and with so many americans not getting the sleep that their body needs we're seeing more and more people develop a new dependence on sleep friendly drugs r t correspondent liz wahl has the story desperate for some sleep more than nine million americans turn to sleeping pills had many patients call them and say that they're

not sleeping well may have been dreamed in years in the first study of its kind the centers for disease control found one in twenty five americans pop pills to get some shuteye the c.d.c. found some trends among users prescription pill use increases with age is higher among women increases with education and pills are prescribed to those that doctors diagnose with a sleep disorder. america's sleeping pill of choice ambien or its generic name is old but it's a sedative that typically knocks the user out pretty quick early this year the food and drug administration lowered the recommended dosage for women because it would keep them drowsy the next day and there's reports of people sleepwalking while on the drug doing everything from eating to driving to having sex and they don't remember any of it oh it's not just prescription pills americans are using to fall asleep millions more are turning to over the counter sleep aids to get some shuteye

some of them are meant to make you sleepy others have drowsiness as a side effect whether or not they're taking drugs an estimated fifty to seventy million americans suffer from a sleep disorder or sleep deprivation why a growing number of insomniacs physicians say there are several factors leading to sleepless nights people are getting heavier and when they're getting heavier they have more difficulty breathing. night it's a condition called sleep apnea in addition to higher rates of obesity stress anxiety and staying up using electronics are also keeping many americans from falling asleep but what folks often do is though use these medications in lieu of their normal sleep patterns and they can get stuck using them in dispute or sort of become addicted to them medical professionals say not only are more people suffering from sleep disorders but doctors tend to prescribe sleep aids more often than one of questions i asked my colleagues

a psychologist psychologist at what percentage point do you start to think maybe it's not an individual illness that there's something troubling in our whole society and culture physicians say prescription pills and other medications should be a short term fix but the long term cure for insomnia is practicing sleep hygiene not watching t.v. late at night. trying not to drink caffeine waited night trying to get some weight loss so that your breathing is better at night in washington liz wahl r t. almost everyone in the u.s. says use or at least heard of a website called craigslist it's a one stop shop to buy and sell pretty much anything you can think of from household items to specialized services to even dates but have you ever stopped to notice the slightly stranger items that the website offers such as peta on the pregnancy tests yes believe it or not that's the latest hot commodity on the market

artie's perry and boring house the story. are you in a hurry to get married what would you do to get your boyfriend to pop the question some desperate people have turned to faking a pregnancy in the past but now there's a modern twist turns out women are selling positive pregnancy test on crags was and people are actually buying them and a quick search on craigslist in d.c. we found several ads want to play a joke on a spouse ex or family member this is the perfect way to do it i'm seven months pregnant and i'm willing to give you a pov the pregnancy test for a low fee of thirty dollars or the urine itself or twenty you never know if you will go as far as to providing a test himself in this is the ad i responded to when i met the woman telling her p. she provided me with this positive pregnancy test earlier i spoke to comedian alex burnett and asked him if he thinks men could fall for that i think you should never underestimate people's stupidity. i think people can often be very very stupid or

or look a full of you know. naive it's a so i took to the streets to see if we could find anyone who has actually fallen for this scam so would you do if your girlfriend faked her pregnancy. i'd probably break up with her one of you didn't know it was fake if she provided a real positive pregnancy test but with her. i would sure get my money back and i break up with her and then hook up with her sister i'm speechless. i've actually had this experience before it's very upsetting that doesn't sound too positive. i don't i don't know about that i think that's kind of messed up. could be a funny prank so i mean if you got a good video of it so i don't think they should be doing this i think morally. this isn't a good joke this is a poor taste in a joke ever your girlfriend show you fake pregnancy test do you think you would

fall for the same oppose. you bra. but there are some people who aren't pleased with this emerging market the woman selling the positive said that she got an email from an angry citizen think she was a horrible person for doing that and hey if people want to sell pregnancy or scores or diplomas from harvard and someone else. you know hey that's the american way right we all will buy and sell anything as long as there's a market for it i think it's fantastic and i don't i don't begrudge her at all new reports show that raising a child can cost more than two hundred forty one thousand dollars so the extra cash could provide new families with the question they need to start saving but here's some advice if you see a positive pregnancy test always get a doctor's opinion and washington d.c. i'm perry and boring. think before you ank ink your body that is as exactly what washington d.c. lawmakers are hoping d.c.

residents will do before committing to a new piercing or tattoo on friday the city's department of health proposed a twenty four hour mandatory waiting period for people who want to make that semi permanent statement if this regulation passes prospective customers would also need to sign a questionnaire to disclose any preconditions that might affect the healing process including pregnancy diabetes and herpes body artist would also have to provide proof that they have been vaccinated for hepatitis b. and agreed to undergo biohazard training but in addition to minimizing health risks the d.c. lawmakers say this will minimize regrets for those who compulsively decide to go under the needle so i guess drunken nights for some people will just never be the same. it's been in many years since the american public learned about the health dangers of the usual cigarette now many americans attempt to quit smoking through a variety of ways such as using nicotine patches or even going cold turkey and now

there's an increased use of electronic cigarettes as a safer alternative but are these cigarettes becoming a problem in themselves the residents lori her finished with more on that. just want to look like the world was finally starting to kick a deadly cigarette habit the divakar industry found a new way to instill a with the masses easy to gretz now all the rage and guess what usage among teens in the u.s. has doubled according to bloomberg u.s. consumers will spend one billion dollars on battery powered smokes this year ten

times more than four years ago good job america easy grads were introduced to the mass market years ago as a smoking cessation tool like the patch they offer a way to still get that sweet stream of nicotine without inhaling smoke from burning tobacco leaves and like the patch some research points to them being successful and helping some people quit but unlike the patch east cigarettes are being glamorized as something the cool kids are doing celebrities like jenny mccarthy and courtney love are appearing in million dollar ads for them unlike the pads east cigarette come in child friendly flavors like chocolate and cherry crush maybe that's why unlike the patch more and more kids are trying them in many places in the u.s. kids can just waltz into a store and buy them because easy aren't regulated like tobacco products are just

as it was getting harder for adults to feed their nicotine addiction and bars and restaurants easy cigarettes came along to help addicts continue to use everywhere. around the clock big tobacco couldn't be happier they'll try to tell you that each cigarettes aren't bad for you because there's no smoke or tar involved but the truth is there hasn't been that much research into them yet and for limb unary research has revealed that easter eggs from some of the leading brands contain personage and and hazardous chemicals all the research phone particles of metals and silicon in east cigarette vapor and smoke first is vaporous by east bigger and are just a way to get your nicotine fix and nicotine can block the release of insulin and increase your risk of heart attack or stroke. the bottom line is easing arrests are just another way for big rotten corporations to make huge profits off of

people being addicted to something that is bad for them so whether jenny mccarthy smokes them or not the bottom line is our growing ease that you read addiction is most definitely not cool tonight but to talk about that me on twitter at the risk of. well that does it for now guys for more on the stories we've covered today go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our website at r t dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at amir a david and don't forget we'll be back here at nine pm with coverage of president obama's address to the nation on the fate of syria we'll see right back here at eight.

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