coming up on r t the sochi winter olympics as teams from around the world compete already a few select teams stand at the top with that all wins but it's far from final the latest on the olympic games just ahead and french president francois alon get the warm welcome from president obama and the first lady this amidst rolling reports of a long i would love affairs a closer look ahead. and 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 our team america.

it's tuesday february eleventh eight camp in washington d.c. i'm near a david and you're watching r t america we begin tonight with the winter olympics a lympics excuse me that are underway in sochi russia the sochi olympics mark the largest winter games in history boasting twenty eight hundred athletes from eighty eight different countries those athletes are competing in ninety eight different events so let's take a quick look at the medal count up until this point norway leads with eleven medals four golds three silvers and four bronzes canada takes second with nine medals and germany takes third with five the netherlands is and fourth played 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 to transfer domestic success on to the international scene claiming that silver medal in the women's five hundred meter speedskating in the

adelaide arena now afterwards she admitted that she was suffering from a huge belt of nerves before her final race and actually 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. the overall standings the event concludes on wednesday the world and european champions put in a flawless display to the delight of the home crowd to firmly put themselves in medal contention despite trying well documented tempestuous nature they put their success down to a special working relationship. i was familiar with i'm going to. my city. and see me they leave 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 it goes 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. shot to global fame after two pianists performances in that competition and she admits that before her winter olympics debut there was some nerves well sure i was very nervous and scared out of my singles event i'm more calm to be honest. i got used to it and single this is a completely different event rush'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 the captain

pavel datsyuk he did attend the press conference he is a. 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 same 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 want to hear from. 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 he's going to speak and i agree with everything he said. so it is all smiles then for alex ovechkin i'm co-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 the remains open despite the fact the world's elitist the world's most elite athletes are actually in town and it's open for skiers and snowboarders of all standards that was artie's paul scott reporting from sochi and aside from talking about good merits at the olympics there's always lots of talk about good lucks they aren'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. the 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 life 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 and to 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 alleged big games and team usa alpine skier bode miller has won many medals but came out today conveyed 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 participating in the winter. big games as are her lawyer in the summer olympics she is one of the few that has competed in both seasons games and are rounding out the list is. the russian beauty bring some tough competition to the sport of curling she is the scope of the russian curling team at the twenty fourteen winter olympic games before taking on her leg she was a figure skater so there you have just a handful of the bold and the beautiful and physically fit that you may feel like it had to glimpse of at the olympic village in sochi in washington party. and president obama is rolling out the diplomatic red carpet for his french counterpart francois lund president obama and all along are touting their cooperation on issues from iran to trade to climate change but the one thing that

will likely not be discussed is the controversy putting a spotlight on a long personal life artie's perry and boring reports. today u.s. president barack obama welcomed president francois hollande of france to a formal state arrival ceremony held on the white house now juan this marks the first state visit from a foreign dignitary since edward snowden leaked the controversial n.s.a. phone data collection program in october of last year it was speculated that the u.s. collected phone records of european citizens including france it was later reported that it has been a longstanding practice for european and u.s. intelligence services to share spy data was an ally nevertheless said today that the relationships between the u.s. and france are stronger today than ever before the book creation mutual trust has been restored. which was about mutual trust must be. respect for each other's country. but also. protection protection.

life personal data french president alon arrived in washington stag after revelations of an affair surfaced in the french media has been reported that a launch cheated on his long term girlfriend who was acting as the french first lady with a younger actress this cause issues for a white house diplomatic protocol with the former acting french first lady no longer in attendance sitting arrangements and programs had to be changed president obama's personal issues were not the focus of the press briefing today however the international press started circulating a full leashes a rumor that president obama had an affair with beyond say and the first lady michelle obama has already spoken to divorce lawyers further the journalist who claimed these revelations recanted his story saying he quote have wanted to make a joke and quote neither riyad say nor the obama's have laughed at the media's joke

in washington d.c. perry and boring are to. and more than six thousand websites including reddit tumblr and mozilla are taking part in an online protest against government surveillance the action marks to hear a sense website blackouts against bills like sopa and pipa the feb eleventh online protest has been coined the day we fight back and artes make a lopez has the story something is very wrong when we as americans know that before we open our mouths to speak whether to espouse a work colleague or in a political community our government is listening listening to your calls snooping on your emails but it is the government listening to calls for reform in the wake of edward snowden's revelations about the breadth and depth of america's surveillance infrastructure ordinary citizens are banding together against government spying over fifty seven hundred websites planned

a day of action against the national security agency many turning their home pages into the home front in the battle for digital privacy february eleventh was declared the day we fight back two years after tech giants like wikipedia and google blacked out their home pages to protest against internet control legislations like sopa and pipa today's anti surveillance press conference was a physical demonstration of the protests that are already going on online we heard from a number of people from a host of different groups we heard from religious clerics from civil liberties advocates even a u.s. congressman all telling the n.s.a. to keep their hands off their data and to respect their privacy many of the speakers had differing views on exactly what should be done and how to achieve it but all agreed that something needs to change rabbi arthur wasco one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the n.s.a. said this spying infringes on his religious freedom of got their teaching to rip

with you if you like being you're. joining in the lawsuit against. that's the kind of religion nor meir is a muslim american and she says the n.s.a. could use her private conversations with her family and friends against her for me standing here as a person of color with family and loved ones in pakistan a country labeled as the most dangerous country in the world i fear that every person exchange an intimate moment from the phone call i made this morning to the emails sent after this will one day or could be used against me linda shade spoke out for her right to protest whether we are on the left or whether we are on the right we are standing here today to say our rights to dissent will not be trampled even congressman rush holt stepped away from his work on capitol hill and into the winter cold to tell americans about a bitter reality our own government is treating every one of us as suspects first

and citizens second congressman holt's surveillance state repeal lacked aims to change that by doing away with the laws that allow for the mass collection of phone records and internet metadata holt says progress is being made in the halls of capitol hill with other legislation as well but he and the other speakers are afraid this issue will be swept under the rug and these controversial practices will continue every day these abuses continue is one more day then our constitution is compromised and a physical demonstration of protest over a dozen rallies were also planned around the world from san francisco to serbia denmark to coastal rica and everywhere in between also more than one hundred twenty six thousand people signed a petition urging the u.s. to return to its constitutional principles in the end the speakers agreed that it's up to the american public to get the debate going so i'm asking you to call to email to fax call everyone that you can and all these buildings around you we're

going to let congress know that we mean business hands off our data the day we fight back is using the tools the n.s.a. so often surveils to finally get the government to listen in front of the capitol meghan lopez r.t. . and a month after one of the most dramatic and disruptive chemical spills in the state's history was virginia is still dealing with lingering questions about the safety of its drinking water it's an issue that took front and center in a rare congressional hearing that took place in west virginia members of the u.s. house of transportation and infrastructure committee traveled to the state's capital city to ask state leaders the still unanswered questions surrounding the leak at the hearing the u.s. chemical safety board revealed that an inspection conducted three months prior to the spill did not meet federal and industry standards interesting lee freedom industries the company responsible for the actual league did not attend this hearing facing

a whole host of lawsuits from those who had been harmed freedom industry filed for chapter eleven bankruptcy the bankruptcy shielded it from lawsuits and since then the company has been increasingly mum about the spill that has affected thousands. and what happened to west virginia's elk river only sheds light on an even bigger water catastrophe that took place many years ago at camp lagoon the military base may be most recognizable as the home to hundreds of thousands of marines and their families but camp le june 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 disaster in american history between one hundred fifty seven and one thousand nine hundred 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 it and ingested it however the water had been contaminated with chemicals all thought to be the result

of underground storage tanks that leaked industrial area spills and waste from an off base dry cleaning business now years later thousands of the june residents have been dealing with the long term effects of being exposed to those chemicals for some the reality has meant dealing with ailments like cancer kidney damage and birth defects and for other more severe cases it has meant death in a statement to r.t.m. marine corps spokesperson said the following some of our marine family members have experienced a tragic health issues they believe are associated with water they drank or used in the past at camp lagoon our goal is to use the best available science in an effort to provide our marine corps family members the answers they deserve and keep them updated with information as it becomes available but two men who have been personally affected by this toxic water say the marine corps response just isn't enough jerry in snigger is

a career marine who raised his family at camp lagoon his daughter janie died of leukemia when she was just nine years old and my part 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 they were both here in washington d.c. today to meet with lawmakers were guarding some new research on camp legend survivors i first asked jerry inswinger to tell me about the point at which he realized his daughter's 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 who has a child is diagnosed with a catastrophic illness to to wonder why. i was no exception. it wasn't till one thousand nine hundred seventy. that i found about found out about the contaminated drinking. and how how did you find out about it. i was.

fortunate enough to have retired in the area down close to camp legion and when eighty s.t.r. 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 now fourteen years and mike you were actually diagnosed as male breast cancer at thirty nine which is an incredibly young age of course at the very where thing for a man to be diagnosed with how did you come to the realization that you weren't alone and what you were dealing with i mean two months after i was diagnosed we found out about a camp was going through jerry testifying on capitol hill about 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 in one thousand sixty eight shortly after that there was a moose story in my local paper that went on the internet and just shows you the power of the internet

a gentleman from alabama saw that story contacted me and he had been a child a camp of jenin during the one nine hundred sixty s. 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 cluster that i'm aware of that's ever been identified in the gravel and how are those people that you've connected with what's their prognosis how are they well i mean it's the disease itself. i mean depending whether it has a size to the body. determines you know survival survivability i'm seven years out

and i'm cancer free at this point we just lost a good friend right before christmas who had fought the disease it went into remission came back with a vengeance and he passed on fortunately from that so i just depends on where the cancer got to i'm sorry to hear that as i understand it there were a number of different chemicals manmade chemicals in this water can you talk a little bit mike about the ones that were sort of the most detrimental well there's four primary contaminants that were identified in the water that we have testing and can show that where they're the first ones bins in from fuel over the forty year period operational period of the fuel part of the base fuel farm the marine corps lost about one point five million as inside the brink or lost an estimated one point five million gallons of fuel into the groundwater campus gym which is where camp legend drives his drinking water from then we have a trick or a plane which is a dry cleaning chemical and it's also used in cleaning different agents you know

weapons guns things like that trike or ethylene which is also used to soften to clean weapons. for vehicles and tanks and things like that and then the third one the fourth one is a degradation product of vinyl chloride three of the four known him a car subdivisions. and jerry when you brought the city to the attention of the marine corps what was the response from that. did not. and i mean basically that's just the same stance that they're taking today i have a token phrase for a minute it's lie and deny. but what i wanted to correct one thing that you said in your introduction of. the contamination began at the largest and worst contaminated drinking water system on the base which was

that had not point or but two marines called referred to it as maine in one nine hundred fifty three so this goes way back yes and then that's verified by the orders or the agency for toxic substances in this is easy registry their water model confirms that date so fierce and very going up and whatever i mean is it was it difficult for you to see the marine corps respond that way said i and 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 strikes or i trained over two thousand new marines i instilled in them our motto which is some provide alice was is the latin for always faithful and we also had a mother another slogan and it was we take care of our own and unfortunately our

motto. is only is a one way street. and i should mention that summer five a documentary about september file 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 an on camera you know that 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 within the record is the institution of honor and integrity and getting the truth out of the leadership of the marine corps from the beginning. of the 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 and this lies

this but 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 have requests right interviews with them they turn 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 can be trapped into and that's going to follow up question right at the truth and i did get that sense now gerri in two thousand and twelve there was a piece of legislation passed in the name of your daughter janie and sneaker can you tell us about what that's done and also how that sort of fallen short for the people that really need aid right now. that bill was basically something to get our foot in the door. i knew 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 has ever gotten any benefit out of. not are still waiting for benefits from and they're almost two years later and then the service members. they're only guaranteed health care because of that law that law. if they want the rest of their veterans benefits they have to jump through the hoops just like every other veteran that lall. was basically an admission of guilt but he actually stated that these people were poisoned while they were at camp legion and we were poisoned by our own government our own leaders that was jerry and snigger co-founder of the few the

proud and the forgotten and mike partain the organization's lead community member tonight resident takes a look at a building in manhattan that has single room occupancy as it is kicking out their tenants after just a month check it out. there's a building on the upper west side of manhattan a very rich neighborhood called the imperial court hotel it's been a single room occupancy building since the one nine hundred forty s. mean the owner rents out single star brooms for short periods of time like for a week or a month in two thousand and eleven

a law was passed mandating stays that single occupancy buildings must be a minimum of thirty days to keep tourists or transients from bugging long term plans or plans president since the law passed the imperial court has been losing tens of thousands of dollars a month according to the building's owner so he's the man that he wants to be able to rent rooms again for a week long state since he's getting no traction with the city he's decided to try a unique tactic for getting his profits back he's now threatening to turn the building into a homeless shelter that's the word used by politicians on the story threatening not me because apparently offering homeless people shelter is now a threat in america he hasn't filed any paperwork with the department of homeless services but upper west side ers are freaking out because oh my god they can't have a homeless people getting shelter in their neighborhood letters distributed to

neighbors warned of the homeless shelters scheme and asked residents to support a challenge to the thirty day law as a rabbi a holy man who runs a synagogue next to the imperial court hotel put it it's like putting a homeless show. in beverly hills no we can't have that democratic new york assemblywoman linda rosenthal said he's trying to scare the neighborhood by threatening the homeless shelter it's really reprehensible yes reprehensible is the word but the fact that people would consider providing housing for the homeless off the rat is reprehensible indeed this is not the first building issuing this threat to challenge the two thousand and eleven law either apparently this homeless shelter or threat is an actual facing i'm sorry aren't we supposed to be christians in this country are we supposed to love our neighbors not do

everything we can to make sure that those in need stay in need and stay far away from us. the only threat in this story is how heartless we have become to consider housing the needy a threat at all tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the residence. i'm near a david have a great night. technology innovations all the developments around russia we've got the future covered.