this year alone the german economy run a budget surplus of over fifty billion dollars that's almost three percent of germany's gross domestic product or annual wealth it's the kind of figure that makes other countries either extremely jealous or absolutely furious it was the german government that demanded after the banks started to fall that the european commission impose new rules on countries like greece forcing them to adopt a hugely destructive tax raising powers in return for bailouts and loans a decade on stagnant economy is in huge unemployment levels of what's left the proceeds went to the banks not the people many economists hold germany directly responsible for bankrupting greece it is very anti democratic approach that is something that gives assurance to general politicians that there are rules and that they can be here too and that things will work out but i think that kind of comfort is illusion it is defense germany would argue that if other countries have

behaved in the right way in the first place then there wouldn't have been a problem most of the political class here bears few regrets about driving policies which proved so controversial no absolutely not i think that was the only way the fact that we are successful in all these countries shows that this was the right way and it's like in the it's like in the private sphere. if you don't half debt you are a free man and if you have half debt you have to listen to the persons who gave you the money. the one area which germany has suffered from in recent years has been the rise of far right populism born partly from economics in poor areas but also from anger towards chancellor merkel's generous asylum policies for refugees this week though the german government announced it was devoting billions of euros. to tackle long term unemployment

a certain way of diffusing anger germany is able to make these choices in ways others can only dream about and that is our show for this week if you want to get in touch with us and comment on anything we've seen you can tweet me i'm at a finnigan on twitter please use the hash tag a g c t c when you do or you can drop us a line counting the cost of al-jazeera dot that is our e-mail address as always there's plenty more for you online at al-jazeera dot com slash c.t.c. that'll take you straight to our page there you'll find individual reports links even entire episodes for you to catch up on. but that's it for this edition of counting the cost i'm adrian finnegan for the whole team here in doha thanks for being with us the news on al-jazeera is next.

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demilitarized zone is to be created around syria's province as the turkish and russian president say they've made progress on a plan for syria. doha three one i'm come all santa maria this is the world news from al-jazeera pressure is growing on president trump's pick for the supreme court as a woman who claims sexual assault says she is ready to testify who is beyond the killing of a prominent environmental campaigner the questions linger as a murder trial begins in honduras and a strawberry scare in australia are often needles found in the fruit it's threatening a multimillion dollar industry. so a demilitarized buffer zone has to be created within syria's last rebel held province made these concerns that what any final assault on the problems could look

like the agreement was reached by the russian leader vladimir putin and his turkish counterpart reject tayyip erdogan just in the past hour they spoke. after talks in the russian city of sochi turkish and russian soldiers will patrol the zone which will be around fifteen to twenty kilometers wide the aim is to separate syrian government troops from rebel forces and said all heavy weapons would have to be withdrawn from the zone and what he called radically minded rebels including a lesser front would have to pull out. so we decided to create a demilitarized zone between the rebels and the government by the fifteenth of october this year it will be fifteen to twenty kilometers wide rebels must withdraw from there including al nusra front according to our proposal by the tenth of october heavy artillery must be removed from the tanks of the machinery guns all removed from the stone by opposition forces let's try to make some sense of this with or a challenge now he's live in moscow what's your take on the story created demilitarized

zone they can be no what was it no heavy artillery rebels you know radically minded rebels as they call can be there and that's the safe zone for everyone else. yeah and i think the thing that is abundantly clear from what we heard recently from her to one putin in the last few minutes is that all this talk that we have been engaged in for the past two weeks about an imminent assault on it to clear out the last rebel stronghold there well i think we can shelve all that now that offensive is effectively on hold how long for well we'll have to wait and see but now these two men these two leaders are talking about instead this demilitarized buffer zone fifteen to twenty kilometers deep which would be policed by russian and turkish troops essentially i think this boils down to

a fairly significant diplomatic success for russia tie a burden when he has been voicing his opposition strong opposition for some time now to the assaults on it live and although vladimir putin i think was never particularly enthusiastic about such an assault all indications were that he would have gone through with it by now if it had not been for turkish opposition to it so we are now looking at a very different scenario that is going to be playing out by october fifteenth this buffer zone will be set up and also the two men went on to talk about stop pushing the road connections up and down syria this is something that the the syrian government is we are being told is on board with there are

various things that of course will have to be worked out and as always devil is in the details but this is a very different scenario that we're looking at now for. as to you know this is an area that we had previously been considering which was and this is something that the turkish president had been playing up in recent. announcements and articles that have been written writing except her which was essentially looking at a huge humanitarian catastrophe for adlib now this is going to be a very different thing that is going to be playing out very interesting development thank you for explaining it all read challenge in moscow now south korea's president in is traveling to pyongyang in order to kick start a stalled peace process is aim to convince the north's leader kim jong un to give up his nuclear weapons it is however being somewhat overshadowed right now by a u.n.

security council meeting in new york the u.s. called for the meeting saying was urgently needed to discuss the country's undermining sanctions on north korea let's check in with james bays our diplomatic editor at the united nations when we say countries undermining it who are they pointing the finger at one country in particular was singled out by the u.s. in a particularly fahri security council meeting and that country is russia the key haley saying that russia is cheating on the sanctions on north korea saying this in an open meeting open chamber of the u.n. security council saying it was a concern a plan by the russians they were just turning a blind eye this was a systemic plan by the russians to thwart the sanctions let's listen to ambassador nikki haley. why after voting for sanctions for eleven different times

is russia now backing away from we know the answer it's because russia has been cheating. and now they've been caught. despite its repeated support for u.n. sanctions russia is actively working to undermine the enforcement of the security council sanctions on north korea james i think i'm right in saying that the u.s. is the current rotating president of the security council really seems that they're using that opportunity to its fullest at the moment a lot of these extra things being cold there was something that stephan demister recently where he was going to say it in private but no they said we wanted in public the u.s. is really using this opportunity certainly trying to use the opportunity of their presidency and as you say trying to make some of these issues and disagreements very public this is notable though we have a lot of disagreements in the security council between the u.s.

and russia all issues but never before on north korea north korea is an issue that has have unity in the past that's why they've been able to get through the very very tough sanctions on north korea that unity in the last couple of hours has completely broken down very interesting james bays is that diplomatic editor at the u.n. or the man who president trying once as his pick on the u.s. supreme court is coming under increasing pressure over a sexual abuse allegation there are calls for brett kavanaugh his confirmation hearing to be delayed for the f.b.i. to reopen background checks the woman who accuses him of assault also says she's now willing to testify more from patty. if brett kavanaugh is confirmed he will change the highest court for a generation he will cement it as solidly conservative it's a high stakes nomination that has been controversial from the beginning with republicans refusing to hand over hundreds of thousands of documents from his long

legal career this nomination is going to be tainted it will be stain. by a badly broken process that has shattered the norms despite that in just days it was expected he would get past the first vote and be on his way to final confirmation until this the washington post has a story about what one woman alleges kavanah did to her in high school christine bleakley ford going public the post writes well his friend watched she said cavanagh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one piece bathing suit and the clothing she were over it when she tried to scream she said he put his hand over her mouth i thought he might inadvertently kill me said ford she managed to escape and she even passed a lie detector test about the incident which kevin has denied so far frankly your

answer has been ambiguous there are calls to bring him back before the senate the last time that happened it was clarence thomas absolutely not the senator nominated to the court when anita hill came forward and accused him of sexual harassment he was confirmed anyway many women were angry in the u.s. after the thomas confirmation it's all record number of women run for office since then we've seen the election of u.s. president donald trump the woman's marks the me too movement again another record breaking number of women running for office now the cavanagh confirmation really just stoke the anger that's already out there the politicians are well aware of that with less than two months to go till congressional elections now the republicans who control the senate have just days to decide if they should ignore the allegations and risk a backlash or call for new hearings potentially risking their nominee patty culhane al-jazeera washington mall from our white house correspondent kimberly halkett now

kimberly realistically is there any chance this confirmation could be delayed or is that just the what the democrats want. no it definitely could be delayed and that is what is developing at this hour right now we have a vigorous defending of the nomination by the white house we are told that brett kavanaugh has been here on the white house grounds at some point spotted by a number of reporters i cannot confirm that independently but that is being widely reported it's not clear if he's left but certainly he has issued a statement through the white house saying that this is completely false in terms of the allegations the white house for its part is standing behind the nomination of brett kavanaugh as the republican chair of the senate judiciary committee where this nomination needs to be voted on before it can go to the full senate for a vote he is also saying that he is hoping to get to the bottom of this and wants to work through this and listen to the accusations but is only at this point

willing to do that through telephone calls but i can tell you that that may not sit well with the ten democrats on that committee as well as one republican republican jeff flake an adversary of donald trump they say that in fact she should have the opportunity to speak in front of that committee and to tell her story so with every passing hour it appears that this is much more in jeopardy than say late last week when this accuser was anonymous and many people were saying that this is nothing more than eleventh hour smear ok has well i don't think i've seen anything from donald trump specifically on this allegation but has he spoken about the cavanagh nomination much at all because there's been plenty of controversy already about how many documents were given with regards to his background and what information was being given out. well there's no question that this is a pivotal nomination and this is a nomination that democrats said even before this process began that they were going to vigorously oppose because they feel that this could shape the court in

a direction they do not want to see the united states go so we saw the the ranking democrat the senior senator in the u.s. senate saying that in fact he would oppose this with the socially every fiber of his being as is the paraphrase on the other side we have conservative seeing this is one of the reasons that they voted for donald trump seeing this as nothing more than a smear tactic this was a top priority and so well this could potentially be rail this nomination because if he were to withdraw his name there would be no time before the congressional elections to push another nominee through so what could happen if that were to occur is that you could see these elections in november become even more pivotal given the fact that not only do we expect that democrats are going to come out in full force to push back against the trauma genda but you would see conservatives doing the same saying that the sole reason that they need to come out in full force

and support republicans in the legislature is the fact that they need to see backing for these conservative appointments so that they can see the court go decidedly conservative ok thank you for all of that can really help at the white house the international criminal court has fined former vice president of democratic republic of congo three hundred fifty thousand dollars for bribing witnesses during his war crimes trial then the sentence was reduced to zero jews or the years already served he was acquitted of war crimes so on appeal back in june and has been barred from standing in december's presidential election as well more from me in brussels. the international criminal court has sentenced. to twelve months in jail and fined him three hundred fifty thousand dollars but the court said that this sentence should be considered already served after bamber spent ten years in jail in the hague on earlier charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out by his movement for the liberation of congo in the central

african republic in the early tea thousands that only a convention conviction was quashed in june allowing him to be able to return back to the d r c to bounce a presidential bid but the electoral committee of the d r c said that he should be prevented from standing as president while this particular verdict was pending well now that the verdict has been given now that it has been considered already served there is in theory nothing stopping bemba from returning to the d r c to be able to mount a presidential bid but he is one of four opposition leaders who have been prevented from challenging the current leadership the possibility for violence should he be prevented from standing is very high indeed ever since.