because you're going to. be. breaking news on our t.v. edward snowden could have the chance to stay in russia indefinitely a russian lawmaker says the n.s.a. whistleblower will be offered extended asylum more on this story just ahead and former virginia governor bob mcdonnell and his wife appeared in court today they stand accused of receiving gifts from a wealthy c.e.o. for political favors archie was at the hearing and brings you a special report coming up. and in switzerland the syrian peace talks could end before they even start today representatives of the government and the opposition fail to meet face to face we'll bring you all the details straight from geneva later in the show.

it's friday january twenty fourth four pm in washington d.c. i'm lynn neary david and you're watching r.t. america. we begin today with the breaking news that russia plans to extend its offer of asylum to former government contractor edward snowden beyond august which is when his one year temporary asylum was set to end this is all according to remarks by russian lawmaker alexei pushkov who spoke today at the world economic forum during a panel discussion alexey hinted that the extension of temporary refugee status for snowden could be indefinite saying quote he will not be sent out of russia it will be up to snowden the u.s. has part of snowden with yes can object the charge that carries harsh penalties just yesterday attorney general eric holder said granting the whistleblower clemency would be going too far but holder did say that he's open to pursuing a deal with snowden if he pled guilty to criminal charges it's unclear however what

that deal would entail. so dan is also addressing the possibility of returning to the us yesterday in an online q. and a stone and was asked what it would take for him to come back to the united states in response snowden said that he knows his return is about is the best resolution but that it's unfortunately not possible in the face of current whistle blower protection laws or more on all of the different questions he answered yesterday let's turn to our tease meghan lopez. the former national security agency contractor responsible for leaking over one point seven million classified documents to the world and turning america's intelligence apparatus on its head took some time to answer questions from the public this week this is the second time edward snowden has taken to the internet to argue his case here's what we learned during the brief question and answer session stoughton once again took aim at section two fifteen of the patriot act which allows for the book collection of telephone metadata snowden pointed to this mass surveillance as the n.s.a.

is the biggest offense against the american people and said there's no possible justification for it and a democratic society he claims the n.s.a. violated the constitution one hundred twenty million times but failed to uncover even a single terror plot snowden warned that the dangers of bulk collection are twofold first the knowledge that these programs exist causes self-censorship consequently making all of us less free and second collection of the sort creates a permanent record where something you searched on the internet out of curiosity years ago can be used against you today the thirty year old criticize the fisa court as a rubber stamp court which approves ninety nine point nine seven percent of all government requests he says that only eleven requests were ever denied out of the thirty three thousand nine hundred in the courts thirty three year existence at the same time snowden acknowledged that intelligence agencies do have a role in protecting national security interests he said the men and women who work

for the cia and the n.s.a. are trying to do the right thing and are worried about the same things that he is edward snowden took some time to talk about his own situation saying he is well aware that there have been threats on his life but asserted that he will not be intimidated into submission he also said that he wants to return to the u.s. but cannot given the nature of plant whistleblower protection laws snowden wrote quote. one of the things that has not been widely reported by journalists is that whistleblower protection laws in the us do not protect contractors the national security arena there are so many holes in the laws the protections they are for are so weak and the processes for reporting they provide are so ineffective that they appear to be intended to discourage reporting of even the clearest wrongdoing if i had revealed what i knew about these unconstitutional but classified programs to congress they could have charged me with a felony finally he made

a plea for international bodies to come up with global security standards that would force privacy rights but also protect countries against attacks story wrote quote nobody should be hacking critical to life infrastructure like hospitals and power stations and it's fair to say that can be recognized in international law snowden says laws won't prevent dangerous hacking from taking place only science and technology can do that so for now it looks as if he's not coming back to the u.s. any time soon but he stands by the decisions that he made and then attempt to bring the u.s. back to what he sees as its core principles in washington maggie lopez r t and glasgow university students have launched a campaign to get ad words known in elected as rector he is one of four official candidates for the three your post also noted is highly unlikely to take up the post in person glasgow's rectors are elected to represent students chairing the university's ruling court glasgow university student love no no work talks about

why some students are voting for snowden. the reason which shows at which no one is because we know that he is a hero is a brave man who wrists a lot of things to let us the people know the extent of hewas media surveillance and intrusion into our private lives and we just want to show him that we appreciate what he's done and it is a clear message sent out to those who are monitoring us that we will not stand for this and that we do not this we do not accept this kind of criminality it would be more symbolic than anything because he will be able to actually physically come to class go it will choose a representative. for him in situations where he cannot personally attend but his duties will be to hold the title of the rector of the university we have bombs or we've had an overwhelmingly positive response of course we will do everything we can to make sure that this actually happens now it was glasgow university student look now no lack. and the justice department has now accused the government's

largest private security background check contractor of defrauding the country of millions of dollars the company coming under fire is u.s. investigations services and it's being accused of filing six hundred sixty thousand flawed background investigations which is forty percent of the cases the company pushed through to the government in a four year period this is all laid out in a twenty five page civil complaint filed by the justice department which will now join a whistle blower's lawsuit against the us i asked that's under way in alabama district court the complaint charges that the company used its close ties with the federal government to conceal its practice of flushing or dumping background checks that means the company would often push through government cases they didn't have proper review but are all official say u.s. i as conducted a faulty two thousand and eleven background investigation of both edward snowden.

and aaron alexis the defense contractor who killed twelve people in a shooting spree at the washington navy yard last year and its defense the company says the allegations related to a small group of individuals and it added that quote since first learning of these allegations nearly two years ago we have acted decisively to reinforce our processes and management to ensure the quality of our work and now to virginia where former governor bob mcdonnell and his wife maureen were in court today the two were indicted on fourteen counts tuesday after a lengthy federal investigation of their relationship with the former c.e.o. of a dietary supplement maker the former republican governor and his wife officially entered not guilty pleas at a court hearing this morning liz wahl attended the hearing in richmond and brings us more.

and it's talk a little bit more about this development i was joined earlier by tom hartman host of artes the big picture and author of the crash of twenty sixteen the plot to destroy america and what we can do to stop it i first asked him if he thought there was enough evidence in this case to prove mcdonald's guilt. you know in politics it's so weird and so bizarre don siegelman who is a former governor of alabama is sitting in a prison cell right now for a conviction of for this kind of thing in and what he did was he appointed to a an unpaid job as head of the hospital oversight board a guy that the two republican governors before him had also appointed the same guy who never gave him any campaign contributions at all who had simply contributed to

a fund that was to have a statewide lottery siegelman got no benefit out of that whatsoever nothing not even you know the rolex watch and but he had angered crow rove and karl rove went off on this vendetta got god siegelman put in prison i think the big mistake or not a mistake but i think the the big thing that's driving the bob mcdonnell thing is they got so much publicity over the last year particularly impressive media. it couldn't be ignored sure one of the things that came out in the e-mail exchange between johnny williams and maureen mcdonnell is that the couple was in a lot of credit card debt and it seemed it was struggling and one of the things one of the first things that she was going to receive but she didn't it was an inaugural address and she basically was complaining how they didn't have money to pay for that do you think there's a takeaway here looking at what this says about the culture of people in high political office and just having to keep up with sort of this lavish lifestyle you

know lavish possessions and destinations and so on and so forth you know it could be bird there are a lot of politicians who are not all that lavish you know there are a lot of politicians who are just down and dirty. who at high levels i mean the governor of montana for example and we just wears bolo ties and blue jeans all john and so. there has been some speculation in the press that some of this was driven by either bob mcdonnell or his wife or both of them. simply wanting to live the high life style and always being super conscious thing. that's all going to come out of the trial it's hard to judge right while in his defense the governor made it seem like he was just being singled out for all of this let's take a listen to what he had to say. the united states supreme court has already rejected this radical idea and for good reason because people were applying as the law of the land did nearly every elected official from president obama on down

would have to be charged for providing tangible benefits to done. so he's spending that's a very interesting way and what do you think about what he just said i think there's some truth to what he said and and you know from the c.e.o. in case i want to the extreme to the bob mcdonnell on the other. most politicians in america fall somewhere in the in the middle is if you look at their donor list and you look at their voting record and you look at the meetings. you will find a correlation and and you know what bob mcdonnell did is he didn't do in a particularly sophisticated way and that's the only mistake it made if he had shovelled the money through karl rove's pac it wouldn't matter i mean if you take the money through a packer through a super pac is it just that you know the loopholes are so huge it's almost like he he's being punished for being stupid rather than being corrupt is because you

know the next week is the thirtieth anniversary of the buckley vs fully goes to court decision now the first time the supreme court explicitly said that money is protected under the first amendment now the word money doesn't appear the first amendment the supreme court said it is and then citizens united of course really nailed that so ever since buckley we've had this political. insight geist in america that is money drives everything i mean you know basically from the reagan era forward it's been it's been all about the money we'll talk about i mean this we just passed the fourth anniversary of citizens united and talk a little bit about how that really changed the ballgame completely while citizens united was the pinnacle it was the capstone it brought together the buckley decision which said money is protected by the for. just a moment and the first national bank versus bloddy decision which was a little less than a decade later the corporations have rights under the fourteenth amendment so now we have money having been protected by the first amendment corporations being

protected by the fourteenth a memo which by the way was passed to free the slaves you know it's just hard to imagine abe lincoln saying let's free the slaves and the corporations you know it's just you know. but but this is what our supreme court has done over the last thirty years and it has created a. politically corrupt system in the united states at the state and local and federal level i mean it's just it's happening all over the place it's very difficult for politicians these days not to be corrupted by politics in fact it's increasingly virtually impossible for him to run for office without behaving in a way that could get you to this kind of trouble one of the things you mentioned the loopholes and i read an excellent article in the new york times by eric lipton in which he actually points out that loophole that if you just basically funnel everything through a super pac and you can get those lavish ski vacations and trips to the golf course and a lot of people don't pay this loophole any attention and it's amazing because it's

just what you sad i mean you can you can do it it's just about how you do it. you know how i just. when you shed some light on how this is being overlooked right now right well first of all our media doesn't talk about it much i mean we kind of get sideways and what during the republican primaries it was well shelly adelson has decided he's going to back rick santorum well this week he's going to back newt gingrich in all of us and you watch them pop up or down depending on which billionaire is giving who you know how much money to whom and the penny should drop for americans i mean americans shouldn't own wait a minute you know we're we're watching who is being funded by what billionaire i mean that's oligarchy you know that's a plutocracy that's that's not democracy or in her public so. i am frankly shocked that there's not more. than just you know horror about this expressed in our media i think it's it's a real this is a real serious problem and politicians both democrats and republicans will tell you this is a problem we can find gold which is an attempt to dial this back which got blown up by citizens united was

a bipartisan bill you know the politicians don't like the fact whether the democrats or republicans don't like the fact that they have to spend sixty percent of their time outside their office in a private office if they were dialing for dollars that every weekend they have to go to fundraisers it's it's and in the one thing about these super pacs is that for entry level politicians low level politicians beginning politicians it can cost one hundred thousand two hundred thousand dollars to set up a super pac i mean it's so they're very expensive operations so the big guys get to play with the super pacs small politicians they run into these problems where they just start to campaign donations things like this and then they get nailed absolutely all it's just i'm it's not fair to say the least but that's unfortunately all the time we have tom hartman host of the big picture and author of the crash of twenty sixteen thank you for joining me thanks america and for more on the case over virginia's former governor artie's liz wahl attended today's

hearing and richmond and brings us more take a look. oh it was the first court appearance for the former governor of virginia robert mcdonnell and his wife maureen at the federal courthouse here in richmond virginia at the arraignment both of them pleaded not guilty to the charges against them counts ranged from conspiracy fraud and falsifying documents now the charges stem from a relationship that the mcdonald's had with a wealthy businessman a man that owns a nutritional supplement company the prosecution alleges that the mcdonald's use the office of the governor to gain personal financial benefits financial gifts it's all mapped out in the indictment the gifts include everything from oscar dela renta address is a rolex watch money for their daughter's wedding and thousands of dollars in loans all of it adds up to about one hundred sixty five thousand dollars and in return the prosecution alleges that they use their position of power to grant to promote

this company and to grant special access to government leaders now before the arraignment the judge made it very clear that this case will not be tried in the media but will be tried inside that courtroom cited a local rule local rule fifty seven prohibiting any anonymous leaks to the media the judge made it clear that he will anybody that does leak to the media will face severe severe penalty is as for the mcdonnell's today they walked into that chamber hand in hand smiling on this day that could be the beginning of a very long saga their trial date is set for july twenty eighth if they are convicted they will each can face a maximum penalty of thirty years behind bars here in richmond virginia liz wall r t. the syrian peace talks in geneva. today after the western backed opposition

refused to take part in face to face negotiations with the syrian government's delegation the two sides are seemingly finding no common ground on the notion that president bashar al assad should stay in power artie's igor piskun of is in geneva with more. it began frankly seem like the negotiations were turning into a complete disaster until your special envoy on syria lakhdar brahimi came out at the end of day and said that he did manage to get both the soon afterwards and the opposition present here in geneva to get in the same room and talk that's going to that's going to happen on saturday and he didn't really provide a lot of details about what they're going to talk about he said that even the ways that he managed to talk them into it are his diplomatic secrets which she is not ready to share with the journalist but he did say that right now the most important thing is for both sides of this conflict to understand what they're here for in

geneva and what these talks are all about because the negotiations were supposed to start at eleven am this friday and. they were supposed to sit down at the same table and formally greet each other with mr brahimi present there as well but since the opposition said they were not ready to sit down at the same table with the f. tori's formally the talks never started so throughout the entire day u.s. special envoy was meeting separately both with the authorities and with the opposition and their representatives have been coming out to journalists and accusing each other basically of sabotaging the in negotiations and it became clear to us that both say the only way out of this crisis is through negotiations based on the agreements reached at geneva one the opposition says that they want to talk about forming a turn to the transitional government in syria without president assad there while the authorities are saying they're ready to talk about cease fires they're ready to talk about joint anti terror efforts and when it comes to president assad future

political future that has to be decided by a nationwide election only with anyone willing taking part and the people of syria deciding that the talks now are going to start really on saturday we don't really know what exactly they're going to be talking about but really getting even them in the same room is already quite a deal. mattick success that was our t.v. corpus going up. as diplomats push for tox edge an eva to the syrian battlefield radical islamist fighters and al qaeda linked rebels continue to turn against each other for control of major cities artie's morea of an ocean are reports from the front line in the northern city of aleppo. the little weekend in northern syria one of the richest and most developed before three divest eighteen years of war has been the scene of some of the fiercest clashes between government troops and the rebels fighting shoulder to shoulder with a number of different al qaida affiliated groups but now

a different sort of war was raging on the same battlefield that. it took or loss of gosh the moderates free syrian army an umbrella military organization uniting anti assad forces since the beginning of the conflict is battling numerous radical jihadist groups who they say hijacked the revolution in order to establish an islamic caliphate in syria. do not stand up he had up to the roof of one of the highest buildings in the city of aleppo but the syrian army's line ends at the who say from the last after that and has no control the militants are only fifteen others beyond the mosque and the area is just food of militants five hundred meters from there and beyond that it's just a few of them. and we hear clashes nearby but the syrian army is not even involved just about got the confrontation is now between the free syrian army and the jihad isp of isis when darkness comes will join the fight but for now we are on standby

let her know we don't have any troops there we are fighting between themselves for control. according to the syrian observatory for human rights the london based opposition group relying on activists in the field for their data around fourteen hundred people have been killed in the country since hostilities between the rebels and jihadists broke out these january among the dead hundreds of moderate rebels and nearly two hundred civilians in an audio message posted online on thursday leader ayman al-zawahiri called on his militants to immediately hold the fighting between brothers which clashes exit q sions and toolchain between those who were once calm rates continue. and with the syrian government and opposition now starting their first dialogue and three years the question is now how this internal rebel fight will affect syria as

a whole some say it would most likely weaken the whole movement others fear the rebels would be completely taken over by the jihadists that's a scenario that could harm him and potentially undermine the prospects of peace that's the in pursuit of the current talks in geneva. rif notion r.t. from syria and a senior european union official met with ukraine's president today during a political stalemate after days of clashes between police and protestors opposition leaders are still demanding the resignation of the government and are calling for early elections artie's peter oliver is in ukraine with more. but been hearing from president dick the on a covert chaffed of the latest rounds of talks between the government and the opposition now he's announced what's been achieved so far he said the january sixteenth laws that were brought in to clamp down on demonstrations that they would be changes to those laws now the opposition and government have agreed that there

will be an amnesty for all people who have been detained by police during the riots that we've seen here in kiev as well as across the rest of the country now what we're going to see next week is a emergency session of parliament here in ukraine during that emergency session we're expecting to see a reshuffle of the the on a covert his government he said he's going to change a few members of personnel around now in terms of the violence that's been going on here because the on a covert you said that he points the finger towards a groups all foreigners who be responsible for the majority of the worst violence blaming them for calling him a provoking the situation here the president said that he will do everything to try and bring about peace saying that all legal means at his disposal would be used as he tries to bring some kind of calm back to the back to kiev in the rest of ukraine we're looking at about

a dozen cities in the west of the country where police and rioters have clashed and it's government buildings official buildings that have been the targets for these these new riots in the west of the country the worst affected cities where we're looking at the cities of yvonne of their friend gulf where writers had tried to take government buildings on thursday night we now see after a vicious standoff that they have succeeded in breaking their way into government buildings in that city in the elsewhere in chad north sea. well what we've seen there is around one thousand rioters facing off against around one hundred. riot police in one of the main government buildings there it's been some quite scenes coming from for not standoff the police there of course outnumbered ten to one in that situation under which was one of the first cities outside of kiev to see violence there they occupied the government buildings so major roads in the

city how be barricaded some ways towards the you had this well the ukrainian prime minister has that as. has said that there will be negotiations and i'll be talking to the e.u. switzerland about. trying to ease tensions see if in ukraine see if they can help to perhaps broker some kind of a peace between opposition right is. the government here you know the news what's been coming out from ukraine has been making headlines around the world and we've heard comments from. u.s. leaders some of those comments is being claimed only really succeeding in inflaming tensions here in inflaming the violence now is artie's peter oliver now boom bust is coming up next here on r t n a joins us for a quick preview erin what is on the agenda today are now coming up on boom bust the founding editor of recession wired dot com when paranoid joins me to talk about

income inequality white here at home in the u.s. and artie's katie pilbeam is on the ground in davos switzerland where she brings us the latest from the world economic forum it's all coming up so stay tuned lots of good stuff there everyone should definitely tune in that does it for now i mean you're a day that. ukraine or at least the country's capital kiev has descended into chaos protests have turned extremely violent and the social order is on the verge of collapse to what degree do protesters in kiev represent the ukrainian people what do these protesters believe in and what do they really want is ukraine on the path to nowhere. and come to the future. ahead so we hit the road to focus on new technology. on this month's show no posses

complete without school shootings. and we learn about the next in still stupid evolution this has the potential to save lives. no new update on it. we've got the future covered. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. if they were it's about story. but if this guy like you would smear that guy stead of working for the people most issues in the mainstream media were pretty much on the bridegroom's didn't find. a good run.

hello there are happy friday i marinated this is boom bust and these are the stories that we're tracking for you today first up but we're bringing you all the latest from davos our pilbeam is in switzerland covering the global economic summit there and she's bringing us the lowdown from the swiss alps you won't want to miss it so stay tuned then a little paramour editor at alternative and full founder of recession wired dot com joins me live from our new york studio to discuss the elusive american dream ever elusive and it's friday which means it's your day here on boom bust and harrison and i address viewer feedback your thoughts comments concerns whatever live on air today it's all on boom bust and it all starts right now.