coming up on r t u.s. troops may soon be gone from afghanistan the pentagon is preparing a full withdrawal of all troops after the u.s. and afghan governments couldn't reach a bilateral security agreement what does this mean for the future of afghanistan find out just ahead. and the line between church and state blurs in the u.s. military more american service members have complained that religion has been forced on them during training and while on duty and look at this i mean. the new study cast a wary eye on months and herbicides the study claims that a roundup may be linked with more americans suffering from celiac disease will ask if that's possible leader and.

it's wednesday february twenty sixth five pm in washington d.c. i'm perry and boring your watching our team america the pentagon is preparing a full withdrawal of troops from afghanistan by the end of two thousand and fourteen president obama phoned afghan president karzai on tuesday to discuss afghanistan's coming elections and the bilateral security agreement since president karzai refused to sign the security agreement the white house said they will resort to the so-called zero option but options actually do remain on the table here is white house press secretary jay carney. the president has. tasked the pentagon with preparing for the contingency that there will be no troops in afghanistan beyond two thousand and fourteen but we are also. remaining open to the

possibility of a post twenty fourteen. troop presence should a bilateral security agreement he signed or the bilateral security agreement be something later in the year. to go she ations over the security agreement have been a diplomatic mess karzai says he'll leave the signing of the deal to his successor there are eleven people running for his seat with an election on april fifth so the candidates have said they would sign the agreement with the u.s. but many analysts say obama's trying to pressure karzai to approve the accord himself by moving forward with this zero option this decision comes just a few days after u.s. military leaders submitted their recommendation for obama to keep ten thousand troops in afghanistan after two thousand and fourteen which begs the question is a president obama more concerned with the filling campaign promises of ending the war rather than completing the mission could the afghanistan scenario play out like

the pullout of iraq and two thousand and eleven they are the president removed all u.s. troops from the country have the u.s. failed to reach a security agreement that would grant american troops immunity today al qaeda has taken back key areas and rock and as america's longest war nears its end afghans and their neighbors are nervous about the resurgence in the region as well pakistani officials have said they're concerned about the afghan military ability to stand up to the taliban and other fundamentalist groups and the republicans on capitol hill say the u.s. needs to keep special forces and drone bases and the country to continue america's own fight against the terrorist. so after billions of us dollars poured into propping up afghanistan to fight the taliban what they're not ready to stand up for themselves. the first amendment of the constitution clearly

establishes a separation between church and state congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise their up but should this apply to the military to low religious freedom foundation has the collected accounts from service members who say religion has been forced on them in mandatory military training and in some cases religious extremists in the military have even used religion as justification for going to war artes and it's also a turk into as more. us is involved in has been debated for years islamic islamic islam but any religion can be taken to an extreme and american soldiers are no exception if they did though some of the gods are mean is it given the wide over the just right serving its enormous fundamentalist christianity is electrically intertwined into the very d.n.a.

of the technologically most lethal organization ever created by humankind which is argue that it is states military this active u.s. military officer asking for anonymity and fear for his safety says his life has been turned into a living hell by those he serves with because he's not christian. the officer says he has reached out to higher ups for help only to receive threats of being stripped of his rank and kicked out of the military. i was at school. i was. the military religious freedom foundation represents over thirty six thousand active duty members of the u.s. military ninety six percent of whom are christians coming to they are feeling

oppressed for not being christian enough claims its founder where we're dealing with a radical type of religiosity again not the islamic version but what's known as fundamentalists are demented christianity well religion can certainly provide solace to soldiers out on the battlefield we have a variety of denominations and faith groups. protestant catholic muslim jewish buddhist hindu chaplains who serve in our military right now again so that our military personnel can exercise their religious liberties watch some experts say religious intolerance has reached unprecedented levels in the u.s. military over the last decade whether they're putting jesus those verses for example on their him six teams or painting their bradley fighting vehicles with christian crosses in the middle of a muslim country or whether they're espousing biblical worst to muslims in

afghanistan or iraq these are dangerous people. even though a handful of attempts like providing fixit kits to wipe off bible verse references on rifles as well as addressing military courses involving jesus have been made over the years too raw to kate the spread of religious extremism insiders see significant change is unlikely. and aggressive stance towards anyone be it a fellow soldier or foreign enemy takes warfare to a whole new level with religions in addition to countries clashing on the battlefield spreading not just more violence but intolerance across borders and. new york and here to the gods of abraham from the council on american islamic relations thanks for joining us thanks for having me absolutely how prevalent is this issue of christian. strain that i'm in the military well from a muslim perspective and as a civil rights group we tend to deal more with civil rights issues of the muslim

military personnel whether it's wearing hijab head scarf whether it's prayer whether it's being able to go on hard as a member of the military to or to wear a beard but we do on occasion get these reports of proselytisation put forward by military personnel so it is an issue but i wouldn't say it's one of our biggest categories of work now in that video we thought u.s. soldiers wearing jackets on their uniforms could be considered a. very able to wear. it's a balance between the freedom of religious expression of the christian soldiers and you want them to be able to express themselves through religion that's their right just as it's the right of the muslim and the sick and the jewish personnel but you can't have a situation where you're forcing their religion on other military personnel and you

know as they say there's no atheists in the foxholes when you're in the military and you're in combat religion is an important thing to you but you shouldn't be in a muslim country pushing your particular faith on people that you're supposedly there to help you shouldn't have overt religious symbols on your weapons i mean just common sense kind of thing that's that's not something you want to do we wouldn't recommend it for muslim soldiers we wouldn't recommend it for anybody but as i said our main goal as a civil rights organization is to make sure that our military personnel whatever their faith have the ability to express themselves to practice their faith and just recently the military has come up with a broadening of religious rights and they've come a. attacked from the right wing when the military said that we're broadening the right for instance to wear a headscarf as a muslim a woman to wear a beard to pray in these kinds of things it's not total freedom but they broaden

those rights we actually congratulated them on that but this issue of proselytisation and offensive religious symbols is one that we've dealt with in the past well a lot of people have expressed concerns about the crusaders culture is that something we should be worried about you know we've seen that on occasion to with certain patches there was even a weapon system that was going to be used by the military called the crusader. and that was eventually dropped they got as we say but. this is an issue and i think it's something that has to be dealt with by the officer corps in the military they just have to be able to clamp down on this kind of thing before it gets out of hand religious expression is fine but. religious symbols that are proselytizing or meant to insult other faiths shouldn't be allowed and if military

members are dealing that they have a lot on their uniforms and they're in another country could that make more radicalization upright might have land yeah obviously these kinds of things in a muslim country are going to cause problems and we saw the situation where soldiers for instance your unaided on corpses and videotape themselves doing that where other kinds of desecrations of this type of taken place there was a in afghanistan where they were burning korans even though they said it was accidental but it ends up on video and it's counterproductive to american interests and image worldwide now considering the fights in the middle east have often been in muslim countries how have an american not arrogantly thwarted. well there have been american muslims who have fought and died in various combat situations around the world i personally know of an american muslim who served on d.-day in world war

two hit the beaches on d.-day so muslims have been in the military they continue to be in the military thousands estimates upwards of eleven thousand muslims in the in our military so these issues will continue to come up and again it's just the responsibility of the top officials to make sure that these things don't happen while protecting religious freedoms for all of the military personnel and have military leadership are thought that to death for the most part responsive it's a huge bureaucracy so sometimes it's hard to access that bureaucracy but usually when things are brought to their attention they handle them appropriately because they don't want internal conflicts or to damage the image of the united states around the world thank you and i think he need hooper from the council on american islamic relations. u.k. government is struggling to contain the rise of islamophobia at home and some

breads are making the job any easier a group of activists have started to patrol the streets of east london in armored vehicles saying they want to protect people being harassed by radical muslims as r.t.s. there are further reports not everyone is on board with the patrols want to be the front of the vehicle. totally clear there's any patrol in town wholesomely hills of the small but may tourists muslim patrols a new political group calling themselves britain first have responded by forming what they've dubbed christie and patrols and this patrol comes complete with vehicle proof that the whole thing is. he joins the as they took to the streets in east london where we have improved. the watch approach why the area particularly because that's where a lot of trophies before you go from the group has been described

as far right many of the members a former b.m.p. or e.t.l. but then we get to differentiate themselves from these grapes and insist they don't want to be associated with violence but tactics such as baiting where members stand with the big cans to try and lure out the muslim patrols have proven controversial and some members of the group have already faced the rest we'll hear during the. problems for anyone to be. sure to try. to confront them. think the christian. god despite having a purely condemned the muslim patrols at the time the east london mosque has been singled out by the christie in patrol for criticism the must say. they feel caught in the middle and i worry that the patrol could inflame fragile community relations

our community certainly feels threatened by his antics turning up to any part of the country. is. putting across the street. a strong message what the public needs to understand is that none of these groups represent the mainstream community or why this society out on london streets and while there's not much support to be found here i think first of all to keep the peace love. story. yeah. yeah yeah i think you're right that he think it's it's all going to be completely peaceful. there are going to be moments where obviously often there's a potential for trouble there always will be there's nothing we can do to avoid that you could not patrol yeah and then just leave these members of the public to

be harassed part of shari'a patrols. this schirripa trolls have been afraid to leave at the front line but that's not what we've been told since a number of arrests last year the muslim patrols have gone to ground it's unclear that patrols are actually still operating that will likely come as some relief to policing community relations work is in this diverse area of london that despite the christian patrol activity the muslim patrols have safe not taken the bait so i think the london. a study published in the journal of enter disciplinary toxicology suggests there could be a link between month santo's herbicide called roundup ready and increase in celiac disease in the u.s. in europe celiac disease is an auto immune disorder where the ingestion of gluten products like wheat leads to damage of the small intestine the authors of the study

proposed that guy fifty eight the active ingredient in the herbicide roundup is the most important causal factor in this epidemic the report states that life of faith binds to the gluten in weeping causes and will mation this can cause long term problems such as and fertility birth defects and increased risk of none hodgkin's lymphoma over the study also states that this proposal has not been proven and further studies need to be done monsanto the maker of the herbicide round up a tells r t the current paper strings together numerous observations many of which are controversial incorrectly or poorly to stablished to assert proposed causation earlier i spoke to lives become founder of farm food freedom coalition and i first asked her as we can draw any conclusions here. well i think this study does offer some important questions that need to be looked at but as the researchers in the study say it's not conclusive let's look into it more let's get some actual on the

ground research going on this issue and see if we can answer some of the questions that they brought up in this conglomeration of research well the study does point out that fish that are exposed to the fate they show symptoms that are similar to celiac disease do we have any idea of how harmful it is well we do have an idea of how harmful glass of eight is because of other studies that have been done on it the implication on the fish there with the fish it was much higher levels than what we're getting in our food so it's it is important to look at this look at it more and do some of the research on other animals and get some long term studies done on the glaze the faintly effect that they have this is really important the long term studies now roundup is used on g.m.o. crops and the celiac disease foundation has stated that there has been no scientific evidence put forward for a g.m.o. celiac disease link however there's been no clinical human feeding trials on

genetically engineered food either so does this study create any advances in finding out the facts of human well standing alone it does not and i don't think the authors intended it to stand alone they want to see more studies done on this and one of the important things to note in all of that though is that people have an experience when they go off including people who are gluten intolerant and they find that their bodies heal and one of the most important things that we're looking at right now is that often consumers have no way of knowing if they're in their food or not because there's no label on genetically modified ingredients and this is one tiny solution we could take to give consumers just the average consumers the information they need to empower them to make the choices that they need for their own diets now although there's been no studies on g.m.o. as. there are safety for chronically ill people do you believe that they're safe for people have terminal illnesses well i can speak from experience and that is

hearing from people who are chronically ill who get out of their diet they see an improved quality of life i think that right there it is anecdotal but it's people's real life experiences and that is something to take into consideration when looking at foods and looking at opportunities for this research now the authors of this study that we're linking to say to celiac disease they state that further testing needs to be done you know we're talking about this what kinds of tests and specific do we need what we need some independent research. institute for. national institutes of health for example or independent scientists who want to take this on privately funded we need this private research done research coming out of the industry it's giving somewhat biased results in favor of the product they're selling no surprise there and we also need long term scientific research done on this we're getting short term studies we're not getting

a lot of the long term ones done so you don't think there should be any public funds in that test if there's an opportunity for that. i think all of these studies put another piece into the puzzle and we can look at the data but i think that one of the most important things that we do need is privately funded research on this because it takes some of the bias out of the whole equation but if you also have privately funded research those private institutions hold the results from the public well i suppose they could but it would be another piece of the puzzle have any scientist or group started these additional tests i mean where are we in the testing phase it's really tough in the testing phase because for example if we're looking at genetically modified organisms you know months and holds patents on a lot of these seeds and the technology and so it's difficult to do outside studies so right now most of the studies are coming from. inside the industry and again we're missing so much information because we don't know what's in our food right now so because they have patents on the seeds other organizations will not use them

to do studies on them and who might have access to them isn't doing it. so this is right said the co-founder of food freedom coalition. the food and drug administration has been conducting meetings this week about a fertility procedure at that uses the d.n.a. of not two but three people the purpose of bringing in another person into the baby making process and so eliminate some genetic defect and newborns the signs have been successfully performed in monkeys and even on humane humans more than a decade ago now researchers would like the f.d.a. to allow it to be tested again in humans critics are raising critical ethical concerns saying this is a slippery slope that involves engineering humans and could lead to designer babies and talk more about this i'm joined by our t.v. producer rachel courteous and comedian league camp so rachel our start with the

tell us a little bit more about the meeting has been going on the f.d.a. this week sure so the question that they're considering is what's called mitochondrial manipulation and the mitochondria provides a scant amount of d.n.a. most of the d.n.a. in a baby comes from as we know the egg in the sperm there's a little bit that comes from the metal conduit which is where all the energy comes from in a cell so what they want to do and what they've been able to do in monkeys is replace that mitochondria of a woman who might have genetic defects this is about one in four thousand children are affected by these mitochondrial defects and replace that with a healthy woman's mitochondria so that's where you get the kind of third person getting involved in the d.n.a. process so the talks are very much limited to this one process of mitochondrial manipulation are not really addressing the ethical concerns that are being ready for the ethical concerns but specifically related to this one of the process not kind of a broader question of manipulating sperm and eggs broadly now when we hear that two is better than one when you say that the resources of d.n.a.

are better than two. to bring as many people into the baby making process last of all so yeah more d.n.a. to better but it is a big oprah worry about this you know. babies in this regard i think there's a much bigger problem in this country in terms of baby d.n.a. idiots are breeding and we're allowing. the it's a meeting other idiots and then they pump out half would be a reason so you have no way to stop that's what i'm saying exactly we should stop. it and how do you recover it was a great solution no i'm not saying it should be illegal i'm just saying maybe designer babies are not as big a problem as idiots that run around this country you know i mean why why give birth to a walkie talkie in an i phone world. people love each other and that's why they want to reproduce. maybe some scientists and lawmakers there are raising red

flags saying wait a minute this is engineering humans rachel what other concerns have you seen raised in this rate so the whole idea of designer babies you know which as i think designer babies could solve your issue and then people would be selecting people with smarter i q's people who are a little more with it rather than people who try to remove themselves from the world as we know it but so so that's the problem right people are saying that this is only going to be a technology available to the wealthy and that they're going to be able to from here it's a slippery slope and anything from i color to i q to accuracy when it comes to throwing a baseball these are all traits that could be selected over time that's one concern people have another concern specifically related to my mitochondrial manipulation is that we don't know what happens when you introduce that healthy mitochondria into the into the gene pool right so over a series of generations there could be a lot of unintended consequences and that scares a lot of scientists who are speaking at the f.d.a. today now we ever faster at the new york university school of medicine he raised the concern that just because this worked in monkeys doesn't necessarily mean it's

going to work in humans and that a presentation he was quoted saying what kind of diet did you have these monkeys on and you have them on a mcdonald's super sized stress test. i mean is the new two without a mcdonald's stress test i think it's actually going down a superstar stress test coming down a super size it is a stress test. no it is absolutely true that there had been enough testing but we like going forward with things without enough testing as your last segment on g m o's was talking about were don't we know that yeah or don't leave i would go in for rude things with testing but you know at least in this case it'll be largely tested it seems on rich people so they'll be the ones that able to afford real exchanges so at least for once rather than testing on the poor people like mcdonald's does you know who knows what the chicken postman nuggets are doing to people will be testing the rich people so yeah and maybe we'll even be able to open up

a market for healthy mitochondria and we can have an you know we can create a lot of. a bag of might come out again i don't know not like the options and this could be unlimited yeah absolutely thanks again our team producer and comedian and camp thanks thanks very. have you ever thought you might die from a broken heart turns out you're on to something according to a study by st georges university of london losing a loved one doubles the risk of heart failure or stroke author of the report doctors until saw that our study shows bereavement can have a direct effect on the health of the heart here's a perfect example of new york couple married for sixty years after being hospitalized for a deadly leg and three at hale was miles apart from his wife laura rena hale when she was hospitalized who for congestive heart failure with only hours left to live when ed heard of the news he insisted on being by her side this by being on his

deathbed he remarkably improved enough to be transferred to the hospital his wife was at they both passed away within hours holding hands. and before we go don't forget to tune in at nine pm for larry king now tonight's guest is san francisco forty nine ers tight and vernon davis here's larry king asking vernon about his other sports endeavors. but what is this with honorary captain of the u.s. curling team why what got you into curling you know one of the beat writers came to me a few years back and she asks me. to come out. and get on the ice and i don't know what it was without you know i was open i was open to do it. but enjoyed it enjoyed it enjoy it it was what makes it good curler.

just your ability to. come up with the best plan. is. so you don't have to be strong you don't have to. you can be weak you can be skinny you can be big it is a matter of sport it is a sport it is it is because those guys you know you have to think about the position that those guys are in when they take off with the style i mean they are in a lunging position you know they can tear their growing they can tear their quad anything so it is it is a sport. so to an end tonight at nine pm on our to america. that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to you to slash r.t. america check out our website at r.t. dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter at perry and.

technology innovation all the developments around russia. the future. hello and welcome to cross talk or all things considered i'm peter lavelle revolutionary care of with the illegal overthrow of the democratically elected government.