good to have you with us you're on our team today on roller sutured. coming up on r t moving in on baghdad insurgents in iraq are trying to take over two key downs that provide power and water to more than a million people it's a battle over resources more on that just ahead. and i have first convention but top of the cyber world comes together in las vegas just as a new report says over a billion e-mail addresses may have been stolen by a russian gang host of boom bust aaron eight joins us from las vegas. plus you've seen warnings about nicotine and alcohol but what about sugar the f.d.a.

considers a measure it says is targeted at obesity what this could mean for you and your health later in the show. it's august sixth four pm in washington d.c. i mean you're a david and you're watching r t america. it's been a day of reflection after a two star general became the highest ranking u.s. official to be killed in either of america's post nine eleven wars fifty five year old harold green was one of the army's gadget gurus an engineer by trade whose goal was to integrate digital technology and a way that would improve military operations greene was killed yesterday when when a gunman believed to be an afghan soldier opened fire at a military academy cademy near kabul afghanistan more than a dozen other soldiers were injured including eight americans it was among the most

damaging insider attacks since the war in afghanistan began. a power grab is underway in iraq as islam akin surgeons continue in their fight not only for landon supporters but also for the country's most valuable resources a mist heavy fighting the islamic state militants are also looking to capture key dams in the country over the weekend isis launched a three pronged attack on the hood either down which regulates the flow of the euphrates river and western iraq and also generates hydro electricity the militants are also fighting to seize the mosul down the country's largest along the tigris river in the north the hydro power dam is near mosul the second largest city in the country which fell to the militants back in june so what could this looming water war mean for the future of iraq i was joined earlier by daniel pipes president of the mid east forum and i first asked him what the appeal is for these insurgents

well in brief if you control the dams in iraq you control who are the true rivers euphrates and tigris are the lifeblood of iraq. there the source of water of course an electricity. there's no there's no wrong too. rivers and the biggest in iraq is on the tigris river so we're north of the country . if you control that you control the city the water and you can threaten to flood and even to destroy by blowing it up. so you mentioned flooding i want to take a look at some of the potential scenarios there has been talk of threats that they will flood cities or farms as surrounding the dams is that a real possibility and what exactly would that solve it's a very real possibility because they've really done with the smaller the saluja

barrage in february they allowed a lot of water to go down and to flood so it's on their minds this is a much larger that they could conceivably do to i think the most likely thing is that they will use this as a lever to threaten basically all the iraq some are and most of the cities along the tigris river it's it's incredible. and as you mentioned this wouldn't be the first time isis would use water as a weapon or earlier this year we sized this capture the solution dam and it resulted in so-called a water wars and can you explain a little bit more what happened there. well they are allowed the water to come out fast and flooded and it meant that farms were unusable until people had to flee by the way the largest example of catastrophic flooding was in one nine hundred thirty eight when the chinese national government hoping to stop the japanese and koreans

of china released a lot of the water out of a dam of the yellow river the estimates are that half a million people died when makes it more awful than it is that didn't even do any good and. so it has been down in history it has been done by ice it's small scale and it's my great work but they will do something more than i know this strange thing is we don't know if they control the system there are contradictory reports so we would spit special to those. we still don't now but muscle damage is an electricity generating dam electricity of course is a scarce resource right now in that region so as it seems like it would be quite a great gain for them and how could they potentially utilize this resource at least politically to advance in iraq they can make demands of disappearance of water in there to some that they must do this and that in order to continue to suit water

and since they are in the current suit. can they also try to sell it as well. so the dam and so much as well electricity for sure and yes it does bring in income which they are very adept at they control oil fields they looted banks they have substantial amounts estimates suggest one two billion dollars and yes this would be another source of isis is not a hot headed group but i mean obviously beheadings and slavery and so forth the stream but what we've seen so far in iraq other so-called capital in syria and elsewhere is that they're well organized. incompetence and that to me is important because the mosul don't have stands out as the worst constructed to the world it was done badly and it needs to be grouted it needs to be maintained basically around the clock and if i says for whoever controls it doesn't keep up to me and there is the fear of catastrophic collapse of that too is and it's not just it's

decided which want to do it's also having to tame. the maintenance of the still very complex which is expensive you require a script that's certainly. you know this isn't the only resource that isis has gone after during just this this latest conflict we've seen that there's also plenty of oil in the country what sort of threat are they to iraq's oil infrastructure. they have substantial oil fields now under their control in syria to the west and they've begun to get some lesser oil fields and. they threaten to take larger ones and to the north in the especially the kurdish area and to take control of a very very large oil. they're on their of their own the i mean it is striking to see all the governmental forces of law and even the kurdish forces are not able to

stop them there isis is winning everywhere you look there in lebanon. there in syria of course iraq who knows the next move to this is a. it's a little hard from a distance understand how this a powerful you can see these pictures and videos of these guys running around in toyota pickups and wondering how can the government of iraq armed forces armed by the united states government takes planes how can it lose to them it's. militia men pick up trucks but those. that was you know pipe's president of the mideast forum. and now to the crisis in gaza israeli and palestinian delegations are in cairo for talks as a seventy two hour ceasefire in gaza appears to be holding for a second day now u.s. and u.n. diplomats are also expected to join the discussions for a longer term truce which will deal with a number of underlying issues that led to the violence over the past month both

sides are coming to the table with individual demands of course israel says it wants gaza to be demilitarized while hamas insists that israel and egypt and their long standing blockades over the area many are asking given the lopsided casualty rate if the israeli military has gone too far now earlier today on r.t. paul herson spokesman for the israeli foreign ministry commented on that question here's what he had to say the israeli military has taken unprecedented steps more so than any other military in the world to try and limit and minimize civilian casualties the israeli military operates one hundred percent within the dictates of international humanitarian law and then as time goes by and hopefully the dust becomes too settled in this cease fire does hold i think the facts will come out and for a closer look at the conflict let's go to our policy or who's on the ground in tel

aviv. you know there there are a lot of soldiers a come back and say to yourself you know what the hell are we doing here you know why are we using so much force why we're treating them as way hannah is one such form israeli soldier she calls herself an anti occupation activist and was one of fifty reserve troops to sign an open letter to the washington post refusing reserve duty aka lassoed law learn about the law during the service i didn't talk about this thing and so many are there you just a part of it but more and more soldiers are choosing not to be part of an army increasingly seen as the bully in the region we are spending billions and billion a rural or. the friend through the system and there is no total different with the. poor. we are not prepared for it with a possibility to overcome it five wars in eight years levanon two thousand and six thirty four days more than eight hundred people killed and in the end israel faced

an even stronger hizbollah for devastation was with him us two thousand and six eight twelve and fourteen thousand killed international outrage and in the end israel faced a unity government between former rivals hamas and fatah foreign policy was it we had four years in the way we lost the middle east. we lost. we in the way lost egypt. in. the in the middle east and many would argue more vulnerable the latest operation protective has done seemingly little to protect israel in the long term you're not going to finish by trying to physically or story from us there's nothing that indicates that it will work this time or indeed the next time and that's taking its toll on the reputation of what was once considered one of the world's most efficient fighting force was the hope

is that the coming days will see a permanent ceasefire in place but bottom line gaza is in tatters mistrust between israelis and palestinians is at an all time high policy r.t. tel aviv the head of the russian investigative committee announced today that moscow has quote irrefutable evidence that illegal phosphorous bombs were used by ukrainian military crane and military against a civilian population in the donetsk region back in july these accusations of course were denied by the ukrainian government meanwhile ukrainian forces continued their offensive on rebel positions in the outskirts of donetsk the city itself came under air bombardment today claiming three civilian lives according to the donetsk city administration officials in kiev deny the strikes blaming the rebels as a result of the violence the humanitarian situation has worsened in recent weeks with more and more refugees fleeing to flee into russia to avoid the bloodshed

artie's refund ocean has that story. in each of these cars individual stories of anger uncertainty and loss. these ukrainians are fleeing their homes for russia after months of conflict has left well over one thousand civilians dead and reduced whole cities to rubble the people in these cars have already spend six or seven hours sitting in line waiting to cross the border which is still a kilometer away but they say they're ready to wait as they practically have no other choice but bill overclock the mom well below average in the bronx made up of the national sociopath. who. live in his mocha got more snow over the store and you don't usually many of the cars here have a sign saying they've got children on board a war doesn't discriminate between age or gender only your child will i go choice

it's a. game of two to salute. him. for it or put a little sheepish will get us closer to his nose the way that little i'm going to press the button on the chopper you wait a minute this is where many refugees will end up when they make it across the border to russia and people here are angry because i saddam off the water man but i still not want to war she should have brought so i'm a bit from her word it really could be so but i thought yes go but i started. the quarter the doctor says he's family has news to go back to ruin your story of the money don't. you know i thought for sure yeah right for a board with no rights group over. north america union you're going to hear thirty years if you're going to be ethical. he invites me to see where they found shelter the rest so many refugees many don't have

a proper place to sleep. theatre's wife also doctor tells us how she lost her home and is there for dessert or before you know. it didn't have to be regular dorm before. you get a. crush this could be cheap this camp is designed for a thousand people but there are at least twice as much here now every afternoon officials managed to send up to three hundred refugees from eastern ukraine to different parts of russia but every evening even more erratic these people have managed to escape a rule that their fight for a peaceful loan is just beginning. russian ukrainian. edward snowden is now a household name gaming notoriety as the person behind the largest intelligence leaks in the national security agency's history but now snowden is not alone u.s.

intelligence officials have now confirmed that there is indeed another leaker believed to be on the inside this is all in reference of course to a scathing new article published in the intercepts called rock obama's secret terrorist tracking system by the numbers the twelve page document released yesterday outlines who is on the government's terror watch list and how their information is being collected according to the author of the report jeremy scahill a pentagon actually tried to soften the blow of the release of this article by trying to spoil the scoop by releasing the information directly to the associated press who then ran the story just after midnight on tuesday morning hours later of course scahill released a much more comprehensive and critical report detailing the watchlist expansion.

alright it's the largest known collection of stolen internet credentials a ring of russian criminals has acquired one point two billion username and password combinations as well as credentials for more than five hundred million e-mail addresses this interesting lee comes just as hackers gather in las vegas for the black hat cyber security conference it's one of the largest global information security events series in the world to discuss the latest in hacking i spoke earlier with boom bust host erin made she's currently at the conference and i first asked her if with all this hacking we should be rushing to change our passwords. there's a big topic of conversation this morning here at a blackout a lot of people say that the numbers of people whose proper tough words were actually compromised they're getting different numbers whether it's three billion or one point two one point three that's still in question but full securities that was the firm that noticed this breach and they're the one thing people out there

you know if you're concerned that that you're from these rates come to us and we'll tell you if you're on the list opposed to the company coming on saying you're in a fortune five hundred companies that have been hit by this and everyone who has done business with them or as any association might want to change suffer so they're kind of working backwards which is an interesting thing as well but people are saying that there's two reasons this could happen either it's an amazing amazing package and people were whoever this was the russian gang that that needs to meet is alleging or it was just a phase out of russia whoever was you know their famous either really impressive because they were able to have all these at once or they were kind of data mining pulling all this information from different sources and smashing it together which apparently and when you're the tallest or security expert isn't as hard as the former so that's really interesting but yes you should change your password they're saying that you know it's best to do it recently apparently and you want to launch and most importantly and one of the ways that you keep being compromised over and over and over again is if you don't change your password from one platform to

another like if your bank has the same password as your work e-mail don't do that make sure you have a different and long one for each each entity that you do business with that makes a lot of sense aaron it's so ironic that you happened to be at a security conference looking at ways to protect against these kind of attacks that we're just talking about on the iss and i hacking world a growing industry. anti-tax and i would say yes it's just it's growing up talking from what i'm hearing today you know it attracts the same kind of person it's like about net it's the best analogy that i can think of you're going to have people who use this information for good and people who. uses information for evil it's basically up to them to how they do it but what's interesting about about this conference blackout opposed to a conference like def-con it attracts a more formal i guess corporate client if you will or corporate person who's interested in this so you get the big players like microsoft and it's a bigger

a bigger ticket so the price tag a little higher and not saying a def con's is a bad guys and these are good guys not that at all but defcon does attract a slightly more counterculture what you're seeing so is a growing industry yes but i would say with the internet growing in our lives only becoming more virtual it's of course only going to grow from here by will your around the latest trends in cyber security what's out there what should we know about right now. you know the biggest trend right now a lot of people are talking about this it's data security kind of you know meet intelligence the more intelligent about securing your data not just say no one size fits all for every corporation you know the needs of a medium sized business are different from the needs of a mass of not a fortune five hundred company or some sort of chip stocks are going to want different tailored security and you know britain teligent is is the catch phrase that we keep hearing over and over again if you have the appropriate intelligence we're going to be better protected so opposed to just using

a blanket system look at where your system could potentially be compromised and then address that work work from the evidence like a doctor would evidence based medicine use evidence based security. and interesting larry and you had to take some of your own for cautions before even attending this conference cause about would you had to do have to prepare to go to the las vegas conference there. yes actually was a pretty funny the safety tips to attend blackout were amazing i'm actually going to pull out my phone or check this out and see one of these in a while nonce mart phone it was god near our ancient today who does that yeah i had to go out and get a burner for a. briefly everything that's going on i haven't turned my photons and since last night and it's a little scary you know they say to be be really cautious don't use any a.t.m.'s in the area carry a low balance credit card only use cash bring no credit cards with because those can be bought don't bring a smartphone unless you're a security expert pretty bonkers stuff so i'm not

a security expert and i never will be so i'm taking the appropriate precautions now as host of boom bust aaron aides. do consumers deserve to know how much sugar is being added to the food they eat that is the ongoing debate since the food and drug administration proposed new labeling regulations that would force food companies to specify how much sugar they are adding to their products. new proposed labels not only would it make the calories in serving size larger it also would separate out the added sugar from the naturally occurring sugars current laws only require food makers to list the total amount of sugar contained in a product not what is added some doctors activists and health groups contend that the amount of added sugars in foods have directly contributed to the diabetes and obesity epidemic affecting our nation however food companies and sugar manufacturers argue that there is no evidence that added sugars are any more

responsible for these health issues than the sugar already found in most foods joining me to help peel back the lady on this issue is gretchen goldman a lead analyst for the union of concerned scientists question thanks so much for joining us and so much for having me of course first of all just break down the actual risks of this added sugar increasingly we're seeing public health studies show that sugar consumption is linked to obesity and it's linked to metabolic disease and this rise in metabolic disease that we're seeing which includes diabetes and heart disease and so the f.d.a. is really reacting to this growing body of evidence that we're seeing on the health effects of sugar and how have food in general companies really responded to this push for change and labeling we've seen several pushback so many food companies such as general mills or trade groups such as the sugar association have worked to

push back against this policy and specifically we're seeing that they're largely using the same playbook that we saw the tobacco industry use when they were denying smoking's health effects and raising. me an example of the kinds of things that they're saying one of the main arguments they always say is as you said that there's not sufficient science and we saw that same argument was smoking we saw that same argument with quite. host of other issues it's the same playbook and it's different players but it's the same game and so we see sugarcoat isn't listening in evidence would you say there's sufficient evidence i would there's compelling evidence to say that sugar particularly added sugar in our diets is contributing to these health and it distinguishes between the difference in the effect of regular sugar and the added sugar cracked. so the main the main problem is that we're eating too much of it so the average american is eating about more than twice what

public health experts recommend so the world health organization has a standard as well as the dietary guidelines for americans and they all recommend that we eat a lot less and were eating tremendous amounts and the problem is that a lot of the added sugar is hidden within foods and consumers don't know it's there when they go to the grocery store and take a product because it's in everything from salad dressings and bread as it's not clearly labeled of course and also the industry is also saying that adding more information to the food labels could just confuse consumers what exactly do they mean by that how how do they perceive this as confusing consumers well they have a lot of concerns and use a lot of different arguments there are certainly going to be a public education component in that will want citizens to be able to look at the radio label and interpret it and the f.d.a. is also rearranging the label and so it'll be a little easier to read now and the key is that consumers will then have access to

the information and they'll be able to at least know how much sugar is in their products which is right that they have to know how much sugar they're eating in so i think that's the first step in this process towards getting us towards following the science on this issue and getting a whole going to be an educational campaign that follows to teach people sort of how to break down the labels that they're reading right i think that will help. but well also it also could lead to manufacturers adding less sugar in the first place if they are now have to say how much they're adding i think many will reconsider their formulas and think about ways to do you think that people are reading labels more and paying attention to these things you know like less sugar and you know. yeah what you want to say. non g.m.o. you know whatever there's so many different labels out there do you think that people are becoming more conscious i think they are i think there's growing public awareness about the health effects of sugar and and one reason it might have taken

longer for people to realize that sugar is a problem for our health is just this misinformation that we've seen coming from some industry actors that have really tried to make sure that we don't know that there are health effects associated i could say white companies don't like that went like this idea in the first place but so let's just say that this change in labeling fails what are the alternatives for the consumer to use in order to really inform themselves about what's in the food what's in the packaging because i feel like it's it's really obscure for the most part it's not like yeah you have to i definitely spend more time in the grocery store now that i read the labels so certainly consumers can get educated they can look at the ingredients and learn all the different names that sugar goes by it's often not. very difficult names and right exactly so there's that and there's also other policy measures that different decision makers are trying to address the sugar consumption issue and so i think

there's a lot happening at the federal level but also state and local so if citizen see opportunities that would be a great way to get involved and ensure we're working towards a better absolutely unfortunately we ran out of time but gretchen goldman lead analyst at the union of concerned scientists thanks for coming on and breaking this down for us thanks so much for having me all right that does it for now stay tuned because boom bust is next. play. the lead the series called the tried to play play play pulling out of. your life for the short changing every minute. play the luck may the law oh well. my a lot like

a headache. plus plus they say the mole time place case is the most elite club slate sometimes for nothing and the lead this season and it's a chance to look just keep up the story you'll be just if you see the stage eight will be. but the speech was. played. on air and. over here not going on here in iraq and some are fixed.