coming up on r t a song still in limbo tomorrow marks three years in a series of detentions but the wiki leaks co-founder who is still stuck in the ecuadorian embassy will explain the latest right ahead and remembering mandela throughout the world people are mourning the passing of former south african president nelson mandela we'll take a look at that reaction and his legacy coming up and birth control pills for man it's been decades since the creation of the female contraceptive but how close are we to making the pill available for males we'll tell you about some breakthrough research later in the show. it's friday december sixth five pm in washington d.c.

i'm lynn neary david and you're watching r t. we begin with the plight of julian assange the co-founder of transparency organization wiki leaks tomorrow marks three years that assad will have spent in detention though he has never been officially charged with a crime on december seventh two thousand and ten the transparency advocate was taken to a british prison cell sweden had issued a european arrest warrant for a song because he was wanted for questioning in a sexual misconduct case a songe feared that from sweden he would be extradited to the united states to face charges for releasing hundreds of thousands of documents containing american state secrets while a songe made bail ten days later he was under house arrest for five hundred fifty days as he continued his appeals process to avoid extradition when the last of his appeals failed a songe walked into the ecuadorian embassy in london seeking political asylum in june of two thousand and twelve he was granted that asylum from the ecuadorian

government in august but has no way to make it to the south american country because there are ground on the ground guards outside the embassy ready to arrest a songe should he step off the property and that's where a song remains the ecuadorian embassy three years after this whole legal saga began . and every year barbara walters does an a.b.c. special in which she highlights who she thinks are the ten most fascinating people of the year this year that list was expected to include everyone from miley cyrus to pope francis but perhaps the most interesting of her picks was edward snowden according to the new york daily news walters had a particular fascination with the former n.s.a. contractor and at one point she believed he would be chosen as time magazine's person of the year as did many other people but even though walters originally granted snowden the top spot on that list executives at a.b.c. later nixed the idea of giving snowden that honor some people have speculated that

the reason he can't take the top. spot is because he's not quote interview will that a.b.c. a.b.c. will only pick people they can have access to snowden is of course currently seeking asylum in russia and not exactly talking to the press but a network spokesperson has already refuted that by saying people are fascinating no matter if we interview them or not the most fascinating decision is not made based on who we interview and so why snowden was snubbed the number one place will remain a mystery and we continue today with the news of nelson mandela's death mandela guided south africa out of apartheid and into multiracial democracy thereby becoming an international icon of peace and reconciliation mandela was ninety five years old and he'll be laid to rest at his ancestral village of could new in the eastern cape on december fifteenth

a week of mourning has begun in south africa and it will include an open air memorial service in johannesburg on december tenth mandela was imprisoned for nearly three decades for his fight against the white minority rule in south africa and in one thousand nine hundred four he became the country's first black president and former u.s. president bill clinton had this to say in response to his death today the world has lost one of its most important leaders and one of its finest human beings will remember him as a man of uncommon grace and compassion and former president jimmy carter has echoed that sentiment saying his passion for freedom and justice created new hope for generations of oppressed people worldwide and because of him south africa is today one of the world's leading democracies here in d.c. people are laying flowers on the statue of nelson mandela at the south african embassy mandela has seemingly touched the lives of many now for more on the reaction from around the world here is our tease laura smith. you see in london and

public buildings all around the city flags are flying at half mast to mark the death of nelson mandela there are around half a million south africans living in this country and some of them have come here to the embassy to lay flowers and pay tribute to the passing of mandela and of course tributes are flooding in from elsewhere to the royal family prince william for example has called him an extraordinary and inspiring man the queen has paid a personal tribute talking of the great warmth she feels when she thinks of mandela saying that he worked tirelessly for his country and that his legacy is the peaceful south africa that we see today and political chippies of flooding in from all over the world lead in this country by david cameron he called mandela a towering figure a true global hero and says a great light has gone out. but

this is all i'm hung around if we look just at the conservative movement for example in one thousand nine hundred seventy. as a terrorist said that the a.n.c. could never rule south africa anyone who thought so it was living in cloud cuckoo land david cameron also around that time made a trip to south africa as a rising star in the conservative movement and they were low being against sanctions on the apartheid movement so most certainly. now it's not clear whether david cameron was personally involved but certainly the organization he belongs to was and it was a similar picture in the us but actually even more delayed in terms of his rehabilitation if you like. that was on the terror list and he and his associates were removed from the database intil as late as two thousand and eight nine years after his presidency of south africa was already over that was artie's laura smith

reporting. and on armed mentally ill man has just been charged with assault in an incident where police officers shot two innocent bystanders near times square the man being charged as glenn brought max and police are holding him at fault for the injuries because they say he instigated the incident the altercation started when broad next walked into traffic at a manhattan intersection and jumped into the path of on coming cars at that point police officers trying to detain him soon after a broad max reach should to his pocket and officers assumed he was reaching for a gun so they fired and mistakenly shot two women nearby broad taxes lawyer is claiming that his client was emotionally disturbed saying he suffers from anxiety depression and possible delusions the attorney for one of the wounded by standards has said this about the charges it's an incredibly unfortunate use of prosecutorial

discretion to be prosecuting a man who didn't even injure my client it's the police who injured my client regardless the bail for broad net. has been set at one hundred thousand dollars and the two officers have been placed on administrative leave. but it's not just glen broad next who is suffering as a result of mental illness it's also people like bobby bennett a mentally ill man who was shot four times by a police officer despite the fact that he showed no threat of force or how about kelly thomas a homeless man who was beat to death by six officers who responded to a call about a man juggling car door handles in a transit center parking lot turns out thomas was suffering from severe schizophrenia and of course there was the case of miriam carey a connecticut mother was shot to death after trying to ram her car through a white house barrier later it was discovered that carrie was suffering from postpartum psychosis it's altar occasions like these that are beginning to call

into question just how police are trained to deal with the mentally ill to discuss us a little bit more i was joined earlier by mayo bart but a civil rights attorney i first asked him whether it's mandatory for all police departments across the country to train their police force on how to respond to the mentally ill. well across the country you know each department can probably get its own rules and regulations so it's impossible for me to really know at this point whether they all have such regulations but it's clear that each and every other apartment should and simply for standpoint that it's essential that people who may have mental illness whether they suffer from mental illness or to temporarily agitated should rest assured that they have the best opportunity to come away from an encounter with police in a safe way and it's equally important for the officers themselves because if there are properly trained they run the risk of escalating a situation and also putting themselves and their fellow officers in harm's way so

are all for the police officers who are exposed to that knowledge what is that training look lighter or look like or what might you think it would look like and would you say that acquit i think that that training should deal first of all the understanding to generally time is on your side. and also the fact that the goal should be to deescalate situations and to keep them as calm as possible now of the vast majority of police department if not all trained their officers in how to deescalate and that's usually embodied in the use of force protocol which starts out with the officers mere presence alone and if you simply think about someone driving on a highway when you see a police vehicle on the side of the highway and everyone driving tends to slow down tends to drive more rationally than they would if that vehicle wasn't there is the same concept with the presence of police who are on foot right out will someone argue that police officers don't always know the suspect has a mental illness and that it's hard for them to distinguish between someone who is

ill and perhaps someone who is under the influence of drugs for example what do you make of that argument well i think that that's why training is so essential for police officers if you look at people who are in other professions it's less essential because you're not dealing with them in a matter which police generally encounter people but quite often police encounter people with a. motional disturbance where they're going to river medical assistance to those people they're not a suspect of a crime national presence we have three cases right now where the police have shot and killed each of the individuals and they were not responding to a crime in either one one is kind of chamberlain senior in white plains the other one is sam cruz in joe and moment in manhattan and in each of those circumstances the police were called their fall into of the circumstances of mr cruz and mr abbas matters the police were called there by law the ones who were concerned about their family members but not because they're private in committee and with respect to mr chamberlain who was a sixty eight year old retired marine mr chamberlain happened to roll over and

trigger his life pendant by mistake and as a pendant it was designed to allow him to call for assistance if you had a medical emergency so there are a lot of these individuals were the police would be arriving wow well in the case of bobby bennett i'm not sure if you're familiar with that his mother did call the police department to come help with her son she couldn't handle it on her own but she specifically warned them that he had a mental issue and of course we know that he was vigorously shot there after is there something more as a family member she was supposed to do to prevent that from happening or did she do all she could. well she probably did all she could because unfortunately we're not training in how to deal with mental illness or the other issues that the police department had available protocols and utilize those protocols because it's it's two things sometimes there is a protocol in place and a department or the officers are not aware of it or choose not to employ it but if

they have a proper protocol in place they were brought to mental health professional or with them and someone who would have been able to assess the situation and determine exactly what was necessary so that everybody could could leave that encounter safe right and right there to give assistance they weren't there because he was committing a crime right exactly a what's your guess as to why the police officers in this incident didn't seem to act with any kind of sensitivity i mean do you think there is a breakdown in the way that that information is communicated to the police officers or is it just like you said you know they're ignoring the fact that he has a mental illness well the one that's an outstanding point because we don't know what transpired between that initial call for assistance. the message that the police themselves actually received so you can call and say that you haven't heard from your last one in a long time your concern about their well being. we don't know what the police dispatcher is saying until you hear the real your own or the nine one one tape what

will happen also is that the person was in the home and this may be one of the most critical points is that the person in the home has not called the police that was male barletta civil rights attorney. poland is in the hot seat this week after lawyers representing two guantanamo bay detainees told the european court of human rights that they are suing the country for permitting cia black sites to operate and torture their clients on color soil. on the sherry and so bade up were considered high ranking al qaeda operatives before their capture they claimed they were water boarded forced to stand in stress positions and went through mocking. secu sions naked all the cia while in these cia black sites on the cherie was captured in the u.a.e. in two thousand and two beta was found in pakistan and the two of them both went through the cia secret prison network often called black sites after that the two men were sent to guantanamo bay where they remain to this day the men claim they

were tortured at secret cia prisons in poland a country that has laws against torture while poland has not officially admitted its role in the cia program there is significant documentary evidence pointing to complicity from poland romania and lithuania and creating these secret detention facilities for previous researcher crofton black wrote we have now heard overwhelming and uncontested evidence that the cia was running a secret torture prison on polish soil with the polish government's knowledge despite being given many opportunities to do so the polish government has failed to contest that it knew prisoners were being held beyond the rule of law and tortured by the cia inside their own country poland has been conducting internal investigations about their potential participation in the black sites but has not yet provided the european court of human rights with any classified documents. and keep your shoes on tighten your belt because your trip through security checkpoints

could get easier pre-check is the members only club run by the transportation security administration that allows low risk passengers to get in the short line at the airport and it's now getting easier to join this week indianapolis international became the first airport in the country to open a sign of center for its pre-check program right at the terminal the pre-check program began in two thousand and eleven and while nearly twenty five million people have already joined there hasn't been any easy way for the average passenger to enroll of concern to privacy advocates joining the program requires travelers to provide a background. and fingerprints but the t.s.a. says that information will lessen the hassle of going through security so the agency can focus on people who are truly suspicious the new enrollment centers are launching in major airports across the country the next one is set to open at dulles international before the end of the year. and the holy see is awfully

opinionated these days on everything from fracking to drones and seems like the roman catholic administration will not be slowing down any time soon just recently a representative of the holy see criticize some very controversial trade deals that are in the works those are of course the trans-pacific partnership for the. and the trans outlandish trade and investment partnership also known as the t.t. ip these are trade deals that have by and large remain secret from the public however the massive packs are expected to affect jobs the environment consumer safety and even the excess ability of medication in a statement the holy see said among the most damaging concessions developing countries make in regional and bilateral agreements are those in hand saying the monopolies on the lifesaving medicines which reduce access and affordability and those that provide excessive legal rights to foreign investors limiting the policy

space for nations to promote sustainable and inclusive development. and it's still ahead here on r t the world of birth control medicine may soon expand australian scientists claim they've come up with a birth control pill for men but what do men really be interested in taking the pill more on that later in the break.

i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. to stay with that story. if this guy like that should be your doctor stead of working for the people's motivations in the major media breach of bribery is beating. the dead rather.

than. i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question. most women thought they would never see the day when men would be taking birth control pills but believe it or not that day is finally in sight scientists in australia say they are closer than ever to developing a male oral contraceptive this is coming from a study conducted by researchers at melbourne's monash university through extensive testing on mice researchers discovered that they can block two of the proteins

responsible for controlling the transport of sperm through the reproductive system and the investigators say that blocking these proteins had no long term effects on the sexual behavior or function of the male mice so that means this could be the answer to achieving temporary male infertility i spoke earlier with elaine listener director of the male contraception information project i first asked her why we haven't seen male birth control already. yeah well it's not about the biology it's about politics it's about money it's about sociology a lot of times you hear well it's a lot easier to stop one egg and millions of sperm well that's true if you're taking the same approach in men as has been taken in women which is to try to shut things off hormonally that is difficult but men are different than women and the sperm all flow through a small tube called us deference so this approach that's been in the news and some

other approaches trying to get a lot more targeted and stop the sperm in that one spot now that said so it's not rocket science scientifically but the problem is there hasn't been the scale of investment necessary there are have been a lot of studies like this one in the news where someone got one hundred thousand two hundred thousand dollars to try something out and it worked but once you have that where do you go now it takes several million dollars to actually take the steps to get something all the way to market right. now i think that money is going to be the talent going forward but i understand that you are familiar with some other kinds of contraception for males out there right now can you talk about a couple of those yeah there are a couple methods that are much more far along there's one called vassal gel that stops the sperm in that tube the vast difference as i mentioned and last ten or more years and it's non-hormonal potentially ten or more years based on

a similar one called rice that was developed in india. we know that data because men have been using that safely for a number of years there is also a method similar to the one that's been in the press but developed originally at king's college in london that also that is a pill and is short acting it's called the clean sheets pill and i'll leave that to your viewers to put two and two together with minutes. and you. asked about demand that's been one of the big barriers as people have thought that men are not interested but times have changed maybe the men who were in power in the one nine hundred eighty s. and one nine hundred seventy s. and sixty's when female contraceptives were developed were not interested but men have a lot more responsibility now and are looking for some control to go with that responsibility . yeah in fact there are are over eighteen thousand men on the

on the list to hear about the clinical trials for the method i want to get to that briefly i want to go back to the research as i understand it scientists use something called knockout mice and i was hoping that you could get way into the audience what what that refers to ok so what that means is they have gotten rid of the function of a particular gene and they've produced mice genetically engineered that don't have that gene so whatever that gene was going to do these mice won't be able to do so it's very nice but it's a long way from use in humans the next thing that needs to happen is you need to find a drug that can affect that gene so because you don't want to go genetically modifying humans not that's not going to happen so. now once you find a drug which you can do by something called high throughput screening where you test thousands and thousands of different molecules then you have to see whether it's safe which is a long process which is why at the male contraception information project we say

hey let's look at the work that's already been done and is in more advanced stages it's been tested in animals we know it works in some larger animals not just my smithy rabbits or monkeys some of the methods we know work in humans and are in fact based on drug side effects of drugs that have been around for a long time. and we definitely should explore that but i want to ask you one more question before we go to the only have like a minute left you know even if scientists and doctors can work out the biology which i'm sure this isn't going to happen for a few more years at a very at the very least. it's more than likely that some men will find this this idea of sort of emasculating you know how challenging do you anticipate it to be getting males to sort of open up the idea of taking birth control or do you think there is enough demand there that you know it's not that challenging. i think that there are enough men not everybody's going to be interested but the men who are

very passionate and it depends what you offer men if we offer something that is lousy is what women currently put up with now men are not going to be interested but there are some better options out there and i think and a lot of men think as well that we should be pursuing them and did some of it is very lousy thank you so much elaine listener director of the male contraception information project and today's resident we take a look at new york governor andrew cuomo is commission to investigate public corruption but what is that exactly take a look. earlier

this year mayor governor cuomo appointed something called the commission to investigate public corruption and it just released its preliminary report you'll be shocked to learn that the commission found a hell of a lot of corruption in new york but as far as state documents go this one has lots of the juicy moment for instance in one hard hitting moment the report says that one of the out of every eleven legislators to leave office since one thousand nine hundred ninety has done so under the cloud of ethical or criminal violations it lists tons of senators and assembly members who accepted bribes and embezzled extorted committed larceny you name it one of the most entertaining moments is when the report transcribes a statement made by her councilman halloran and the secret conversation when talking about a case where a senator was charged with trading cash for a male nomination he said that's politics it's all about how much he can't do

anything without that attitude money but the real lightbulb moment of the report is when it says bet much of the deplorable conduct of public officials is perfectly legal yet profoundly wrong it illustrates this by going into case after disgusting case a pay to play arrangements loopholes misuse of campaign funds conflicts of interest and so much more and it actually has moments where it offers ways to fix this crap like increasing transparency about politicians income or their relationships with lobbyists. and more oversight of discretionary funding that goes into ways to overhaul campaign finance all of its recommendations are much needed no brainer solutions that any high school kid could understand and agree with but the final touching moment is when one of the commission's co-chairs issued a call to arms saying it's now up to us all to transition from this backbiting

phase to implementation and legislative action these fixes won't happen naturally which is so true because the people we need to write new laws that aren't filled with legal corrupt loopholes are the saved people who benefit from them never be britain legislating against corruption would be the most unnatural thing for politicians to ever do so who knows if it'll ever happen but at least for this entertaining report goes into the shredder and gets forgotten maybe our politicians will give it a quick read and remember they're supposed to be serving the public and not their bank accounts for just one moment tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter abs the rest of it. and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com

slash r t america check out our web site r t v dot com slash usa you can follow me on twitter at amir and david i can name. hello and welcome across all things considered i'm peter all about the continuing and consistent rise of china declaring restricted fly zones for a critical view on the subject of buying u.s. dollar debt beijing is sending signals it will be respected and will act as any great power in today's world in fact it would appear china is tearing a page from washington's playbook it too will make rules to fit its geopolitical interests.