coming up on ard t.v. in new york the u.n. general assembly continues diplomatic talks circle around the syria crisis and the possible improvement of u.s. iran relations we'll have the latest on today's events ahead and the u.s. military claims that the guantanamo bay hunger strike is over but that's not the only news coming out of gitmo we'll tell you why the detention facility was seeking millions of dollars for upgrades coming up. and a florida man was struck and killed by a police officer now the man's family is pressing for criminal charges against that officer but so far that hasn't happened more on this case later in the show.

it's wednesday september twenty fifth four pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sachs and you're watching our t.v. and we begin with continuing coverage of the united nations general assembly in new york city speaking in front of the general assembly today are leaders of roughly two dozen nations but the real business at the u.n. headquarters is what's taking place in smaller meetings throughout the week one on ones or group meetings among diplomats to hash out some of the most pressing international crises to begin with an iranian nuclear deal may be back on the table president obama a newly elected iranian president hassan rouhani didn't end up meeting face to face yesterday secretary john kerry secretary of state john kerry is scheduled to meet with his iranian counterpart on thursday for further talks over iran's nuclear program elsewhere the u.n. security council is busy consider. a resolution on syria's chemical weapons also

keeping secretary of state john kerry busy this time with russian foreign minister sergei lavrov who helped author the deal so what might come of all of this well joining me now from new york for the latest on the happenings at the u.n. general assembly our teas on a stasia turkana welcome on a sausage thank you so let's let's start by talking about iran much hyped meeting between president obama a newly elected iranian president hassan rouhani never went down but president obama in his speech yesterday did talk about dispatching secretary of state john kerry to work on an iranian nuclear deal so kerry is going to meet with his iranian counterpart tomorrow what can we expect here we sold this deal this deal proved elusive with ahmadinejad at the helm what changes now that rouhani is there. well sam i look like we're finally beginning to see some baby steps take place between iran and the u.s. trying to kind of finally approach each other that a highly anticipated meeting that we were looking forward to seeing between obama

and rouhani would have been the first in over three decades between the u.s. and iranian president that meeting did not take place but yes tomorrow kerry and has iranian counterpart will be holding talks and those should certainly shed more light on whether or not we could see some kind of improvement between these relationship between these two countries and of course you know the reason that people are being optimistic that something might actually come out of this is because over the last eight years especially when mahmoud ahmadinejad would come here the previous president lots of fiery speeches controversial statements aimed at the west and the west of course for years now the united states and the west have been concerned about iran's uranium enrichment program which iran has always claimed was peaceful but according to the u.s. and the west did not cooperate enough to feel to make the international community feel safe when it came to that program but with these latest developments it looks like talks on this will take place because we heard from a saudi certainly take rouhani certainly take

a save that iran is not interested in tension between the u.s. and tehran and the don't want this iran of phobia to continue throughout the world and generally he said that iran is ready to remove any concerns so we'll see if that happens you know these are interesting developments considering it's been about a decade since previous president george w. bush labeled iran firmly in the axis of evil let's move on to syria here john kerry and russian foreign minister sergey lavrov held a biological meeting last night or is lucian they've worked out is they'll be considered in the security council what hurdles are there still in way of passage and what sort of timeframe are we looking at here well samar from my yesterday's meetings we can tell you that russian foreign minister did say that the talks were productive rob regardless of the. disagreements that. remain on syria between russia and the u.s. he did say that there is a mutual understanding on how to move forward based on the talks held in geneva and if we remember this means that what is being looked at is setting up

a political transition where that would get all parties to agree on a political process in solving the syrian crisis obviously this is much harder than it sounds and in terms of the points of disagreement of course the biggest issue between russia and the u.s. the key kind of players on working on this resolution is the potential use of force if the syrian government does not comply in moving its chemical weapons under international control of course the united states continues to say this needs to be a clause that will be in included in the resolution that any not following up on agreements should be met with with force russia however constantly consistently has said this is this is not possible so it's hard to tell what the timeline is in this case we certainly know they're working on this around the clock this screw this comes a few weeks after the president tried to rally the american people in support of military strikes against syria and we now have this new c.b.s. new york times poll showing that

a plurality of americans now disapprove of president obama's foreign policy forty nine percent disapproving to forty percent disapproval ratings have grown actually since july of this year what do you think speech in this growing disenchantment and how might that hinder what president obama is trying to do at the u.n. this week well sam you know i think what explains these numbers is the issues the main foreign policy issues that the u.s. has been trying to deal with have really been at a stall and i guess that explains why these numbers are so high these dissidence approval ratings certainly you know some it's a very interesting poll another number of speaking of iran for example which has not been moving forward as of yet for years only twenty two percent of recipients of the c.b.s. new york times poll said they expected things to get better because probably. there's been no improvement for a very long time with syria the numbers are eighty two percent approve of the deal but two thirds think it's not going to actually happen so you know and of course

the majority of americans continue to disapprove of any military option when it comes to syria because of the endless warfare that the u.s. has been i'm bald in parties on a stasia churkin i will be checking back in with you throughout thank you. now moving on to the detention facility at guantanamo bay the new york times reports today that the pentagon has rejected a nearly two hundred million dollar renovation project for defoe that included nearly one hundred million dollars for new guard bear million for a new mess hall and fifty million to replace camp seven which currently houses what are referred to as high value detainees pentagon decided lack of congressional support as the reason for denying the renovation of the facility a facility that is beginning to deteriorate after more than a decade of so-called temporary operation meanwhile according to the military the hunger strike that brought renewed attention to the facility over the last several months is now over or teasmade in lopez has more on this new development.

for over seven months now we have been reporting on mass hunger strikes happening at the guantanamo bay detention facility on monday military officials announced that a core group of nineteen are left but before we declare the mass hunger strike more or less over let's take a quick look back at how the protests played out and what has changed since it started on february sixth the hunger strike reportedly began lawyers and humanitarian groups said the detainees initial reason for the strike was the constant and invasive searches that guards conducted on the cells as well as the confiscation of several korans however it took weeks before prison officials formally agg knowledge what was going on but even then their numbers of how many people were actually participating was significantly lower than other reports over two months into the strike the spokesman for the high commissioner for the un human rights body wrote a letter to r.t.

saying that they are looking into the details of the mass hunger strike and throughout this time the more the public knew about the hunger strike the more protests and petitions actually took place across the country one time zero detainees saw a new change of command on april twelfth when the obama administration appointed rear admiral richard butler as the new commander of the joint task force guantanamo on april twenty third the military realized how serious the strike was and it sent forty additional medical personnel to guantanamo bay seven days later president obama formally acknowledged the hunger strikes in his speech and reaffirmed his commitment to permanently closing down the facility a little less than a month after that the president held his first major foreign policy speech in years at the national defense university we're going to lay out his plans to transfer d.t.s. out of gitmo he also announced that he would assign a senior envoy to lead that task it was the moment human rights advocates and

prisoners themselves have. waiting to hear for months during the hunger strikes and also during those forced feedings but that momentum stopped abruptly on june fourth when the house of representatives not only voted to keep the facility open but to block the use of taxpayer money to housed detainees transferred out of the prison but some members of congress wanted to see for themselves just how bad the conditions really were and get no president obama's chief of staff denis mcdonough along with senators feinstein and mccain traveled to cuba when they came back they announced that one hundred four people were still refusing to eat forty one of whom were being force fed now in order to bring attention to the cause and is show how inhumane force feeding can be one protester went on a sixty one day fast on september seventh he allowed himself to be force fed in front of the white house and then monday military officials announced that they

will stop releasing daily hunger strike updates because the number of protesters steadily dropped to a core group of nineteen defiant protesters now keep in mind that throughout all of this lawyers of the detainees complained that the military was trying to force the men to end their hunger strikes by denying them water or even visiting rights lawyer david remes described on r t how guards were subjected detainees to invasive body searches before they met with their lawyers the guards actually found up the men's genitals and that is something that is strictly forbidden in islam so many men simply stopped going to their appointments those searches were temporarily halted but then they started once again also the military was shot it was slow to realize that the hunger strike was actually happening and that the numbers vary dramatically from the reports from lawyers and human rights groups they take a look at this this is the line that shows the official prison count for the hunger

strikers as as well. reported by the military the official start of the count on march fourteenth with nine and then slowly slowly very slowly moved up that line to over one hundred six participants meanwhile this is how human rights lawyers and humanitarians say the longer strike played out so obviously there is a huge difference when it comes to the hunger strike and when it started and also how many people were participating but eventually officials did acknowledge that one hundred in six men were participating at one point in time and that's where we are today a lot is changed since the hunger strike began but whether it was truly a result of this mass hunger strike depends on who you ask in washington meghan lopez r.t. and i want to capitol hill for those of you who are obsessed with watching c.-span i know there must be dozens of you you may have been surprised when your regularly

scheduled calculable programming was interrupted by this marathon speech what was routinely mislabeled as a filibuster by texas senator ted cruz who spent the night trying to make his case against obamacare and get his republican colleagues to join him in defeating any spending measure in the senate that keeps the government funded while also keeping obamacare funded despite obamacare being senator cruz's motivation alongside perhaps boosting his own profile the speech tended to meander into the absurd would you like them here or there i would not like them here or there i would not like them anywhere i do not like green eggs and ham i do not like them sam-i am what americans try to if they discovered they did not like. green eggs and ham and they did not like obamacare either one of my favorite children's stories actually from when i was a kid was the little engine that could on

a saturday or sunday morning when your dad's making pancakes it is very cool when he can like flip of the make him make a do a flip in the air and catch you know some time ago i tweeted a speech that ashton kutcher gave and i will confess that phrase a rebellion against oppression conjured up to me the rebel alliance fighting against the empire the empire being the washington d.c. establishment and indeed immediately on hearing that phrase i wondered if it some point we were going to see a tall gentleman in a mechanical breathing apparatus come forward and say in a deep voice mike lee i am your father. not. sure got it ok no all of this takes place as the government is scheduled to run out of funding on monday and then hit its debt limit a few weeks later or boring has the latest from the circus that is topical hill

all eyes have turned to washington d.c. of congress is in a full fledged debt debate this afternoon sen ted cruz completed his talkathon after spending over twenty one hours trying to delay the senate from proceeding with the house passed funding bill take a lesson this fight is not about any member of this body this fight is not about personalities look most americans could not give a flying flip about a bunch of what politicians in washington who cares you know almost all of us are in cheap shoots with bad haircuts who cares. well you might be asking yourself what was he talking about and what did he accomplish while his efforts were fruitless because at noon today the senate at georgia forcing him to yield control of the floor so this was not technically a filibuster since he was not able to delay a vote but this was to bring awareness to the negative impacts obamacare would have

on the economy what she was successful with as hash tag stand with cruz was trending on twitter through the night and into the afternoon today but why did senator cruz want to delay proceeding with the bill before by his own party and basically he wanted to stop senate majority leader harry reid from having the opportunity to amend the house passed bill and remove the provision that defines obamacare this is how he brought it on friday or saturday and this week we will vote on cloture anyone who votes yes for cloture anyone who votes to cut off debate on this bill is voting. to allow senate majority leader harry reid to fully fund obamacare the senate agreed to proceed with the government funding bill this afternoon so no matter what now we are read it is going to move forward as he already committed to strip the

obamacare of the funding provision a vote on final passage will take place no later than sunday and it's expected to pass this clean bill will then go back to the house and it's anyone's guess if the house will pass the senate's amended bill the possibility of a shutdown is becoming more real the administration told us this would be dangerous and cause economic ruin but not everyone agrees as glenn jacobs a wrestler who has taken the politics told us. we will not have a complete economic collapse you know the first thing the government always talks about when there's fear of a government shutdown is that planes are going to start crashing in the world's going to come to an end and then there's going to be giant earthquakes and it's going to be a catastrophe of biblical proportions and nothing ever happens except people generally find out that maybe we don't need these politicians as much as they think that we do it. the house is also expected to bring up a separate bill to encrease the government's borrowing limit treasury secretary

jack lew sent a letter to congress today warning the treasury now estimates that were extraordinary measures will be exhausted no waiter then october seventeenth this brings the possibility of a debt default closer as well but government shutdown does occur essential services such as national security law enforcement an air traffic control will continue military benefits checks will still be mailed out as well as other means the postal service will still be in service in the case of the debt limit is not raised the united states would not to be able to meet all of its obligations this does not necessarily mean we would automatically default on the debt though you would think washington complete shambles but it's a lot of pomp and circumstance too in washington d.c. a parian boring r.t. . this was thirty eight year old marlon brown he was killed last may when a police officer in florida ran into brown with his police car. as you'll see in

this footage showing the incident brown was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt he fled from officers and that's when delay and police officer james harris sped on to the scene drove past the officers in pursuit and slammed his cruiser right into roberts who had slipped and fallen on the ground roberts died from his injuries. officer harris was fired but is that all that should happen the city of dillon did pay a settlement of five hundred fifty thousand dollars to brown's ex-wife for his death that settlement also protected the city from any further legal action but the family of marlon brown wants the officer who killed him to face vehicular manslaughter charges earlier this month a grand jury looked at the evidence and decided not to charge former officer harris with any crime but according to an attorney representing the family quote marlon brown was executed in a vegetable garden now for more i'm joined by matthew finney system editor for

reason dot com and reason twenty four seven news thanks for joining me don matthew thanks for having it so here's what i don't understand assuming officer harris stopped his vehicle jumped out pulled out his gun and fired three shots into marlon brown killing him. he would likely be facing some sort of second degree murder charges assuming who knows what the way police are charged with crimes nowadays but the fact that he used his car to kill him no charges does that make any sense to you i mean well i'm i'm obviously not a lawyer but it does seem very strange to me that particularly in light of the video that was released that he's not actually facing any criminal charges i'm totally bemused by the grand jury decision here not to actually have criminal charges perhaps that is very strange indeed i mean what what what is i think is also worth remembering is that the medical examiner rishon initially said that brown wasn't killed by the impact of the car but as the photos you just showed reveals it's hard to see how he wasn't the medical examiner said he was expected

from being trapped under the car and then we have the funeral home. very brown saying look at the bodies this is a massive trauma. that almost looks like and i don't want to i don't want to speculate but almost looks like they were trying to do a cover up here of what actually happened not knowing that a video might be released or something we all know and then the video was only released after the initial incident was reported and i think what is also sort of interesting is that the settlement given to the family. is in place but the office is still up facing criminal charges so the family are going to get money but the the officer involved is not in any trouble and like i said earlier if you look at the video it seems like that is you know ample space for the officer to stop his car and it's also worth remembering that there was you know this was a chase that started because of a seatbelt violation this is hardly an armed robbery a drug chase or anything like that we hear about these sort of wrongful deaths at the hands of police fairly often last week we had jonathan ferrell in a florida a and m.

university study he was in a car auction he was trying to seek help and i guess he was waving his arms to wildly in the street and was shot and killed by police we just had five officers who were charged with civil rights violations in new orleans post katrina for shooting and killing unarmed people civilians on bridge a. edge their conviction was recently overturned does this sort of culture of impunity of police not really facing any consequences when they step over any boundaries fuel more police brutality moving forward well i think absolutely right that police are getting away with sort of these outrageous under way with a murder well yeah and well i think not only fuels perhaps a culture of this perhaps in police forces but also. so that reinforces a culture in some parts of this country of people not trusting the police and you know the entire communities across this country where police are not viewed as people who enforce safety or you know protecting the property i mean myself growing

up i was always told if you're in trouble call the police or approach a police officer but that's not what a lot of people are told across this country going to the same time there seems to be a lot of difference given to the police i want you know a resident of this told local news outlet that the officer was just doing his job everyone knows that you don't run from the cops unless you did something wrong and have a reason to run you don't just run because you weren't wearing a seatbelt could there be a cultural problem here too i mean marlon brown was. you know he had been arrested several times before he'd been convicted of some felonies before. is their problem where we just immediately assume this guy's a bad guy he doesn't deserve any rights or any and actually very reason in my former colleague who's now at the mike riggs mentioned that you know he had a suspended license and was on probation but that hardly seems. you have a high speed chase which ensued i mean it's this this whole case is full of so many tragic elements especially because you know we have these stupid seat bubbles to begin with and why it's anyone's business if you know someone in i think it was you

know in the very very early hours of the morning is driving around without seatbelt is is totally beyond me doesn't it shows the importance of having videotape evidence someplace where they're stashing videos or citizens being able to but the record the case also i see even with videos people get a lot of stuff. about the feeding assistant editor at reason dot com and reason twenty four seven years thanks. then finally more discontent is brewing between members of congress and the top secret house intelligence committee one of the gate keepers of the national security state secrets speaking at the liberty political action conference congressman justin amash retold a story about something that happened to him in august when he and other colleagues were trying to access a national security dock. from the house intelligence committee. according to a model rather the notifying members through the proper channels that the document would be available for viewing the house intel committee instead sent out a mass email via the cluttered spam filled dear colleague system

so they said ok we'll make this document available to you but we're not really going to give notice to anyone they send it through the dear colleague system this is a system that it's almost like a spam folder frankly not everyone in congress has signed up to it and basically it's a system where you. send letters to your colleagues about different issues will you co-sponsor my bill will you sign my letter that kind of thing normally if you're getting. information about an upcoming briefing or an upcoming document that's going to be available to members of congress you would get an e-mail an e-mail a normal e-mail would come to you to all members of congress saying hey there's a document it's going to be available come stop by. but no we got it through the dear colleague system so basically the house intel committee wants to notify members of document disclosures in the same way that your crazy aunt wants to

notify you about chain e-mails that you have to forward to ten people or else a cat dies or something not only that the document was made available with less than a twenty four hour notice on a friday just before congress was set to go on a five week recess and anyone who knows capitol hill knows that on a friday before recess the place is a ghost town members are on jets flying back home so naturally the house intel committee which has been dogged by criticism for its reclusive eighty and penchant for secrecy chose that friday as the ideal day to make this disclosure and for those lucky members who did stumble into their year dear colleague spam folder that day and found out about it well hopefully they forward the email to ten people you know for good luck. 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 dot com forward slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at sam sachs we'll see you right back here at five pm.

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talk to the man mr president this is what some are saying to barack obama as he and his are waiting counterparts address the united nations well hard liners in both countries particularly the u.s. to ride diplomacy in on its negotiations there appears to be a genuine moment for engagement in the u.s. ever take yes for our nation's. spy case to scooby snacks the insulting thing is that they actually have the nerve to call if. you smoke and you're smoking something that is laced with your even know what they're many many different than me. that is right there are no real move for him only. there's nowhere for the regulations are. just the smoking light no idea what is in the.

well it's on your. face you know. a pleasure to have you with us here on our team today i'm sure. it is easy to. please.

people that want to. fight. this. story. the first thing. the president did not keep his promise. two years later on time tomorrow is still operating. on shutting the door on that detention center really and the trauma of one timeout. and can the closing of a prison really low.