accessibility is is faster so then that's that's really good for what china is aiming at and i think the there's however there's a flipside to that these digital economy also means that everybody is inside the net the information out of china and the online and he has to leave open the possibility for the government to look into what what is happening so in short everyone who uses the digital technology in the economy means their names addresses phone numbers bank account all of those are are within the control system of of china so but you know people are happy with it so it's not it's not a problem for the public well it's a little they prefer that they prefer cheaper prices accept accessibility rather

than less control let's talk a little bit more about that flipside the tight control. over the internet and what people can access and so on because china has made it very clear that it wants to do this on its own terms but if if you want to become a technology powerhouse when it went when innovation thrives on the free exchange of ideas is that sort of policy helpful. well it is this is like. a story that is in process because as you know when you go to the digital digital technology this is both ways is in and out so you have to allow information to come in and also for your own people to communicate outside so this is a kind of war that is still happening because in the middle is as i said the security interests that china thinks it is it has to take control of so it's going to

be that story is going to be like that still for the years to come. digital technology is part of the globalization that china is is doing but globalization in measured terms in china's terms and as it continues to grow do you think china will eventually overtake the u.s. as the world's biggest economy and if so when. i think it's quite soon i would say well the estimate is by two thousand and twenty well the problem we have in the world now is that you have europe that is doing delaying in terms of economic growth you have an uncertain economic growth taking place in the u.s. you have japan that is just you know kind of muddling through so then that gives all benefit to china so this is this is like if europe was if we are talking of fifteen years ago twenty years ago then china would would not be in the same

position at the moment but because we see that how what is the situation in the in the u.s. in south america in europe and then that this makes china take up fill in the blanks as people say good to speak with you ruben monday july in hong kong thank you. now imagine a machine that's broken through the barriers of human knowledge while it's here this week an artificial neural network designed by google's deep mind mastered the ancient chinese board game of go but this is cimon is not about the board game previous ai's were able to win by training on thousands of games played by humans the latest version was able to teach itself google says the ai which is known as alpha go zero could have a number of uses and why fight technology has been around since the turn of the century but could it be in need of some fine tuning this week researchers

discovered a network floor that allows hackers to spy on uses it affects mobiles laptops and other connected devices and tech companies have yet to release patches to fix the problem all right still to come on counting the cost why some people in the zambian town of cab way feel like they're being slowly poisoned. first there was plenty of speculation over saudi aramco this week the kingdom of saudi arabia says its plan for what might be the world's biggest stock market listing is still on track for twenty eighteen and this comes on reports the giant state owned oil producer might swamp the initial public offering in favor of private share place in saudi arabian oil company as it's also known has also allegedly received an offer from china to directly buy up to five percent saudi arabia wants to use the money from the sale to diversify its economy away from oil

. aerospace giant airbus has snapped up a majority stake in canada's bond body a c. series jet rescue deal will be great news for one body a staff in northern ireland where at least a thousand people work on these planes and budget overruns for the c. series almost pushed one body into bankruptcy two years ago and it's been the subject of a trade route with the u.s. something it now hopes to avoid the organization for economic co-operation and development has painted a very gloomy picture if the u.k. crashes out of the e.u. without a deal on brakes in paris based think tanks as a disorderly brags it could bring credit ratings downgrade and new lows for sterling but it says reversing briggs it would significantly boost britain's economy or that warning from the o.e.c.d. comes as many businesses across the u.k. and europe are struggling to prepare for brakes it that's because they simply don't

know what it's going to look like huge uncertainties remain how will it impact the border between northern ireland which is part of the u.k. and republic of ireland which is in the e.u. for example and the clock is ticking the worry is that the u.k. will crash out of the european union without a deal and you summit in brussels was held this week to review the progress so far german chancellor angela merkel tried to send a positive signal about the future of a possible agreement. but yes most of the fight is the. view both sides must work hard we must be transparent over our conclusions especially over the partnerships a person might want but not yet fully clear on that but it will happen it will happen within the required time frame and we all know when that will end i want an agreement and not some unpredictable solution we're working very intensively on that let's speak now to simon french in london he is the chief economist with london based primer gordon and co thanks very much for being with us now i want to

ask you first of all how likely we've had a lot of talk this week about the possibility of a no deal. yet how likely is that and what impact would that have on the u.k. economy and europe's economy i think it's a likelihood that is growing all the time it's very difficult to put an exact. percentage on it but i think two things are very clear at the moment first of all that the government is struggling to get enough votes here in the u.k. to pass only deal sonority eventually brokers and even before we get to that stage conversations with their twenty seven partners aren't going particularly well and therefore we expect the decision on which to go to the next phase to be deferred from this october's meeting to december's meeting terms of what a no deal scenario would do i think we've been quite clear for more than a year now alberta the impact will be significant in terms of u.k. g.d.p. estimates of about four to six percent of g.d.p.

over a fifteen year period and the o.e.c.d. has been giving some some dire warnings about the economic impact of bragg's it and that's fueling the other side. in their quest to stop break zero or at least reverse it how how likely is that at this point i think it is unwind cleaver the warnings of the o.e.c.d. will be who do it i think what is more likely is that as we head towards the cliff edge in markets. two nineteen of the point of which the u.k. leaves the european union that the government looks to really test whether the general public one to go through with this and i think the odds are now increasing that it may test public opinion through a second referendum so i think it is more likely these warnings will be used to justify that test of public opinion rather than deliver a u. turn at this stage in the political cycle and there are of course the ongoing talks

over what will become of the u.k. border with ireland and by extension northern ireland's. border with that and how that is going to be negotiated they seem to be. on different wavelengths on on this the u.k. and say saying that the priorities are all out of sequence the e.u. and ireland a say no that's not the case what do you think going to happen there yes so just for some of your viewers your monitor similarly the process the u.s. led set out three parameters of the u.k. in the must agree on before they can move to the future trade relationship one of those is northern ireland on the island border and thus far the u.k. government has said look we do not want to risk to return to a hard border between those two parts of the island of ireland and but they are saying that without a conversation on what the new customs and trading arrangement looks like after

twenty nineteen and not sufficient progress could be made it's a it's a chicken and egg scenario if you like and i think they will be looking to the european union to open up a little bit of a discussion around what the future state looks like. three in order for the discussions on the irish border to be progressed because those have been one of the most difficult along with the money part of the negotiations and when you look at as well what is happening in spain right now and the showdown there of catalonia as demand for independence and what could happen there. the talks of a break zip the don't seem to be going anywhere at this point it's like it's a very turbulent time in europe right now what impact is all of that having on the continent well it has to be said from an economic standpoint actually most of the continent of europe has cast off the risks both of praxiteles catalunya and independence the recent elections in germany france and the forthcoming one in

italy don't appear to have impacted growth at all if anything growth is actually accelerating but ari i think it's important not to dismiss what are the factors driving the cattle an issue the issues of bracks it issues that came to the fore in the french and german elections this is a electorates that are uncomfortable with their economic lot with the impacts of globalization and they will continually vote for parties who are looking to bring economic control back to a a more local jurisdiction be that in catalonia be that in the u.k. i think it's a european a global phenomenon but thus far it has to be said economic growth has proved immune to the politics simon french in london good to speak with you it's my pleasure. awatere ministers from egypt sudan and ethiopia are gathering to discuss how africa's largest hydro dam will impact access to the river nile the grand ethiopian renascence dam is sixty percent complete and has yet to go into operation

the four point eight billion dollar megaproject near the sudanese border was launched in april twenty eleventh nearly a quarter of a billion people rely on the gnarls waters its base in covers eleven countries from tanzania and sudan up to egypt but egypt and sudan claim exclusive rights to its use and object to anything that might affect the river ethiopia disagrees most of egypt's nar water originates in ethiopia and it wants the four point eight billion dollar dam to help boost its own economy. well joining us now from portland oregon is calling for and calling is a professor and chair of physical geography at the u.k. based nottingham university thanks very much for being with us calling i want to ask you first of all what do you see as the potential impact of this dam not only on ethiopia but on the downstream countries sudan and egypt the building of a great dam. is bound to have impacts both locally and throughout the the river

system it's all one joined up system however the way that it's done and the way that it's built and the way that it's failed in the way that it's managed kind of. massively reduced those impacts and if the addition of another dam to to a river is done in a coordinated fashion with the existing dams and water resource development then actually the addition of a time can be beneficial so it's all in the way that you do it and the way that you operate the time afterwards and is it being done right here is it being done in a coordinated fashion. in the case of the of the good or the the ground if you o.p.m. renascence time. as somebody who's not directly involved in the project it's quite hard to tell because the reports that were promised about exactly how the dam would

be done the technical detail simply isn't available so it depends really on on what you can read in the media and the scraps of information that come out. and and on that basis it looks as if it could be being done correctly. but that is a matter really of trust whether you believe the international panel of experts who are advising the ethiopian government whether you trust the theo p. and build is that the time to do what they. well what they said they're going to do but egypt has of course been crying foul about this for some time saying that this dam would reduce what he sees as its traditional share of the waters and i appreciate that a lot of this is based on the information that's that's out there they justified in that concern well justifiably nervous certainly i think

any country in egypt's position would have concerns about development of a major water resource upstream they are they downstream right piri and to some extent. they don't have control over what happens upstream of them so i think justified to be nervous but they must enter into full dialogue with sudan with ethiopia indeed with the other countries in the nile basin because that's the only way that can be managed in a coordinated fashion to the benefit of all the nations and that has to be the goal here and i was a fantastic water resource it's being exploited for not just centuries but millenia that's going to go on into the future at a time of increased floor to stress because of climate change and if the nations and their engineers and technical experts work together then then i think fear is

although understandable it will turn out to be unnecessary so do you see other areas in the world then went with similar dynamics playing out and where we could possibly see what i want to refer to as water walls. well i think that unfortunately is a distinct possibility but it doesn't have to be that way so it to be only surrounded in stress and negative i'd rather stress the positive. great rivers like the me kong have the mekong river. commission and the nations of the mekong basin collaborate through the mekong river commission not because they're bound by law but because they recognize it's a sensible thing to do to to support development of countries that badly need that and that means not necessarily compromise but finding points where there's mutual agreement where there's a shared vision of a secure water future for the for the basin good to speak with you calling for

joining us there from portland oregon thank you thank you finally is zambia's economy was built on mining but more than a century later children are feeling the after effects of years of toxins polluting the environment i don't want to report. in the notice of sunshine meyer looked a little small for his age after blood tests were done a nurse at the clinic gave her the bad news he's suffering from lead poisoning. his condition hasn't changed he sometimes vomits has diarrhea and he's often tired the clinic doesn't have the right drugs last time i got medication for him was in january fled is a new a toxin that's particularly dangerous to children they often ingest the poison dust while playing or doing chores a study done by the world back in twenty eleven found that in a fifty communities here led in the soil was about ten times the u.s. safety limit some children haven't been tested so there are no official figures of

how many are sick but community leaders say they know decades of mining lead and zinc have left a toxic legacy. very stringent for instance. that school is quite poor and. there is really hard to believe. the warning signs don't seem to scare away the poor and desperate is still a valuable commodity used around the world the locals call the spit black mountain they can dig for hours looking for lead to sell they say there is no other work when the mine close in one thousand nine hundred for many people lost their jobs gavin is awesome make ends meet even if it's dangerous work. angels are working with the government to clean up or take to communities since twenty fifteen more than one hundred homes have had contaminated soil replaced with clean soil get

remember put it in the ground put some gravel and then they get a block so put it on top and plant grass so that the membrane only allows water to go downwards and applauds and then there's no dust environmental health experts say after more than a century of mining camp will never be a live free town is too late for that but getting as many people as possible away from the exposure could help make this former mining town a little bit safer for future generations. that is our show for this week remember you can get in touch with us by tweeting me at has him and use the hash tag a.j.c. to see when you do or drop us an e-mail counting the cost that al jazeera dot net is our address but there's more for you online at al-jazeera dot com slash c t c that will take you straight to our page which has individual reports links and entire episodes from catch up on. that is it for this edition of counting the cost and has a secret from the whole team here thanks for joining us the news on al-jazeera is

next. as we embrace new technologies rarely do we stop to ask what is the price of this progress what happened was he was started getting sick but there was a small group of people that began to think that maybe this was really want especially in a job an investigation reveals how even the smallest devices deadly environmental and health costs we think ok will send our us to china but we have to remember that air pollution traps around death by design at this time on al jazeera november on al-jazeera. in

a historic visit the pope will travel to me and mine and bangladesh bringing more focus to the plight of there and jeff. a new six part series about extraordinary lives of the common people from across to me. as the u.s. backs away from the paris climate agreement well diplomats will be gathering in bonn to restate that commitment. from the heart of asia one when east brings captivating stories and award winning film. as tensions on the korean peninsula remain high president trump mbox in a five nation tour to east asia november on al-jazeera.