coming up on our t.v. one still to come valley power grid under attack a former federal regulator claims sniper shot up a power substation all the f.b.i. denies that it was an act of terror will have more details on that ahead and just one day until the start of the sochi olympics athletes representing nations from around the world are warming up before the events begin our report from the resort city coming up and the birth rate in the u.s. continues to drop are americans in a romantic recession or lancer that later in the show. it's thursday february sixth four pm in washington d.c.

when you're a david and you're watching r t america. a former federal regulator is calling an april sniper attack on silicon valley's phone lines and power grid a terrorist act according to a wall street journal report it is all thought to be caused not by some glitch in the system but rather by an entire group of snipers who shot up a silicon valley substation for nineteen minutes last year the snipers knocked out seventeen transformers before fleeing the scene the incident took place the day after the boston marathon bombing which kept it out of course of the media spotlight now one former federal regulator is going public about the sabotage john while inhofe who is the chairman of the federal energy regulatory regulatory commission at the time says this is the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred while in office also cautioned that if this were replicated across the country it could take down the u.s.

electric grid and blackout much of the country utility executives and federal energy officials have long worried that the electric grid is vulnerable to sabotage the grid is most notably vulnerable to trees hitting transmission lines and fact one tree in two thousand and three knocked out power to fifty million people in the eastern u.s. and canada for days in the april incident a blackout was avoided due to you to the workers who were able to reroute power around the site but the substation was knocked out for about a month the f.b.i. says it doesn't believe a terrorist organization caused the attack but it's all remains a mystery who the perpetrators are and how they pulled it off. and we are just one day away from the opening ceremonies for the sochi winter olympics fans and athletes are arriving in the resort city and so is the olympic flame artie's martin andrews has the story. well off to one hundred and twenty two days the torch is finally here in the sochi area to arrive yesterday on

a yacht on the black sea which you can see behind me some more of the one hundred twenty three days will be complete at all make its way to the opening ceremony tomorrow night at the time will be fourteen minutes past eight of course to represent twenty two and see if you go back to two years ago we had the likes of david beckham james bond and queen elizabeth the second he made appearances so everybody is really talking about who will be carrying the torch tomorrow earlier on today we had a lot of rough we had. the i.o.c. president he was also carrying the flame i also a surprise visitor from the likes of ban ki moon the general secretary of state the united nations as well as famous russian actors and musicians and earlier on we caught up with the french figure skater brains you bet and this is what he had to say about the rising excitement here in the sochi area so i feel good and everybody from the french team feels good so everything is small you know to have an age and everything it's close on. the ice rink is close to do on

a big show we can go by warnock and there is not a big security so we feel we feel free and we feel confident and also the world famous tennis star maria sharapova added her comments on the excitement surrounding the twenty fourteen winter olympics same in the black sea the same day as you can drive an hour to the mountains in stinson the best slopes in the world and you know and really believe me and i hope that everyone will be able to experience this on. a course it's quite interesting to the fact that the games actually started today why is that well that's because there are twelve new events added since the vancouver games in twenty and of course everything about carrying the torch and who will win those magnificent medals that world to the various journalists yesterday. that was r.t. correspondent martin andrews from sochi and the sochi olympic olympics is also in

the spotlight on tonight's politicking with larry king russian ambassador thursday kids play act and congressman dana rohrbacher both addressed the issue of safety at the winter games here is a look at what's to come the obvious first question with the opening ceremonies coming friday night how safe is. it save it save because we have the taking hold in this measures in order to deny. terrorists that would be terrorists any chance of success and we are going to succeed in that so it's going to be a wonder for all. the hide the poor sportsman for a younger generation that i hope is going to be remembered by them and by many other people including your viewers as something very spectacular positive joyful there has to be those some concerns with all of the threats with the kurds as previously in the as a month or so in moscow how much security is in place. while

the result of his security that were put in place. and. certainly terrorism as a global phenomenon. so when you talk about think about terrorism target it's equally applied to russia as it applies to your country and i will just to point to the recent suburb all that was so well protected and i understood that your law enforcement also they get that kind of threats or challenges very seriously so russia is a responsible country and we certainly have a lot of assets to deploy which we have already done and we are pretty comfortable that everything will be fine there is a great deal of cooperation going on right now i know mike rogers would prefer the be more cooperation on a higher level but during my recent visit i talked to various people involved and

i've been briefed here as well and there is a significant level of cooperation much higher level than we've had before in trying to prevent this sort of radical islamic terrorism from taking the lives of innocent people no matter who were country they come from who would like to attend the olympics so tune in for about an award tonight at nine pm right here on r.t. america and with the twenty fourteen winter olympics about to begin you would think the u.s. media would be reporting on athletes and sporting events tonight's resident looks at some of the more bizarre stories the u.s. media is actually reporting about going into the olympics check it out.

the twenty fourteen olympics are about to kick off and so to freshen up we should all be excited to root for our favorite athletes right the problem is the american media hasn't bothered to even tell us who the hell those athletes even are instead the media is only focusing on the really weird stupid story for example all the mainstream outlets that york times the huffington post box news all of the they all just ran the same story that russia is blocking a shipment of chobani yogurt to the u.s. olympian as the times puts it the yogurt industry's political allies are outraged mind you all countries have very strict laws about importing dairy products for good reason the u.s. is own international dairy foods association has a lengthy testing process for importing any dairy but for some reason the media has

decided to be outraged that u.s. the limpia who remain unnamed can't have their precious new york me the greek yogurt chobani at the olympics and other weird story the american media has decided to focus on is the toilet in sochi i yahoo sports reporter tweeted a picture of a sign in a sochi bathroom telling people not to flush the toilet paper but rather he was a basket that's provided this is standard procedure in many countries and is actually a lot better on sewage systems but the reporters said that that without question the thing that is most surprising him. in sochi not the athletes wake time or practice schedules not compelling stories about the road to the gun for tyshan but the fact about not flushing toilet paper that's what he's most surprised by that's what he reported and his tweet was reach we've had thousands of times the coverage

has just been a haven is c.n.n. conducted a leading poll asking americans if they thought a terror attack was likely to happen and we see all but promises you'll get hacked if you go there fox news tried to get mitt romney to say that the games will be dangerous and even he was like why the hell are you asking me this what's your problem will be saved it's almost as if every american media outlet is trying to report sochi bashing stories faster higher and stronger than their competitors for some reason that has more to do with politics and a lot less to do with the actual spirit of the olympics that's the motto of the olympics by the way that's higher stronger but you probably didn't know that because everyone here is too busy reporting about the toilets instead tonight but to talk about that by following me on twitter at the president.

and opening statements began today in the trial of a florida man accused of killing an unarmed teen forty six year old michael dunn is accused of fatally shooting seventeen year old jordan davis davis was gunned down by done at a gas station in jacksonville florida in november of two thousand and twelve for allegedly playing loud music dunn claims that he felt threatened by the teens and says he may have seen them carrying the gun though it was later determined that the police found no gun in the vehicle done then shot inside of the vehicle eight or nine times before driving away leaving jordan davis dead here's a portion of the opening statements to the twelve member jury first from the prosecutor than from the defense. when the defense. wanted to kiss. you and your car for teenagers and started and continued so i'm sure.

he was guilty of to not. guilty of during counts of attempted murder. and guilty of the first degree murder of john we're not here to say anybody deserved to lose their life. but on the last just the top. michael dunn to the facts of this case and the law and every right. to be a victim. jordan davis's death has been compared to that of trayvon martin who was gunned down by george zimmerman in february of two thousand and twelve coming on the heels of the trayvon martin trial the dunn trial is likely to once again put florida's controversial stand your ground law into the spotlight zimmerman was found not guilty in the death of martin and now his innocence is being used as somewhat of a promotional ploy just recently a boxing promoter announced a match between zimmerman and rapper d.m. x.

rapper was allegedly chosen out of fifteen thousand applicants who wanted to fight zimmerman will have to see if dunn's next fight will be in the ring or behind bars . and we're just learning that eight l.a. police officers who mistakenly fired on two women during the manhunt for ex cop christine are will be allowed to return to the field after they get additional training that's all according to the l.a. police chief charlie beck who had this to say about the decision i have confidence in their abilities as l.a.p.d. officers to continue to do their jobs in the same capacity they had been assigned in the end we as an organization can learn from this incident and from the individuals involved now this is all in reference to the mistaken shooting which took place on february seventh of last year when officers were protecting a potential dorner target when one of the newspaper delivery women threw a paper onto the pavement in the early morning hours an officer thought the sound was a gunshot and opened fire on her margie crohn's forty seven suffered minor injuries

and her seventy one year old mother emma hernandez was shot in the back so was this the right call here to discuss us along with some other police related cases making headlines i'm joined by keith air at cop block dot org so pete as far as we know these two women went on to win of for. four point two million dollars settlement from the city which was well deserved but this is what their attorney had to say about the l.a.p.d. is decision not to punish the officers he said if either of the women had been killed you can bet your bottom dollar somebody would be fired and maybe prosecuted a stroke of luck firing more than one hundred rounds and missing should not mean the discipline is lighter so is this what has to happen for us officers to be charged someone has to be shot and killed versus just being shot and injured well unfortunately what we've seen all too often draw the states is you know if the

police employ engages even in an action that causes the death of an innocent person or the death of someone unjustly then even if they are charged and very frequently found guilty us to if this was the correct finding in this case and i think for the police and you know their colleagues they would say that yes that is the correct finding the police spokesperson called these eight involved talented and well qualified but obviously there's no deterrence in these sorts of actions when there's no accountability have when they're back on the streets and when the people forced to pay the settlement are the taxpayers that are supposed to be serving right now the civilian police commission that found the officers had violated this policy to begin with also blame the department saying the officers weren't staffed properly that the sergeant wasn't trained to oversee such a protection detail and that there was no operational plan in place so should there

be some kind of punishment for the department itself. i mean alternately individuals are responsible for their actions so i would say that the eight individuals that were responsible for firing these rounds at him at least seven other houses. are responsible themselves and whether the institution l.a.p.d. should be you know in some way culpable we have to step i think it's important to step back and realize that that is the to sion just like all police departments are founded on a double standard that say directors have the right to steal from people they say they protect and able to protect them they are taking the taxpayer money from people in the area so they're saying it's ok for us to do something that you can do we can steal from you to protect you so when you have an institution that set up with these perverse incentives it's not surprising that you see young comes late this right why do you want to turn to another story regarding miriam carey that's the woman who was killed after a car chase near the capital last year we're learning that her family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the secret service and the u.s.

capitol police the lawsuit is for seventy five million dollars now considering how the situation unfolded i don't know if you remember in detail what happened but do you think that she has a strong case here. well unfortunately what police stations have done to the court system here in the states it's a carryover from. the english courses thems in large part in the feudal system there said the king can can cause no wrong and so what does translate into here in the states today is what's called qualified immunity for police employees and unless courts rule that yes you can go ahead and and sue these police employees then they're immune from being sued in their individual capacity so i don't think that we're going to see much in the way of accountability even if this doesn't form the court system and if it does and there is a settlement reached again it's not going to be the triggermen that are on the

hoped for is going to be area taxpayers right well let's go to a more recent case a twenty eight year old florida man was shot to death after assaulting some people take a look at this cell phone video of the incident. thank. you ok. so he was naked and had apparently been biting people's faces aren't that's that's what's been said they don't know if he was under the influence of any kind of drug but they apparently tasered him and then afterward shot him three times i mean do you think that police at all they could in the situation or is there something else that could have been done should have been done what's your thoughts on that. yes i mean i wish i could give you a more direct answer not being there myself and not having all the details i can't come down with any one hundred percent accuracy but what i do know is that some people in the area the brother and the father of one of the people that have been

pursued by the gentleman to step on to try to come to the aid and deter that attack and that's something i think we should emphasize more and more instead of the default being turned to the so-called authorities we should look out for each other in our communities look out for ourselves know them since we ourselves we have the sponsibility to take care of ourselves and ideally to take care of our neighbors hoping that they would do the same for us so i know florida is an open carry stagers lot of consume carriers which are good but ultimately with the police employees involved i would hope before any of them whatever use deadly force they would think what would i do if this person that i'm about to shoot it was a family member what if they were my aunt what i try to talk them down what advani there needs to be some questioning as the first line of defense for sure but i want to get to the last question before we have to let you go which is looking at law enforcement in the justice system because we're just learning that a texas judge has again considered the centime sentencing for this sixteen year old kid claiming affluenza this is

a teenager who killed four people while drunk driving is sentenced to ten years probation. considering what we've seen with harsher sentences for lesser crimes i mean are you surprised by the sentencing. not at all and you know it really it just underscores the fact that their criminal justice system isn't built to protect people is built to protect the legitimacy of the those active in the criminal justice system and people with money and we seeded there have a rat has been used against people who question the legitimacy and against historically against minorities and people that they want to keep oppressed so the fact that they might be more favorable to do with money isn't surprising all right well peter erekat blocked out our thanks for all your insight. and it seems one social pastime is on the decline in japan and it's not one you might readily think of according to cities put out last year young people in japan have

increasingly abandoned sexual activity and dating altogether and with japan already having one of the world's lowest birth rates some are concerned about what this will mean for japan's dwindling population artie's alexy reports. thanks but no sacks says this japanese woman in her mid thirty's she's now on her second marriage but intimacy with her husband is off the marital menu. after i had a child with my first husband i lost interest in sex we divorced i remarried but my second husband lost interest in having sex with me so i have actually got used to having no sense at all this is becoming a trend which now has its own name in japan sexless according to recent polls more than sixty percent of a married man and near half of women aged eighteen to thirty four are not in relationships more over forty five percent of women and a quarter of man aged sixteen to twenty four were not interested in having sex at all for the country with one of the world's lowest birth rates this spells huge

demographic trouble we used to have a very large population but now we're rapidly shrinking with if things carry on as they are japan's population will be half of what it is now by the year twenty fifty that would be seventy eight million we have indeed struggled to find many couples openly showing their affection in the multi-million capital of tokyo and what makes the situation even more bizarre is that japan has always been a world heavyweight when it comes to the matters of sex but your show our area in tokyo is one of the old this red light districts in the world for centuries it has been thriving now its streets are practically empty for almost four hundred years it has been restricted to the locals and now with japanese people having less sex the businesses here had to open their doors to foreigners. the homo could not here she used to be called queen love and worked in one of those brothels now runs a special course called sex counseling she helps people resuscitate their basic

instinct sometimes through hypnosis she even urges men to dress as women to make them understand what the opposite sex feels like she says the government is partly to blame for the situation taking on. the government's put strict. even sixty commercials disappeared from t.v. these first young people to go there show in their sex lives now they have more interest in social media and dating becomes annoying to them. not only social networking but also high unemployment among the youth generates this widespread celibacy and sexual reclusion say researchers many simply have no money to date and get married oh yeah i'm out of just to help up to one hundred people every month but with growing numbers of those are interested in intimacy in population of a hundred and sixty million this is just a drop in the ocean lets us have c.r.t. reporting from tokyo japan. and sexual activity may not be declining in the u.s.

but birth rates definitely are the fertility rate of women in the us fell to a record low for the second year in a row in two thousand and twelve according to data released by the centers for disease control and prevention the fertility rate is the number of births per one thousand women aged fifteen forty four according to the december two thousand and thirteen report in two thousand and twelve the u.s. fertility rate was sixty three that was down about one percent from sixty three point two in two thousand and eleven which is the previous all time well it marked the fifth year in a row that the u.s. birth rate has declined and the lowest rate on record since the government started tracking the fertility rate in one thousand nine so what is causing the falling birth rate here to give us some insight on that i'm joined by andrew foster is the director for population studies and and the training center at brown university thanks so much for joining me. about twenty two percent of eighteen to thirty four year olds surveyed by the pew research center in december of two thousand and

eleven said they had postponed having a baby because of economic conditions so how much is the economy to blame here. well i think the economy plays a big role in the you know even though there's been an overall sort of upturn in the u.s. economy since the crisis you still see very high unemployment or under-employment among the youth population so it's not surprising when you particularly interesting those groups that they're uncertain about their futures and obviously the child is is a major long term commitment sure well let's take a look at the other side of this because some people say that it has more to do or at least equally to do with more education and higher rates of contraception or use of contraception and that people have even pointed specifically to shows like m.t.v.'s sixteen and pregnant or teen mom is there any evidence to support that that is indeed a contributing. well in terms of the take the less point that there is sort of evidence in the kind of the developing world that media plays

a big role in people sort of identifying with small families i think in terms of trying to sort out what's happening in the u.s. is there really isn't any very strong evidence on that point and the other thing i would say is that while you can see a sort of small blip in fertility when measured properly in fact u.s. fertility has been fairly stable remarkably stable actually for twenty five years particularly when you look at the fifty years preceding that so so i don't think that you want to make a big deal of a relatively small change over five years in just saying well answer as far as i understand it is very important for the population to replace itself at least for economic reasons if the birth rate does continue to drop and perhaps a little bit more dramatically could this really affect the future of the labor force for example well i think i think they may think they realize that most people who enter the labor force over the next twenty five years at least the of the native population of already been born so we're not going to see any sort of major decline in the labor force in the us as a result of

a declining birth rate for twenty years or so after that yes they'll be declining any sort of change in the size or composition of population requires the economy to respond but if we're talking about a period of twenty years you can see things like sort of more robotics and sort of replacing labor so so from a sort of production standpoint it doesn't seem to be so critical they'll be ample time for the economy to kind of figure out how to deal with the relative shortage of of sort of new workers from a labor of perspective do you think it might adapt so does the ad government do you think at least the government bears any responsibility in trying to sort of lift that birth rate and furthermore what can be done to restore the population or at least make sure that it doesn't dwindle the way it has and say japan. well in my view the government has a clear role in sort of ensuring that people that children have adequate health care and good quality education and those things will in turn i think make it

easier for families to to think about child bearing and understand that they can do that they can successfully raise a child so rather than directly intervening on the fertility side i would say that sort of making making it easier to be a parent through through the availability of those kinds of services is a place for the government to step in and i think those can have the desired effects you're talking about indeed those things need to be put in place enter foster professor at brown university thank you you're welcome and that does it for now i'm on your david stay tuned the best is next. you know the name. the limbic spirit travels with the flame from its birthplace in greece. joining james

brown for an elemental and epic journey around russia and beyond. where i suppose because. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question for.

which. has their i marinate this is boom bust and these are the stories we're tracking for you today. prolific businessman investor and author jim rogers is on today's show you won't want to miss that he's giving us his views on everything from trade agreements to emerging markets to farming you definitely don't want to miss that then plus do you think business in europe is squeaky squeaky clean think again we'll tell you why coming up and finally in today's big deal ed harris and i discussed what those pieces of paper in your wallet what they're actually worth you know the things as dollar bills or pounds or whatever it is wherever you're watching from you want to miss a moment of it and it all starts right now.