coming up on r t in afghanistan tribal leaders gather for a momentous vote at issue should u.s. troops be granted immunity in the country beyond twenty fourteen the future of u.s. intervention in afghanistan coming up go we nuclear senate democrats are changing the protocol to approve presidential nominees does that mean a clear path for janet yellen and update from capitol hill in the push for the next fed chair and food lovers be aware in an attempt to tip the scale in the favor of clear honorees the f.d.a. is about to take your trans fats away get saturated in the issues coming up.

here thursday november twenty first dave him in washington d.c. i'm maggie lopez and you are watching our t.v. well political leaders and tribal elders are competing in kabul afghanistan this week to discuss the future of u.s. troops in the country the meaning is known as lawyer her go more than two 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 what 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 provide immunity for u.s. troops for at least another decade now the tribal elders have their hand at modifying the deal after their vote will go on to afghanistan's parliament and then back to karzai for his signature but it's in a surprising turn of course i announce today that he plans to defer the signing to

his successor after the april elections for more on this meeting i was joined earlier by karen a retired u.s. air force lieutenant colonel i first asked her how important is the decision coming out of lawyer jurga and would it likely pass. i don't know how important it is it's more of a in many ways it's more of a show kind of a show on the part of karzai to show that the people are with them or at least he's hoping i don't think that the loya jirga jirga or the parliament is going to be very happy with the lack of immunity you know the immunity of the american soldiers they're not going to like that much in the way that iraq did not like that in fact that was the cause of our troops leaving on time as it were from iraq so as a u.s. military air force veteran how important is an unity for troops well from an american perspective it's incredibly important ok we mistakes happen and the things

that the habit of war the habit of urban warfare in particular the use of drones this is not something that it's a can of worms really we don't want our people exposed we work very hard and have for decades to protect our people from when they're deployed around the world to protect them from the legal systems in the country in which they're deployed this is a habit on our on the on the american side it is to protect our troops and it is to protect our political leaders as well. but from the perspective of the afghans or any any other country that has american troops there as we've seen in the case of japan in the past several years it is very important that these countries be able to hold these troops accountable for their actions and what type of immunity are we talking about here is there anything that wouldn't be immune under these that the past was regulations that they had and this future agreement. i'm not sure i did

look at the agreement today and read through it it seems very standard much is the kinds of agreements that we have with all kinds of countries and normally what that means is. our our troops are vulnerable if they're outside of base in the community take you know doing crimes or conducting their mission in a rash way or a way that somehow causes the death or injury to people or property there it's pretty typical this agreement is actually not unusual it's the kind of thing that we do every where we have troops so it's important to us but from the perspective of the afghans this is you know twelve years of in many in the view of many of them occupation so. what we consider to be a very normal and routine type of them unity to them looks like basically free hand that we have a free hand this is business as usual in a bad way and it's something that they would like to change and it's an insult it's

an insult to their sovereignty now another sticking point in the agreement has been the continuation of night raids in the country what's the issue and how could it potentially be resolved. could be resolved if we could stop doing them. this pretty pretty simple. the way that we're conducting anti terror operations as we would call them really does into the. livelihood of the just day to day activities of of afghans and i think i think it's fair to say that they are very weary of war i mean if you think of the past twenty five almost thirty years of afghan history they have been in one way or another at war and they're tired of it so night raids is a war time activity now i thought they were supposed to be peace i think the afghans thought they were supposed to be peace by now the fact that there isn't in

effect that night raids are emblematic of a wartime operation yet i'm sure that they don't want these now the major reason that the afghans one american troops to stick around is to continue to train afghan troops so that they can protect themselves against the taliban but on the other hand karzai government has been reaching out to the taliban for talks so what signing this agreement make talks with the taliban or to negotiate a future peace be more difficult. yes it would and i think part of what you're looking at with this agreement and part of karzai is action today in declaring that he will delay signature of any approved agreement until after the next president is elected this is code name for karzai needs american protection you have to remember karzai was our guy ok in kabul we put him there in i think early december of two thousand and one he's been there almost a dozen years yes he's been elected but he is backed up and supported by the

americans. he really is looking and the people that are dependent on american aid contracts criminal activities whatever it is that were associated with over there the people in afghanistan particularly political attentions and leaders in afghanistan and kind of the middle class if they are dependent on the americans they are kind of in a precarious position in many of them and i'd say karzai what part of this are looking for ways to disentangle with this american dependency and who's going to be left we already know the most powerful unified group that has any potential to leave that country whether we like it or not is the taliban so if you want to be an afghan citizen you need to buddy the bread on both sides on this one absolutely karen a retired u.s. air force lieutenant colonel thank you so much for weighing in on this very complex very delicate issue. 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 since the violence began perhaps one of the hardest hit areas is a stark town of lula this mountainside villages on the unesco list of proposed world heritage sites it is one of the last known places where western aramaic which was the language of jesus is still spoken now the town has been attacked on numerous occasions since the war began and many have chosen to flee however syrian patriarch gregory la hum is urging christians to stay put r.t.s. apollo slayer has more. for many christians in the middle east the arab spring has been wintry at the base the international society for human life says that one 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 in years nasa last year two thousand and twelve based weights and the persecution of christians escalated so much so that many today say the night me facing the questions of so it is the same night me that the questions everyone has been living under since the invasion in two thousand and three sold the way oh no i believe it is all systematic and planned 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 older posts here the christian town of mahmoudiya

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 syria they have been displaced only 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 just now of course people started crying out for help from us there's. priest was right here and they were captured the church elsewhere in egypt the muslim brotherhood supporters have blamed christians for the army's own story of the president mohamed morsy more than eight hundred christian sites were attacked and some fifty two churches razed to the ground one of 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 faced harassment and oppression in one hundred and fifty nine countries this is maybe three quarters of all the countries on the face of the want to see on t.v. television on capitol hill senate democrats broke a two hundred twenty five year tradition today when they voted to eliminate the use of a filibuster against president obama's pick to fill executive and judicial positions now those nominees will require a simple majority in order to get appointed this photos all but pave the way for federal reserve chairman nominee janet yellen to take over for ben bernanke it come february today the senate banking committee approved yellen nomination on her 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 that

position and therefore one of the most powerful women in the world of finance artie's parian boring was at capitol hill today and she 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 fifth's 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 the 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 their over their policies themselves the biggest one being quantitative easing the bond buying program and this is what senator hyde kept pulling earlier today take a lesson. i think everyone in the respects that she's going to be confirmed on the floor but they wanted to have a movement to express their disagreement with the said 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 near ben bernanke is for instance. right she is a fiscal does she support. or it's 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 and bond purchases is very controversial even former fed officials have come out to our 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 it 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 types of power that janet yellen will have being

the first woman to hold this position. ratios the first woman so we saw 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 the they support the same policies and this is absolutely the most powerful and is he on the face of the earth 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. 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 janet yellen and with her policies generally he won't approaches to just stop the promises of considering

people going forward and it would make any difference where the original yellen who is being proposed for the. 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 to think 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 the c.f.p. books which she plays and her gold role in it and when i asked her if she's for opening up the fed's books she went to 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'll have

to see how the next phase of janet yellen the confirmation process plays out are to correspondent carrie and boring on capitol hill well twenty nine year old san francisco man who allegedly ran an underground web site for selling drugs documents and services as a new york federal court today for a bail hearing ross williams old wretch who reportedly used the name dread pirate roberts to run the silk road website was denied bail for charges that he actually carry a minimum mandatory sentence of ten years in prison maximum of life he's also charged with being involved in two separate assassination plots are to correspondent on a saucy a chuck and 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 allowing users to purchase drugs online 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 and 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 on 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 a head of a cartel the distinctions between work than the 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 points. he wouldn't 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 n.s.a.'s 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 probably done. really in other words according to statute as we've seen from the releases of opinions by the financial the foreign 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 party new york and now to another soon to be a list that substance trans fats if the food and drug administration has its way the artificial ingredient will be banned from all american food products but is this the best way to fight the growing obesity epidemic here in the u.s. or to 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 gras 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 fat 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 any amount this consider 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 or 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 josue have brought in birds 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 a 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 in food you know it will be in this process thing that you'll find on the shelf it can never go bare but if you care go bad cannot be very good for you 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 somebody says it's trans fat free but only means that it has less than half

a gram of transfer it. to the serving size to just be less than half a gram in a computer trans fat and even when trans fats are eliminated they're usually smoked with saturated fats those facts aren't healthy either they will be replaced with some other source of solid that that may be not as bad as a 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 well in the food industry as dire as place trans fats with a healthier alternative home oil is now being considered as a replacement it comes from the pulp of the fur of palms but it's not as easy as swapping one fast for a saturated fat a switch of that magnitude will have huge economic impacts on the world and environmentalist's warned that it could lead to massive deforestation in southeast

asia right now eighty five percent of palm oil around the world has grown into countries indonesia and malaysia is becoming so popular that plantations in indonesia have expanded to eight times their size in order to accommodate for growing soon consumer demands one of the biggest buyers is the u.s. which doubled imports between two thousand and six and two thousand and eight to over one million metric tons per year but before you go getting your. thinking your donuts peanut butter and frozen pizza are safe keep in mind palm oil is still a saturated fat that can lead to heart disease now because the soil is becoming more valuable growers are being accused of clearing native forests destroying the habitat of endangered species and violating the rights of forest weller's a problem that is only likely to grow when the f.d.a. does ban trans fats for good meanwhile protesters gathered in front of the kellogg

company's headquarters on wednesday to push for an end to the company's alleged ties to rain forest destruction kellogg's is the company behind frosted flakes pop tarts chips ahoy and fruit loops among other products environmentalist's handed officials a petition with thousands of signatures demanding the company to end its partnership with our international which is an agribusiness from singapore that has been accused of using illegal deforestation practices in order to collect home loyal kellogg's says that it encourages its suppliers to use more sustainably grown palm oil instead the deforestation and protests are just one side of the story to consider as the f.d.a. bites into the issue. well thanks to advances of the internet and smartphone technology it seems that we can't help ourselves in taking one picture after another to share on the net and now oxford has taken greater notice of this trend

the residents a lorry harvest with more on that. every year at the editors of the oxford dictionary named their word of the year they just chose their word for two thousand and thirteen and that word is fellow thief you know a picture you take of yourself usually with a smartphone and usually uploaded to the internet with an ironic hash tag and all too often it's taken with a duck face. according to a statement on the oxford dictionary as blog they choose words that i'm a fairly new but that asserted some kind of prominence in society the word selfie

has been traced to spiral back in two thousand and two but it's grown more than seventeen thousand percent this year alone the statement goes on to say about southie if it's good enough for the obama's and the pope but it's good enough for a word of the year. another word they considered was binge watch the practice of watching a million episodes of a t.v. show in a row the risk. they also consider to show the room in a world of refers to the practice of going to a store to check out items and then going home to buy them online for less money thus screwing the store another word not many words to work that's all i'm going to say about that but. those words are all overused enough to qualify but i've really wanted to choose a word that truly reflected the state of our present culture and selfie was the perfect choice because if genuinely captures how self obsessed we're all becoming

we've all got facebook pages for our hobbies we all have kickstarter is where we. ask our friends and families to give us money for whatever we feel like doing besides working for someone else the internet is conditioning us all to believe how important we are and that is turning our attention in word we're now more concerned with our profile pictures than with what's going on in the world around us oxford crystallized this point by choosing the word selfie so maybe we can use this as a learning opportunity to open our eyes about our selfish wave maybe we can start pointing our cameras at other things that are south maybe we can start pointing them at worthwhile causes that need attention or natural beauty or social injustice that is and strive to make feed the word for two thousand and fourteen or if that's too much to ask of society then maybe we can just strive for

a little that. tonight but talk about that by following me on twitter at the resident. all right that does it for me for tonight but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t.m. america check out our website ru dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter after meghan underscore lopez but for now from all of us here at r.t. have a great night. one of the most celebrated investigative journalist of our time bob woodward of the washington post reporter on every president since nixon and he's the author or co-author of a dozen number one best selling nonfiction book. considering what he's covered over the years it's appropriate that he joins me at the historic adams otel overlooking the white house next politics.

there i marinate it this is boom bust and here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today first up the bogle rule will it or won't it be up and running by the end of the year that's the question on deck as the ruling faces new obstacles from top the regulators we'll tell you what's going on coming right up and big banks sure are known for their loyalty aren't they especially when it comes to governments that bail them out right right know we'll tell you about j.p. morgan's already whipped up plan b. for a u.s. debt default and finally lori wallach from public citizen for.