in moscow 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 about 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 plagued by insurgent violence last week alone dozens of iraqi citizens died in a wave of terror attacks well for more analysis on this now i'm joined by john sloboda in london he's a co-founder of iraq body count thanks very much indeed for joining us what we know the former british prime minister tony blair faced an inquiry into the war this year do you think that any top british or u.s. government figures will ever be held to account for what many do consider as an illegal invasion. and so majority of world opinion is that this war was both

illegal and disastrous and international figures such as kofi annan on the international stage and pretty prime minister nick clegg have called it such so in a sense the leadership has already been held to account by world public opinion but if you're asking the question have all legal processes possible been exhausted so the answer is obviously no will there be though do you think possibly in the future well that's up to individuals to instruct lawyers and lawyers to believe that there is a coast to be brought one of the things we think is that there could be a possibility of some kind of judicial inquiry into the deaths that have been caused during the war your group is criticizing the inquiry which i referred to a little earlier led by john chilcot for ignoring the huge scale of iraqi casualties just just tell us what why do you think iraqi casualties actually received such scant attention anyway whether in the media or in inquiries like that . well it is quite puzzling because when gordon brown set up this inquiry he gave it a very broad remit to inquire into all aspects of the war both before during and in

the long aftermath and to learn lessons from it and how can you possibly learn lessons if you do not examine one of the central facts which is that over one hundred thousand people violently died and this really hardly came up in inquiry at all your organization must be welcoming today aren't you withdrawing all those combat troops and the fact that it is the official end of the conflict you must welcome today. well yes but it remains to be seen whether the violence will lessen because as you know the violence is still going on and many people are still dying of the violence every day in iraq so is there a case for those fifty thousand remaining u.s. troops justified to stay there while some of those who are perpetrating the present violence see the americans as occupiers even though they may not be in combat duty and it may well be that the violence will go on at this kind of level until there is there are no troops in the country at all well. the u.k. withdraw its troops from iraq last year gordon brown saying the operation was a success story the us government's also full of optimism now that it's officially

over they are leaving a better iraq than what they found out after all saddam hussein's dictatorship was ended wasn't it. well tony blair made a very interesting prediction only eve of the war he said that many more people would be killed by saddam than in any conflicts well we know that the number of people dying under saddam in the couple of years leading up to inflation were in the hundreds a year so far more people have paid the ultimate price now and for every one of those people and their families they couldn't be saying that this was a success what do you think the future of the country will be now that there is this official end although the fact that we have still fifty thousand american troops there do you think though that the country will eventually achieve stability the fact that there are less american troops there which some perceive as an antagonistic can actually cause a lot of the recent violence do you think that things will perhaps settle down and we could see a gradual transition to some sort of democratic government well whatever the

solution is it's a solution the presence of western forces and influences in the country is very problematical and i would certainly take the future by quite a lot of analysts but the solution needs to be a regional one which is only a sense policed and mandated by those neighbors of iraq including iran saudi arabia etc who have to be brought into some kind of regional security compact so when that happens will there be peace so policed but not by any american presence or perhaps any other allied forces with america well anything like that would have to be squared with all the countries in the region you have to get everybody on board otherwise there will be continuing conflict and a listing co-founder of iraq body count we really appreciate your time here in r.t. thanks very much for joining us from london thank you. walter remains a threat in iraq it's also at the forefront of other trouble spots in the world political scientists nikonov says the danger is widespread. there was an assumption

that terrorism is more or less localized in afghanistan and they were looking for causes of terrorism in iraq what it looks it is more widespread now we can fly and the terrorist training grounds in some countries of asia. are also quite active in central asia in the former soviet union so it is spreading . financing and weapons are there. courses for terrorism or created. almost daily. and you can hand more of what we just had to say in the full interview coming away in about twenty minutes from now here on. well coming up later in the program also bullet point you can find out what people in the u.s. state of louisiana are saying give us our guns back five years after they had them

taken away. russia's high tech nor makers who are exchanging tweets in the workplace get a ticking off from the president. the first desperate times in one indian village have prompted residents to take desperate measures a severe two year drought has left three hundred families on the edge of starvation threatening to commit mass suicide if there's no aid from the government but despite despite the stark warning so far no help as of right karen singh has the story. 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. into mutely we will have to die sometime so horny 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 die early without food to eat how many days can a person want to live. the region has had an acute drought for two years now this has driven villagers from jakarta 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 arrive they say they'll commit suicide. 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 could 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 buried and instead. not abused or receipts but for the last two 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. the suicide request has 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 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 got in saying r.t. from the village of. well countries around the world of suffering from extreme weather this summer with record breaking heat in russia and severe flooding in pakistan to name but two later max keiser and stacy herbert say the people who bear the brunt of this are victims of irresponsible corporations they talk about two thousand and ten is the year of global weirding. global weirding well that that's not that's not right you know what the real problem is it's global warming and climate change brought about by over industrialization and nobody has put the adequate cost of their carbon emissions on their balance sheet the big oil companies for example don't cost the expense of their detritus of their

exhaust they don't pay for that exhaust they don't pay for the damage that they do no one of they make money they don't actually pay for the for the raw material that goes into their product and the and the waste that it creates now the result is the worst what is a decade or a year on record temperatures for ever for the existence of historical records of these nine nations oh thanks big corporations around the world thanks for causing premature human extinction thanks a lot. and you can watch the cars report in just over an hour here on. people in the u.s. and just be 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 the looting and violence but is pushing to report some a still function 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. so our forty percent 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 everyday life believe in this right to sue for ask questions later. been robbed at gunpoint before and i know what it's like i believe that a. living in america maybe said we should be able to carry a handgun but that wasn't always the case so what do do you. so we've taken your weapons. richard stiring and his friend wayne shoom were on lake ponchartrain 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 we heard of the. stuff that was going on in the wall and all the

shooting and the people that were getting heard some 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. from your order on manage your private property . don't have any right taken here. as the hurricane took the city by storm residents felt their constitutional rights were being blown away the armed populace keeps a 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

twelve gauge semi automatic joe in 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 and 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 we decided to evacuate u.s. marshals came across this in front saw me with my shotgun you know they pulled about a dozen m. sixteen sourness put her body against the wall. 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 government has the guns and the populace is not 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. an american radio host alex jones says the actions of the government four of years ago did the breach people's right to defend themselves what's scary here is the first time the federal government was able to take control of a us city during an emergency they wouldn't bring food and water to the people at the superdome in fact they blockade in many cases their main mission was set the precedent to get the american people's guns five years later we still see the continued anti second amendment mission of the federal government we are now a total third world a least a total charity setting in and the system doesn't know what to do because they haven't been able to get our guns yet and they tried to use katrina as

a case point to set the precedent and to train police nationwide under federal and f.b.i. control to go into high and dry areas and take people's right to defend themselves and leave them by themselves to be right robbed and killed by the looters many of which were the government themselves. and that was american radio host alex jones sharing his thoughts from texas by the way you can check out our website for more stories that's at r.t. dot com and here's some of what's there right now russian police bust again because he swindled trusting internet users of over thirty million dollars in just one month. and the industry black expanse of space has its own small you can find out what it is. dot com. 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 the country south to spin the wheel again by

considering switching locations and he looks at what's at stake for the russian sin city. this is a gambler spera dice the oracle 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 other swell willing to build gambling spots here in the area it still looks like most in the industry see it as making bats in a burning house last year russian lawmakers banned all casinos and gambling clubs across the country to be replaced by four specially designated and developed zones in siberia western russia the south and the east the industry reacted immediately like you know shutting down the facilities moving them abroad or going on the

ground even the most successful the sudden gambling zone is mostly being ignored by the un to nurse. them most investors a passive many because as a city is far away from other major transportation hubs the local airports underdeveloped and the roads and not like good only that and the other factor is that the gambling ban in russia is really hard to enforce. in cities just a few hundred kilometers away from us all police discover illegal gambling downs 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 seldom 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 . and 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 so. by and by decades of experience essentially we've come up with a new concept in the resort where gambling will be just one of the highlights the idea will have to get support from the russians the duma possibly together with other amendments to help reverse the odds of getting the new gambling rules to work so for now the future of russia's on the asparagus still looks dim leaving more questions than answers for its supporters and skeptics alike. are crossing the region. twitter mania is sweeping russia's leading politicians so much so that even some are even doing it right under the boss's nose one governor was caught tweeting away in the middle of an important meeting in the kremlin by prison if it himself. that you'd look at the year of his posting something on his twitter page right now or during district council session as if he has nothing else to do. but tweeting

didn't end with the president's remark has more members of the council join the online exchange and the russian leader is known to be a big fan of gadgets and has a twitter account himself his friends include barack obama and the head of apple steve jobs who presented the president with a new i phone four on a recent trip to silicon valley. what are some other international news of this hour to yemeni men have been arrested after arriving in the netherlands from the u.s. following suspicion that they were tempted to commit a terrorist attack airport officials acted after finding a mobile phone strapped to a medicine bottle along with knives and watches both are currently being questioned . palestinian government of reportedly killed four israelis in the west bank one of whom was pregnant the victims were traveling in their car when it came under. attack comes on the eve of a crucial summit to peace talks no group has so far claimed responsibility. as a roadside bomb blast that killed four american troops in eastern afghanistan

a fifth u.s. soldier died in an insurgent attack in the south it comes off to similar violence on monday which killed eight nato soldiers in the same area american troops have been killed in the country since saturday. with an update of our main news stories in less than nine minutes from now in the meantime we have the latest from a lot of business with you that's coming your way after a short break. for the full story we've got. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers. hello

and a very warm welcome to the business program to solve the world's biggest alinea 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 results says it expects a strong performance for the rest of the year as demand and prices continue to outstrip rising costs. i would say with the hope that with its results for the first or second quarter to see when the forecast from the first quarter loss was off for the first quarter with you i'm looking at us to meet what we heard in the first or what we think that was too that's why we're so happy with the margin which twenty five percent each of them higher than the projected in the first quarter due to our control and the cost of the as

a model for go rich from well three billion. and roussel is also heavily involved in the shareholder dispute for control of russia's biggest mine minerals chemical but about putin is in the city of new to see the town and to all the plant he's met with the two main shareholders in the company chief i did i am pleased to meet bhutan in the head over intervals the two billionaires each owned twenty five percent of minerals and want to buy the other out motion has noted that the conflict is damaging the company and a solution is urgently needed it but the government insists it will not force the issue as long as continues to operate successfully. the dispute appears to boil down to a difference of opinion about how normal cyclical should be run and who should benefit the company's chief executive david crystal cool ski describes the problem as he says it. conflict is due to

a difference in interests one side wants a gradual development of the company to improve environmental and social conditions while the other one wants to take everything there isn't a company and even more i'm against taking the money out this may benefit shareholders right now but in the next years the company won't be able to develop. for sol is adamant it will not sell up instead elected fosco says he will try to get minority shareholders to equate point independent professionals to the boat but the chief executive of nora nicole lefts little doubt as to what shareholder he was favoring has here effect of the twenty nine percent loss andrew assault ship price since they have been getting wealthy at the company led by david. said your search since the beginning of the nickel has been the only company to increase the share price twenty three percent of us have a negative dynamic the leader among them is the person you just interviewed with

a twenty nine percent because the person who tells us how to work how to control our company he's the leader among losers now whatever he says we listen to through the prism of a person who did not see in managing a company successfully why we have the world's highest dividend was fifty percent seventy eight percent is the world's average and everyone is happy here for some people fifty percent is not enough and in other news from the city of new rolls the prime minister says the government is considering a new flexible tax formula for nickel and exports he suggests the system could be similar to fatten post on oil what about put an irish the metal producers to take part in the development of a fair formula. there's an idea to develop a flexible formula similar to the one we created for the oil industry in a very with the increase or decrease in global prices but where is it is not agreed

soon we will come up with a solution of our own one of the norilsk nickel shareholders may not like. and the russian markets finished tuesday session in the red energy stocks made some gains to watch the close telecom continued its twenty three from monday the only bring up more than three and a half percent. russia's second largest oil producer has announced that income for the second quarter fell sixteen percent two billion dollars that's despite a strong rise in revenues the company says it was hit by taxes sent costs tros faster than the price of crude oil and separately the company says it doesn't intend to buyback the entire eleven point six percent of its shares from current owner conoco phillips and speaking exclusively to business r.t. vice president plenty of good looks planes why should. we think that the purchase of almost eight percent of shares is enough to reduce the tension on the market and

to assure that our shares show enough value on their own the company is interested in increasing its free flow the more shares on the market the more stable they are we are also looking at listing on one of the asian markets in the future i think it's enough to ensure future stable and reliable company before messrs. that's all the basis news for now but you can always find more news on our website r t v dot com slash business.

there conduce childhood was overshadowed by this tragedy. these two feel the fear they faced. and remember every second of this nightmare. it will remain in their memories and hearts forever. and using so. innocent victims. of little angel one are cheap. wealthy british style. is not on the tires.

market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cars or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our.

if you're not from the russian capital twenty four hours a day this is top stories the u.s. is poised to officially handed security over to local forces as the last of america's combat troops have left the country and about fifty thousand will remain local security force. is a bit. in a village in eastern india desperate for help farmers faldo commit mass suicide more than stop to death if government aid doesn't arrive sing. to russian limited gathering to form remote regions casinos that have failed to attract business that's prompted investors to stake the future of gambling on a popular tourist destination the black sea. well now we talk to the political scientists. and get his take on some of the.