considering brake override systems in all toyota vehicles, specifically the keyless ignition systems. they re also considering a study, more research to be done on the electronic control systems, the throttles. because a lot of people really felt that when they pressed down the pedal stayed down and would not release. they felt that effectively the pedal had no connection to the engine and they believe what was causing the cars to stick. again, toyota saying no. the department of transportation saying that is not the finding and that regulators are going to look at the placement, believe it or not, of the brake and the gas pedal to see whether in fact that need to be reexamined and perhaps redesigned. martin? complicated stuff, deb feyerick, thanks very much for the first look at what has come out of this study. checking some of the other big stories of the day right now. we are into day 15 of the anti-government protests in egypt. and it s easy to see why our
freedom. thanks very much for joining us and, first of all, tell us, how does it work? hey, martin. glad to be here and thanks for having me on. it is very simple. it combines three components a compass, a map, and a camera and they re all all uses the military grid reference system, latitude and longitude. it s very basic in concept. but it takes what some expensive civilian gps and military gps devices do and puts it all in one app if you will and helps, hopefully, helps soldiers execute their mission out on the battle field. well, that s the great thing about it is how inexpensive it is. can it pinpoint where the attackers may be? yes, it can.
the amount of tents you see there on tahrir square that people are really digging in for the long run, martin. and so what s the strategy on the part of the government, then, fred? i presume then that mubarak and the vice president simply think that they can last longer than the protests can? well, that seems to be part of it but on the other hand they certainly at least are trying to give the impression that they re making a sort of reconciliation and sort of making advances toward the protesters. there was an announcement today by the vice president that apparently mubarak had signed a decree to form a committee to try and implement some of the things that mubarak announced in an earlier speech. you know, pertaining to the transition of power pertaining to changes in egypt s constitution and so therefore it seems as though the government is making some move toward the protests and in that way trying to take the momentum from these protesters. but certainly by the numbers that we
reporter: well, martin, ben is exactly right when he says this is one of the largest crowds we ve seen since the protests started. i can tell you right now it s about half past 8:00 p.m. and the square is absolutely packed. still tens of thousands of people. the interesting thing is we re actually still seeing people come into the square. what we ve seen with the crowds is they tend to get bigger in the afternoons and today was certainly the day as we were saying that many people came out here. we re not exactly sure why that is. one reason might be that on twitter and facebook we ve heard renewed calls for people to come here. also of course we had that google executive who was released after being held captive for about 12 days and he gave a very emotional television interview last night. that really seems to have galvanized the antimubarak movement and certainly people i ve been speaking to down here on tahrir square are telling me that they re absolutely in it for the long haul.
what the government is saying, martin. and it all has remained peaceful today. right, fred? it certainly has. it certainly all has remained peaceful. if you describe the mood down there it s sort of like a festival kind of mood that we re seeing down there. certainly people are still very aware of the fact that there s quite a serious protest but at the same time you have artists down there. you have people with guitars and drums making music. you have a lot of people with banners so certainly the emotions are very festive down there. it seems as though this is at the heart of very, very peaceful protests, martin. we ll stay in touch. fred pleitgen right there in the middle of tahrir square thanks very much. let s go to another hot spot, chechnya and its bloody feud with russia. the devastating war between chechen militants and russian troops is long over but some militant factions continue their own brand of guerrilla warfare. moscow calls them terrorists. now one of russia s mo