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if you. believe. they had now hatefully insight for the crazy days remaining shots in the ice bar it's case of the ice breakers continue their rescue operation. us crashing in on conflict more than half of americans oppose their country's borders we want them to deal a blow to business for some corporate giants. to break future facing

britain's overly any call to retire pensions and interest rates to keep up with the rising cost of living. there you're watching r t welcome to the program two russian icebreakers have started moving a refrigerator vessel stranded in frozen waters in russia's far east leaves a supply ship with more than three hundred on board as a next to be exported out have been trapped in the yards for days when it sees sara first is across about it once and joins us now. with this feels like a case of saying this so far doesn't it. has certainly been a low low price us but they said hatefully now the end in sight today is crazy in the early hours of this morning we saw the ice breakers cross in and out. matter of

clearing the ice around the refrigerator vessel which is one of the remaining two and then out saying that currently to thinner ice. but cool the supply vessel and it's still that this is going to be the most difficult to extract from the i say they say cross in the mast was against me combining their efforts to try and break up this incredibly they call and to try and break a canal passage for this vessel to then post a few motors but again we see coming up against these extreme conditions very very strong winds very late temperatures incredibly thick ice and so we had the captain of one of the chopper it's really the end of this rescue mission would be very dependent on the weather conditions. everything depends on the weather when the wind comes down the rescue operation would come quicker we have enough water and food supplies that could last two to four months. when though there are

hundreds of people on board lucky to be rescued i mean they've been stranded for most a fortnight now. well the crews have been there an incredibly long time you've really got to feel for the show they're going to be have been quite relieved. and cross into the refrigerator vest and of course the. supply now waiting for that to come but as you heard from the cuts and they've had plenty of food and water on board never any danger of them running out of supplies and they've been able to being contact they've been saying that they're out so the fight of if they just get free of this i think get back to work and these two events that the two icebreakers working very hard will keep you updated on their progress today. indeed salty sara for courting that thanks for now. well still to come how the molecular world has just got to my tip songs are very powerful intimate microscopes and specialised in proving to the tiniest of. seven

hundred twenty five billion dollars that's how much the u.s. plans to spend on its military activity to see if it's the world's largest ever defense budget and comes amid the flagging economy and burgeoning national debts the pentagon says it's cutting its cloth over the next five years but has learned this to reports that's going to be difficult when there's an entire industry dying on wars to continue. when it comes to the afghan war well over half of americans oppose it and after a year of record casualties and having plowed in over three hundred fifty six billion dollars why is the u.s. committed to staying the course they're all trying for the war including energy motives and profit motives and strategic motives and if you're wondering why some in the u.s. just might not want to see the war and ever here are three reasons thirty six billion twenty five billion twenty three point five billion those are roughly the

dollar amounts the top three american defense companies. handed government contracts in two thousand and eight a president once warned about this industry we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought all runs or by the military industrial complex it was fifty years ago that u.s. president eisenhower said those now famous words let's look at though were u.s. defense spending has gone since then it's skyrocketed from just around five hundred billion during the vietnam war to more than seven hundred billion dollars now during the post nine eleven wars and some argue that escalation is tied to exactly what eisenhower was warning about but there's a whole range of business that just you know lives off fighting wars and i think it's you know particularly the arms companies because they have representation every state and district in the country in many cases they have congress on their

side here to build the weapons or if necessary to use them lawmakers cast the votes that ensure a military contractor such as lockheed martin gets two hundred sixty dollars from each household a year according to hart on three search making it the single largest recipient of taxpayer dollars meanwhile companies like lockheed dole out millions in political contributions and for lobbying each year and promise to deliver politicians not just weapons but jobs sometimes they will even say you know if you vote with us we'll put a factory in your district those who agree with hard times they the defense dollars are sure to keep coming for contractors as long as the influence continues and as long as the empire continues to expand you're suggesting then a permanent u.s. presence in afghanistan something which you consider we have bases all over the world when you think strategically you may wonder if the u.s. really wants to end the war or ever leave afghanistan in a stand it's next to the middle east and it's next to russia and it's next to china

it's a wonderful place to have bases and weapons and nuclear weapons. it's a place where they very much want to look at natural gas lines looking at recent history our combat mission is ending but our commitment to iraq's future is not what does it mean to say a war the united states would like to end the iraq war by keeping the military bases there keeping fifty thousand troops there keeping enough control of the economy so that if the iraqis do anything at all that the united states and its investors don't like we can immediately kill another hundred thousand iraqis and while in afghanistan the u.s. is still spending billions trying to win the hearts and minds of the people looks to some like resources are going in a different direction and drive along and for at least a mile and a half there will be a wall and there is some kind of big american construction of ammunition depots and housing happening on the other side of that wall and on the other side of that road

you see the people who are displaced are actually living in tents without heaters and without blankets not through cold winter afghans left out in the cold while the u.s. government and corporations appear to capitalize on a war that looks here to stay lauren lyster r.t. new york. a top ranking u.s. officer is openly voicing concerns over the professional conduct of the country's armed forces in afghanistan no mother in this as it's been severely challenge during nine years of war these revealing military contributor believes a material person undermining american defense policy abroad. at the national defense university which is the top military madrasi in the united states and merrill michael mullen who is the joint chiefs of staff chairman conducts the soul searching the jam session for the military profession the top objective is to spill

began it's been in the military community from the outset the admiral has made it perfectly clear that couple of subjects will be off the table without any benefit of the down the first of them is the behavior of some lose cannons and the strikers brigade in kandahar because couple of those road warriors so cold sculpture hunters not only have discredited a large part of the u.s. military abroad and specifically in afghanistan but by their anger from am against civilians they undermine the u.s. state department democratic finger pointing to the other contraries abroad the us on demining the whole least stick and integrated us foreign policy. britain's pension is going bankrupt faster than any other group in the country.

this findings highlights how seriously those over sixty five are struggling to keep their homes running as costs rise as ati's and it reports most of the people's budgets have already been cut to the bat. retirement depicted as a golden age where older people get more time to enjoy their families and hopis so it's a new survey shows a different side of old age and a worrying picture of a country where more and more elderly people can't afford to retire pensioner lydia portsmouth won't say how much money she gets from the state but she's forced to dip into her limited savings to pay her monthly bills like many others she wasn't able to push away a lot of money for her retirement and what she does have is now earning so little interest in the bank that she regularly has to spend the capital that money.

if you know that. a bit of. it coming. back in again. in the end. lydia is one of the lucky ones she owns her own home and has a small amount of savings but data from the office for national statistics shows more than half of single pensioners in the u.k. live on the equivalent of less than forty five dollars a day with nearly a quarter of a million getting by on. the consumer credit counseling service to help people to repay debt when they get into trouble they're seeing an increasing number of older people with huge credit card debt and no way to repay them and they say life's only going to get more difficult they're going to get worse in all costs. be. quickly.

so that's a problem it's a bleak picture for pensioners present and future rock bottom interest rates mean the elderly can no longer live off the interest from their nest eggs if they have any and interest rates may not go up for several years a new pension scheme which will oblige employers to pay into a fund for all their employees isn't due to come online till twenty twelve the result seven out of ten people in the u.k. contant visit your traditional retirement in the future where people stop work and live off their pensions for thirty years and for every year the government raises the pension age currently sixty for women and sixty five for men it stands to save itself twenty billion dollars it's a freezing winter here in the u.k. so many pensioners will struggle to pay heating bills and it's unlikely to get any easier for older people the government plans to raise the age at which people could

receive a state pension to come back to government debts and as a response to higher life expectancy but while that's all right for the rich critics say it's the poor who will suffer by being forced to work until they drop. you know we're at it. later this hour take a look at what lies ahead for the world in the twenty eleven trends for cost says there's one thing we can be sure of the beginning of the end of government bailouts . federal reserve the united states be saw it's the thirteen trillion dollars that they in washington lend spent in garenne teed since two thousand and nine they shuffled under the table to banks around the world twenty trillion that's with a t dollars worth of deals they gave money to the banks to chip pan the banks in

south korea the banks in the netherlands to credit suisse to do a bank to the banks in ireland in england they gave money even to the banks in canada the federal reserve gave these no interest or extremely low interest rate loans to corporations such as general lecture carly davidson mig donal's vera rai is in and they have buddies in the hedge fund so we don't know these things are going on behind closed doors and the only way we found out about it is because of that one time reporting requirement that came about from that dogged frank bill that was supposed to bring about a new type of financial regulation and it really didn't it brought back more of the same so we don't know what schemes they're doing to prop it up but what we're saying that in twenty eleven the game's going to run out.

some world news in brief but twenty two has been the attempted killing of a u.s. congresswoman of accounts in a democratic governor system critically ill. being shot in the head during the massacre outside a supermarket in the state a gunman gunman opening fire is the new politician that venters killing six and injuring a dozen others. was among the dead was one of those a nine year old girl and the district judge. a passenger plane has crashed in northwestern iran leaving at least seventy two people dead and thirty three injured around seventy seven was on route from tehran to the city. when it came down it before officials say about whether it's in the recovery operation but at least five major crashes in iran since two thousand and five with u.s. sanctions being blamed for making it hard to maintain interest. there

of flood warnings in queensland in australia over the stricken state and will bring forth. the country's third biggest cities bracing itself for what is the region's worst flooding in decades about two hundred thousand people going back to disaster in the east ten people died. when today a lot of people have elza cross-talk guests take on religious writings and they don't have a debate has some of what's ahead. the underlying foundation of islam is to take over the world muslims you know have to believe in islam as a religion and as a state muslims not to live under the american constitution they are here to eventually go to place the american constitution with islamic sharia because no one is allowed to live and that it. was all done to fly people

did they believe in islam. this is what mohamed said well thought well that is that is that all of that is absolutely contrary to the reality of a person like me who is an eighth generation american whose parents are christian whose associates and friends and loved ones in many ways in many cases are christian no one has ever told me in any religious context that i've been in that the purpose of my life was to somehow overturn constitutional law and replace it with sharia that simply isn't true and nor is it true in agreement on radio you know your places in the muslim world that in which muslims are way way way in which muslims are either i'm a jordan or a minority so i think you're simply taking in that phrase think your perceptions out and try and you're right in your trying to universalize it in a way that's not true.

yes you can see more of crosstalk day to day here in o.t. but now they invite you to world of microbiology just got a whole lot bigger thanks to the work of russian scientists they've developed a system which uses a powerful microscope to get that chris two views of the tiniest bacteria and i think scientists anywhere in the world to take a look at was tom barton discovered this by christmas she still faces some big hurdles. but imagine a terrible virus sweeping across the planet scientists racing to try and understand it then stop it then imagine a new tool enabling all those scientists via the web to see the minute structure of that virus within minutes it's a question that concerns these scientists and engineers in moscow we should know

all about the viral particle. keith you were given all the knowledge about the viral particle if it were possible. to develop in your way. we sure will defeat of the virus. the device is called a scanning probe microscope and they've existed for some time in many countries but this team has zoomed in on a novel potential this professor from a university in faraway italy isn't just able to talk about the microscope online using special software he can actually control it program with our program can be connected to any microscope in any part of the world and it's just one click away that the benefits of being able to scan images via the internet are becoming ever clearer doctors can share information about newly discovered viruses or bacteria as they're scanned and it's also helping to instruct students the world over. it takes only one microscope and each student can work at computers and at the same time

observe all the processes going on in real time a lot of course it's not all seen through rose tinted lens so making something is precise requires top quality components and laser accurate engineering coming out today for thirty thousand dollars a piece and the teams efforts to keep the cost of the microscope down and get it sold a regular frustration rushes bloated bureaucracy. and if so difficult for law firm with part time. either our product to another country or a theory that if they are part of that i still hope some other ones labs can start cooperating in how they see the world of the very small it could bring big changes to the worlds of medicine and science. in this and other machines the team hopes to build over three hundred microscopes every year by two thousand and fifteen they want them accurate they want them affordable and they want them into connected by

the internet so the team and their customers will be watching this space very closely indeed tom watson r.t. moscow. with our stories are updated twenty four hours a day at r.t. dot com there's plenty more video news and analysis there too let's take a quick look the new clear soon for our threat may be gone but the reminders remain top moscow bunker is now sharing tourists close the world came to annihilation. watch the american divorce see these choosing polities over pain the same break windows to teaching them to build their edges stories and a lot more got caught and. brought. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images.

from the streets of kandahar. operations ruled the day. stay with us the business news is up next with you. hello and a very warm welcome to the business news twenty eleven may become a revolutionary year for russia's finances and vicious privatization program that starts this year promises to become the largest since the post soviet selloff in the ninety's and it's going hand in hand with plans to make moscow an international financial hub. takes up the story. at the start of last year russia was the owner of thirty five hundred seventeen federal state dinners for enterprises and a shareholder of twenty nine hundred fifty joint stock companies if the goal is to

sell off state property within the next three years goes to plan the russian government will release one hundred fourteen state enterprises and another eight hundred nine stock companies into private hands including to stakes in ten largest firms the expected proceeds from the sell off in the top thirty billion dollars and it's not just about the possibility to tackle budget deficit which is the government's first priority the second one is actually be crazy garments our ownership of the economy increases transparency. for governance and to make it much more competitive in the first deal is the perspective sale of up to thirty five point five percent in state land v.t. b. which the government hopes to complete by early two thousand and eleven among the other companies being mooted for the purposes asian aros nearest russian railways is burbank roads hydro and south come forward in most cases the gun plans to retain a controlling stake at least in the initial stage however it astounds the need to be flexible and wish them with a beautician we can go further and sell the controlling stake so in the majority of

companies we can lower the state's share to twenty five percent plus one this flexibility will be key to winning investors given the amount of deals expected outside russia and also within russia this year which will make for other tough competition the preservation programs which are going to be implemented in poland in turkey china is one of the biggest assurance in emerging market as we all know and also let's not forget the russian private sector which pre-crisis has been issuing twenty to twenty billion dollars worth of paper a year although many questions still have real answers regarding this some vicious privatization one thing is for certain the desire to make it happen. given good business r.c. . in the past here was a game of two hobs for the russian markets the head of strategy at u.b.s. in moscow explains how investor attitudes changed. two thousand suntanned was very

difficult here for the russian equity markets it was characterized by increased volatility that was a function of what has been happening globally like concerns about sovereign defaults concerns about we capitalization of european banks in the second half the situation started getting bad with. certain areas like investment growth and that translated in russia performing quite significantly the rest of the remaining emerging market universe but south stream gas pipeline project aimed at strengthening european energy security is on track and should be on line by twenty fifteen south stream will open a new route to solve an e.u. markets for russian gas across the black sea in addition to the current route through ukraine the head of sales trends been given business r.t. an update on progress. we are working on the. feasibility studies now in various places along the approach the feasibility study of shore is

very far ahead is in many respects already completed then they are defeated building two studies on shore and the other important steps that we are on the taking right now is of course working on the shareholder remains we have to make sure that all the shareholders agree on how to structure the project commercially and financially we're having discussions now also with the european commission our main point in these discussions is of course the commission and you should make sure that this project has the same opportunity and is not in any way disadvantaged as potential other projects. gold was a clear medal winner in twenty ten beating all records and delivering a thirty percent return for investors russia has the world's second largest gold

reserves but it's only ranked fifth in terms of production that gives russian miners some of the best growth profiles in the industry as sort of a severe off from deutsche bank russia told r.t. but it's all performed poorly michael i think. there's a bit of bush around creditable price war increased because our board might be used not only as safe michael but also you know industrial production projects that are those if used for more in the industrial production it will generate investor of the month or this model and also produce has a lot before interest from the long term project but the problem is when the excuse next year the company will make it through supply and then it will spark new us to get us to the stock. that's all we have time for now you can always get more stories on our website r.t. dot com slash business.