does r.t. here in moscow good to have you with us the us has officially ended its combat mission in iraq vice president joe biden is in baghdad to oversee the operation and hold talks with the country's leaders washington says that this is the last act of a seven year war in which over four thousand u.s. soldiers were killed however around fifty thousand are staying in iraq to train and support local security forces they will not be allowed to carry out combat missions unless requested and accompanied by the iraqi military but many analysts say baghdad doesn't control the country which remains in political deadlock after inconclusive elections in march and is plagued by insurgent violence dozens of civilians died in a wave of terror attacks last week journalist nir rosen who has chronicled the war told me all of that while america's declared victory it's come a very high cost to the iraqi people. they didn't 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 the rock 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 the iraqis say a democracy of death and a random bombings in the freedom to die in the street so there's no way to say whether it was worth it and what strikes me every day that i'm here is not a family i meet that hasn't had their men murdered kidnapped beheaded defend these 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 iraqis paid for this american victory and to laughlin from the institute for democracy and cooperation says the proclaimed withdrawal is on paper only 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 all other 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 john laughlin there are other news now in 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 mass suicide if there's no aid from the government but despite the start warning so far no helpers arrived charan singh 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. and 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 while the 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 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 because 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 state the farmers are desperate as the entire state of charge couldn't 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 . all are seeing that for the last two years there has not been enough what crops to grow seeing the distress 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. 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 we are referred 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. well coming up later in the program he writes. the right to shoot for course is later living in america maybe so we should be able to carry a handgun and find out why people in the u.s. state of louisiana no longer feel safe of the government stripping them of their right to bear arms. russia's high tech who are exchanging tweets in the workplace get a ticket from the president. but first 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 now reports some are still floating 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 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. for courses later. before. i believe that. living in america means that 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 styrene and his friend wayne shoom were on lake ponchartrain about a week after hurricane katrina made landfall and i had almost to 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 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. away from your order your private property. 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 and whatever the government has the guns and the populace doesn't have the guns the government does what it was 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 accept for one occasion spot 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 dan's with. them and they were breaking into any businesses where there was no sign of anyone around him 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 and sixteen's on this put her body against the wall checked her by the 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 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 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 u.s. 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 that continued anti shuckin amendment mission of the federal government we are now

a total third world elise state total charity 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 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 sit com now here's some of what's there right now for you russian police have busted getting of hackers he swindled trusting internet users of a thirty million dollars in just one month. and this black expanse of space has would you believe it's own smell you can find out what it is that are to cover with plenty of other fictions. it's

a big day for germans who are marking twenty years since they were formally reunited into a single nation the capital and the country was split in her after world war two but the fall of the budget will pave the way for a united germany on the thirty first of august nineteenth a treaty sealed the east germans integration with the west but some analysts say the reunification process wasn't fair and equal for both parts. the. german democratic republic was bankrupt they didn't have any money anymore and what's. 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 late to unify germany's survive and under these circumstances it was very clear that the political way to 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 that unification was for eastern germany also during due to a currency problem is 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 south to spin the wheel again by considering switching locations that he looks at what's at stake for the russian 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 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 lately though shutting down the facilities moving them abroad or going underground

even the most successful the southern gambling zone is mostly being ignored by the enterprise nurse. most investors are passive mainly because as of citi is far away from other major transportation hubs the local airports underdeveloped and the roads and not that good only there and the other factor is that the gambling banned 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 but you can have a good time there if you play your cards right the regions of dorothy's have come up with a new plan to make the rules work they want to relocate the whole southern gambling zone closer to pop. are tourist destinations like the black sea coast resorts are phenomenal and inspired by les vegas they wanted to be 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 that best that las vegas has to after refined by decades of experience essentially we've come up with a new concept in the 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 biggest still looks dim leaving more questions than answers for its supporters and skeptics a y. r t cross in the region. twitter mania is sweeping russia's leading politicians so much so that even doing it right under the bosses nose one governor was caught tweeting away in the middle of an important meeting in the kremlin by president medvedev himself you look at the euro. 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 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 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 this hour for you here on r.t. 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 and port officials acted after finding a mobile phone strapped to a medicine bottle along with knives and watches both are currently being questioned . amasses a bit of responsibility for a gun attack which killed four israelis in the west bank one of whom was pregnant comes on the eve of a crucial summit in the us to relaunch peace talks two minute two men died when their car was followed by gunmen hebron around five hundred nationalist jewish settlers live under heavy guard and one hundred thousand palestinians in the time

their. nature is 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 off a similar volatile monday which killed eight nato soldiers in the same area nineteen american troops have been killed in the country since saturday. pakistan there were tens of thousands of children bearing the brunt of water illness it's the spreading due to severe flooding in the country officials say they 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 and west of a flooding in the country has claimed over one thousand six hundred lives with seventeen million affected in total. i'll be back to top stories in ten minutes from now but first we talked to all the political scientists and president of the moscow based polity foundation government research and political consulting

organization he gives his assessment of iran's russian built nuclear power plant that's coming next. 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 are a big part of that now what is the implication on russia 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 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 sat. 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 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 it's about some other facilities which are on. 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 of relationship. 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. 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 whether iran is really up to have 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 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 for we are not 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 civilization itself persian civilization. with self-esteem which with growing economy. or russia's support. moscow has said that it will ensure that iran does not pursue. peaceful means how those russia intend to do that in terms of sure 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 in 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 let

iran develop their nuclear program and to make it peaceful. what makes a mechanical engineer. open a reason. british . holds.

the global economy. into. more news today. these are the images. from the streets of canada. today.

good to have you with us this is. the russian capital top stories now of this full story as the u.s. officially ends combat missions in iraq fifty thousand troops stay behind to assist local forces leading critics to say that america's proclaimed pullout is a sham and the war goes on concerns remain about the stability of the country with the supreme leader still unable to form a government after inconclusive elections in which. a severe drought says left three hundred families in a village in eastern india desperate for help. commit mass suicide to death if government aid doesn't arrive soon. and off to russia limited gambling to four remote regions casinos that have failed to attract business that's prompted investors to state the future of gambling on a popular tourist destination.