global news from the heart of moscow this is r.t. . the u.s. says its combat mission in iraq will come to its official end within hours u.s. vice president joe biden is in baghdad overseeing it with all american combat troops having already left the country washington says this means the end of the seven year long war that killed over four thousand u.s. troops however around fifty thousand will remain in iraq to provide training and support for local security forces u.s. troops will no longer be allowed to go on combat missions unless requested and accompanied by iraqi forces but many analysts say baghdad doesn't control the country which remains split and plagued by insurgent violence last week alone doesn't involve iraqi citizens died in no wave of terror attacks john walker lindh from the institute for democracy and cooperation says the war in iraq is far from

over. there's no real withdrawal at all on the contrary fifty thousand troops are going to remain in iraq so what we're dealing with here is a political package it's an administrative change the troops who are already in iraq will stay there the name of the mission changes but they will still be combat troops they will still be engaged in combat operations after all an american soldier died again only on sunday so this is indeed all about presenting or rather creating a reality which in fact does not exist the collapse of state power in iraq and the fact that it is effectively an occupied country means that it doesn't have self-determination. i think that people who argue in favor of this war say that the achievement of democracy at least on paper made it worth it i'm not sure of course whether the many hundreds of thousands of people who've been killed would agree with that but even if one can say that the situation has in some respects improved

to the extent that there is no longer a dictatorship my own view is that the human cost in terms of deaths is much too high. now despite the pullout of u.s. troops from iraq more americans are still being sent to replace those remaining this is fresh and he will protests in the united states iraq war veteran about this issue told of his experience of one such demonstration we still managed to be on site at the exact moment the buses were pulling off base to go to the airport get in the streets get our banners unfurled that said please don't make the same mistake we did resist and now in the other that said occupation is a crime the soldiers in these buses this is the last thing that they saw on american soil before they went to get on a plane to go to iraq and i tell you we're doing this because you know we were there we care we love these soldiers who are going to commit these work rhymes

however we are trying to wake them up they need to understand that you know we're we're their friends next time they get ambushed when they're in iraq it's not going to be nonviolent that people there are going to resist them and when it happens it will be just this war is not over because barack obama or joe biden says combat in iraq is over does not mean soldiers are going to stop dying it does not mean they're going to stop killing people the bloodshed will continue until we withdraw . that's iraq veteran war activist mathis sure group well coming up for you a little bit later here on the program on our t. bullet point find out why people in the american state of louisiana are saying give us our guns back coming five years after they had them taken away. three russian pilots abducted in sudan have now been freed both sudanese and russian officials have confirmed the release the pilots were kidnapped by armed men

in the volatile darfur region last sunday it's unclear on what terms the three were released as previously there were reports the kidnappers wanted or run some russians were employees of a sudanese airline and this incident is the latest in a wave of kidnappings targeting foreigners in the country. desperate times in one indian village have prompted residents to take desperate measures a severe the two year drought has left three hundred families on the edge of starvation they're threatening to commit mass suicide if there's no aid from the government but despite the stark warning so far no help has arrived charan singh reports. here in the village of you know remote part of eastern india. molly spends time with his family including his little grandson this may look like one happy picture but the reality is quite the opposite with no food to eat. and over twenty other farmers in the small village of about

three hundred families have threatened to commit mass suicide. intimately we will have to die sometime so when we suffer like this every day it's better to die now we're so hopeless that we've come to the conclusion that committing suicide is the best option would like to do nearly two to eat how many days could personally. the region has had an acute drought for two years now this has driven villagers from girard to write a letter to the president of india and the state governor asking for rations and it a geisha in facilities if help fails to work i they say they'll commit suicide a column of them look he says because we requested immediate food aid from the governor and for the long term development work that could provide us with employment such as digging a new well and improving the route to a village which is in a bad state the farmers are desperate as the entire state of charge couldn't

grapples with a forty two percent rainfall deficit this year. shows me his field which should have been full of crops at this time of year but lies bad and instead. of used up all receipts but all the last three years there hasn't been enough water for crops to grow seeing the desperate situation you know homes were thinking what is the point of living. this suicide request has george to the local administration into action promises of food and development have been made but little has actually reached the village officials at the district headquarters didn't respond to our request for an interview meanwhile enjoy going to just wait for the promised. all the senior officials have visited us from the local administration that along with our elected member of parliament they've given us assurances but i do know when to expect action it may take five days fifteen days or even

a month. and clearly not so important to the government. this crisis has been in the making for two years now and this letter has just brought it out into the open with an entire village driven to despair the government will have to take urgent steps to prevent this from snowballing into a major crisis gotten saying r.t. from the village of georgia then eastern india it's nearly ten minutes past the hour now here in moscow you are with r.t. thank you for joining us today now people in the u.s. have just been marking five years since the deadly hurricane katrina in the wake of that storm many people in the state of louisiana had their guns confiscated in an attempt to stem looting and violence but as previous treated reports some are still fighting for the right to defend themselves. it's a sunday afternoon in louisiana i just came out here to shoot practice. and guns are a blazing at this shooting range. thanks to our forty percent i

believe everybody should have the right to defend themselves at any cost in this part of the united states the right to bear arms is part of every day life. force and have the right to sue for ask questions later. before i know what it's like. living in america in ways that we should be able to carry a handgun but that wasn't always the case so what do you bill. so we've taken your weapons. richard stiring and his friend wayne shoom were on lake pontchartrain about a week after hurricane katrina made landfall and i had almost say anywhere from six inches to a foot of water in the house. but it was still there they went to styron's house to get his things but we heard of the. stuff that was going in the wall and all the shooting and the people that were getting her son killed from what i've been told.

while heading back across the lake the pair was stopped by law enforcement and asked to give up their weapons. away from your order your private property. don't have any right taken here. as the hurricane talked the city by storm residents felt their constitutional rights were being blown away the armed populace keeps the government in check the government should not be in charge of the populace the populace should run the government at whatever the government has the guns and the populace doesn't have the guns the government does what it wants in the aftermath of katrina new orleans was in complete chaos law enforcement couldn't handle all the problems and on streets like this one every single building with looted except for one occasion is pa as they are three smith and wesson club action shotgun the twelve gauge semiautomatic joined guido's is the owner of cajun's pub

she decided to take things into her own hands there was vans with. them and they were breaking into any businesses where there was no sign of anyone around them that they didn't mess with us here because i stood out front. with my shocked we don't protected her patrons when law enforcement was nowhere in sight after guarding her pub for about a week decided to evacuate u.s. marshals came across the scent from saw me with my shotgun. you know they pulled about a dozen m. sixteen saw us put our body against the wall checked our bodies our d. took all my weapons and then left she couldn't believe this was happening in the united states i was furious i had no way of protecting myself beyond the physical destruction they saw their city and even their country transforming before their eyes look at the communist countries look at cuba look at nicaragua look at any country you want to take where the the government has the guns and the populace is

and are and look at how they live and how they're treated it's a story they want remembered so it never happens again preassure either r. t. new orleans louisiana. well it's a big day for germans who are marking twenty years since they were formally reunited into a single nation the capital and their country were split in half after world war two but the fall of the berlin wall paved the way for a united germany on their thirty first of august one thousand nine hundred ninety treaty sealed east germany's integration with the west now for more on the challenges of reunification his government and business consultant christopher all talk he joins us live from germany good to see you sir so there was a lot of euphoria all across germany when reunification happened tell me how do people feel about it now. where the feeling is mixed the majority of the youth no days now entering universities applying for their first

sharp things out there they feel very comfortable there is no east no west for them for them it's very easy but for the older politicians who remember the difficulties of the unification process for them that's quite look different and we hear the prime minister of brandenburg state who just said that we had a very. difficult. transit into unification in that there was a deep industrialization in eastern germany and they're tired to see the fears that eastern germany it was just taken in by the federal republic western germany what is interesting you say that actually because at least in my next point there's been recent criticism in some quarters of the way east germany was reunited with the west some saying it was more an exaggeration rather than anything else so what's your take on those claims. we're to be honest part of that must be true

we had a very hard to see unstable situation in eastern germany there was a lot of interest in the thousands of people fled the country because how to see the doors swung open and very clearly how to see the. german democratic republic was bankrupt they didn't have any money anymore and what they were expecting was a fifteen billion marks loan from western germany and western germany was not ready to extend it so there was the very clear cut question from one day to the next how could this part of a later unified germany survive and under these circumstances it was very clear that the political weight of the power was very clearly on the side of the westerners and no doubt many easterners must have felt annexed. to task was enormous to integrate two state which had separate political economic

and social development from the previous forty or so years now twenty years on what is there still left to achieve. well we just have a few things left one thing is very clear the joblessness percentage is much higher in eastern germany that it is in the western part we have as always we head good signs in eastern germany for a let's see level. situation with western germany but very clearly we need more industry in eastern germany all these companies that went bankrupt after the very hasty unification process that is very very difficult to replace and build up again and the effect of that unification was for eastern germany also during. a currency problem as devastating and then we have the problem

that very clearly still the seller are not on the same level the difference has trunk in the last years but it's not completely level and of course we have this let's say this minority feeling among many easterners that they feel that the majority of westerners is not doing what they would like to have done in their part of germany and that this let's say one of the minor problems but these problems are still there and they need to be addressed and many people have the feeling that in the current crisis which was brought about by the with these problems are no longer duly addressed. government and business consultant christopher hostile thank you. you can always check out our website for much more on our stories that is our t.v. dot com and here is some of what streaming there right now russian police busted a gang of hackers who swindled trusting internet users of over thirty million

dollars in just one month. and the endless black expanse of space has its own smell find out what it's like at r.t. dot com. well the ban on gambling in russia has seen casinos forced to move to four designated regions so far though the remoteness of those places means many casinos have struggled prompting investors in their countries south to spin the wheel again by considering switching locations r.t. if it is looks at what's at stake for the russian version of sin city. this is a gamblers paradise the oracle offers all kinds of games from the army of one armed bandits to poker and roulette. however most of the time the place is deserted. this is the only legal casino in russia a private company invested ten million dollars into its construction and even though there are a few others who are willing to build gambling spots here in the area it still

looks like most in the industry see those making bats in a burning house last year russian lawmakers burned all casinos and gambling clubs across the country to be replaced by force specially designated and developed zooms in siberia western russia the south and east the industry reacted immediately but you know shutting down the facilities moving them abroad or going underground even the most successful the southern gambling zone is mostly being ignored by the un to nurse the most investors a passive mainly because as the city is far away from other major transportation hubs the local airports and the developed and the roads and not let get only there and the other factor is the. the gambling banned in russia is really hard to enforce. in cities just a few hundred kilometers away from us police discover illegal gambling down every week. of course it's officially prohibited but in our neighborhood everyone knows

where to find the underground gambling den you can have a good time there if you play your cards right in the regions authorities have come up with a new plan to make the rules work they want to relocate the whole southern gambling zone closer to popular tourist destinations like the black sea coast resort the phenomena and inspired by les vegas they wanted to be about more than just gambling . so we said why can't we try and do something like that in russia ship without making the same mistakes we can use the best that las vegas has to offer refined by decades of experience essentially we've come up with a new concept a family resort for gambling will be just one of the highlights the idea will have to get support from the russian state duma possibly together with other amendments to help reverse the odds of getting the new gambling rules to work so for no the future of russia's biggest still looks dim leaving more questions than answers for its supporters and skeptics why then is our team crossing the region. it is just

twenty minutes past the hour here in moscow you are with ati and a twitter mania is sweeping russia's leading politicians are so much so some are even doing it right under the bosses now there's one governor i was caught tweeting away in the middle of an important meeting in the kremlin by president himself you get that you look at the eurovision delicious boosting something on his twitter page right now during district council session as if he has nothing else to do. well but twittering didn't end with the president's remark as more members of the council joined the online exchange the russian leader is known to be a big fan of gadgets and has a twitter account himself his friends include the head of apple steve jobs who presented the president with a new i phone four on a recent trip to silicon valley. police in mexico have arrested a gang facing drug trafficking charges in the u.s.

the group includes a notorious alleged drug lord known as bobby who's been blamed for a vicious war featuring shoot bodies being hung from bridges whose real name is ed valdez and he could be extradited to america where he has a two million dollars bounty on his. arrest comes just hours off of the government's about ten percent of the federal police force have been sacked as part of a campaign to root out corruption. nato says a roadside bomb blast has killed four american troops in eastern afghanistan u.s. soldier died in an insurgent attack in the south it comes off the similar monday which killed eight nato soldiers in the same area nineteen american troops have been killed in the country since saturday. engineers in chile have begun drilling to rescue thirty three miners trapped underground in the collapsed operations of the mine could take up to four months rescue workers say they plan to send down

food over the next few days and. earlier the miners had their first telephone contact with their relatives and one of them even decided at the time to bury his longtime girlfriend. ok well yulia is now here with the latest business news. allow time for the business news good to have your company to solve the world's biggest al-ameen producer has posted a profit of one point twenty seven billion dollars for the first half of twenty ten after making a loss in the same period last year the results were considerably better than forecast and the company's shares rallied in hong kong where the company listed in january as it expects a strong performance for the rest of the year as demand and prices continue to outstrip rising costs. sol is also heavily involved in the shareholder dispute for

control over saul's biggest mine and rolls couldn't help but approach and is in the city of new to see the town and to all the plant is that with the two main shareholders in the company elected a pasta and legend at the time in the head over into was the two billion is each owned twenty five percent of neural and want to buy the other out which it has noted that the conflict is damaging the company and that a solution is urgently needed but the government insists it will not force the issue as long as no nickel continues to operate successfully. both for its spot rosol is adamant it will not sell up instead elected he says he will try to get the support of minority shareholders to agree to make independent professionals a majority on the board correspondent medina course no one has the story. but. the general director alpha roussel though couldn't take part in the messing with the media here in moscow as he's right now in the russian city of

a norilsk where he is the times in a meeting with prime minister vladimir putin posed to visiting the city to rice in the middle of the shareholders conflict well just to remind you add to the june shareholders anything. unexpectedly came up with only three boys says compared with the norilsk who are on that clause of the start of the shareholders conflict of interest that also god three says out the boys said that the vote was conducted in accordance with all the rules were to sell claims it was done fairly manipulated no risk legal costs of the twenty first of book still but this year to be the day for its extraordinary general meeting where shareholders will vote on whether the car inboard should be removed and if so who will make up the new board while the deputy general director of bruce output is lost love neal said that bruce l. does not plan to sell its twenty five percent stake in norris can it go. straight

with its steps to the strategic stake or also is a strategic investment. to benefit from but dividends from the rising. value of the stake that's why we are going to keep that for. meanwhile the prime minister like you made a pollutant has already mentioned that he says some progress in the concept and the russian government has a once again repeated that it is not in time to ain't agoing the stakes of either blood united by buying in or did it cross and will not intervene in a dispute as long as the company continues to operate successfully. and are also in the city of new rolls the prime minister says the government is considering a new flexible text format for nickel and exports he suggests the system. could be similar to that imposed on all but urge the metal producers to take part in the development of a fare formula. there's an idea to develop

a flexible formula similar to the one we created for the oil industry in may vary with the increase or decrease in global prices but where is your formula if it is not agreed soon we will come up with a solution of our own one of the norilsk nickel shareholders may not like. let's turn now to the equity markets european stocks have fallen sharply on tuesday echoing down the trend in the global markets risk sensitive stocks are leading the false banks and commodity just seeing the sharpest losses a gloomy outlook for plausible to mongers damaging investor sentiment. and russian markets are suffering here in moscow and it is stocks are falling as commodity prices weaken gas promise down more than one percent on my six banks are also among the worst before most bear very bank has shed more than one percent so far but frost telecom is continuing this winning streak being only blue chip gave up after

just a bit under four percent. russia second largest oil producer has announced that income for the second quarter fell sixteen percent to two billion dollars that's just by a strong rise in revenues the company says it was hit by taxes and costs tros faster than the price of crude oil and a separately the company says it doesn't intend to buyback the entire eleven point six percent of its shares from conoco phillips. well that's all visitors for now but you can always get more stories on our web site that's r t dot com slash business.

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it's now five thirty pm on tuesday here in the russian capital this is our headlines now the last u.s. combat troops have made their way over the iraqi border but about fifty thousand will remain. train local security forces they will only be allowed to go on missions at iraq's request. a two year drought has left three hundred families in an indian village on the edge of starvation farmers vile they'll commit suicide if government help doesn't arrive soon. and casinos have proved a bad bet after russia limited gambling for designated regions that's prompted investors to plan building a las vegas style resort in a popular tourist destination the black sea coast.