coming up on ard to see the year two thousand and thirteen nears its end and it was quite a year for the news of the boston bombing n.s.a. revelations r.t. was there covering it all special roundtable in the greatest news hits just ahead. a new york federal judge rules that timothy's ball collection of phone records is legal this really runs counter to last week's really by a federal judge in d.c. who found the program to be likely unconstitutional the latest update on that more later in the show. and it's the false positive no one wants to see generally but it turns out that on the web people are buying and selling used pregnancy tests will take an in-depth look at what drives this industry.

it's friday december twenty seventh eight pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching r.t. and we begin tonight with a look back at twenty thirteen winds down we close the book on a year with some really big news stories because they are whistleblowers and n.s.a. secrets and he was how washington post reporter barton gellman who was in the possession of snowden documents describe the impact of this story on whistleblowers this year. i've seldom if ever seen a story that has taken hold. so far and so broadly and so deeply and you know if you're a whistleblower who wants attention and. you can't even plausibly aspire to the impact he's had already and this was also a year of violent explosions both from homegrown terrorism in boston and from corporate disregard in west texas it was a year of government dysfunction and a year in which average people around the world took to the streets to protest

against the status quo with actions against the trans-pacific partnership trade deal a new community of activists rising up on behalf of chelsea manning learned her fate this year for exposing us war crimes so earlier i spoke with the very people who brought you these stories r.t. correspondents a list of all on the stasi churkin and ramon glinda i first asked liz water coverage on the chelsea manning trial i want to know what she learned from the story and the impact the trial had on two thousand and thirteen. certainly it was a year of very high profile leaks namely the court martial of chelsea manning formerly known as bradley manning spent a lot of time there covering the trial and for meeting marilyn of course he is accused of the largest leak of classified information in military history charged with a very serious charge of aiding the enemy in addition to a slew of other charges and the judge found him not guilty of that most serious charge of aiding the enemy but guilty on most of the other charges he was

sentenced to thirty five years behind bars of course manning a divisive figure some people handling him as a hero for shining a light on government wrongdoing others calling him a traitor for exposing government secrets throughout this trial his attorney david coombs tried to keep it under the radar but did make a very public statement after that sentence was delivered in august here's what he had to say while we were successful in avoiding the aiding the enemy offense. the fact that the government pursued this offense the fact that the government. let the suspense go forward even after it was clear there was no evidence of any intent to do so should sound an alarm to every journals it should sound the alarm to every concerned citizen. that was manning's attorney there david who is arguing or

a kind of condemning the government for its so going so aggressively after manning and charging him over a charging and he says especially when it comes to this aiding the enemy charge and he says and what a lot of civil rights activists have argued throughout this case is that it has had this chilling effect on the media they do also chill see many views of the only whistleblowers having to. to tell you the cia whistleblower we've been fact a lot of the notable whistleblowers of this year in studio. john kiriakou story how did his story affect jazzer it was actually around this time last year that he was sitting in this studio i interviewed him right before he was about to go to jail as you had mentioned he's a former cia officer and he is also charged with leaking information to the media interesting thing about kerry aku before that happened he was also the first cia officer to publicly expose that torture does go on on u.s. bases at guantanamo bay and he brought specific attention to waterboarding saying

that this practice happens at guantanamo bay and he was he called it torture and he used those words now here is part of my conversation with him before he went to prison. the bush administration more specifically president bush at the time was lying to the american people by saying that we were not waterboarding prisoners we were not torturing anyone and if anyone was being tortured it was a result of rogue officers inside the cia going to say i want to bring you in now as a result of what whistleblowers have done particularly chelsea manning in recent years wiki leaks has been able to bring to light some of the nation's darkest secrets about the iraq war the afghanistan war in particular the detention facility in guantanamo bay especially with these this summer's hunger strike you were at guantanamo bay on a stasia you gave us several reports from there what's going on down there this year. well last and what's going on down there this year is pretty much what has

been going on for day one of obama's presidency when he promised to shut this place down which has become really a permanent state on america's image and you know what home and abroad and what went down there with this major hunger strike that took place earlier this year where for over six months the majority of the prison population was on hunger strike in attempts to bring some kind of attention to the fact that they are still there because people just stopped talking about this location politicians kind of brushed it aside after obama's promises to kind of put an end to this place so we saw this kind of peak of desperation from the majority of the prison population over one hundred people going on this major hunger strike which so many times we've heard described as just a horrific process and when we were there the way officials talked to us about it was a lot more nonchalant take a listen. before it's passed on the news we lubricated and we give the patient

a choice do they want to have the key which is a. dual. area or if they want of will to lubricate the tube. most of our patients have been using all of will you seem to like you in fact some of our patients are so used to this they will describe which nostril they want. so sam and guys you know one of the major things we saw ad one time of this year was that this is this huge disconnect between the way officials describe this place and presented to the media and by the countless reports of desperation torture and just horrid conditions and hopelessness that we've heard from prisoners throughout the years on associate whistleblowers hunger sugar's they didn't receive a lot of attention from mainstream networks but the boston marathon bombing was wall to wall coverage it was a huge story this year you were in boston right after the bombing in one of the you

know a wild few days in the city with the manhunt for the bombers to shoot the eventual capture of george or not what was it like. well you know sam this was the biggest terror act in the united states since nine eleven and certainly to say the least was absolutely tragic and of course tragic and of course unexpected and i think one of the bigger things that people learned from it was that. this sense of security that we've kind of become accustomed to sort of in the united states this sometimes sense of security because of the measures that are put in place all over the country that kind of tell us that a lot of being is being done to make sure these terrible things don't happen this bombing showed people i think this year that. nothing it is as secure and safe as it feels in this day and age and certainly was just a very tragic sad event and the city of boston has certainly recovered but when we

were there for about ten days it was really just just really sad and everybody was able to kind of communicate because again terrorism is you know something that is not that happens in a particular nation and something that unfortunately is plaguing the entire world. i want to bring you in a few days after the boston marathon bombings there was the explosion at the fertilizer plant in west texas killed fifteen people injured more than two hundred you were there would you see on the ground in west texas in those days afterward. this reporting that we did in west texas it was some of the most physically demanding and emotionally demanding that i've done in my career i mean it was a scene of utter destruction and despair when we originally when we initially arrived there in west texas we heard from the mayor of that tiny town tommy muska and he described the explosion as having a nuclear bomb being dropped on his town the night of the blast when we arrived we arrived only a couple of hours after it happened and we were kept

a little distance away from the fertilizer plant it was still on fire but even miles away you could see blown out windows buildings badly damaged and was the fire was put out and we were able to get a little bit closer to to where the blast originated from we could if it was just a crater more than ninety feet wide we could see schools which were completely destroyed fire trucks a mangled mess playgrounds just reduced to rubble and all the while talking to the people of these town which is has a population of about three thousand people so everybody knows there everybody knows each other there are a lot of people knew the victims and they talked to us in the aftermath let's hear from them. the windows were blown in on where i was at in the room my kids. saw i don't we don't know the extent of the damage just the house lifted up and. i grabbed my kids and we're headed out the door in the hallway in the room

and said explosion the windows blew in and everything we fell to the floor and we waited until it stopped. got up and i got my other daughter and my mom that was in the room with my stepdad and he ran outside the house to smell like gas. yeah and a lot of people still in mourning some people still even in rentals other people are in the process of rebuilding for but for a lot of those people living in that tiny town to two thousand and thirteen was unfortunately a year to forget for them of a rough one ramon i want to switch gears here this is also been a year filled with protesters like the last few years have been and if you few issues generated as much popular revolt as the trans-pacific partnership trade deal being negotiated throughout the year you covered many of these protests in california what impact have they made. that's why we've covered protests t.v. protests here in beverly hills los angeles and even upping utah and there has been

a lot of grassroots efforts to put these this trade negotiation on hold and so far it appears to be successful because we're not just seeing opposition at the grassroots level many people in congress are are really concerned about the obama administration's goals to move the t.v. p forward into really thatched rackets in congress we have to remember that the obama administration really wanted to have this deal which encompasses twelve nations done by the end of this year but it appears that the you know people of the negotiators from all the countries involved have been able to come up with something that they all can agree on so in two thousand and fourteen you can expect to see more protests against the p.p.p. and many people in d.c. really questioning whether this is in the best interests of the united states and the other countries involved just one of many big stories this year brought to us

by great correspondents covering them r t correspondent liz wahl in our d.c. studio on a saucer turkana from new york ramon going to from l.a. thank you all a look back at some of the most viral clips from r.t. america's you tube channel over the past year. girl's ride for the constitution is a deep rooted grassroots campaign of independent truck drivers and they words they are quote leaving a convoy to deliver their truck or demand in their left hand and the us constitution and non-negotiable rights in their right hand they set off this morning to the interstate surrounding d.c. to bring attention to their cause by backing up traffic when they saw the google street view car coming through the outside pair pulled over and jumped out of the car a beverage in hand. and well. the did that make. the

job. you miss. the boat we're now in chalice alvin gerhardt is speaking out now against the t.s.a. after agents snapped his rare cello in to the cello was a one of a kind heinrich's pumps prosecutors were looking for a lengthy jail sentence after sixteen year old ethan couch got there in the will the pickup truck with a point two four blood alcohol level three times the legal limit in value in his bloodstream for pedestrians killing them including a mother and her daughter but instead couch got probation because his lawyer basically argued the couch was suffering from affluenza i spoke to a member of the secret service asked him why the extra security he said that this is in response to the tragedy that happened today in boston and even just walking

around the city you can get a sense i saw members of law enforcement with bomb sniffing dogs so clearly a heightened sense of security here and this is this tradition is very much for having guns and having a position that is a type. and i think that they do this because it's a knee jerk reaction to having to deal with the reality that this is a very violent society inside america and that even banning guns is not going to end that violence and moving on do turkey where high profile corruption scandal has prompted massive protests in istanbul the country's capital earlier this week six members of prime minister ever once party resigned over charges of graft many of which involved bribery the prosecutor heading the investigation and depriving the search of one's inner circle was removed from his job yesterday and issued a strongly worded condemnation for what he called interference in the country's judiciary a symbol as chief prosecutor said the stabbing change occurred because of leaks to

the press. that's protesters take to the streets police are using water cannons and tear gas to try to break up the demonstrations and the crew on the ground in istanbul covering this protest was caught up in that tear gas we got out of sara firth on the streets of taksim square for more on these protests you pay the price has this been one of the states being there and the police are being trying to push them back you say with the kind of the police the really being absent from this protest tonight and then coming this is something that we've been trying to i began trying to stand here i mean think that's a good many students. we see behind me we think maybe since we think one could it mean if it was going to be me. the political risk here was very good that i'm going to make the paper that's number one common faith and it's not the power here but the best thing we've seen the prime minister face thing a challenge not only from the people here in the pentagon may be the same thing with the new government in fact there was sarah firth reporting from the streets of

istanbul. it's been months since the u.s. and russia and other world powers reached a deal to remove the syrian government's chemical weapons the deal helped avoid a potential u.s. strike in syria for the latest on that or teaser in a glue show tells us more. we can see the first hurdle or rather task at hand which is destroying the facilities where the chemical weapons were stored and produced and then gathering all the chemicals together that that stage has been completed now we are at the stage two and that is the transportation of all chemicals to the port of latakia and now the there is a deadline and that was december thirty first but again they shoot for broad vision of chemical weapons and saying that deadline is most likely not to be because you don't have to transport the chemicals the route they have to go via the route from damascus to a talkie which of unfortunately is rife with various armed gangs populating the

areas and that could present some danger although russia is helping out in that regard by sending its special heavy duty armored trucks and lorries in order to transport these chemicals now after they reach the port of latakia the chemicals will be boarded on several vessels belonging to denmark norway and head over to italy where they will be transferred to another vessel this one is belonging to the united states there is also of course the issue of the actual destruction off the chemicals and there are two ways that could be done and the details are being figured out today. by all parties participating in this rather difficult and very sophisticated task and according to the russian there presented to the russian history of foreign affairs there are some kinks that they need along the way when talking to the representatives of the united states but again russia is remaining very hopeful that the talks today will be very productive and of course they're saying that they're smoothing things out along the way as they go.

striking back today a federal judge in new york ruled that there is bulk phone records collection program does not violate the law and that it serves as an effective counterpart to al qaida those were the words of u.s. district judge william. polley as he dismissed a lawsuit brought by the a.c.l.u. back in june following the edward snowden disclosure that millions of arising customers in the united states were having their phone data collected and stored by the government a.c.l.u. argued such collection violated an individual's fourth amendment right to privacy and their first amendment right to free association but in the fifty four page decision judge poly argued the n.s.a.'s bulk collection program is not being used in a way that violated the constitutional rights about average law abiding americans he notes there is no evidence that the government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks which ruling comes less than two weeks after

a federal judge in washington d.c. came to a much different conclusion about the n.s.a.'s bulk phone records collection program judge richard leon ruled the program to be likely unconstitutional arguing i cannot imagine a more indiscriminate an arbitrary invasion than the systematic and high tech collection or attention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of queering it and analyzing it without judicial approval now with this latest ruling it's looking more and more likely that the supreme court will be the final arbiter when it comes the n.s.a. is spying programs. staying here now to a story about the revolving door in news media you may remember john miller the c.b.s. correspondent who brought us the sixty minutes n.s.a. report earlier this month the report was heavily criticized as a puff piece about a single critic of the n.s.a. spy programs was interviewed for it and c.b.s.

which was alleged to have traded softball questions for access is also very clear early on that john miller was not an objective reporter when it comes to covering intelligence and counterterrorism tactics. full disclosure i once worked in the office of the director of national intelligence where i saw firsthand how secretly the n.s.a. operates well less than two weeks after that report miller is going through the revolving door again in taking a top counterterrorism job this for the new york police department will be working under the new new york police department commissioner bill bratton. some of you may have had the experience of buying a pregnancy test and finding out that you're going to have a baby but the question is what do you do with the used pregnancy test afterwards or you probably just throw it away right actually some people sell them are boring has the story. for you in a hurry to get married what would you do to get your boyfriend to pop the question

some desperate people have turned to faking a pregnancy in the past but now there's a modern twist turns out women are selling positive pregnancy test on craigslist and people are actually buying them and a quick search on craigslist in d.c. we found several ads want to play a joke on a spouse x. our family member this is the perfect way to do it i'm seven months pregnant and i'm willing to give you a positive pregnancy test for a won't be a thirty dollars or the your in itself or twenty you never know if you will go as far as to providing a test himself in this is the ad i responded to when i met the woman selling her p.c. she provided me with this positive pregnancy test earlier i spoke to comedian alex burnett and asked him if he thinks men could fall for this i think you should never underestimate people's stupidity. i think people can often be very very stupid or or let's say full of you know. naivete so i took to the streets to see if we could

find anyone who has actually fallen for this scam so as you do if your girlfriend faked her pregnancy. i'd probably break up with her what if you didn't know it was fake if she provided a real positive pregnancy test but was it her. i would sue or get my money back and i'd break up with her and then hook up with her sister i'm speechless. i've actually had this experience before it's very upsetting that doesn't sound too positive. i don't know about that. i think that's kind of messed up. could be a funny prank i mean if you got a good video of it so i don't think they should be doing this i think more in the. this isn't a good joke because of the poor taste in a joke ever your girlfriend shows you a pregnancy test you think you would fall for the same approach. but there are some people who aren't pleased with this emerging market the woman

selling the positive said that she got an e-mail from an angry citizen think she was a horrible person for doing that and hey if people want to sell a pregnancy test or s.a.t.'s scores or diplomas from harvard and someone else will buy it you know hey that's the american way right we all will buy and sell anything as long as there's a market for it i think it's fantastic and i don't i don't begrudge her at all new reports show that raising a child can cost more than two hundred forty one thousand dollars so the extra cash could provide new families but the question they need to start saving but here's some advice if you see a positive pregnancy test always get a doctor's opinion and washington d.c. i'm perry and boring r.t. then a major shift this year the united states is now the top producer of oil and natural gas this is thanks in large part to the increase of fracking prospectus continues to grow more and more people are saying not in my backyard residence laurie harvest

drills home the point. the u.s. has a history of keeping industrial activity out of middle class and upper class backyards because we like our products we just don't want to see the dirty truth about how they get made but that's starting to change with our big oil boom the u.s. is experiencing an energy revolution and is on its way to energy independence thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling but we're also starting to see the dirty truth behind our energy addiction and we don't like it so much because all of that oil

boom drilling is starting to happen right in our well manicured backyards and that having some seriously crappy effects a new report found that shale gas drilling within a kilometer of a home can seriously decrease property value because not only is it ugly it can seriously mess up your water supply with cancer causing chemicals as a result millions of american homes have lost a ton of market value and the owners are very upset about it what's more in areas around new drilling sites crime rates are going up and bothersome traffic is increasing and there are numerous reports that knowledge of headaches and nosebleeds near drilling there's constant noise and per base of chemical smells who wants that in their backyard perhaps most surprising though is that all those areas where drilling occurs see an initial rise in income research shows that that tapers off pretty quickly eventually go. those areas end up much worse over the long term

partly because these areas become too dependent on a single industry that tends to bust and partly because no one wants to live here these unsightly drilling so americans want the cookie cutter green back yards and the mcmansion filled with all those light and tech gadgets and big screen t.v.'s we just don't want to see the dirty truth about how we power all of those things but thanks to our oil boom drilling is no longer something we're doing in some remote wilderness or in the middle east a big term for lots of americans drilling is something we're doing right in our own backyards and it ain't so pretty and i for one think this is a very good thing we all should have a front row seat to the damage we're doing with our continued addiction to fossil fuels because it's dirty and scary and it's probably not going to end well for us

better to see that dirty truth now hopefully before it's too late to do anything about it and all of our backyards turn into graveyards tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the residence. before we go tonight don't forget the turn of nine pm earlier tonight suggested the actor jason schwartzman will talk about his role in the film saving mr banks here's a snippet of what's to come we're just unsure of what it's like to work with the famous actor tom hanks. but i do have these scenes of tom hanks and tom hanks is someone i grew up watching my whole life goes there is a fascinating thing where it's like wow i can't believe i'm really in that thing with tom hanks as a regular he is a regular guy he has no affectation at all it's incredible in fact like i am still trying to get used to the like he asked me

a question question recently and my answer was like twenty minutes long i think because i was so excited he's like how are you doing with that they are all credo as driving in there was a day of tornado in moore and then at the end i was like thank you gosh i did he really want to know i think he does so check it out that does it for now for more of the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t v dot com slash usa you can follow me on twitter at sam sachs for now take it easy. be ignoring the. story others in the. lights need. to picture.

from a good. luck to. you. this is extremely interesting. strategic reason to try. a longer covert team of journalists trying to release wiki leaks documents about how the united states is trying to. make me a local media more pro-american they encounter fear ignorance and pressure. country blocks the way to information freedom. media stuff on our t.v. .