presenter meditated. news from russia and around the world this is us here with me. thanks for joining us the u.s. 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 in washington this is the last act of a seven year war in which over four thousand u.s. soldiers were killed however around fifty thousand staying in iraq to train and support local security forces 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 and journalist no rosen who house chronicled the war says that while america's declared victory it's come a very high cost to the iraqi people. 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 are languished in american prisons years of their lives were lost. is destroyed shirt or a dirty desperate people are very poor living in. 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 a random bombings in the freedom to die in the street so there's no way to say whether it was worse than i what strikes me every day that i'm here is that a family i meet that has an. there are many murder kidnapped

beheaded to families displaced is 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 iraqi speed for this american victory. and john laughlin from the instead of democracy and corporations as they 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. this is also coming up later in the program write some defiant. words and have the right to sue for courses later living in america maybe so we should be able to carry on. so find out why people in the u.s. state of louisiana no longer feel safe thing at all of the government stripping them of their right to background. this is the only legal casino

a private company invest a million dollars into its construction and even if you willing to build gambling spots here in the area it still looks like moose in the in the street see those making brats in the burning house. find out why none of the four approved gambling zones in russia are really working while into grand casinos and what the governor is planning to do about it. 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 that's threatening to commit mass suicide if there's no aid from the government but despite this stark warning so far no help has arrived canvassing has a 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 reigned over twenty other farmers in the small village of about three hundred families have threatened to commit mass suicide. 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 die early 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 an indication 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 state 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. see that for the last two years there has not been enough water for our crops to grow seeing the desperate situation in our homes and 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. 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. americas remembering the eighteen hundred victims of hurricane katrina five years since the disaster struck west hate was the city of new orleans and as its streets flooded with water the city became submerged to in violence and looting residents complain that not only did the authorities fail to protect them they stopped them from protecting themselves. and our ports. 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 shoot for ask questions later. been robbed at gunpoint 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 we heard 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 for a minute your private property. taken the wrong and. 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 in the populace doesn't have the guns the government does what it was in the aftermath of katrina in 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 showing 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 dan's with. them and they were breaking into any businesses where they have 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 protect 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 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. it's been a big day the germans have been knocking twenty years since they were formally reunited into a single nation the capital and the country were placed in hard see but the fall of the building wall paved the way for united germany on the thirty first of august one thousand nine hundred a treaty field east germany's integration with the west but some analysts say for creation process it wasn't and while. 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 a very clear cut question from one day to the next how could this part of a unified germany survive and under these circumstances it was very clear that the political way to the power was the 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. a currency problem as devastating and of course we have this. 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. political analyst crystal hall still talking to us from germany and check out our website for more stories that set our team dot com and his son was the. right now i have a question please pass the gathering of how. old trusting internet users of about thirty million dollars in just one bag. and the endless black experiments of space has access now find out what it is that. they've been on gambling in russia has seen casinos forced to move to four designated regions so far that the remote ness of those places means medica seen is have struggled prompting investors in the country's south to spin the wheel again by considering switching locations and. or said stake for the russian society.

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 invest upturn 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 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 of city is far away from other major transportation hubs the local airports underdeveloped and the roads are not that good only there and the other factor is that the gambling burn in russia is really hard to enforce them. 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 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 own list bagus still looks them leaving more questions than answers for its supporters and skeptics alike. r t cross in the region. it's a matter of a sweeping russia's leading politicians so much so that some were even doing it right and of the bosses and guys one governor was caught tweeting away in the middle of an important meeting in the kremlin but president medvedev himself. right now 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 and his tech savvy friends include brugge obama and the head of apple steve jones who presented the president with a new i phone for a recent trip to silicon valley. let's check some other stories making news around the world to you given the matter has been arrested after arriving in the netherlands from the u.s. it's following suspicion that they were attempting to commit a terrorist the time officials acted after finding a mobile phone strapped to a medicine bottle along with knives and water is currently being questioned. hamas has admitted responsibility which killed four israelis in the west bank one of me was pregnant and it comes on the of a crucial summit in the u.s. to relaunch peace talks to women and to learn died when their car was fired on by

gunmen near hebron around five hundred ultra nationalists jewish settlers live under heavy guard among one hundred thousand palestinians in the volatile area. nato says a roadside bomb blast has killed four american troops in eastern afghanistan fifty u.s. soldiers died in the surgeon to tuck in the south that comes after a similar violence and monday which killed eight nato soldiers in the same area nineteen american troops have been killed in the country since saturday. turns 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 they were affected by a rise of cases of malaria from a stagnant water more than one hundred thousand pregnant women are also facing the risk of infection. disease there was stellar flooding in the country has claimed over sixteen hundred lives with seventeen million affected in total. but back to

remind you of our top stories in ten minutes time but first we'll talk to. a political scientist and president of the moscow based politics foundation in the governmental research and political consulting organization and he gives his assessment of iran's russian nuclear power plant that's up next here nazi.

today we are joined by 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 russia and relationships and how can russia be sure that they're really pursuing this for peaceful purposes. russia provided the. nuclear reactor of the same to americans who were supposed to provide to north korea to prevent them from having nuclear weapons this is a load 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 a 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. and 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 on bushehr opening. we shoes 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 western 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 the station isn't capable of producing weapons grade uranium iranian nuclear program which war is americans and europeans and russians is not a bold bushehr 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 a 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 to gender. 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. l.-i 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 the 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 before we quite sure about the instincts 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 a growing economy. and or russia. moscow has said that it will ensure that iran does not pursue. peaceful

means how does russia intend to do that in terms of well 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 and 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. develop their nuclear program and to make it peaceful. mechanical engineer. open a. small. more

news today in holland says once a game flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations are on the day.

again this is all see the headline it's. full stall in the u.s. official about missions in iraq fifty thousand troops stay behind to assist local seal susan leading critics say that america is playing all out as a sham and the war goes on because senator made about this stability of the country with but it's still unable to form a government so inconclusive elections in a moment. as severe to draw out as let's read hundred families in the village next in india desperate for an old saw as they'll commit suicide rather starve to death have a government a dozen of them and see. them and often rush of them into the gambling to forward regions casino staff fails to trunk a business that's prompted to invest just.