belgium beats favorites brazil two to one close on to book a place in the world cup semifinals. plus earlier on friday france knocked out your boy with a two nil victory and news do not get out. and france is on cloud nine following their quarterfinal victory as fans waved flags and climbed on cars in celebration. you can read up on more world cup action plus stories from around the globe. but here on our to international there's a new episode of the big picture coming up next.

on this week's show human cloning once the stuff of science fiction or we know there are and should we go there but first happy birthday uncle sam six months down six to go as we pause for the fourth of july weekend the twenty eight team halftime report holland cook in washington this is the big picture on our t. america. don't blink you'll miss everything year to date has been a blur what happened and what happens next let's ask political commentator jonathan harris and conservative radio and t.v.

pundit steve malzberg welcome. if you're ever going to be here hala all right let's do the lightning round in that order jonathan then steve thirty seconds each max or the economy how we do and the economy is doing well the economy is doing very well as trump is happy to tell everyone i just i think the thing he usually leaves out is that the trends that he's enjoying right now began under the previous administration that's always something that he tends to leave out he also leaves out the numbers that he likes to tell right now he called fake when they were under president obama so i'm not quite sure when they became real maybe it was after he was inaugurated of the shabat it steve well it's certainly more than just the unemployment numbers which are at all time record lows for you know if we can name all the groups it's also consumer confidence it's confidence in the direction the country is going when it comes to the economy it's the lowest number of people on food stamps and he is undone just about every regulation and economic policy of

obama so it doesn't lend credence to the fact that this was started under obama well ironically there is a danger for the republicans in november of complacency the midterms are always a matter of turnout and things are looking good all right question to the mall or investigation and the inspector general report jonathan then steve not what you think should happen but your predictions i don't know what to expect from the report i really i really don't if past is prologue we might see more indictments i really don't know what we can expect going forward i know that in terms of the i.g. report i think it again at least lends credibility to the fact that at least with hillary clinton there was no wrongdoing there despite what republicans think about hillary clinton it's always so interesting to me the republicans are like hillary clinton was guilty even though all the investigations show she wasn't but in electronics innocent even though there's no proof that he is so that's always interesting i don't know i want to see how that plays out i wouldn't i be careful

in predicting those maybe more indictments though for sure. if predictions. wrongdoing i mean i've got to be if you ever have to be investigated by the f.b.i. and they you find out they're texting each other that they're going to stop you and that you're this in your that in every name in the book i'm sure you'll be happy with the fair and honest litigation but action unless you have prediction i think mother is going to issue a report and not know what and it trumps not going to get indicted or anything like that they'll be no grand jury to go to congress if the democrats take over congress they'll try to impeach him and maybe well that's very very predictable i think question three immigration the story that blocked out the sun a couple of weeks ago jonathan then steve what is the practical fix for what is so obviously broken well i mean at least in the short term in terms of separating kids from their families and then putting them in like child detention centers i want to applaud him for signing in order to under his own order so i mean i guess you can graduate somebody for that i'm not sure how that works but definitely kudos to him

for thinking that he shouldn't separate kids and their families even though saying it was a good policy like two days prior. in terms of that it's obvious you don't separate kids from their families you keep the families together as is being done under the obama administration you keep them together and you process them accordingly in terms of a long term fix president obama tried to get that through congress and republicans play political games with it so i don't know that's a that's an issue that predates my lifetime as a matter of fact reagan thought am i was the way to go so who knows i don't know we could go to reagan and the car from settled steve what do we do well to talk about fake news obama separated children from their parents go look at the pictures they're all over online and that little girl on time magazine guess what turns out she wasn't separated from the parents this is below and the only fix is comprehensive immigration reform with the four pillars that donald trump said he wanted on the state of the union which the public overwhelmingly agreed with and anything short of that you're going to have a met a mess for the for the foreseeable future how do you get it through congress though

steve they just don't want to do anything together. well i mean even the democrats look you talk about this executive order trump did they didn't like that the kids were separated now they don't want the kids sitting in that camp or enough in a holding cell with the parents they want the parents to go have a get out of jail free card the democrats want open borders no penalties for breaking into our country and that's not going to fly with the public jonathan the democrats want open borders again i will remind you that the only party to give amnesty was the republican party through reagan i don't know where you go open borders for all of them were different world under reagan it was it different there were all nobody nobody advocated for open borders at all president obama's immigration reform that he proposed that republicans were playing political games with and wouldn't pass because they didn't want to give him a win did not talk about open borders and talked about a path to citizenship people going behind going to the back of the line if they came here legally and he was the deporter in chief how do you get deporter in chief

and how do you reconcile that with open to that where do they get that obama really did by the numbers deport more than anybody in this i don't know where how you reconcile this hope and border thing is a fox news talking point oh no it's not i'm talking about right now that's what the democrats want they don't want the people who come in here illegally to be prosecuted and they want them and they ask can be sent into the country nothing has been given free reign no they don't nothing has changed it's just we don't want kids being separated from their families while they're being processed when they come over oh and also we also think that if you're coming over to seek asylum that should be ok that's something that's different in that election and we have seen the power of a picture issue for talking about photo op the trump kim summit jonathan then steve then what that was that was very much exactly that it was a photo op nothing substantive came from it at least for us i'm sure kim jong un thought it was great because the debt we definitely stopped the military drills on

the south korean border so kim probably things that was great as far as us we didn't get anything out of it except trump doing p.r. for north. korea which is the weirdest thing i've seen in a very long time praising everything that kim jong un does i don't know if you praise the starving of his people though i don't know if you got around to that but he also wants all of us you and i and steve to stand up like north koreans do for kim jong un that was great but no nothing substantive came from the summit. i was born during the korean war and now i'm on medicare it would be nice if north and south could get together what do you think happens next well i think what happens next is first we didn't end the exercises we already had the most recent exercises the next ones are planned for months in advance and we've already stated that if they don't cooperate if they don't continue with cooperating and going along with the talks we will reinstate the exercises as far as this being a photo op donald trump did something that no other foreign leader what the president has had the courage to do the failed policies of clinton and bush and

obama have left us here and and trump was asked about his statements praising him and you know what he said to the reporter i say those things because i don't want your children to be hit with a nuclear weapon that's what we're facing a nuclear threat not of trump's making so yes he placates this madman dictator in hopes of gaining peace and going to know that all that placating a psycho is our new foreign policy with someone with nuclear weapons that's interesting please. do you think so you advocate bombing in which you know it takes israel it's as fascinating to me that when obama even spoke of meeting with dictators without preconditions the right was clutching their girls they just really didn't imagine it but then trump does it nothing comes of it and they're like well this is just the biggest foreign policy breakthrough ever but then he just backed out of the iran nuclear deal which actually was about denuclearization and that iran was complying with and the right to abort said i'm not it's just fascinating to track the biggest purveyors and supporters of terror in the world obama couldn't wait to kiss their butt and give them tens and tens of millions and

billions of dollars i know they were owed them if you mean what do you mean when obama gave them their money. that we had to pay more for. their money alcott maybe al qaida is owed was their life is there any that are given to them are you familiar with the whole concept of the failed nuclear the failed arms deal that we had to pay them back for that was the money didn't hand them money he gave them when you had a real welcome back we had to pay around the biggest purveyors of terror in the world we had to pay them back i know that i know that we think we can do whatever we want but we lost the ruling in the world court and we had to pay them because. it's their money to run on that november you guys have just set the table for issue five what about a trump putin summit jonathan then steve you know what would you do have our president ask or tell russia's president you know i don't even know i'm still

kind of spinning from the trump kim summit i don't know trump was like i didn't even prepare before you one nine hundred ninety six hello dolly she was a female sheep the first clone produced from a cell taken from an adult mammal she lived over six years compared to the average ten to twelve year lifespan twenty eight team barbara streisand says she paid fifty thousand dollars to clone her dog sammy's doctor took some cells from inside her cheek and the skin on her tummy just before she died not only did the cloning process take but it produced four puppies according to barbara for years the prospect of human cloning has been controversial can we is one thing but should we let's ask adam shulman who served as the senior research consultant on the president's council on bioethics one of the authors of human dignity and bioethics essays commissioned by the president's council adam welcome. thank you for the

phrase human cloning conjures up the notion of creating a whole person a twin termed reproductive cloning which we are told has not happened explain therapeutic cloning. yes as far as we know human cloning has never happened reproductive cloning would be the production of a full replica of a human being. therapeutic cloning is the production of a cloned human embryo for research purposes to gain scientific knowledge and produce proper possible therapies it doesn't involve transferring an embryo to a womb for pregnancy and birth many other countries have outlawed human cloning here are two different stem cell research and handsome and acts were passed by congress then vetoed by president george w. bush and we often read as you mentioned that

a human being has not been cloned based on state of the art science do we know for sure that a human being has not been cloned. we don't know we scientists have come close they've in the past year cloned the primates for the first time in history. a cocky monkeys were cloned in china. so it seems there are very few steps left before human cloning might be attempted but as far as we know it has not been attempted and we think of the apes as are not too distant cousins how were those who were cloned doing. it's hard to say one peculiarity is that the cloning in this case was using fetal cells rather than adults so it's not the full cloning up in adult. organism but it's they seem to be doing all right and as i said it seems only

a step before someone might attempt human cloning in that controversial experiments of the netherlands recently revealed scientists combined two types of stem cells to create a viable embryo without using an egg or sperm let's listen if years of research the laboratory of nikolaus has found out how to induce stem cells to organize themselves and develop into an early embryo like structure. all in the lab this scientific breakthrough has truly opened up the black box of early pregnancy. surprisingly we know very little through a sed days of pregnancy and the time the embryo is extremely small it's about two weeks of a hero and in the womb just routine inside to use it contains less than one hundred sales and the seals from the outside all do stem cells that are going to form the

inside there is a very small cluster off about the stem cells that are going to form the whole embryo. we can easily harvest. themselves in the lab adam as high a layman understand this work the goal was to figure out why embryos fail to implant in the womb but let's consider the ultimate ethical issues among the arguments for reproductive cloning is couples with fertility problems can have biologically related children couples at risk of having children with genetic disease could have healthy children ideal transplant donors for people who are sick or dying parents could replicate a dead or dying child and families or society could reproduce individuals of great genius talent or beauty speak to these concerns adam. so those are all the positive reasons people have cited in favor of reproductive

cloning but there are all kinds of ethical concerns on the other side. there is the concern that. cloning would turn childbirth into a kind of manufacture that it would increase the power of the parental generation who are the children in ways that it has never been happened never happened before that there are dangers that. multiple copies of the same adult could be cloned and that could pose challenges to the dignity and individuality of the clonie these are just a few of the ethical doors that we would be opening if we tried to. bring a cloned embryo to term but you're right about the multiple copies thing this would be the ultimate identity theft and i imagine the potential for exploitation of

women. donors correct. the issue is that under current procedures. human oocytes would be needed to produce cloned embryos and so if this were to happen on a large scale women would have to be induced to donate large numbers of eggs and there's certainly potential for exploitation in that regard well as a practical matter where do you see human cloning go when and when. well as you mentioned many countries i believe seventy and all have banned reproductive cloning the united states has not but there has been certainly a moratorium on implanting cloned embryos and there's an ethical consensus that that would be. inadvisable but there's no question that

somewhere somewhere in the world some laboratory could attempt this in the next few years and it would become fact on the ground it's hard to tell how that would affect the status of this. problem elsewhere in the world sounds like baby steps are indicated adam shulman thank you for joining us on the big picture my pleasure. having heard about the science of cloning is one thing but let's get real because there are some legal and other implications let's bring in analyst and attorney lionel what could possibly go wrong with human cloning. say no more by the way have you ever noticed holland that when you talk to anybody who's in the cloning business or somebody who has a science they never think of anything that could go wrong at all this is

a wonderful as there are a few tick let me give you this one let's assume because remember lionel's law the law always lags behind technology but to assume holland cook decides to clone holland cook now this is great work with me on this you give birth not you but somebody a surrogate gives birth to in essence your clone ok the hospital comes who is that mr cooke about this bill and you say you know what i thought about it then i changed my mind is it well you have to support your clone why well get out the birth certificate and on it it says the clone is either your son or your daughter but what is a clone it's you now if you refuse to support your clone and they bring less a child support antiquated legal theory you're going to go into court and say your honor i stipulate that that is not only we are not genetically connected that's me but it's not a child it's not an offspring. what is it if you kill it i know this is

crazy is it suicide the point is is that science loves to run through this and then think about the legal implications later meanwhile the law hasn't cared at all about this and you're going to find later on people asking very novel questions with the punchline why didn't you think of this before sure can we do it is the techie part should we do it is the conundrum we already have trouble with twins identical twins are technically clones they have the same fingerprints who among them has not fooled the teacher in third grade right right but there's also an issue to later on when we get into the cloning let's assume that you need a particular transplant or you need stem cells and we're going to the issues of can you clone yourself or clone something in order to harvest to two i'm sorry to use

the term spare parts to create a human mean what is in fact the human being no i haven't got into the to the religious part of this that's another as another area but the implications of this now when something goes wrong when something is in error is it whose fault is it you know this is a wonderful thing and i love the idea of being able to clone things and of course barbra streisand going to dogs but when you're talking about human beings to difference to you know holland years ago in the seventy's it was a great and i remember this i was a was a margarine commercial was chiffon and the tagline was it's not nice to form mother nature there you go that and that. is what irrespective of what you feel like in terms of religion risperdal wallaby there were things that are the benefactors or the or the beneficiaries i guess of millions of your years of evolution and if you

come in you tinker. here and i'm here and you say hey i've created this have you really and then you find out all of the fine details that nature provided that you can replicate well lego and at the risk of a cable news cliche the questions outnumber the answers maybe we should leave the creation to the creator thank you lionel least i think that's lionel. that you see there and that is the big picture if you missed any part of this week's show or if you want to share it you can or you'll find all our shows at youtube dot com slash the big picture r t m holland cook in washington back next week and tweeting in the mean time at holland cook so let's hear what you would like to see in the big picture question and more.

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f.o.c. played golf. in the last days of the soviet union people were full of hope and anticipation of the upcoming changes underground music by young musicians of the time captured the mood perfectly what was it like to live and make music in that atmosphere. in twenty forty you know bloody revolution through to the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests to be creasing the violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it your style or here i mean your lists book video through me in the new bill is that i new school in the middle of the former

ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty fourteen. those who took part in this today over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and other calls that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. oh most guys are this is the report yeah we're in london fabulous london city of the future. i don't know about the city of the future but is certainly a city that demonstrates a massive misallocation of capital as money continues to pour into property speculation if you walk around central london it is a nonstop construction site and this made me think of the smells allocation of

capital that we've seen across the west this is all we have since central banks basically became the economy we're seeing just in the past week or two that all these big banks banks are the ones are supposed to allocate capital for us what are they doing they've all announced.