coming up on r t a white house appointed review board made its way to capitol hill to make a case for n.s.a. surveillance changes but will lawmakers and the white house agree on any meaningful reforms we'll have a report from capitol hill just ahead and in some parts of west virginia it's now safe to drink the tap water but not everyone can drink from the fountain after last week's chemical spill was a state judge has a warning for the company responsible for the leak details coming up and an undercover drug deal exposed the d.n.a. and justice department secretly met with members of a mexican drug cartel all mexican authorities were left in the dark find out how the u.s. was doing the cartels dirty work later in the show. it's

tuesday january fourteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i live near a david and you're watching our t.v. . we are now just three days away from a speech president obama is expected to give regarding the changes he's willing to make to satisfy concerns over the n.s.a.'s surveillance programs one of the most important questions to be addressed is whether the government will continue to collect millions of americans bone records in order to identify anyone who believes might be connected to terrorism but beyond the question of whether the program can continue is who would be responsible for storing the data one suggestion that's been proposed to the president is shifting the storage of the phone records from the n.s.a. to the phone companies themselves that's exactly what was explored today by obama's review group on intelligence and communications technologies and a special senate judiciary hearing former obama administration officials met to

talk about this and other possible n.s.a. reforms r t political commentator sam sacks bring this brings us more on what happened on the hill. the senate judiciary committee took on n.s.a. reforms today and they heard from president obama's own independent n.s.a. review panel which recently put out forty six recommendations to reform the spy agency some ideas include adding more transparency to the n.s.a.'s requests for data from private companies changing the n.s.a.'s leadership structure and making changes to the top secret phase of course a lot of these reforms will require congressional action and stays hearing and on friday the president will lay out which reforms he supports but the most significant question today and the rest of the week is what happens to the n.s.a.'s bulk phone metadata collection program which has been ruled likely unconstitutional by one federal court but up held by another federal court the review panel discussed the privacy concerns associated with bulk metadata collection there is

quite a bit of content and metadata and when you have the records of the phone calls that a particular individual made on me you can learn an awful lot about that person the independent review panel also found no evidence that such bulk collection prevented any terrorist attacks but they don't suggest completely scrapping it instead they suggest stripping the n.s.a. of its power to collect and store americans metadata and instead leaving up to telecom companies to administer these massive databases that's an idea of the white house reportedly may get behind the one that telecom companies are hesitant to endorse as is raking member of the senate judiciary committee senator chuck grassley this is an interesting idea perhaps worth investigating but i think it's legitimate to have concern that it may create some many as many privacy problems says it sells indeed private companies seem to be allowing their customers information to be act on what seems to be

a daily basis now the chairman of the senate judiciary committee senator patrick leahy has his own ideas about the n.s.a.'s bulk collection america of. phone metadata he thinks the program should be terminated and he's sponsoring legislation to do just that but he's facing some strong opposition from lawmakers on the hill cozy with the surveillance state looking ahead the president could on his own end of the bulk phone records collection program he could do it this week and he doesn't need congress's approval but he's not expected to do that you may remember following the edward snowden revelations the white house moved to rather quickly to stop targeted spying on a few dozen world leaders but it has not shown the same willingness to stop dragnet spying on tens of millions of ordinary citizens in the usa and in places like germany and brazil so we'll have to hear if the white house is reconsidering its position on friday also don't forget about the courts the courts don't care what

the white house or congress is doing and they're going to have their say on the constitutionality of the n.s.a.'s bulk collection spying program too and it will likely be the final say on capitol hill in washington d.c. sam sachs r t. and we're now learning that the u.s. made efforts to oust afghan president hamid karzai by attempting to manipulate the country's election in two thousand and nine this is all according to the headline making book by former defense secretary robert gates and the book called duty memoirs of a secretary at war gates called this attempt to influence afghan elections ugly he said quote it was all ugly our partner the president of afghanistan was tainted and our hands were dirty as well our future dealings with karzai always hugely problematic and his criticisms of us are at least more understandable in the context of our clumsy and failed pooch karzai has long claimed the us trying to manipulate the two thousand and nine election to remove him from power in response

to the allegations one cars i spokesman said that this confirms that their suspicion is true karzai administration officials have also pointed to this as a reason to hold off signing a bilateral security agreement that would allow for u.s. troops to stay in the country after the twenty fourteen deadline however washington insisted there was no manipulation involved the book which gives gates perspective on the u.s. occupation of afghanistan is scheduled to hit bookstores today. and two former california police officers were found not guilty late yesterday in the beating death of kelly thomas attorneys try to make the case to a jury that fullerton officers men while ramos and j.j. chameli abused their authority when they responded to a call that thomas was breaking into cars in two thousand and eleven the officers had used a stun gun and baton to shoot and beat thomas a thirty seven year old gets a friend a homeless man a surveillance video in the area happened to catch the altercation on camera by the

end of the beating thomas' face was bloodied and disfigured he went into a coma and died five days later ramos and teacher nellie both faced involuntary manslaughter charges in the aftermath but after brief deliberations were ultimately acquitted in response to the verdict thomas' father ron thomas had this to say. it's not over. we still have several rounds to go. we've been stopped so far but that's just in the process it's just a criminal portion of it which is the most important to me the most important. but i will not stop until we get justice for charlie. and to discuss this a little bit more i was joined earlier by our tease ramon glendower in our l.a. studio i first asked him how the defense managed to argue against a coroner's report that prove the beating cost kelly thomas' death the prosecution really their whole case surrounded this videotape in the photographs of killian

really the public perception was that these police officers were going to get in trouble but. after seeing this tape but the defense argued that it wasn't the beating that ultimately killed kelly thomas they brought in their own expert witness saying that it was actually kelly thomas' drug use which weakens his heart and that was the reason for his death alternately the defense strategy was to go after the victim himself kelly thomas in the they tried to paint him as a dangerous character who had a tendency for violence and at the end they were able to put enough into the jury to where the were able to convict two former police officers and ramona why it doesn't seem like it was so difficult for prosecutors to convict police officers. yeah i mean it's very very rare for a police officer to even go to trial much less be convicted of

a crime when it involves some sort of excessive force and in this case it was all caught on video but we have to remember that police departments and prosecutors work hand in hand on a daily basis so prosecutors really rely on police testimony to go after other criminals on a on a regular basis so this tie relationship really makes for a situation where da's are usually pretty reluctant to go after police officers because they know that they're going to have to rely on them for other cases. you know what's the next step here is there are chance for an appeal or perhaps for a separate federal trial right well the district attorney in orange county tony recall because this is a he doesn't plan to retry rondo's or since anally he respects the jury's decision but this has a big effect on the trial of officer joe wolf. the d.a.

is now going to go after him he was another officer who was also charged on this the f.b.i. is looking into whether any sort of civil rights violations were committed during trial or at the time of the incident but so far nothing has been announced and remember what is the reaction been from activists who have been following this case you know should we expect to see more people coalesce around this issue going forward. well sure there has been a lot of public cry and cry online we've seen days and days of protesters protests today and there will be more in the days to run tom is here since the beating happened back in two thousand and eleven has joined with police brutality groups so it does seem like people are rallying around the cause there will be protests who will see how long how long this lasts we do remember that there was a ton of outcry right after the beating which forced. which caused three city

council members to resign and ultimately the police chief to step down at the time so there have been some changes within the city but it's you will have to wait and see whether this causes more of a movement to really speak out against these sort of things what have to see what the reaction will be from the community going forward and if another case aside after parties ramon glendon thank you very much you bet and a west virginia county judge has now ordered the company at the heart of the chemical spill that contaminated water in several counties to preserve all documents and evidence relating to this spill this comes at a time when the number of lawsuits against the company are mounting artie's magnum opus has the story. after nearly a week of no showers no clean dishes no clean clothes and overall dry conditions the water taps are slowly starting to flow again in charleston the west virginia american water company has been notifying customers on

a county by county basis that they can safely use the water once again after of course they flush their system of potentially contaminated water left sitting in the pipes in the wake of a historic water ban in the state now the cause of this unprecedented ban is a chemical spill a reported seventy five hundred gallons of four met the cycle hexane methanol or n c h m a by freedom industries it's a chemical used in the coal manufacturing process freedom industries has not spoken with the media nor a least a press statement since the press conference on friday evening take a look at this map as of tuesday morning thirty five percent of customers had their water working again represented by all the areas you see here in blue and all of this area you see here in red is where the ban is still in place so quite a few people are still dealing with the aftermath of this chemical crisis

particularly those people in more rural less affluent neighborhoods authorities are now turning their attention to the investigation into how this bill actually happened in the first place an independent federal agency known as the u.s. chemical safety board has deployed a team to the area to investigate the spill and has said this quote our goal is to find out what happened to allow a leak of such a magnitude to occur and to assure that the proper safeguards are in place to prevent a similar incident from occurring. so now that the situation is starting to finally calm down let's take a look at some of the numbers as a result of this leak two hundred thirty one people were reported to local hospitals complaining of suffering from some of the symptoms associated with ingesting this chemical of them. fourteen people were admitted to the hospital to undergo evaluation and treatment no word yet on how many of those people have been released sixty pets were also reported sick local authorities say they found no

fish or wildlife dead as a result of the spill and that is because they say that this chemical is toxic yes but ultimately non-lethal meanwhile at least eighty lawsuits have been filed against freedom industries in the west virginia american water company as a result of the spill none of them have been certified as of yet and more lawsuits are expected to come in the future now the downtown charleston area and surrounding neighborhoods essentially became ghost towns in the wake of this chemical spill and nearly every restaurant was forced to close from thursday evening until saturday costing the businesses millions of dollars in lost revenue schools and nine counties that were affected by this close they remain closed in four counties as they wait for the system to be flushed before they return leaving parents either stay at home or look for a child care provider local business owners are now in the process of contacting their insurance companies to see if they are covered for this type of emergency but

even if they are the compensation funds are still always out with the claims process the overall economic and long term health effects of this massive spill are still hazy at best residents are trying to get back to normal but if one thing is certain this story is far from over in washington meghan lopez r.t. . and we're just learning that agents of the u.s. drug enforcement administration and justice department officials have met in secret with members of mexican drug cartels all in exchange for information on rival drug organizations this is all according to a new investigative piece reported by mexico's alluna rosol news according to the report u.s. agents held more than fifty secret meetings with cartel operatives in mexico for over a decade between two thousand and two thousand and twelve and they did so without informing mexican authorities the article says without the presence of mexican authorities bilateral agreements stipulate without informing the mexican government

the agents of the da met with members of the cartels to obtain information about their rivals and establish at the same time a network of informants traffickers who signed cooperation agreements. based its reports on extensive interviews as well as official american and mexican court documents according to those documents the u.s. specifically had an arrangement with mexico's a lower drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs also to lower provided information on rival gangs conservative estimates of the cartels annual revenue is about three billion dollars and according to the head of the d.a.'s office in chicago quoted before this investigation the senate low a drug cartel is responsible for supplying seventy to eighty percent of the drugs and train the chicago area and has a presence in cities across the u.s. to discuss this undercover deal i was joined earlier by andrew chemist an investigative journalist based in mexico city i first asked him about these

cooperation agreements and what these drug lords were promised an exchange for information about cartel rivals. well first of all the contention in terms of which drug lords had which immunity agreement what we know for sure is that the lenient lawyer for the scene a little cartel. lawyer named castro had over six years worth of agreements with the d.a. these are called confidential source agreements and there there's no doubt this is deputy documents that were released by the prosecution and there's no contention on the other side that this was and continues to be the case is fact even jack riley the head of the cheap haven't. spoken to explicitly several times about this and there's no contention there and now where the contention lies is to what extent immunity agreements like these apply to other cartel leaders and this is where the defense and prosecution differ in some t.o.s. the nickname the loosely translated as pretty boy contents is that these agreements

apply to him and other leaders and that in exchange for intel on other groups such as let's say does he had the same kind of protection that was afforded to their lawyers the prosecution denies this. kind of spiced up the case in fact a little further and actually also said not just that was intel those being exchanged but that even there was fast and furious weapons as well and i wanted to i want to get to that before me dale. in giving the d.n.a. information on rival gangs want us in a lower cartel essentially getting the u.s. agency to do its dirty work. well sure i mean in fact even officials admit that this is literally dirty work that having deals like these with leaders are like these are dirty work and security experts go even farther and say that arranging deals like these the strength in one cartel over others so that there's let's look at tension and disputed positives and then there were less violence is indeed a legitimate security strategy and it's one that has to be done in a war that's pretty much hard if not impossible to win and so this is their logic

for doing these kind of things and that's kind of the logic behind getting intel on a cartel that's known to be much more despised by both the mexican and u.s. governments that is as they brag and routinely in narco montrose that the only cartel that doesn't have any agreements with the governments there are known for the most heinous and violent violent acts by one trend i want and i want to talk a little bit bribery i want to talk a little bit about that specifically you know during the height of this relationship which was between two thousand and six and two thousand and twelve coincidentally there was a market surge of violence in mexico not to mention that the sinhala cartel saw a steady rise in power during those years so do we know if this you know could be attributed to the silhouettes cartel or the sin along cartels you know tit for tat with the d.n.a. . i want to have a good picture that i would paint the picture a little differently in fact during the height of the drug war it became the case

that again the government's refusal possibly desperate enough to enter into agreements like these again so it's a strength in one cartel over the others and have here at least the violence be reduced. that was investigative reporter andrew canute's. it's not every day that one of our t.'s own experiences backlash from a news report but that's exactly what happened in the aftermath of a story covered on breaking the set yesterday abby martin brought attention to the plight of independent journalists who have been blocked from being recognized on the collaborative information website with the p.d.f. here's a look at part of that report this issue calls into question the way with a pedia decide who and what is notable enough to be worthy of the text on its site on the deletion thread editors deanna and kirby eric explain that i'm not notable enough for my own page because apparently they couldn't verify any of the information about me through third party sources so i found this interesting

considering how there are dozens of third party sites that have talked in depth about my work as well as the show including one called white out press der spiegel max kaiser alger miner joe rogan stuart wilde global post and firedoglake yet none of these sites are apparently notable enough to allow me a sacred page. i was joined earlier by breaking the said host abby martin and i asked her how she found out about this issue to begin with. i don't really care if i have a page on my computer i just thought it was funny my dad at christmas is like hey you're on wikipedia it's really cool and i saw that the page got removed and then it got resubmitted by another user and then it got removed again and someone wrote an article about it saying hey what's the deal and so i kind of just wanted to bring attention to the fact this editing process is actually really a skill how does it work and can anyone just upload and sure enough i guess anyone who is a user can create at it or vote to delete content but there's only

a sacred few admins that can kind of oversee the whole process and they consider anything that's really not corporate media unverifiable third party sources that they can validate your page from being that's incredible well what happened since you brought up the issue here would be a page yesterday so after we did after i did that report. that someone had given me a revisionist history because on wikipedia can see the whole thread of everyone who's kind of talking about it and why they chose to make these actions that they did and on the very top it just says user john reeves actually voted to add it to block all non admin users to recreate my page indefinitely so this is basically an explicitly set it explicitly says that he is blocking all non admin users from ever recreating my page so it's kind of i don't know what i think i just have no idea what to say i mean i'm just kind of appalled at the fact that even if someone tries to verify these sources book now and you know for sure that that wasn't an issue

before yesterday's broad no that i don't know i mean it happened yesterday. it seems like it's a little bit of a quins i think maybe people flooded with p.d. and saying hey what happened then is just like hey screw this i'm going to block it i think it's a personal bias decision and that's the problem is with this online encyclopedia it is ultimately up to the subjective personal bias of these admins and that's really i think what the editorial decision was and hopefully you know it will be reinstated actually heard from another one. admin who was like i was lobbying for you i'm going to try to get it back of. your brain i said audience sort of been involved in this at all or they've been lobbying we compete in there they're kind of just figuring out i mean i just figured out kind of how kind of a she this whole process really is there's a whole corporation called wiki p.r. that you can essentially you know pay to make your page verifiable and all this stuff so it really goes back to how it can be bought just like a democracy it's definitely gotten more difficult i think over the years are

a lot of people i know i knew that personally had a book if you get pages that all the sudden were taken down and it's been a notability standard that really applies to whatever the biases of the admin that's in question lastly you know a lot of people see it as an accurate source because obviously a lot of those biases and you think of it as this sort of you know generic sort of objective site for information do you think this incident should really change how people perceive the site i mean it definitely changes the way that i perceive this i mean of course teachers will say don't go to wikipedia if your source is but you know you do and you can link back to the down citations and you can see what everything's going back to but the thing is when you're reading the first paragraph you are influenced by the bias that's put out there by these admins and so really i think it will just take a second look at you know what's deemed a consensus definitely well i was breaking the set abby martin because i'm irish have you ever heard of the muscle building drug zille max you probably haven't

considering it's not for humans rather it's for cows and although the f.d.a. has said it's ok for the cows to consume it there have been some questionable side effects the resident investigates. if you're eating a burger right now you might want to put it down while you listen to that there's a muscle building drug called ville max that's made by merck and co an estimated seventy to eighty percent of u.s. cattle has been fed it or another beta agonists over the last decade or so to beef them up and make them more flavorful tender and juicy and according to bill max's

website it's perfectly safe and we all benefit from still max that's really what the site says the f.d.a. said it was safe and merck had some scientific experts study how the cows act when they're wrong so max and they said the wellbeing of the cows is totally not affected when they take the max so i guess they didn't study the recent seventeen cows whose who visit fell off because of a bill maxx they were taking i'm not getting the poor live cows hooves fell off causing the immense pain obviously and also rendering them too messed up to even eat or to live anymore they had to be immediately put down and not eaten because that's just gross when mark was questioned about it they stressed that the max is perfectly safe they said they brought in third party experts who said the hoof last was not due to the bill max they have however temporarily suspended sales of the drug in the us and canada even though it's perfectly safe. meanwhile cattle has

been euthanized after using bill max over and over again and the number of cattle euthanized in the industry rose over a hundred and. evony five percent since the drug introduction so dumb come on gore operation stop putting horrible crap into our food better yet come on humanity stop putting so many burgers into our mouths meat production is one of the biggest contributors to potent greenhouse gas emissions including carbon dioxide methane gas and nitric oxide the cattle industry also screws up the land and meat producers shove a ton of antibiotics into the meat which is helping to screw up our antibiotic resistance as a species eating so much meat is not great for the planet or our arteries and yet we're eating more meat than ever according to a new study in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences. isn't it about

time that we stop lining up like a bunch of sheep at mcdonald's to eat our daily serving of how it might be time for us to realize our population is to be fed up and our food corporations are too screwed up to consider burgers as a main staple in our diet anymore tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the resident. and before we go don't forget to tune in for an encore presentation of larry king now tonight's episode features oscar winning actor jeff bridges as he talks about his most recent film r i p. d. and much more here's a snippet of what's to come. in the hollywood age the longevity of the marriage. well probably one thing is the example that my

folks you know went through you know they they were married to the end you know they were they met at u.c.l.a. and fell in love and you know. my father passed away we're you know we're married. and maybe it's you know maybe the kids have said this is before bed seems to you know pop into my mind the key is not getting a divorce you just go away when that when the you get that well wall with you they have a wall how you get through that well that's like there's a buddhist. kind of practice that i'm working on a closure on when those tough things happen those are really kind of gifts they're really opportunities to expand you know and to open your love and try to you know get more intimate with your spouse do it go to 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 website r t dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at amir and

david for now have a great night. well . it's technology innovations all the developments from around russia. the future covered.