says it's officially ended its combat mission in iraq u.s. vice president joe biden is in baghdad overseeing it with all american combat troops having already left the country its surge just after midnight local time in baghdad and washington says this means the end of this 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 in playing by insurgent violence last week alone dozens of iraqi citizens died in a wave of terror attacks nir rosen journalist and chronicler of the iraq war told me only if the people there are still suffering they did get rid of saddam hussein at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives of iraqis millions of displaced tens of thousands of iraqis who were languished in american prisons years of their lives

were lost. is destroyed shattered dirty desperate people of very poor living amidst trash during hours of checkpoints and desperately trying to obtain electricity so yes there are some freedoms. that exist now that didn't exist before but there's also. a democracy of death and a random bombings in the freedom to down the street so there's no way to say whether it was worth it in the what strikes me every day that i'm here is not a family i meet that hasn't. there are many murder kidnapped beheaded displaced not a family you meet that hasn't been touched by the occupation the violence that came with it so while the american administration is celebrating its victory i think we should never forget the high cost of iraqis paid for this american victory. and joy laughlin from the institute for democracy incorporation says the change is only a people one and iraq remains an occupied country. 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. of the news now desperate times in one indian village of prompted residents to take desperate measures a severe two year drought has left three hundred families on the edge of starvation they are threatening to commit meso aside if there's no aid from the government but despite the stark warning so far no help arrived can sing has the story. here in the village of you know remote part of eastern india so intricate mali 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 so reined in over twenty other farmers in the small village of about three hundred families have threatened to commit mass suicide. mutely we will have to die sometime so why 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 it early a little 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 gerard to write a letter to the president of india and the state governor asking for rations and in a geisha in facilities if help fails to they say they'll commit suicide. he says we requested immediate food aid from the governor and for the long term some 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 street the farmers are desperate as the entire state of charge can grapples with a forty two percent rainfall deficit this year julie mooned shows me his field which should have been full of crops at this time of year but lies bad and instead. used

up all our seeds but for the last two years there has not been enough what crops to grow seeing the distressed situation in our homes and we're thinking what is the point of living this suicide request has george did 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 the villagers wait for the promised aid. all the senior officials have visited us from the local administration 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 and saying r t from the village of then eastern india. well coming up later in the program for you here in our rights under fire you can find out why people in the u.s. state of louisiana saying give us our guns back five years after they had them taken away. and still to come russia's high tech mall they are exchanging tweets in the workplace ticking off from the president. 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 it's pretty scary to report some 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. 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 every day life. force and have the right to sue for courses later. before i know what it's like i believe that. the living in america may say we should be able to carry a handgun but that wasn't always the case so what do you know. 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 but we heard the. stuff that was going in a wall and all the shooting and the people that would get 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. from your order for a minute your private property. taken here. as the hurricane took 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 and 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 i say or three smith and wesson clip action shotgun a twelve gauge semi automatic joe when 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 decided to evacuate u.s. marshals came across this in front saw me with my shotgun. you know they pulled about a dozen sixteen's on us put our body against the wall checked our bodies id 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 as

a dog 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 five years ago did that 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 of the superdome in fact a blockade in many cases their main mission was shut the president to get the american people's guns five years later we still see the continued anti shuckin amendment mission of the federal government we are now a total third world elise state total tyranny shutting down 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. 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 all a t dot com website here's some of what's that right now at the moment russian police bust a gang of hackers who swindled trusting internet users of over thirty million dollars in just one month. with a website you have this black expanse of space which you believe has its own smell you can find out what it is that r t dot com online all the time. it's a big day for germans who are marking twenty years since they were formally reunited into a single nation the capital of the country was split in half after world war two with the force of the burning will pave the way for a united germany thirty first of august one hundred ninety a treaty c.

it is germany's integration with the west but some analysts say the reunification process wasn't fair and equal for both parts. of the. german democratic republic was bankrupt they didn't have any money anymore and what they were expecting. it was a fifteen billion marks loan from western germany and western germany it 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 elater unified germany survive and under these circumstances it was very clear that the political rate at the power was a very clearly on the side of the westerners and no doubt many easterners must have felt. the next one thing is very clear the joblessness percentage is much higher in eastern germany that it is in the western part of 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 the unification was for eastern germany also during due to currency problem was devastating 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. 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 that many casinos have struggled prompting investors in the country self to spin the wheel again by considering switching locations within these blocks he looks at what's at stake for the russian sin city. this is a gamblers paradise the oracle of all kinds of games from the army of one armed

bandits to poker and roulette. however most of the time the places deserve it. 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 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 force specially designated and developed zooms in siberia western russia the south and the east the industry reacted to mediately by either shutting down the facilities moving them abroad or going underground even the most successful the southern gambling zone is mostly being ignored by the nurse . 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 that 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 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 the region's 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 without making the same mistakes we can use the best that las vegas has to offer rafah. 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 now the future of russia's on the asparagus still looks dim leaving more questions than answers for its supporters and skeptics or why. our team crossing the region. to mania is sweeping russia's leading politicians so much so that 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 president defended himself you'd look at the euro. something on his twitter page right now or during the student council session as if he has nothing else to do. but tweeting 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 tech savvy friends include iraq 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. to some other international news for you this hour on r t two yemeni men have been arrested after arriving in the netherlands from the u.s. following suspicion that they were attempting to commit a terrorist attack airport officials acted after finding a mobile phone strapped to a medicine bottle along with knives and watches both a currently being questioned. the myth of responsibility a gun attack which killed four israelis in the west bank one of whom was pregnant it comes on the eve of a crucial summit in the u.s. to relaunch peace talks two men died when their car was followed by a gunman in hebron and five hundred ultra nationalists jewish settlers live under heavy guard among one hundred thousand palestinians in the volatile area. as a roadside bomb blast has killed four american troops in eastern afghanistan a fifth u.s. soldier died in an insurgent attack in the south it comes after

a similar violence on monday which killed eight nato soldiers in the same area one thousand american troops have been killed in the country since saturday. and tens of thousands of children in pakistan are bearing the brunt of water illnesses that are spreading due to severe flooding in the country officials say were affected by a rise of cases of malaria from stagnant water more than one hundred thousand pregnant women are also facing the risk of infection and disease the worst ever flooding in the country has claimed over one thousand six hundred lives with seventeen million affected in total. well i'll be back top stories in about ten minutes from now in the meantime we talked to. political scientists and president of the moscow based policy foundation it's a nongovernmental research and political consulting organization and he gives his assessment of iran's russian built nuclear power plant that's coming up next here on.

today we are joined by a mr vyacheslav nikonov he is a political scientist and he's also the founder and president of the polity foundation thank you very much for joining us. now the first question i'd like to ask is iran has now launched its first nuclear program it's a first in the middle east and russian engineers were a big part of that now what is the implication on russian and relationships and how can russia be sure that they're really pursuing this for peaceful purposes actually

russia provided a. nuclear reactor of the same to americans who are supposed to provide to north korea to prevent them from having nuclear weapons this is a light water reactor which is not capable of providing any weapons grade uranium. and all the fuel will be provided by russia and all the waste fuel will be taken away by russia so it is safe facility which is very important which is the first nuclear power station in that part of the world which i think is extremely important. as you may know russia was the first to build a nuclear power station which is the first to build nuclear power station in in the middle east which i think is so important. if you follow the

reactions of the major countries. opening. we should by the way is not yet their station will produce electricity only. december the reaction is quite neutral or even positive the only country which reacted negatively was israel but interacts negatively to whatever happens in relations with iran any other country since they are for isolating iran i don't think russia is on the position of. the russian government saying. with iran diplomacy. still can work so all the controversy with that we've been hearing in the past few months with major west europe reacting to iran said. wanting to build nuclear power stations all this is unfounded if you're saying that

technically speaking it will not be possible to produce nuclear weapons no absolutely not this station isn't capable of producing weapons grade uranium iranian nuclear program which war is americans and europeans and russians is not about to share. some other facilities which are on this. look to stress that. russia being very critical of iran north korea only following all the procedures of international atomic agency still does not agree on whatever is in washington and london or paris or berlin as far as iran is concerned because russia has its own agenda with iran which is somewhat sometimes different and sometimes not related to nuclear energy at all russia and iran. difficult history over lation ship.

at the same time they have quite a while agenda. economic agenda including. the development of the riches of the caspian sea. we have some common strategic interests since for as international terrorism is concerned in iran is very. the us is. in certain aspects of. fighting terrorism so we have some interests in common we of course in russia north supportive of your rainy and nuclear military program at the same time there are also though it's whether iran is really up to a bomb. or just a capability which of course is

a big difference. say germany or japan countries with nuclear weapons capabilities they just do not have any bombs and that is their choice so as far as i read this situation in iran is not in a suicidal mood and i don't think they really want to bomb they want to keep ability and a capability is harmless the capability is harmless if the government is responsible. depends on whether these government really. wants to. keep peace with the neighbors or has some aggressive inks things before we quite sure about the things of the iranian leadership so we should be cautious of course

but at the same time iran is an important country it's a country with great history it's a civilization in itself persian civilization. with self-esteem which with growing economy. or russia or. moscow has said that it will ensure that iran does not pursue. peaceful means how does russia intend to do that in terms of there is no way it can be perceived peaceful means in terms of general policies over on the russian proposal is quite clear we are not against iran developing peaceful nuclear program it's their right including their right. member. of course it is very important to.

make sure the iranian program is peaceful one of the ways to do it is to go with. quite well known russian and french proposals to provide. low enriched uranium to iran or you can enrich to rename to iran for their research purposes but. all this. should be under control and should be returned to the countries. france russia so there could be a proposal we could really engage those two purposes. develop their nuclear program and to make it peaceful.

mechanical engineer. open a reason. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images cobol has been

seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are all day.

from the russian capital good to have you with us top stories now that the u.s. is poised to officially handed iraq security over to local forces the last of america's combat troops have left the country about fifty thousand will remain to train local security forces. severe to you trust three hundred families in a village in eastern india desperate for help farmers pile they'll commit mass suicide rather than starve to death government aid doesn't arise. and off to russia limited to four remote regions casinos there have failed to attract business that's prompted investors to stake the future of gambling on a popular tourist destination the black sea. the precept that for the moment up next we'll be exploring the latest and most innovative scientific advances in technology update and this edition we'll look at how budding formidable.