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the rescue operation continues to free their remaining t. shirts. case but the progress is being hunted by poor weather conditions. for us cashing in on conflict more than half of americans oppose their country's wars we can buy anything that would deal a blow to business for some corporate giants. the big future facing britain's elderly and the counter forced to retire is pensions and interest rates for them to

keep up with the rising cost of living. for all costing around the world and around the clock says he will straight to our top story now two russian ice breaking ships are stuck to the scorching a refrigerator vessel which has been stranded in frozen waters off russia's far east for almost two weeks because among several vessels that became trapped in the ice well that now leaves a supply ship with three hundred crew stuck on board as the next to be freed. is across the latest developments. we need of the few icebreakers been working since the early hours of the morning to free up these remaining t.v. shots in the eye in the bay now they're currently telling the small if they see the refrigerator vessel trying to get in

a right that we have heard that they're having some difficulties of these extreme weather conditions it's incredibly thick they've had. a very very poor visibility and a russian federal fishing agency has had a press conference that the two icebreakers and now trying. change up the positions to find another way of trying to break through this they call ice and then when they can finally take the smaller vessel to safety they'll come back and get the love supply ship is going to have a three hundred crew on board we can him or know from that press conference. the ships will sail clips together towards the area ruth said no use for another thirty five miles. ten to twelve hours later it's very difficult to make any. then both lunch break as we return to the supply ship. we're going to shift lord so close as you heard he has to go that supply ship waiting for the ice break is to get the smaller vessel to safety and then to come back and the free them up as well

the three hundred three ohm boat but now we know the crew is safe they've got plenty to feed no more to supply so they have an incredibly long time twelve days now just to recap what happened with the three vessels originally the food in the help i understand the thirtieth then later last week we had a couple moshe's get stuck in the ice so the ice breakers be working to free them up they managed to free three of them and that towing the full thought now and then the hostage gave back for the first one but as he said progress really being slayed down by the extreme weather conditions that we've seen this economy where these vessels have been shut that's a big a very dangerous marina area anyway it is very clear it was the areas we know we've had some reports that there are going to be helicopters looking over the area to try and get the lay of that ice and just how bad the situation is but we know that

at the may move with the extreme temperatures and the go both when this is affected the area west unusual and has resulted in these vessels being shut as some officials have said that possibly it will be tomorrow that these ships could get freed up we know that there's going to be further updates to morrow morning on. so there really they're going to be looking to these weather conditions hoping that they'll eat up a bit and these ice breakers can find a way of maneuvering through this incredibly thick lies and hate bringing up these poor creature that we know that twelve days. her first reporting there was still to come how the molecular world has just might hear russian scientists develop powerful internet microscopes and i'm specialist world wide to probe into the tiniest tear. seven hundred twenty five billion dollars that's how much the u.s. plans to spend on its military activity this year it's the world's largest ever defense budget comes amid

a flag economy burgeoning national debt 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 is an entire industry dying on was 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 sixty six billion dollars why is the us committed to staying the course they're all trying for the warre 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 were handed in government contracts in two thousand and eight a president once warned about this industry we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether someone runs on by the military industrial complex

it was fifty years ago than us 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 my. or 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 in some you know particularly the arms companies because they have representation every state and district in the country in many cases they have a 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 heart 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 put a natural gas pipeline 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 them of 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 just 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 through a 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. officers openly voicing concerns over the professional conduct of the country's own forces in afghanistan. says it's been severely challenged during the nine years of war and needs reviewing. what you contributed to these personnel undermining american defense policies abroad. at the national defense university which is the top military madrasi in the united states and michael mullen who is the joint chiefs of staff chairman conducts the soul searching jam session for the military profession the top objective is to spill the guts within 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 doubt the first of them is the

behavior of some lose cannons and the strikers brigade in kandahar because couple of those road warriors so gold sculpture hunters not only have discredited to a large part of the u.s. military abroad and specifically in afghanistan but by their anger from afghan civilians they undermine the u.s. state department democratic finger pointing to the other countries abroad thus on demining the whole least dick and integrated us foreign policy. to britain pension isn't going bankrupt faster than any other group in the country the u.k. insolvency service findings highlight how seriously the sixty five struggling to keep their homes running as costs rise as artie's and more and it reports most 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 there's a new survey shows a different side of old age in britain 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. that coming because nothing done back in again.

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 heart that the consumer credit counseling service helps 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. 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 oh it see. where they took a look at what lies ahead for the world in twenty eleven trends for cost to mentor says there's one thing we can be sure of the beginning of the end for government bank. the reserve of the united states be saw age 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 the chip pan the banks in south korea the banks in the netherlands to credit suisse to broach it back to the banks in ireland and. they gave money even to the banks in canada and the federal reserve gave these no interest or extremely low interest rate loans to corporations

such as general electric obligated six mc donalds for rising and their 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 small i'm reporting requirement that came about from that dog frank bill that was supposed to bring about a new type of financial regulation and it really did and 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 now twenty two year old has been the attempted killing over u.s. congresswoman and other talents of democrats. critically ill after being

shot in the head during a massacre outside a supermarket in the state of ours and the gunman opened fire as a politician voters killing six and injuring a dozen others one of her aides was among the dead what is a nine year old district judge. one of the flight data recorders from the iranian plane which crashed in the country's northwest has been recovered the burning seventy seven it was on route from tehran to the city of rome lying when it came down in heavy snow and fog leaving at least seventy seven people dead and around thirty others injured officials say the bad weather is hampering the recovery operation there but at least five major crashes in the run since two thousand and five the u.s. sanctions being blamed for making it hard to maintain the country's industry. there are more weather warnings for queensland or australia the stricken state and

all rain for causing flash flooding areas the town west of the state capital was deluged killing one woman who was swept away others had to cling to trees and power lines for safety an estimated two hundred thousand people have been affected by the disaster and at least ten people. are there today on our tape peter lavelle's crosstalk guests take on religious writings in their heated debate here's a taste of what's ahead. the underlying foundation of this is the take over of the world. muslims you know has to believe in islam as their illusion and as a state was stamped out of not to live and that the american constitution they are here eventually to replace the american constitution with islamic sharia because no one is allowed to live but and that. i was all done to fly people

and did they believe in islam. this is what mohammad said well thought well that is all that is about all we are not ready for 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 nor is it true in agreement no you have always in the muslim world and in which muslims are way way way in which muslims or either a majority or a minority so i think you're simply taking in that phrase think your perceptions out and trying and you're right and you're trying to universalize it in a way that's not true. you.

want to. be by twelve 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 give them clues to clear views of the tiniest bacteria and i think scientists anywhere in the world to take a look at this time bought and discovered this by christmas she needs to face 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 the scientists and engineers in moscow we should know all about the viral particle if you were given all the knowledge of all of the viral

particles 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 him for 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 a complete is and at the same time as they have all the processes going on in real time a lot of course it's not all seen through rose tinted lens making something this

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 of russia's bloated bureaucracy. he thought difficult. last thing with part time. off by that power project to another country or a theory that is part of that i still hope some of that warm slabs. construct 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. but our stories are dated twenty four hours a day at r.t. dot com and plenty more video news and analysis there to take a quick look nuclear superpower threat may be gone the mind is still here today we tour moscow bunker which is now showing tourists how close the world came to an animation. and watch the american divorcing these troops in qualities of pain is a very close to reaching their miserable marriages these stories and more power to dot com and on you tube try to write no. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. operations are all.

next on the business news with you the bucket. hello and a very warm welcome to the business news twenty eleven may become a revolutionary year for russia's finances and dishes 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 or 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 stakes in ten largest firms the expected proceeds from the sell off make 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 big grazer garments our ownership of the economy in previous transparency. for governments and to make it much more competitive in the first deal is the prospective 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 position our russian railways is burbank the roads hydro and so i've come for in most cases the gun plans to retain a controlling stake at least in the initial stage however it does stems 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 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 privatization programs which are going to be implemented in poland in turkey china is one of the biggest assuras in emerging markets as we all know and also let's not forget the russian private sector which pre-crisis has been issuing twenty to twenty five billion dollars worth of paper a year although many questions still have no answers regarding this some vicious privatization one thing is for certain the desire to make it happen. business our city. the past year was a game of two harv's for the russian markets the head of strategy as you b.s. in moscow explains how investor attitudes changed. two thousand it 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 translated in russia performing quite significantly the rest of the remaining emerging market universe. the 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 in giving business r.t. an update on progress. we are working on the. feasibility studies now in various places and on approach the feasibility study sure is very

far ahead is in many respects already completed then they are defeated basically studies on shore the other important steps that we are on the taking right now is of course working on the shareholder agreements we have to make sure that all the shareholders agree on how to structure the project commercially and financially we're having discussions no 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 rate there so far 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.