coming up on our t.v. iraq's military forces continue to struggle in the face of growing isis control inside their country our d. has a crew in iraq for an on the ground report at the violence in the war torn country . and in eastern ukraine anti kiev activists have agreed to a ceasefire this is months after the clashes that have divided the ukraine more on that coming up. and a new study links the rate of autism with pesticide families living near certain california farms see an increase in autism with their children a look at this new study later in the show.

it's monday june twenty third five pm in washington d.c. i'm manila chan you're watching r.t. america. u.s. secretary of state john kerry is in baghdad today where he met with iraqi officials as the isis militants continue their push into baghdad despite that secretary kerry says that president obama has prepared a range of options for iraq in cairo before traveling to iraq kerry had this to say about the present state of both libya and iraq the united states of america is not responsible for what happened in libya nor is it responsible for what's happening in iraq today the united states shed blood and worked hard for years to provide iraqis the opportunity to have their own governments meanwhile back stateside

senator rand paul is weighing in on the subject that kentucky senator feels that the u.s. has turned parts of the middle east into quote a jew hottest wonderland take a listen we went into libya we got rid of that terrible could offer you know what should she hardish wonderland over there is she ought to everywhere if we were to get rid of assad it would be a jihad is wonderland in syria it's now a jihadist wonderland in iraq because we got overinvolved he was referencing the overthrow of moammar gadhafi and libya now while both political parties point fingers at one another for the mess that is our iraq policy new poll numbers show that president obama's disapproval numbers are now equal to former president george w. bush's whose own iraq policies cost cause much controversy among the american people according to a c.n.n. o.r.c. poll this this marks the first time that a majority of americans have an favorable view of obama artie's lucy cavanagh

is in iraq she is one of the few reporters traveling outside of the green zone in baghdad here's her report on the unrest and golfing that country. the march on baghdad for now on hold instead of just hottest fighters tightened their grip on western iraq this weekend's gains three border crossings into syria and jordan and for nearby towns territory now for only in the hands of insurgents from the islamic state in iraq and syria. despite the chaos spreading across the country and eerie calm in the kurdish capital the city is just sixty kilometers from the isis front line but it downtown erbil it was business as usual kurdistan has often felt like a separate country altogether even at the height of iraq's most violence and bloodiest moments now but the current crisis treading the country to pieces it's

closer than ever to becoming one kurdish soldiers are now in control of territory that used to be disputed but no one here seems to think that just harvest would dare march on them. but i have full faith in the forces we won let's anything happen. for some the prospect of a divided iraq was a welcome one do you think that iraq or a man of one country as we know what's after this crisis may be that may be that iraq will have to be divided will have area and the sunnis and shias will have there is no one in kurdistan is more and we have oil we have a strong army. they may help or oil but fuel is running scares for days now iraqi forces battled with isis for control of the country's largest oil refinery this is one of the first things you notice here in our build these massive gas lines some of the cars have been here for hours since the morning many

people in fact camped out overnight to try to get online so they can get gas frustrated residents line up to get their share authorities have limited each individual to thirty leaders that's less than what it takes to for. two tanks. were seen entering their newly purchased supply in two containers in order to go back for more it's a very unusual situation where it's kurdish police officers guarding the gas stations here to prevent fights and conflicts breaking out the people we've spoken to said there haven't been lines like this for fuel since the outbreak of the u.s. led invasion back in two thousand and three and although there are shortages here in erbil parts of northern iraq have run out of gas on the black markets and so people are stocking up they say that they don't know what the thing the fear is for the go a lot worse before it gets better and. that's a sentiment we've heard from many here this man fled the sunni dominated and our province it's not ice is that he was afraid of that again making it less because

we're scared of shelling from the iraqi army. he has and it's not just a nice fleeing the violence we encountered shia refugees to talk till gonzi job or came here six days ago from baghdad and in baghdad the situation has gone from bad to worse and to people who are arming themselves and getting the ready to fight one another notch them only seeing the future is bloodshed and violence if something doesn't change iraq will be a country of orphans and we don't like to see catherine of erbil iraq. and with all eyes on iraq and the u.s. military advisers that are en route isis has taken to you tube to fill their ranks from some unexpected places one of those being right here in the united states and a highly stylized recruitment video called there is no life without jihad led by abu time the al yemeni reportedly a british citizen isis states that they have brothers joining their cause from all

over the globe and you tube has since removed the isis recruitment video but just as anything else on the internet it's out there and plenty of people have reposed of it earlier i was joined by our correspondent sara firth from our london bureau and i asked her how effective this video has been in recruiting fighters from abroad. well absolutely in that video it's a professional piece of propaganda you can hear these british accents is filmed in syria but you can hear the fight is saying that they'll be taking the fight to iraq and now we seem this tactic from isis social media by extremist groups is nothing new but i think the extent to which isis has been successful with their use of their social media campaigns and with videos like this has really been what's called the attention now as it's important to remember that all day isis is hit the

headlines in the past couple of weeks they haven't come from nowhere this is a group that has been operating for a long while now and it's important we remember that when we're talking about foreign fighters in particular and the success that they've had recruiting westerners and from here british people who have gone to fight abroad because we've seen people from britain traveling out to syria for the last couple of years is only been recently that we've really seen british security forces decision on this issue and indeed it was only last week that the british government added isis to the list of prescribed terror groups so this is been going on for a while now itis hasn't come from nowhere and so i think it's important that we remember that in talking about their successes this how right they are they're not brand new element but of course we have seen the message really hitting the mainstream absolutely now speaking of the british government and david cameron has echoed the sentiments of new york city's counterterrorism chief hard at home has

there been any evidence of this happening is this a valid fear or will this is the real concern internationally is that fear of blowback once those foreign fighters return home we've already seen threats emerging on social media from some of these groups yes these threats a very relieved got to look at the scale of farm. bitit that have gone to syria now potentially some of them crossing over to iraq is thought of around twelve thousand foreign biters around three thousand of those thoughts to be from europe and here's the u.k. government estimate at the moment putting the number of people who've gone to fight in syria four hundred although there's lots of speculation that the real figure in fact could be much higher than that as well so there is real concern here about what will happen if when these people return and we spoke to a counterterrorism expert in the head the other day and he said look this is

another important distinction to make not everyone who has gone to syria has gone to fight and equally not everyone coming back he's fighting in syria and potentially iraq is going to be a terrorist or pose the same level of terror threats that. he said to us that small percentages of small percentages big given that the numbers of foreign fighters that have gone across to this conflict a slave big of course those small percentages actually depot is a very significant threat and it's going to be a massive task for the security forces not just in britain but internationally to really focus in and ensure that no one slips through the net because of course what all the governments know is that it only takes one person to carry out a significant terror attack and you know the level of damage can be absolutely must that that's what they're going to want to avoid and that is going to be what preserve a real challenge now earlier you mentioned that isis has been very prolific in their use of social media can you tell us a little bit more about this isis p.r.

push as it appears and their use of social media what else are they doing as he said i mean the use of social media by extremist groups is nothing new but we have seen isis have huge success with their campaign and i think really at the heart of that success is that they've been able to take their message mainstream and you look at the images and the video is the isis has to. that and really horrifying images of some of the alleged attacks that they've been carrying out but yet they've managed to strike a chord with a mainstream audience we've seen a lot of pro isis supports online and i think that's really a cause for concern because it is targeting these young people it's having an impact on these young people disenchanted people in the west and say that really is a cause for concern and it's what counterterrorism experts are saying here is that we now really need to focus on the counter narratives especially in the west to

counter that message to counter that success that isis has had online now it appears that this abu al yemeni he's become the face of this western recruiting effort can you tell us a little bit about who he is what's his appeal i mean apart from being young and of course the other men that are in the recruiting video all just as young can you tell us a little bit about. yemenis appeal well this is the young student from cardiff he's been identified as one of the speakers in that video. yes i mean it's incredibly disturbing to watch that obviously you have got a very young british national he's a there there now he's giving that message aiding the people back in the west calling on them to come and joining in the fight you know the heart of this is isis one thing to establish an islamic caliphate this isn't just focused on syria or iraq they're saying that is just the beginning and we've heard this message

repeatedly in a lot of the videos that are out there that are especially focusing in on the west today they're saying to the young people back here leave your cars leave your money leave your women you know come enjoying this holy war as they think that they are fighting it's really disturbing because of course that is having it's targeting the disenchanted people back here in the west people who are young who are possibly can feel. about that is that my density that was artie's sarah furthest from our london bureau now to the crisis in ukraine could there finally be an end in sight the leader of the self-proclaimed people's republic in eastern ukraine has agreed to a cease fire in the region until friday the ceasefire comes with one condition though key of forces must also stop the fighting artie's roman kosar of has more. no guns or artillery fire this time around and yes indeed the anti-government

activists donetsk people's republic of people's republic have agreed to a cease fire which will last until it's when t seven. o'clock in the morning in fact the sides are hoping to continue a dialogue continue consult. the government side they have asked for a complete stop of all movements all for ukrainian government forces around ukraine they're also said they're working on a free in the always sea reps here in eastern ukraine they are hoping this four day breather will give them a chance to do that course this is all good news for the locals in the. areas who have been heavily bombarded by the ukrainian army over the last few weeks this will give them a chance to tend to the wounded bury their dead and of course get food and water supplies into a badly devastated region meanwhile we've heard that at least forty children have

died as a result have been killed as a result of this conflict some were killed. some were killed as a result of. gunfire now according to it's hard to say whether this particular cease fire right now with stick because we've heard from a. governor. who said he's not going to listen. and he said i'd say he will continue. his hired guns until a situation is over now the east of ukraine is certainly heading for a humanitarian catastrophe they have no drinking water there right now local officials are saying that the region is heading for an epidemic meanwhile the activists and anti-government activists seeing the latest moves as a good sign and of course. rudy holds the spoiler will actually stick around that

was our team's roman kosar at. poland's foreign minister has been secretly recorded comparing his country's relationship with the us to a sexual act and it's washington that's come out on top r.t. is marina of course ny is been following this embarrassingly frank diplomatic conversation with the polish government has indirectly confirmed the authenticity of the leak conversations which you're talking about where we hear the foreign minister calling his country's alliance with america worthless and during the conversation foreign minister sir course ski gets quite vulgar describing warsaw's relationship to washington in one which poland is the partner who's always performing sexual favors and receiving nothing in return the private conversation was first reported by. a polish magazine according to w.

sikorsky goes on to say that the polish american alliance is harmful because it creates a false sense of national security he calls his government suckers for thinking that if his nation gets into a conflict with russians in germans things are going to be ok because poland performed a sexual favor on america so of course he's potty mouth comments are quite surprising considering that warsaw is among washington's staunchest allies as a matter of fact u.s. president barack obama was in poland three weeks ago where he unveiled a one billion dollars security plan to expand military training in joint exercises exercises and in order to bolster. allies now the world saw images of friendship and handshaking between the u.s. and poland at that time but clearly behind the smiles and handshakes warsaw is quite frustrated with its a very good partner now on monday poland's prime minister. confirm the authenticity

of the lead conversation saying it would not force him to make any cabinet changes now this of course isn't the first time we've heard colorful language used by. the u.s. and its european allies back in february our viewers may remember that as system secretary of state victoria nuland dropped the f. bomb when dismissing the european union's involvement in the ukraine crisis so that would be great i think to glue this thing and have the u.n. help glue it and you know the e.u. now clearly every fan friendship has its problems but when it comes to relations between the u.s. and europe critics say that the alliance may not be as strong as it appears to be on the surface colorful language indeed that was our correspondent marina. and it's a health subject that in recent years has gone much support and a lot of speculation but still leaves so much to be researched autism is a major concern for would be moms and new moms celebrities like jenny mccarthy

whose young son suffers from the disorder have gone on record touting some very questionable research and conclusions on the subject many people within the health community have weighed in on the autism subject but medical research is still under way a new study links autism to pesticide exposure i was joined earlier by the leader of the study dr jamie shelton of the university of california davis i first asked dr shelton what prompted her to look into this possible connection. you know our study is not the first one to look at this connection there were two studies published in two thousand and seven also in the california central valley looking at autism with regard to pesticide exposure and so we were really following up with a case control study that we had in northern california to see if we also saw similar associations that ours is not the first actually so what made you decide to look

further into it was it just jumping off of some other reports that you've already followed up on you know yeah and then the problem i think with the scientific. approach to these issues is that there's no single study of that kind that can identify you know what is the cause of autism we need we need an accumulation of research we need to see many studies and different populations that that all suggest a similar thing and look at you know more thorough populations and do better research and improve on previous previous research so. for example and some of the previous studies the cases were only diagnosed through the california state regional centers where as in our study they were given a secondary confirmatory diagnosis that the mind and in sacramento california so we have we have some strengths or a study that we felt would contribute more to this literature and now as you mentioned some previous research has shown

a link between developmental disability and exposure to pesticides and while it's important here to say that your study doesn't conclude per se that pesticides cause autism how does your research build on what's already been studied. well our research looks at a much more well defined case population so i'll give you an example in a previous study that showed an association that cases were identified by asking parents about some of the symptoms of their children behavior and so within within the community of diagnostician that would not be considered as rigorous a diagnosis as going in and doing all of the clinical testing which which is required to receive a confirmation of autism so for our for our study we had a much more rigorously defined case population done that in the previous study so that in and of itself is an improvement because we know that we're looking at children who really between ages of two and five definitely have

a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder so we're really narrowing down the population so that. now. in your study and please correct me if i'm wrong your study didn't directly measure each individual woman's exposure to pesticides but can you can you describe for us in your research how these women were exposed sure so what we did was we used a database that's available in the state of california called the pesticide use report and what that is is a database of cultural and commercial pesticide applications and in california state law that applicators have to report their voters so they have to report what sign up their exposure but they're at the chemicals they use so they have to report what they used and where they used it and so that data with that link to the addresses of mothers during their pregnancy so we have a case control study where kids in the study are at this point to between two and

five years old and. the historical addresses from the pregnancy and prior to pregnancy to the mom we could then evaluate if a kid or or a developmental. disorder general intellectual impairment we're more likely to have mothers that lived in close proximity to these agricultural chemical pesticides and that was the exposure that we that we used because unfortunately we didn't have. bio specimens or anything to look at during that from the pregnancy to mop their budget that way now does it matter at what point in the woman's pregnancy that they're exposed to the pesticides. you know it's interesting because there's been a lot of discussion about where the period of vulnerability for autism during pregnancy if there is an environmental exposure when does that occur and we saw a higher cause of autism whether it's you were exposed in the second and third

trimester which we didn't expect to see we would have we would have expected to see in the first trimester so for example in the second trimester we saw for clear pierrefonds. increases of between two and three fold in the risk of autism for mothers who are exposed in approximately one mile of their homes so because we know from other research that the dust in homes you can measure pesticide levels in the dust in homes and that does correlate with urinary levels and so we imagine the exposure occurring somehow related to the drift of the pesticide and we know that pesticide drift does enter into homes because that is also been measured and confirmed so while our exposure is not perfect it is very costly to do a study where we would actually measure exposure in pregnant women and then wait five years for enough children to grow up and if they've had

a diagnosis of lots of sure you know what sorts of pesticides are we talking about here. so we look out for class pesticides that are known to be neurotoxic and have previously been established in the literature to have a link with either developed. or autism so we looked at organophosphates. carbonate and organic chlorine and so organic or in the really been phased out so we actually didn't have enough people who'd been exposed organic organs to look at that population so we ended up only looking at three classes of those pesticides. phosphates are used. very widespread so for example about between seventy and eighty percent of every culture of pesticides in the united states. are phosphate pesticides and so there is a really high wide brochure and then there is also the i resorted pesticides which which are used in the home to a greater extent than the organophosphate pesticides and the carbon base we were

curious about because they operate through the same mechanism. as the organophosphates they're a little bit different in their toxicology but so that's why we chose which pesticides to look for that was that was dr janey shelton epidemiologist and researcher at the university of california davis and that does it for now i'm manila chan i'm at the martin rock the stories we cover here we're not going anywhere so i have to tell the reason they don't want you to know about it don't read it because we know let's break the set.

number of freedom industries the company responsible for the january chemical leak that contaminated drinking water for three hundred thousand people across west virginia everyone in the media was all over the story vilifying freedom and calling for their head in the news media acted like they actually cared cut to a few months later and everyone seems to have forgotten about freedom industries but guess what they just spilled again twice in two days at the site where they're supposed to be cleaning up their mass they have a collection ditch for rainwater that overflowed for two straight days which sent runoff right back into the elk river again putting thousands of residents drinking water at risk for toxic contaminants but this time newsmedia is m.i.a.

not only is freedom industries doing a sub par job of cleaning up their mess they're paying contractors big money to do it and here's the thing about that there are lots of people that were harmed by this bill and are seeking compensation there are people with lost wage claims out of pocket expenses for medical treatment and other business claims by people who sustained losses from the spill and the more money that freedom spends on their cleanup the less money they'll have to pay back all the people they harmed freedom also wanted to spend more money to hire a bankruptcy consulting firm to act as a claims agent who'd help them deal with the claims against them in advance the legal way. but a judge in the bankruptcy case denied that request telling freedom to use the much more affordable choice of a court appointed lawyer so where is the media coverage of all that it also freedom's bankruptcy filing might make it look like they're taking responsibility but a new chemical company called lexicon was recently registered as

a business and it has the same addresses phone numbers and executives as freedom their mission statements are almost word for word exactly the same lexicon also made public their intention to buy freedom's buildings when they come out of bankruptcy in other words there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that freedom plans and continuing to do business just under a different name they file for bankruptcy to cut their losses they've money and fame taking responsibility but in the end they're just going to continue doing the same crap that they've been doing so freedom industries continues to screw over west virginia and the media coverage just doesn't exist so not only did freedoms bill chemicals all over the place their story believe.