i think it's. going to take your time. coming up on r t the sochi winter olympics heat up as teams from around the world compete already a few select team stand at the top with medal wins but it's far from final the latest on the olympic games just ahead and since news broke about the death of actor philip seymour hoffman the danger of heroin is back in the news and a large portion of those drugs in the u.s. come from countries like afghanistan and mexico a look at heroin in the u.s. coming up. and for decades u.s. marines and their families were exposed to toxic water at their military base in studio to survivor share their stories with r.t. america.

it's tuesday february eleventh four pm in washington d.c. i'm in the david and you're watching our team america we begin today with the winter olympics that are underway in sochi russia the sochi olympics mark the largest winner of gains in history boasting twenty eight hundred athletes from eighty eight different countries those athletes are competing in ninety eight advance let's take a quick look at the medal count up until this point norway leads with eleven medals for gold three silvers and four bronzes canada takes second with nine medals and germany takes third with five the netherlands is in fourth place followed by the united states switzerland russia and austria for more on the games let's go to our t correspondent paul scott who is in sochi. somewhat of a surprise is old enough transferred domestic success on to the international scene claiming that silver medal in the women's five hundred meter speedskating in the

arena now afterwards she admitted that she was suffering from a huge belt of nerves before her final race and she credited her success to a sports psychologist elsewhere russia are on course for a second gold medal in the figure skating event at the halfway stage of the pairs competition. trunk of an tatyana volatile the overall standings the event concludes on wednesday the world and european champions put in a thoughtless display to the delight of the home crowd to firmly put themselves in medal contention just like trying well documented tempestuous nature they put their success down to a special working relationship. i was familiar with some of. my duty. and like seem to believe so we get along just fine which because when we first started skating together i told her that more than half of what people say about my personality is probably true and she told me she could get along with

pretty much anyone. whatever people say about my or someone else's personality figure skating is a sport and what matters is the result doesn't matter what my personality is like some would say about a coach for example he's insufferable the most important thing is my training in my performance and the medals i win which who cares if i'm a difficult person. trying. already have gold medals to their names at these winter olympics that's after success in the team event fifteen year old yulia lipnitskaya shot to global fame after two peerless performances in that competition and she admits that before her winter olympics debut there were some nerves well sure i was very nervous and scared but i had of my singles event i'm more calm to be honest i've got used to it single and. this is a completely different event russia's ice hockey team russia's men's ice hockey team attended a press conference ahead of their first match against in two days' time not captain

pavel datsyuk but he did attend the press conference he is a hero in sochi despite fitness concerns he missed all of his side's n.h.l. matches throughout january with injury and the n.h.l. is actually on a mid-season break right now so the n.h.l. players can compete in the winter olympics but it might be the final time that they allow that to happen is currently up in the air and currently up for discussion but it does seem that despite the fact there is going to be increased pressure on the russian team playing on home ice and in front of an expectant home crowd it does seem that spirits are high inside a jovial russian camp. who do you want to hear from just. the captain of course. i think because we're playing at home we'll have a lot more brotherly support the entire country will be cheering force we will be united. i agree with our captain and he deserves his title he is very experienced respected by the entire hockey community and beyond so with

a captain like that we can aim for the top as for our team we're very friendly bunch there's a great atmosphere among the team and the coaches are on the same wavelength and that's the most important thing everything is in our hands now. thank you i agree with everything he said. so it is all smiles then for alex ovechkin head of the men's ice hockey competition but away from the coastal cluster and up in the mountains i can tell you that the women's inaugural ski jumping competition has taken place germany winning gold there and up in the mountains there is still one resort there remains open despite the fact the world elitists are the world's most elite athletes actually in town and it's open season snowboarders of all standards . i was that was our tease paul scott and aside from talking about good merits of the olympics there's always lots of talk about good looks they don't exactly give out medals for beauty at the olympics and for good reason but artie's liz wahl is

taking a look at the olympians that would surely make the list if they did. a limbic games a global event where people are rallying the world to an end to celebrate athletic achievement while it brings together the world's most talented olympians there happens to be many quite attractive competitors we've compiled a list of seven of the finest in no particular order will start off with australian snowboarder or a bright bright is an olympic gold medalist at the two thousand and ten winter olympic games in vancouver she carried the flag for australia at the opening ceremony is more i can be on the slopes shaun white is a snowboarder on team usa here he is at a press conference near sochi gearing up for the twenty fourteen olympic games a lot of pressure on white today as he competes in the sochi half pipe in a bid to win a third straight a limbic title didn't happen though he finished fourth place and ashley wagner has

the beauty to match her grace and her figure skating competitions her selection into the olympic games this year was controversial as her critics thought she was not the best qualified she made third place at the midway point and survived the elimination cut. mexican alpine skier her burgess von hohenlohe he shows us what it's like to age gracefully here he is leading the mexicans here into the stadium for the opening ceremony and sochi fifty five year old has represented mexico in six a live big games and team usa alpine skier bode miller has won many medals but came out today conveying regret for not getting lazic eye surgery before this year's olympics in sochi this despite competing on a crystal clear day he finished eighth place in sunday's race and lolo jones makes bobsledding look good the american bobsledder was reportedly fighting

a cold but is back with her teammates in sochi in addition to participate. in the winter olympic games are her alert in the summer olympics she is one of the few that has competed in both seasons games and are rounding out the list is ana. the russian beauty bring some tough competition to the sport of curling she is the skep of the russian curling team at the twenty fourteen winter olympic games before taking on her was a figure skater so there you have just a handful of the folds of the beautiful and physically fit that you may feel like it had to glimpse of at the olympic village in sochi in washington r.t. . well just because they're locked up doesn't mean they don't have plans for the future believe it or not five war on terror captives detained at guantanamo have designed a self sufficient agricultural business just west of yemen's capital the detainees

say they'd like to build a community of two hundred families one hundred farmhouses ten cows five hundred chickens fifty sheep honeybee subsidiary and a computer system powered by wind mills this was all laid out in a seventy five page prospectus completed before the get my hunger strike that took place last year it was part of a program that effectively worked as a business school behind bars that perspective has recently emerged and its release coincides with a time when the obama administration is searching for ways to justify sending prisoners home while closing the controversial detention camp of the one hundred fifty five men that are being held at guantanamo seventy seven have already been cleared for release and the majority of them are from yemen. and federal drug data shows that the rate of heroin dependence doubled nationally in the decade between two thousand and two and two thousand and twelve the number of heroin users remains

lower than for illicit substances such as cocaine but experts are particularly concerned by the speed of its increase in recent years is a trend that was highlighted by the death of actor philip seymour hoffman who died of an apparent heroin overdose artie's ramon glendon takes an inside look at the narco trafficking that's going to contributing to its rising like hugged by god recovering addict jordan describe the euphoric feeling of the first time he was terrible and no pain we get in fights and he wouldn't feel anything in fact in those schools when they do it was like whoa what have i been visiting georgia became addicted to prescription painkillers in high school and then moved to smoking heroin and at age nineteen he started shooting up from one in the head to those legs and shot up everybody in there is shit about the rise in prescription drug abuse has been linked to an increase in the use of heroin here in the u.s. the problem transcends america's there been centers and has hit affluent suburbs

like here in orange county california in the simi town of newport beach police say that half of their narcotics arrests this year involve here would they give us a close up look of some of the black tar they took from a suspect or seller and it cuts across all income levels not all racial lines. a slight focus towards a younger generation and it's really used to be an urban problem and because of that addiction level and because of the availability. it's really cut into every community nationwide in vermont this year state of the state address was devoted to the plague of drug addiction in every corner of our state heroin and opiate drug addiction threatens us the drugs remain cheap as production of opium is skyrocketed in places. afghanistan in mexico it was a fifty percent increase in you know game supply which is the raw ingredients in heroin you know gas down last year alone so it looks to me like we're having kind

of a glut of heroin on the market which is keeping the prices low while afghanistan remains a top producer of opium most of the heroin sold in the u.s. is linked to poppy production in mexico according to the da law enforcement and users agree that the drug is also becoming more socially acceptable if you see a problem there is a problem and it will take here kids life away other narcotics are still more popular than heroin in the u.s. but as people transition from pills to harder street drugs the threat remains and even the most unexpected places. in newport beach california are among the in the party. and still ahead here on our t.v. for decades u.s. marines and their families were exposed to toxic water at their military base in studio two survivors share their stories with r.t. america will hear from that right after the break.

the star wars. in the finish line of the marathon.

we welcome aaron eight and abby martin two of the two or three close on the our team network. is going to give you the numbers might give you one star never i'll give you the information you make the decision don't worry about it i'll bring you the set were the revolution of the mind it's a revolution of ideas and consciousness. with the extreme right you know politicians who would be described as angry i think in a strong you know under single.

well camp lagoon is perhaps most recognizable as the home to hundreds of thousands of marines and their families but this military base which is located in jacksonville north carolina also has a darker side it's the site of what is thought to be the largest water contamination site in american history between one thousand nine hundred seven and one nine hundred eighty seven hundreds of thousands of marine corps members and their families were exposed to tap water containing extremely toxic chemicals during that time people living at the base bathed in that water drank and ingested it not knowing it had been compromised the water had been contaminated with chemicals thought to have stemmed from underground storage tanks that lake leaked industrial areas spills and waste from an off base dry cleaning business now years later thousands of lagoon residents have been dealing with the long term effects of being exposed to those chemicals for some the reality has meant dealing with the elements of cancer kidney damage and birth defects and for other more severe cases

it has meant death and that's why two men who have been personally affected by this are working tirelessly to expose the truth jerry and snigger is a career marine who raised his family out of the june his daughter janie died of leukemia when she was just nine years old and mike partain is the son of a marine who was born at camp lagoon at the age of thirty nine partain was diagnosed with male breast cancer and both of them join me now first of all thank you so much for joining me thank you very sleepy so very i want to start with you your daughter passed away back in one thousand nine hundred five just shy of her tenth birthday at what point did you realize her death was not just a coincidence. i had no idea i mean you know when she was diagnosed it's a natural thing for a parent as a child was diagnosed with a catastrophic illness to to wonder why and i was no exception. it

wasn't till one thousand nine hundred seven that i found about found out about the contaminated drinking water and how how did you find out about it. i was. fortunate enough to have retired in the area down close to camp lucia and when a t.s.t. or was releasing their initial public health assessment back in one nine hundred ninety seven one of the local t.v. stations did a story on it. and so it took over ten years and i'm now fourteen years and mike you were actually diagnosed with male breast cancer at thirty nine which is an incredibly young age of course it's a very where thing for a man to be diagnosed with how did you come to the realization that you want alone and what you were dealing with you know i mean two months after i was diagnosed we found out about a camp was june through jerry testifying on capitol hill about the the children born there between one nine hundred sixty eight one thousand nine hundred five and

i realized at that point i was one of those children because my birthdays and i can sixty eight shortly after that there was a nice story in my local paper that went on the internet and shows you the power of the internet a gentleman from alabama saw that story contacted me and he had been a child a camp was around during the one nine hundred sixty s. i actually lived in the same neighborhood that i was born in at the same time that i was born and he too was diagnosed with breast cancer once i realized that there was another one out there that i was in the flu and there had to be more and it's been now seven years since my diagnosis and in that seven year period we have located across the country eighty five men including myself who had the single commonality of exposure at the base is a marine or the child of a marine and male breast cancer and it's the largest no breast cancer closer that i'm aware of that's ever been identified it's incredible and how are those people that you've connected with the what's their prognosis how are they well i mean it's

the disease itself i mean depending whether it metastasized to the body. determines you know survival survivability i'm seven years. and i'm cancer free at this point we just lost a good friend right before christmas who had fought the disease it one of the remission came back with a vengeance and he passed unfortunately from that so it just depends on where the cancer got to them sorry to hear that well as i understand it there were a number of different chemicals manmade chemicals in this water can you talk a little bit about the ones that were sort of most detrimental well there's four primary contaminants and we're going to fight in the water that we have testing and can show that were there in the first ones benzene from fuel over the forty year period operational period of the fuel part of the base fuel farm the marine corps last about one point five million inside the brain core lost an estimated one point

five million gallons of fuel into the groundwater campus gym which is work temperature and drives as we drink the water from then we have a core core of flame which is a dry cleaning chemical it's also used in cleaning different agents you know weapons guns things like that truck or a thing which is also used as a solvent to clean weapons made for vehicles and tanks and things like that and then the third one the fourth one is a degradation product code vinyl chloride three of the four known him of our citizens. and jerry when you brought the city to the attention of the marine corps what was the response from them. did. and i mean basically that's just the same stance that they're taking today i have a token phrase forum and it's a lie and deny. but what i wanted to correct one thing that you said in your

introduction. the contamination began. at the largest and worst contaminated drinking water system on the base which was the had not point or but the marines called referred to it as maine in one nine hundred fifty three miles of this goes way back yes and then that's verified by. the agency for toxic substances and disease these registry their water model confirms that date so it's and jerry going off of what i mean i mean is it was it difficult for you to see the marine corps respond that way oh no i mean nobody could have been more disillusioned in the misconduct of the leadership of our corps i mean i was just i couldn't believe it. i mean i was a marine drone structure i trained over two thousand new marines i instilled in them

our motto which is supper fidelity was is the latin for always faithful and we also had a nother slogan and it was we take care of our own and unfortunately our motto. is only as a one way street. and i should mention that some provide is a documentary that always faithful is the name of a documentary or a documentary. that sort of charts this entire story but mike you know i actually tried to secure it on camera you know this i tried to secure an on camera interview with the marine corps and they denied me that what's your sense as to why they are so tight lipped about this. and the marine corps is the institution of honor and integrity and getting the truth out of the leadership of the marine corps from the beginning the other contamination has been my accountant trying to nail jell-o.

to the wall. at the very onset in one thousand nine hundred five when the contamination became known publicly we have the base environmental engineer on record stating that people weren't directly exposed to the pollutants in this lie as this but per perpetuated mutated over the past twenty five thirty years and now they've gotten to the point where you've requested there's been numerous people that rick was right interviews with them they turned everybody down because now that the truth is out there and the media knows what the truth is they don't want to put anybody out on camera where they could be trapped into asking a follow up question right at the truth that i did get that sense now jerry in two thousand and twelve there was a piece of legislation passed in the name of your daughter jamie and some anger can you tell us about what that's done and also how that sort of falling short for the people that really need aid right now. that bill was basically something to get

a foot in the door. i know it had a lot of shortcomings. you know we have a phrase that it's a band-aid over a sucking chest wound but. it's a start and that was the way i viewed it. the president signed it into law the health care for the former service members started immediately upon his signature. but to this day not one of the family members is ever gotten any benefit out of it now they're still waiting for benefits from and there's almost two years later and then the service members. they're only guaranteed health care because of that law if they want the rest of their veterans' benefits they have to jump through the hoops just like every other veteran that law . was basically an admission of guilt they actually stated that these people were

poisoned while they were examples you and we were poisoned by our own government our own leaders it's incredible it's such a travesty and unfortunately we've run out of time but i really appreciate you both coming on and sharing your story and i well i wish you the best of luck in your endeavor here in d.c. and beyond you you have a mission thank you mike partain leader of the few the proud and forgotten also gerry and singer co-founder of the few the proud and forgotten. and it may be time to lay off that soda according to a recent study conducted by consumer reports that golden brown color usually found in your pepsi or cola comes with a dose of something called form out and that formal could pose a real risk to your health potentially causing cancer now this chemical can be found in foods but consumer reports focused its study on beverages the sodas were purchased and analyzed in a california lab in that study it found that one twelve ounce serving of pepsi one

or multiple exceeded the levels permitted without a warning label keep in mind that in the state of california food and drink manufacturers are limited to twenty nine micrograms of exposure for the average consumer per day foods exceeding that limit have to carry a warning label that reads warning this product contains a chemical known to the state of california to cause cancer so technically those sodas should carry a warning and even though the state of california puts limits on how much for mel can be used there are no federal limits on the amount of formel in food and drinks the f.d.a. says it has studied the use of carmel as a flavor and color additive for decades but in response to this report the agency says it will review new data on its safety. and the presence of water on mars is often talked about in the past tense but researchers have found clues that water could be flowing in the present at least during warm seasons this is all in

reference to the mysterious streaks that appear on mars surface during warm weather the marks known as recurring slope linea a snake down from crater walls when the mercury rises on the red planet and now research by academics at the georgia institute of technology suggests that brines containing an iron anti-freeze may flow there from time to time keep in mind direct evidence of water remains unconfirmed at this point however unraveling the mystery of mars seasonal dark lines could reveal very exciting things about the red planet such as its potential to host life as we know it if there is water on mars it would be near to the surface and salty most likely containing an iron mineral called sulphate so the question is even if there is water on mars would we want to drink it and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com forward slash r t america check out our website r t dot com for its say you can

also follow me on twitter adam you're a david stay tuned boom bust is next. there's a new game we like to play you see a game with no added sovereignty e.j. made to above that puts me on my knees you call it master and servant we call outs and simon with this sort of independence you need servitude alex why be another nation on the chain gang when you can be the first on the block chain. to. put on your whole shawl more

than a wife should be making news all the face i think your right to vote. was . a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm researcher. i've got a quote for you. that's pretty tough. stay where it's about story. to describe what you would smear about john stead of working for the people most issues the mainstream media working for each other primaries vision. problems. of the road.

hello there i'm aaron a this is boom bust and these are the stories that we're tracking for you today. first up janet yellen makes her first official appearance as chairwoman of the federal reserve we'll tell you what she had to say and what you expect from her new regime then we have run out of congress paul fred roberts he is on today's show he's talking gold default u.s. economy and much much more you definitely cannot miss this interview plus we have heard now and economists to what i just told you that what my doing now in this big deal we have are now an economist in my opinion edward harrison piece assessing why how it will remove a popular big boy now from a top story and what this means for the fifth.