coming up on r t in afghanistan tribal leaders gather for on a momentous vote an issue should u.s. troops be granted immunity in the country beyond twenty four teams the future of u.s. intervention in afghanistan coming up going nuclear senate democrats are changing the protocol to approve presidential nominees those that mean a clearer path for janet yellen an update from capitol hill on the push for the next fed chair and food lovers be wary of an attempt to tip the scale in favor of clear arteries the f.d.a. is about to take away your trans fats will get saturated in the details of it later in the show.

here thursday november twenty first five pm in washington d.c. meghan lopez if you were watching r t well political and tribal elder results are convening in kabul afghanistan this week to discuss the future of u.s. troops in the country the meeting is known as loya jirgah more than two hundred thousand tribal elders will vote on whether or not to give us troops immunity in afghanistan beyond two thousand and fourteen without such an agreement the u.s. has threatened to pull all troops out of the country and let afghan troops take on the taliban on their own president hamid karzai and u.s. secretary of state john kerry have already reached a draft agreement to rewrite immunity for u.s. troops for at least another decade now the tribal elders have their hand that modifying the deal after their vote it will go on to afghanistan's parliament then back to karzai for his signature but in a surprising turn corners announced today that he plans to defer signing this bill

if a success until his successor is chosen after the elections earlier i was joined by scott horton he's a contributing editor at harper's magazine i first asked him how important is this decision coming out of loya jirga and what it likely pass. well i think this is a key issue frankly. is. the most prestigious most powerful institution in afghanistan it's the supreme council or the elders council . and it has tremendous credibility and power and it's because it's such a large one will be body it's very difficult to say going into it how the church is going to deal with these issues and i'd say the absolute pivotal issue here is whether the u.s. troops will secure i'm unity because i think the u.s.

make clear previously that without immunity from criminal prosecution in afghanistan we will not leave troops behind there and in fact this was this was the big issue at the time of the final program from iraq the u.s. have proposed to leave behind about two hundred. very substantial more the target of american soldiers and in the end iraq would not agree to to this immunity request and on that basis the u.s. departed friendly completely so what type of immunity are we talking about here what exactly will it protect u.s. troops from. well. it's probably it's bigger than us troops to start with it's also the civilian contractors who go with them and particularly the security contractors and i'd say it's traditional that when any military forces stationed abroad that the military itself exercises discipline over its troops and that the

draft agreement provides that. it also provides for exclusive jurisdiction and of course the agreements to us is reached with many other nations japan germany korea for instance are not exclusive they provide for concurrent jurisdiction so this is less favorable to afghanistan than the u.s. has reach with other allies but probably even the more sensitive issue is the treatment of contractors and this agreement says the contractors remain subject to afghanistan well that is also says that afghan police forces are not permitted to arrest or to cold any of them very interesting now president karzai has administration announced today that they want to wait on any agreement until his successor was elected in april what the u.s. be willing to wait since they have such direct deadlines or and also another question is is cars i just trying to get more concessions from the u.s.

with this proposed delay. well he's clearly pushing for more in fact he made a he made a strong point earlier about two days ago that he wanted to see a written letter of apology from the united states for bad conduct. american forces in afghanistan and this goes to what is a very very hot issue within the country and that's night raids conducted. all around the country and secret detention arrangements. by the u.s. much of which is conducted by by the chase are the special. special forces unit. in afghanistan and that's that's been the a cheap point for three or four years now he's continued to press it i'd say in the end of the day you know whether he's trying to there is success or is less of an issue than whether it's approved by the loya jirga and then by the parliament very

very interesting indeed now the major reason that afghans want american troops to stick around is to continue to train their ass can chose so that they can protect themselves against the talabani but on the other hand karzai is government has been reaching out to the taliban for talks so one signing this agreement make talks with the taliban more difficult in the end i don't think the agreement necessarily would i mean i think the whether there is in the end of the day a reconciliation with the taleban the afghan government is still going to need the training facility i think what we're seeing though in any event is a sunset. u.s. military operations on the ground in afghanistan and of finally can you tell us a little bit more on those night raids that you were just speaking about what kind of agreement could be resolved here in the senate and this lawyer greg. well i think there is strong resentment about it fact i would expect this to be an issue

that's raised and discussed openly in the loya jirgah in fact it's tribal elders and many of the regions who've been completely outraged by it they consider it to be these the night raids to be a violation of some of their most fundamental traditions. and i you know i doubt we're going to see approval in the loya jirga without some concessions by the united states probably knowledge but that the night raids policy was a mistaken policy it certainly was one that was never supported or indorse by the government of afghanistan it was carried out over the opposition of the government of afghanistan and that was a violation of their sovereignty but thank you so much for thank you so much for weighing in scott horton the contributing editor at harper's magazine great to be with you to syria now where hundreds of thousands of christians have fled the country since the beginning of the civil war there one to two thousand christians

are believed to have been murdered in the violence perhaps one of the hardest hit areas is the historic town of ma lula that's non-science villages on the unesco list of proposed world heritage sites it is one of the last known places where western aramaic which is the language of jesus is still spoken the town has been attacked on numerous occasions since the war began and many have chosen to flee however syrian patriarch gregory lama is urging christians to stay put artie's a policy layer has more. for many christians in the middle east the arab spring has been wintry at best the international society for human life says that for want of the every five acts of religious discrimination in the world today a perpetrated and carried out against christians nowhere was this more acutely felt than in the middle east and north africa if you look at syria for example we tend to say of the total population is christian a third of them have already fled from the civil war that started two years ago and

that number continues to grow off to the murder of father best serious nasa last june two thousand and twelve the threats and the persecution of christians escalated so much so that many today say the night me facing the questions of syria is the same night me that the questions of the one have been living under since the invasion in two thousand and three the soul of a homeowner and i believe it is all systematic and plan foreseen christians to leave in iraq for instance less than two hundred thousand christians remain we do have concerns we do hope we can stick to our land syria which is the cradle of christianity we also hope that the pope and heads of christian denominations shall call for denouncing violence and adopting dialogue in old in the spirit the christian town outside of damascus was attacked by rebels tens of soldiers were killed and many residents fled it's still not clear how many of them

have not returned to the village and where in fear they had been displaced earlier i visited the town of homes where syrian soldiers took me to the frontline and showed me the damage the rebels had carried out against a local church one hundred this is the church unfortunately it was not like that before look at this destruction in mass from here the explosions were coming down on people praying of course people started crying out for help from us but what are . it was right here and they were captured during the jury trial elsewhere in egypt of the muslim brotherhood supporters have believed christians for the army's own story of the president mohamed morsi more than eight hundred christian sites were attacked and some fifty two churches razed to the ground one in the run off to the american invasion back in two thousand and three home for the iraqi system population lived for other middle eastern countries and american think tank the pew

forum says that christians face overestimate and oppression in one hundred and fifty nine countries this is maybe three quarters of all the countries on the face of you want to see on teen television on capitol hill senate democrats procreate two hundred twenty five year tradition today when they voted to eliminate the use of a filibuster against president obama's picks to fill executive and judicial positions now those nominees will require a simple majority in order to get appointed this photo has all but paved the way for federal reserve chair nominee janet yellen to take over for ben bernanke a come february today the senate banking committee approved yellen nomination on a vote of fourteen to eight her nomination has now been sent to the full senate for a vote if confirmed janet yellen would be the first woman to ever hold the position and one of the most powerful women in the world of finance artie's perry on morning

was at the capitol today and brought us the latest. delon pass she had fourteen senators voted for eight voted against is out of twenty two members of the senate banking committee one democrat voted against her and three republicans voted for her so there's a boat was bipartisan we had republicans and democrats voting for and against it janet yellen today now senate republicans have been slowing down a number of president obama's picks as of late for a host of reasons however the senate just voted today to invoke the so-called nuclear filibuster option allowing a simple majority in order to confirm president obama's nominees how will this speed up the confirmation process. did take sixty votes to get a nominee through a full senate that's out of one hundred that's a three fifths vote this is the way it's been since one nine hundred seventy five today with the nuclear option it only takes fifty one votes so any one will be sped through takes way less votes every member democrats control fifty five votes in the

senate and this is exactly what senator hyde camp was talking about now and most members of the senate banking committee were not concerned with janet yellen qualifications they were concerned with federal reserve policies themselves the biggest one being quantitative easing the bond buying program and this is what senator camp told me earlier today take a lesson. i think everyone in there expects that she's going to be confirmed on the floor but they wanted to have a movement to express their disagreement with the fed policy. so now with the nuclear option and with what happened in the hearing last week and today it looks like janet yellen is on the fast track to becoming the most powerful woman in finance very soon and the parian you touched just a little bit about some of the janet yellen fiscal policies can you give us a little bit more ideas of what it's like today miro ben bernanke is for instance.

right she is a fiscal the she supports this huge controversial program called quantitative easing it's an unprecedented inflationary monetary policy the most the biggest policy of our time eighty five billion dollars a month in bonn purchase says is very controversial even former fed officials have come out who are part of that came and said they were sorry that they were a part of q.e. so it looks like yellen is the same old song as ben bernanke she supports q.e. he supports q.e. so we're not really expecting to see a lot of changes in the fed anytime soon so what is the next step in this confirmation process. well now it's going to go to the full senate for a vote again with the nuclear option and looks like she's on the fast track to becoming the next fed chair woman can you go into a little bit more detail about the type of power that janet yellen will have being the first woman to hold this position. frazier's the first woman so it's all these women senators of the senate banking committee were also very excited for her but

again she's the same old song and as ben bernanke he they support the same policies and this is absolutely the most powerful entity on the face of the earth it controls monetary policy of the u.s. dollar the world reserve currency for the power that's being put in this woman hands are larger than anyone else that we're that we've seen now rand paul has said that janet yellen is the transparency advocate for the fed do you have any idea if that would change the way that the fed conducts its business where we see any more information coming out of it. now senator rand paul said that he was not going to support janet yellen and that he would even hold up her vote unless his bill out of the fed was brought to the floor as well and i asked elizabeth warren about this and this is what she told me. his problem is not on which janet yellen and with her policies generally he wants approaches to just stop the promises of considering people going forward and it would make any difference whether it were janet yellen

who is being proposed for this or someone else and i think that's not the right use of the filibuster so she does not think that rand paul is genuine about this she thinks that he was trying to make it into the role for president obama he doesn't really care about auditing the fed but we have to remember senator warren's background she helped create and establish the consumer financial protection bureau that's the c f p b it was created in dodd frank the financial reform law and it has jurisdiction under the federal reserve which is very different to other federal agencies so opening up the fed's books would mean opening up a c.f.p. believe box. she plays the enter girl role in and when i asked her if she was for opening up the feds books she wouldn't answer the question so the real question is who is for transparency in our government and it seems that a lot of our elected officials ignore these questions very interesting we have to see how the next phase of janet yellen the confirmation process plays out r.t. correspondent perry and boring on capitol hill well twenty nine year old san

francisco man who allegedly ran an underground web site for selling drugs the documents and services is a new york federal court today for a bail hearing ross williams old ritual poorly used the name dred roberts to run the silk road website was denied bail for charges that carry a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in prison has also charged with being involved in two separate assassination plots corresponded on a stasia charkha takes us to the courthouse. twenty nine year old ross albright accused of being the mastermind behind the silk road website run by an operator dubbed dread pirate roberts a lot of users to purchase drugs on line has been denied bail at this federal courthouse in lower manhattan over it was arrested at the science fiction section of a san francisco public library last month and charged with drug dealing money laundering computer hacking as well as murder for hire accused of hiring hitmen to get rid of

an informant in a witness he had allegedly been fearful of the knot in his drug market website silk road was launched in twenty eleven with over a billion dollars in sales and almost a million customers the f.b.i. has seized hundreds of thousands of bitcoins a virtual currency worth tens of millions of dollars they see that the person operating the website had pocketed about eighty million dollars they've also dobbs silk road one of the most sophisticated and extensive marketplaces on the internet today all great of course has pled not guilty and all the charges being made against him and has his defense team says the prosecution can't prove that he is who they say he is ross who is living a life in san francisco in a modest way and they're claiming. it that he's living in a manner of the head of a cartel the distinctions between ross albrecht that head of a cartel you don't have to see too many movies to to recognize what the differences are here at wednesday's hearing family and friends pledged over one million dollars so that ross could be released on bail his family offered up their home thousands

of letters of support were sent and however the judge decided that he will remain in jail i thought it was the wrong decision why tell him. he would have been a flight risk and he's never been and is not a danger to anyone while the prosecution says the university of texas graduate ran an extensive criminal enterprise for the last two and a half years one of the aspects the defense plans to question is the and the ses involvement in this case if we're talking about n.s.a. surveillance being used and the question becomes twofold one is whether it was done prop. really in other words according to statute as we've seen from the releases of opinions by the financial difference to the foreign intelligence surveillance court that the government and n.s.a. have been regularly out of compliance with even what they're authorized to do then the question even one step further back is whether even if they're authorized under statute whether that's statute constitutional with lots of questions yet to be answered for now this case is only in its first stages and as they see it you're

going to r.t. new york and now to another soon to be a licit substance trans fats if the food and drug administration has its way the artificial ingredient will be banned from american food products but is this the best way to fight the growing obesity epidemic here in the u.s. r t correspondent liz wahl gives us the skinny on trans fats. the food and drug administration hopes to ban a type of fat now considered toxic it includes moving trans fat from a state where they're generally recognized the safe grass into a category where they would become food contaminants the f.d.a. proposal would eliminate trans fats from the american food supply the cheap and tasty artificial thought was once seen as a harmless way to preserve food but it's proven to be a health hazard trends that are strongly linked to very high risk for heart disease and cardiovascular deaths so there is no safe pressure hold for transfer

that it's any amount this considered too much by the world health organization getting rid of trans fats is expected to prevent thousands of people from going to the hospital according to the food and drug administration the restrictions would prevent twenty thousand heart attacks and seven thousand deaths each year trans fats have been on the decline major fast food chains have replaced them with other fans sources in two thousand a new york was the first city to ban them from restaurants the move faced resistance with some consumers seeing it as a sign of becoming a nanny state's regulations i think i think government's got twice twice as big as it should be both on the federal and state level but even those that don't like regulations think trans fats should be banned they should figure out a way to do this allow trans fat because that's just not good for anybody what you you want to be food josephs brandenberg agrees as part of transforming his lifestyle and body he's eliminated trans fats from his diet he recalls the days

when he wasn't so fit so i grew up. to be. one of the things they would call me when i was there was the thing adopting a lifestyle of exercise and healthy eating he lost more than forty pounds you can see the transformation here in his before. and after photos generally speaking you will not find trans fat in food you know it will be in this process thing that you'll find on the shelf it can never go but if you care go bad cannot be very good for that means getting more of your diet from of these aisles and staying away from items like donuts fried foods and processed foods i mean you have to read labels but experts warn labels don't always tell the whole truth even today when you know something says trans fat free that only means that it has less than half a gram of transfer. so the serving size could just be less than half a gram in a computer trans fat and even when trans fats are eliminated they're usually smart

with saturated fats those fats aren't healthy either they will be replaced with some other source of solids that that may be not as bad as the trans fat but they'll probably be saturated and may be artificially created saturated bad so while banning trans fats may not be a cure all for the nation's obesity epidemic and related diseases the f.d.a. hopes it will be a step in the right direction in washington liz wall r.t. now as you kick your feet up with the remote and cozy up to watch the television today be warned your t.v. could be watching you manufacturer l.g. is investigating claims that its line of smart t.v. is collecting data on its customers a u.k. based i.t. consultant wrote about the discovery and found a corporate phony you know that boasts quote smart ads analyzes users favorite programs online behavior search keywords and other information to offer relevant as to target audiences for example l.g.

smart ad can feature sar shark suits to men or alluring cosmetics and fragrances to women upon further investigation the consultant found that this data collection happens even if the user turns that setting off so is this changing the channel on your privacy while r t a web producer andrew blake has been watching. t.v. all day and proper racial as you know it hopefully you've been watching something good maybe a little bit artsy but t.v. surveillance the same thing as why it's internet companies have been doing like google for instance you know what i mean yes in the sense that this is sensitive information that's being provided to someone unwittingly but you know this isn't you're not logging on to g. mail you're not going to type up search queries and google you're not doing bank information on your t.v. least not yet not my t.v. my t.v. is ancient and doesn't have any of the school stuff but. what was happening here was the british fellow the i.t. consultant discovered that when he had his l.g.

smart t.v. on even when he disabled a feature that. collected information about his viewing habits even when he disabled that his that information was still nonetheless being collected being transmitted back to l.g. and all done completely on encrypted so anyone who was smart enough can figure out what he was doing and was collecting all sorts of data you know like i said not you know the sense of stuff that we do on our laptops or our personal computers but still enough that would really cause many people to be alarmed so what type of monitoring are we talking about here. is actually found a couple different things what this fellow jason huntley is the blogger who discovered this just the other day and he came up with a few different things one even if you disable this function which normally records information about your viewing habits. disabling it does nothing apparently what he discovered was that if he changes the channel from one station to another his t.v. record statue changed and it says here's a guy who is now watching b.b.c.

and that information is then sent to l.g. and they know that oh here's a guy who cares about the news maybe he's british he is perfect right it was doing other stuff too one thing that was really spooky that i had him worried was you know these t.v.'s not mine obviously because it's garbage but these fancy t.v.'s we can on hook up u.s.b. sticks and all. other sort of external devices to them so you can do all sorts of nerdy stuff on your giant plasma or whatever so what this guy did was he took a u.s.b. stick and he loaded up with some files particularly one file it was called midget porn. it was not a pornographic movie it was just a fake file but what he did was when he plugged it into his t.v. and he looked to see at what kind of traffic internet traffic was going out of his house he could see that even though he disabled all these functions she was still being fed information about not just what channels he was surfing to but what files were connected to his t.v. so now all of a sudden l.g.

thinks that this guy is watching something called point out a.v. i and he's not it's just a file that's connected the back this computer so it raises all sorts of questions about what these companies are collecting now i do want to pivot the conversation now to the united nations countries like germany and brazil have been pushing to kind of change and expand privacy rights considering everything that went on with the n.s.a. and leaks so what exactly is a proposal that's on the table in the u.n. right now so i mean there's a lot of people are upset about what the n.s.a. has been doing you know not just even here and obviously germany and brazil are going to be a bit peeved after all they had their rather high ranking leaders subject to n.s.a. surveillance so obviously they're going to get a little upset so there's a u.n. draft resolution being passed around right now it could be approved as early as next week and what it would do in theory was it would expand upon the international covenant on civil and political rights which was international u.n. treaty passed i believe in one thousand nine hundred sixty six somewhere around

there and it has different provisions for that talk about what kind of privacy rights people have while germany brazil want to expand it so that your online privacy rights are also connected are also protected under this roof and charter which is great that seems to make sense on line privacy as we do more and more things on line is becoming just as significant as is real life see. i.r.l. in real life that's what we see on the internet so germany brazil they want to switch things up and us on the surface on the public eye saying yeah go right ahead that's also but foreign policy i believe just had something earlier today about a leaked memo that was being passed around by u.s. representatives over at the u.n. headquarters that was saying ok let's take these brazilian in these charming talking points and let's restructure them a little bit because sure maybe we can get away with having them do this new privacy thing but. you know we really want to keep doing that whole spying thing too so the n.s.a. wants to rewrite it so unlawful surveillance is bad but the core of the n.s.a.

everything that they're doing is absolutely by the books and a ok so we'll have to see next week what happens with that r.t. web producer and you'd like thank you so much for filling us in on all of that and i think we're going to have to invest in new television for christmas or something for you all right around the corner thank you and it looks like people all over the world are dropping bombs aft bombs that is now the map there you see coming up was from the new site f. bomb dot c.e.o. created by college student martin gergis it tracks that exactly when and where people are tweeting the word that cannot be named on television each marker you see is another you have something f. word on a social media site from the looks at it the word is quite popular but that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out our website r g dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez i'll see you right back here at eight pm

eastern thank you so much for watching. that was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little. leak. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of joy and in great things rather that there has to be adequate regard at the core of what the sound alliance is the story many sort of movies playing out in real life.