coming up on our t.v. armed in america over the weekend a shooting inside of maryland mall left three people dead we'll take an in-depth look at the growing trend for gun violence across the u.s. just ahead and more silk road fallout now two men involved in between exchanges have been arrested and charged for money laundering authorities say they laundered one million dollars of virtual currency for the black market website forum that coming up and see it was a lower john kiriakou is calling out corruption from his prison cell in pennsylvania his latest letter accuses prison officials of violating his rights by censoring his communication with the press the details from kiriakou behind bars later in the show.

it's tuesday january twenty eighth five pm in washington d.c. i mean you're a david and you're watching r t america. we begin today with the gun violence in the u.s. in the u.s. over the weekend a mall shooting took place in columbia maryland a city located just outside of washington d.c. the shooting highlights the increase in gun violence across america in recent years research released by yale school of medicine estimates that out of the over ten thousand kids shot in the u.s. in two thousand and nine at least one third of them died additionally according to a usa today report put out last month nine hundred thirty four people died in mass shootings over the past seven years that's only one percent of all gun related homicides and it's this high volume of shootings that makes the latest incident feel somewhat routine artie's megan lopez was in columbia maryland and brings us

the story. it's become an all too common scene in the u.s. less than a month into the new year public shootings have dominated headlines leaving dozens dead and many more fearing for their safety the columbia will became the latest scene of a shooting here in the u.s. the shooting happened on saturday morning at about eleven am the gunman allegedly shot two people have killed them before turning the gun on himself police officers swat and first responders arrived on the scene in two minutes using lessons from previous public massacres they immediately enter the mall rather than waiting to secure the surrounding area the gunman darion marcus aguilar a nineteen year old newly graduated high school student his victims twenty one year old brianna benlolo and twenty five year old tyler johnson both victims worked at zumiez skate shop on the upper level of the mall the killing spree was over in seconds realized that something was people running by the store. and then there

was another one right behind us was like. we got to close. the doors. got all of our customers in the back and we all hit i just ran you know in we were i saw other people going in was just trying to get to safety now police are trying to figure out the shooter's motives and why these tragedies continue to occur we have about one hundred times the rate of gun homicides and violent gun crimes relative to many countries of western europe and we should not be in the business of normalising violence since the beginning of two thousand and fourteen there have been seven school shootings across the country in just fourteen school days resulting in one shooting every other day meanwhile both baltimore and boston have been the scenes of unprecedented gang violence just north of the columbia mall shooting in baltimore newspapers report sixteen. people were

shot and killed within the first twelve days of this year alone the youngest victim sixteen year old lavar crawford he was shot seven times in the back and then on tuesday night yet another gang shooting another nineteen year old killed meanwhile over the weekend in boston three shootings that left three people dead in just twenty four hours bringing the total to nine for this year that's the highest the death toll has been in this city this early in the year in recent history shootings attributed to gang related retaliation so what is being done to curb this alarming trend federal and local lawmakers are coming up with a wide range of responses and louisiana state representatives are debating proposals to restrict sales forcing gun buyers to complete a safety training course first but oklahoma state senator nathan dom says violence will only decrease if everyone owns a gun regardless of their training or their state of mental health he is pushing to

eliminate gun licensing and background checks on a federal level president obama confronted the issue during last year's state of the union address ideas parents named cleo are in this chamber tonight along with more than two dozen americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. they deserve a vote. thank you deborah thank those of both thank you to the servo thank you very much for the right through a vote but the house never gave a vote to a bill to increase background checks and the senate failed to overcome a filibuster this year president obama is not expected to address gun control in his speech but could take executive action in the near future though not everyone agrees with legislation the bottom line is that you can't write

a law that essentially will apply to someone who's a law breaker you can assign penalties to lawbreakers but you can't create any law that controls someone's behavior gun violence has gone down in the u.s. over the past two decades however this recent uptick of public shootings has once again made the second amendment right to bear arms a target of debate in the pursuit of public safety in washington meghan lopez r.t. . and the justice department has agreed to relax its longstanding gag order on certain types of data requests made to tech companies allowing them for the first time to publicize how much customer information they must turn over to the government government for more on that here is our wall so here are the states of the next conference happens every year and brings together hundreds of people and attack world and government leaders of course one of the issues that they had to discuss today is this issue of n.s.a.

spying and possible reforms to the program this of course in the wake of the very controversial revelations from former n.s.a. contractor edward snowden one of the speakers today on this very topic was a judge a judge by the name james carr he was a formerly a judge in the face a court before the court that ultimately approves government surveillance requests he discussed some of the changes he believes should be made to the process the need for this kind of outside import whether you say it's representing the interests of the target representing the interests of the constitution the interest of the public during times of my six years when some of you know i really would like to have somebody in the room talking to me about this show so we judges make their minds up about something now one of the most recent controversies to come out of the edward snowden revelations is that the n.s.a. uses i phone applications are smartphone applications to spy on their targets one

of the most notable apps that they use is angry birds this game it looks like it's all fun and games but apparently according to these documents these kinds of apps can provide the n.s.a. with huge amounts of information we're talking information from location political affiliation sexual orientation and other personal information google maps is another tool. that is used by the n.s.a. according to these documents the n.s.a. has responded by saying they only collect information for quote counter intelligence purposes but it is unclear the scope of this program and how often they do tap into these applications to get information now meanwhile some of the biggest names and tech some of the biggest tech companies like google yahoo facebook microsoft they have all reached a deal with the justice department where they can now disclose the amount of requests and when exactly personal information is requested from them all of this

is an attempt to be more transparent as this debate rages on about privacy and government spying here in washington liz wahl r.t. . and ukraine's parliament voted today to repeal harsher anti-protons laws just hours after prime minister my cola submitted his resignation and a bid to and anti-government protests the prime minister explained that this move his move was motivated by efforts to peacefully resolve the current crisis peter oliver reports. the ukrainian president viktor yanukovych has accepted the resignation of prime minister mccaul as out of hand his cabinet they will remain in their positions for the time being until replacement saw put in place in fact they can stay in those positions for as much as as long as sixty days according to the law here but tuesday also seeing

a much anticipated emergency session of parliament there's been plenty to discuss there by lawmakers and they have made some changes to the laws one of the the major changes that's taken place and it was voted for unanimously. by m.p.'s here by the the duma by the rada deputies here and that was to repeal the emergency anti demonstration laws that were put into force on the fourteenth of this month they've now been torn away and repealed now also all the major issues that were up for discussion and there's going to be a lot more discussion to come was the talks over amnesty for anybody that is being detained by police now and the session that was taking place on tuesday ended with them saying that the decision to stay they said that they would continue long and tough negotiations about what form that amnesty would take and there was going to be any kind of amnesty before they could put it to a vote we're expecting to hear

a vote on mat on wednesday morning know another bit of news coming to us on tuesday is that it is coming from a guy who's pretty much the mayor of independence square he set him up as the same self as the commander of the area depends where being just over there that's where the the main body of this demonstration has been taking place he said that the only way this demonstrators will leave that opposition supporters will leave occupied government buildings is when victory on a covert leaves power so despite decisions and concessions partly being tried to make decisions in middle ground being try. to be found by law because there's still numbers here on the streets of kiev saying that they are not willing to budge on the demands that's how it looks right now all eyes now looking towards whedon's day to see what comes when his vote or how or what form or whether they will have any kind of steve for those detained by police and that was our correspondent peter

oliver. and federal prosecutors have officially charged two bitcoin entrepreneurs with using the virtual currency to launder one million dollars for drug trafficking on the underground website silk rope road was a black market website that allowed users to buy everything from cocaine to guns all by anonymously using bitcoins robert who went by the name of bt seeking and ran a digital money exchange for the site was arrested in his florida home additionally charlie shrem an overnight celebrity was arrested at new york's kennedy airport coined as a form of digital cash that allows users to bypass banks and credit card companies but when the f.b.i. shut down the silk road site in october and seized millions of dollars in bitcoins they said the digital currency was being used to cloak illegal trades i was joined earlier by artie's on a stasi a churkin off from our new york bureau to talk a little bit more about this latest development i first asked her about the details

and arrest of charlie shrem and connection to silk road. well i mean aren't twenty four year old charlie shrem was arrested upon landing this weekend on sunday at new york's j.f.k. airport upon returning from amsterdam where he was giving a speech he was taken to a manhattan federal courthouse where he has now been released on bond of one million dollars and is currently under home arrest in his parents' home in brooklyn and he was charged with conspiring to commit money laundering with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business as well as failing to report to a full authorities any suspicious activities he has importantly pled not guilty and is facing as much as thirty years behind bars because the prosecution is saying that the c.e.o. of the bitcoin exchange company bit instant how did been helping users by over one million dollars worth of bitcoins to lead or be able to use this money on silk

road this super an interest web sites dubbed by officials to be the black markets bizarro illegal drug purchases and the most dangerous sites on the internet sir and the second man robert known as the v.t.c. king how is he allegedly involved in this whole ordeal. well a fifty two year old fila was also arrested this weekend at his home in florida and charged with two of these charges conspiring to commit money laundering as well as operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and basically what the prosecution accuses of file of doing is operating on the silk road websites by. buying up get bitcoins with cash then at a marked up price selling these bitcoins to users kind of buying them off of schrans website and that's their connection there and because he was buying the bitcoins off of their website selling them on marked up prices and getting kind of

some kind of deals with sram because he would buy the bitcoins and much larger stock and so the officials are saying twenty eleven to twenty thirteen making or exchanging over one million dollars worth of bitcoins and which silk road users again because bitcoin is the only currency that was allowed to be used on this website that's why now shut down to be able to buy drugs online so the question is where do to their cases go from here or is this expected to have a larger impact on the big coin community as a whole. well i mean and that's really one of the most important questions in this case because the bitcoin community and the bitcoin trend as it was only beginning to really take off and this is one of the questions whether or not these particular routes and what's going to happen to these two men sram in particular because he was really a celebrity like you mentioned in the bitcoin world and some of the. out of lists

and supporters a saying that there are only reason that bitcoins a bit is being attacked is because it's a virtual currency that is not connected to banks or corporations that it's much harder to track online obviously that you know using a credit card and these are some of the concerns and some have been saying that this is possibly an attempt to scare the bitcoin community but you know we'll wait and see obviously how this for these particular cases end up impacting what happens to bitcoin should be really interesting to see how all of this plays out in the coming months artie's stasia churkin i'm from our new york studio. and the concern about the impact of silk road on vehicle and hasn't stopped thousands of others from celebrating its future as an alternative currency artie's perry and boring was at the north american bitcoin conference in miami this weekend and brings us more. they claim believers think this e.p. payment network is going to take over the world's banking system as we know it but

its reputation for facilitating illicit behavior makes it risky and there's a significant amount of people who still don't know what big corn is or how to use them as skeptics doubt this will ever catch on but here at the north american big conference in miami beach florida the big going community is reveling in the extraordinary growth the cryptocurrency has seen in the past year there's an unbelievable migration of human talent and capital moving in a big climb last year at this time we had seventy thousand users of law change out info and just a week ago we got one point one million which is a major milestone for any company but especially for a big client base business and there's plenty of room for more big claim this says there are so many opportunities for innovation on top of bitcoin we haven't even scratched the surface yet people are going to use it for escrow and smart contracts and you'll be able to buy a car and have the title transferred on the watching block chain dot info and bit pay are among some of the first big queen businesses to lay the groundwork for the fledgling currency the next step is to make it more user friendly people every day

in their lives use e-mail they probably have no idea how it works under the covers but they use it because it's simple free and easy allows innocent messages anywhere in the world for free or you can do the same thing with decline send money anywhere in the world basically for free so we have to make it that simple and we're working on things like that so you know user interface design and education systems to help people understand how to use it is really a focus for two thousand and fourteen and part of that call is a super by financial services to people who don't have access to bases jeffrey tucker is using decoding to help launch a liberty dot me and leave the merging markets where people are under bankcard don't have that things at all how can they accept that point and every deal to start their own business using this new technology they will pick winners as a global currency so it can go anywhere and regardless of geography and so you could sell your stock or your services anywhere in the world for playing for dallas and. you have access to a bank or not have to have all you have to have a cell phone it turns out there's a lot more people cell phones of them with bank accounts actually all over the

world i've lectured and african nations are right so we have a lot of people in these emerging markets especially in africa who use their cell phones for their bank is because it's unregulated cyber criminals have use it as a tool for tax evasion and money laundering but it's the decent realisation a bit coin that keeps it out of the hands of governments and central banks it's a technology that we buy passes all of the elites in the world it's amazing in december when china restricted banks from using pick when the price dropped ten percent and one day the government regulation can only go so far for this untraceable digital point the more regulations that govern the coming and going from national money the more you and some of us do with just this bailout of national monies charlie so these regulations are definitely going to come of that they're going to hope business but they're going to be counterproductive even for the part of the couple but we haven't seen a widespread abandonment of national currency debt as supporters say these

challenges will be overcome in the long run because it will transform digital commerce mid-point is still in its earliest phases of industry development and faces a lot of challenges going forward including price volatility government regulation as well as a legal issue for the whole issue so over despite this there has been a flood of new recording and bester is an entrepreneur i think this is a disruptive technology that's here to stay in miami beach florida kerry and boring party. and now to the latest regarding whistle blower john kiriakou we're now learning that the bureau of prisons is making a concerted effort to stop curiosity from sending letters from prison you may remember that curia was the first member of the cia to publicly acknowledge that torture was an official u.s. policy under the bush administration in two thousand and twelve he was convicted for providing the name of an officer involved in the cia's rendition program to a reporter and he began serving a thirty month prison sentence in february of last year soon after kiriakou began

writing what's been going that letters from loreto and which he communicates with his supporters and talks about his prison experiences the letters published on fire dog lake were very descriptive and often revealed the corruption and illegalities taking place behind prison walls but in august of two thousand and thirteen kiriakou abruptly stopped writing after the prison administration informed him that he would be able to serve the final part of his sentence in a halfway house but this was only if he agreed to stop sending the letters however the prison later broke its promise and curiosity decided to resume his letter writing and in his most recent letter he wrote i have learned firsthand that the prison and ministrations greatest perceived threat is my freedom of speech now earlier i spoke with kevin the stolen blogger at firedoglake and i first asked him why the bureau of prisons classified curiosus letters as dangerous. they've

classified them as dangerous letters that firedoglake dot com has been publishing in the middle of last year they've been classified as a dangerous to the prison facility in laredo pennsylvania because of his access to the press i guess they market publicize he obtained documents showing classified or central inmate monitoring and this means that they scrutinize him more heavily than other prisoners inside of the facility right and in his latest letter about rights he said quote the v.o.p. is afraid of you knowing what the prison system is really like they're afraid of the public disclosure and that they don't bother to follow their own rules they're afraid that you'll learn that they can violate the law with impunity can you get some examples of how to react these letters illustrate this what are some of the regulations that were being violated. or what he was talking about was specifically

how supporters of kiriakou have been mailing him letters of support trying to correspond with them and what they've been having happen is their letters are opened and then those letters are sent back to them it appears that one person had his tapes back together shot and then the letter came back to them and he has no idea that. he's having his letters denied to them with curiosity even being notified of the fact that the warden of the facility is rejecting these letters we've also got instances where illegal mail is being opened and i guess he actually doesn't get a chance to appropriately challenge this if it's legal or special mail he's supposed to be able to watch the war and open it look at it inspect it and make sure that it's not threatening to the facility and that hasn't happened i don't think and then the other thing is the e-mail e-mail service and it takes

a while. to send e-mails out and receive them but apparently to use it anymore because when you send e-mails she finds his conversations are being read by the officers staffers inside of prison and then they talk about in the come up to you in the know say something to him about something his wife said or they'll say something to him about plans that he might have one example of he was considering maybe going to do business or do some work in south africa and he says well i've someone came up to me and said i'd be a great person i could talk to you about doing business in south africa and he thought that was kind of freaky and and so he's decided to refrain from talking about anything on email also something peculiar is that his mail was only delivered on mondays which i find very interesting what was the rationale and then relegating all of his mail to just one day of the week. the rational that would probably be the same for all the other violations of his rights the fact that he has brought access to the press and i think they just want to take their time getting him

letters any correspondence he has in coming from and they don't want to be inconvenienced by the fact that he is someone who is very popular a high profile prisoner he doesn't want they don't want to say that he has more rights than anybody else in the ability and in the process is there actually denying his right right now heaven and his august thirtieth letter before all of this went down before he stopped communicating kiriakou explain that he was forced to sign a memo from the u.s. justice department that stated he was regally obligated to clear everything he wrote with the cia's publication review board but as it turned out he wasn't actually legally obligated to do anything he talked about how they intimidated and essentially into signing that memo. so according to a lawyer. this is illegal and unconstitutional you would have to submit your prison letters to the cia's pre-publication receive board has nothing to do. at this time

isn't until it does officer so they also wouldn't have any material clear. sensually he was sat down and he was ordered to sign a memorandum or. letter that said he wouldn't send any letters out giving them to the cia's board to approve them or publishing and actually it seems he has been doing this even though he shouldn't be required to do show he has been sending letters to the cia sent one in december published toppy of this notice that came back to them that they have received this letter and then in about a span of a month they approved it and i think that i haven't gone back to look at the posting firedoglake dot com i think it checks out that that december letter we did not put up at firedoglake dot com until the middle or the early part of january about the time i'm sure we have approved it now haven't as a handler standeth kiriakou submitted a freedom of information act request for himself i was last here what was revealed

in that boy request. the revelation was that in fact he was designated for the central inmate monitor after which i have to tell you you're supposed to be notified as a prisoner if you are given this designation and according to the letter if i read it correctly kiriakou was not informed. right and the two hundred fifty seven pages that he was able to obtain from that there were five that were marked for yet exempt do not release to n mate do we have any idea what's being censored in those five pages that they chose not to reveal to him. would appear that somehow he was able to figure out that. maybe because his attorney placed some kind of a request for that information and was possibly privy to it because of the fact that this person would be representing him legally so i don't know if the information he put in the letter he would have had out some way of accessing the

content of those pages otherwise you would have been able to describe passages from them as he does in the letter so i don't think they managed to actually with all the record any information from him like they had wanted to share well thank you so much for all of your insight on this very important case kevin the stolen blogger at firedoglake and most of the time when doctors find something in your teeth it's a cavity but now researchers have found d.n.a. in the teeth of two germans killed fifteen hundred years ago by the justinian plague and used those scrapings to recreate the bacteria and what do they find well that the very same bacteria that caused caused the justinian plague also cause the famous black death plague but in recreating the strains of the plague the scientists did something very similar to what researchers attempted during the film twenty eight days later take a look at how it turned out for that. old

joke. tone our who led the research told a.p. that that's a plague becomes airborne people could die within twenty four hours of being infected that's very scary and that has a 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 and follow me on twitter at amir david. we welcome aaron eight and abby martin to have a terrific hosts on the our team network. it's going to give you a different perspective give me one stock never i'll give you the information you make the decision don't worry about i'll break you the said works the revolution of the mind it's a revolution of ideas and consciousness a frustrated with the system extremely problems and so would be described as angry

i think in a strong. under single. we welcome era nate and abby martin two of the two or three coasts on the r t network . it's going to give you a different perspective give me one stock tip never i'll give you the information you make the decision don't worry about how breaking the said works it's a revolution of the mind it's a revolution of ideas and consciousness and frustrated with the system extremely you know probably two things would be described as angry i think in a strong. under single.