no matter who's in government. and even if the decks government can start the recovery process those living here at the bottom of the social ladder will be the last to benefit. joining us now from london is edward glossop edward is the last of america economist at capital economics edward good to have you with us on counting the cost again if the incoming administration of brazil can't fix the system is this going to lead to a financial crisis well i think it's it's probably not really it's a financial crisis i mean i think obviously. argentina's fiscal crisis is much more acute because the government has large effects debts but in brazil is case a lot of the government's debt is held in local currencies which really limits the risks it took about argentina's economy the problems how important though is brazil to latin america's economy and even to the global economy was by far the biggest country in the region but i think it's worth noting actually that brazil is

fundamentally quite a closed economy so it's worth noting the rest of the region can still do relatively well in terms of economic growth even if brazil is stuck in a slump so what needs to be done to put brazil's economy back on track well i think the main thing that investors are looking for is pension reform and deep fiscal reform i think there needs to be a big pension reform that president tanner struggle to push through and i think future governments will struggle to push this through to because it's highly unpopular with the electorate and also the reform requires three fifth's majority in congress and whistles congress is it must be five men to this twenty political parties in there is going to be very difficult to push that kind of unpopular form through congress ok so if they can't get pension reform what else can they get through where they can probably get through some spending cuts which will help to narrow the budget deficit and type things over if you like for that in the coming years but sooner or later. you need some structural fiscal reform to really bring

in that budget deficit a lot you know. to sustainable levels of you know two three percent of g.d.p. and that looks very unlikely without crisis further down the line brazil of course the world's biggest producer of coffee and sugar water prospects for commodities growth helping the brazilian economy yes good question i mean i think brazil is fundamentally a commodity producer obviously i would cultural prices will play a role in determining brazil's terms of trade which therefore plays a big role and how well the economy is doing overall in terms of its domestic demand and a couple economics we we probably see commodity prices falling back a bit from here which will probably filter through into a week ago from brazil over the coming years it will be added headwind not just for brazil but for the rest of the economy for the region too because latin america is hard and then on commodities and given that the. the the almost universal ownership

of mobile phones the use of digital technology facebook and twitter can the digital economy in brazil help to bring it out of to pull it out of recession. possibly i mean it seems very unlikely i think what we see in places like brazil is. things like the digital economy are very much. will play in future a much bigger role in places like china in asia where as i said before investment rates are very high so these economies are better placed to actually invest in this new technology in the digital economy which can therefore help these columnist produce stronger growth in places like brazil you really need to get overall economy investment in order to really reach the fruits of the digital economy and with things like. the business environment is still quite bad and the pension system is very generous which means that domestic savings are very low there's no

incentive to save domestically and therefore the investment rate in the economy is too low so i think that this issue economy will obviously in growing importance in brazil but it's not going to make a driver of growth anytime soon or of here's the rub as a lot of america economist are you optimistic about the prospects for brazil in the short to medium term over the next year i think the cyclical recovery probably has further to run i mean we look at the business and consumer confidence indicator is still points and poor's not should help domestic demand to stay strong over the next three to six months or so beyond say probably more bearish the most on the prospects potential growth is probably around two percent which is very weak for for an emerging market or brazil size and it was all income level it would be good to talk to you but he thanks indeed for being with us. well as you're hearing the brazilians a pretty active on social media brazil is facebook's third biggest market whatsapp

says it has one hundred twenty million users in a country of two hundred million people online platforms keen to protect themselves have stepped up deletion of fake accounts in brazil bought our computer programs which can be automated to carry out tasks we use them in search engines but they're also used to spread false information and to mimic human uses online unlist say that the twenty eighteen election in brazil will be an important reference point for the country and its relationship with social media still to come on counting the cost the tax man cometh find out what a chinese film star called been bring us president donald trump have in common. but first one of america's largest employers is raising pay for its workers amazon says its workers in the u.s. will be paid a minimum of fifteen dollars an hour from next month and workers in the u.k. will also get a raise now in the past the company has been criticized for its labor practices

including underpaying workers thirty kohei and reports. america has a problem the divide between those with the least and those with the most is growing and the gap is just getting wider the economy is doing well but wages are not rising that's due to stick might soon see a bump one of america's largest employers amazon has announced that everyone who helped send the smiling boxes around the country will soon be paid more at a minimum fifteen dollars an hour more than double the national minimum wage it's not cheap it's going to cost them a billion dollars i think per year it's not that they're able to raise prices or pass that through to customers this is something their shareholders are going to fund but i think that a lot of amazon shareholders think this is the right thing to do that's what amazon said was behind the move it was the right thing to do but it's also facing a lot of criticism in large part because of its founder jeff bezos he is the

richest man in the world worth one hundred sixty five billion dollars breaking that down he makes about two hundred seventy five million dollars each and every day and amazon is hugely profitable in the second quarter of this year it had a profit of two point five billion dollars so we can afford the raises and with low unemployment it might have to pay more to get enough workers to move their merchandise still the raise is being praised by amazon's toughest critics what mr bay's host today has done is not only enormously important for amazon's hundreds of thousands of employees it could well be and i think it will be a shot heard around the world not every economist thinks pay workers more will actually help decrease income inequality on the one hand yes workers in amazon will benefit from this this increase in basic pay but in the longer term amazon is

exactly the type of company which we don't match and would. vesting automation i would be much more difficult for other companies traditional retailers to match this kind of offer america can often seem like two different countries divided between the haves and have nots economists will be watching to see if amazon's move does anything to heal the divide. now to the middle east where yemen's southern separatists of called for more demonstrations over the collapse of the country's currency the southern transitional council is piling the pressure on president rubber months for hadi they blame him for the economic collapse after a four year war with with the rebels and as the as bernard smith reports now from djibouti. economic collapse rather than the war against the who thing is now becoming the biggest short term threat to the stability of yemen's government across the south there been protests against the fall in the value of the currency

of the loss of a lot of saudis war in yemen is seriously affecting us we've not been paid properly for the last three years we can't find any other way to get by under us law that diesels up to eight hundred dollars for twenty liters when it was nine dollars before cooking gas is nine dollars for a catheter and is impossible to find the only fuel you can get is on the black market the government had been printing more money to try and keep cash flowing but there's been no increase in exports and not in the horn currency reserves to support the increased supply now the saudi arabian government has given the central bank two hundred million dollars to stabilize the rio and amount of money and when you print more money must be matched by hard currencies in market if you don't and does nothing to hold the value of our damaged currency and decision paused in yemen preventing exports from liberated provinces also damages they're going to me these government failures have caused an economic collapse. these protests seem to have been spontaneous but now the leadership of the southern transition council the

s.t.c. is organizing more demonstrations for four years a saudi u.a.e. coalition supporting the internationally recognized government of president robert mansoor hardy has been fighting who the rebels but the s.t.c. backed by the u.a.e. wants independence for southern yemen that's rejected by president hardy oh against this backdrop of growing protests the u.n. special envoy for yemen has arrived in abu dhabi marching gryphus is trying to arrange talks between the yemeni government and the. the separatist leader. is also there and if there are any talks he also wants a seat at the table. drug company and. nostrum pharmaceuticals has hiked the price of a sixty five year old antibiotic mixture by up to four hundred percent to two thousand dollars a bottle austrians wasn't the only price hike last month it was one of sixty according

to analysts of wells fargo drug price hikes of essential medicines coming out of political scrutiny from china to the u.s. remember fabro martin. farmer broke became infamous back in twenty fifteen the former c.e.o. of curing pharmaceuticals raise the price of an aids drug from thirteen dollars fifty to seven hundred fifty dollars a tablet sparking a huge backlash the reality is that drug makers can boost prices so that they and middlemen can make bigger profits while developing a drug is estimated to cost around two billion dollars but with advances in artificial intelligence some are saying that those metrics could change and should the consumer really have to pay those costs well most expensive drugs are those that treat the rarer diseases in the u.k. n.h.s. spending on drugs is rising at five times the rate of its budget according to the king's fund think tank the cost of cancer drugs in china was highlighted recently

by the chinese film dying to survive and it's becoming a political issue too in the u.s. with president donald trump putting pressure on companies like pfizer to lower prices for lifesaving prescription drugs. joining us now from london is good stuff and the ghost of a senior director and vice president within the life sciences group i chest market good to have you with us who decides on the pricing of a new drug is is there a world body that decides what's fair and what isn't a very good question or not not really you know so it really depends on the country that you're talking about each country has its own health care system its own health care budget and by extension its own system of. charging or deciding on what a new treatment should be priced at and what is a fair level so in many many countries it's a very very heavily regulated market and very very difficult to charge well i guess

what you would call excessive prices but then other markets have a very different health care system and they let the free market decide a little bit more how or what the fair price for this is them is and in which case there's a multiple layers of actors who decide on the prize starting with the pharmaceutical company itself you know. proposing a price and then having payers insurance companies and other bodies that can then weigh end to decide whether this is actually a fair price or not and then there can be a negotiation based on that can you give us any any specific examples where that where that actually happens. i'm sure you know i don't we don't want to become a bit too u.k. centric but for example in the u.k. there is a very lengthy process although actually the government has and short to try to quicken that process and actually some of the recent new innovative treatments have come to the u.k. a little bit quicker than that than usual but there is sort of a to and fro discussion between the pharmaceutical company on the one hand who have

also been developing this treatment for let's say ten years or five years and conducted multiple clinical trials and many drugs have failed along the way to be able to get to this potentially one successful one and they have an idea of what they think the price of the treatment should be but then the government obviously on the other hand has its budget that it needs to weigh up against and and it has its own system and its own mechanisms it to decide on what a fair price for the treatment should be and very often there's actually an initial rejection of the price and they go back to the drawing board and they have more discussions and then ultimately they hopefully will reach an agreement on what is a fair treatment or what it is a fair price for this treatment how is the big disrupter digitalisation affecting big pharma with people taking more control of better control of their lives with with computers now able to predict they have simple chances of of succumbing to

certain illnesses or conditions. shouldn't digitization in the price of medicines going down and not up in the future. yes and no i mean the rid of pens on one angle that you're looking at digitalization for short change is almost everything within health care it means that you're able to conduct potentially more efficient clinical trials you're able to more easily identify potential molecules that you can target and mechanisms of action that you can target so and then all the way through to the actual delivery mechanism of a treatment so you actually have digital tablets now for example for a certain. for certain treatments so there's a couple things that you need to look at though over what that results in the final price of the of the of the drug and that can be that the level of innovation that this is actually bringing to treatment potentially digitalization has a very very strong ability to enable clients to adhere to their medications about

through you know digital technology that there are you know apps out there and other technologies that help you and remind you that you need to be taking your medication right now and there's always enormous value and able to be. to be able to do that and you know that can be reflected in the final price of a treatment as well so tech companies will be the driving force of digitalisation of the pharma industry these companies that you know like like old tech companies are going to and data lots of data on therapies on patients and research should we as consumers trust them well we already do that and don't understand you know this is very very sensitive data clearly and again the health care and pharmaceutical sector has extremely strict privacy guarantees around this so you know in order to enter this market or in order to be able to provide technology for this you have to sign up to some of the most you know strict privacy laws that are possible in this case so it's

a trade off for sure but it always is as soon as you're taking a medication or as soon as you're even visiting a doctor you know you are. talking about an illness and there may be underlying symptoms there that are either obvious or not obvious and it's always a trade off or to contract almost between yourself and the data that you're sharing with whoever you're talking to in this case and this is just a new avenue for that and for short clearly that there needs to be strict monitoring of it and there already is in and in most countries around the world you know this is quite a new area and so the so there does the reforms taking place and regulatory clampdowns to make sure that there are that there is protection in place for patients and consumers because not great still keep many thanks david being with us and counting the cost thank you so much that what is it they say there are only two certainties in life death and taxes this week the new york times reported on how us

president donald trump allegedly exploited the tax system to make millions the trump family's tax affairs are now being reviewed by new york state authorities following the allegations of fraud she had pretends he reports. the new york times report goes to the heart of the donald trump origin story that he would tell on the campaign trail that he is a self made man he used a one million dollar loan from his father to make billions of dollars and property worldwide the new york times saying no that's not true he received millions of dollars hundreds of millions of dollars from his father from a very early age and indeed his father would step in when the old traumas fabled dealmaking would run into problems so that's one part of the story the other part is the allegations of illegality and that trump and his family set up sham corporations underestimated the value of their property portfolio in order to evade taxes the criminal liability might face if these allegations are proven true as

past the statute of limitations has passed however civil action is possible new york authorities are already launching an investigation no word from the revenue service to federal authorities although they're so depleted of funding you wonder whether they even have the resources to investigate this sort of thing but donald trump's lawyer insisting that this is all false one hundred percent false highly defamatory he serves finally this week one of china's top actresses has been ordered to pay a one hundred twenty nine million dollars tax bill the actress has appeared in the x. better iron man franchises and is the face of luxury brands in china or china correspondent adrian brown reports. well this is sold to be the biggest ever fine imposed on a chinese movie star eight hundred and ninety two million r m b that's almost one hundred thirty million u.s. dollars that's what the tax authorities say fan being being owed than they say if she pays this money back she will not face criminal prosecution founding being says

she hopes to be able to do just that now thanh being being is not the best known actress here in china but she's certainly one of the best paid earning some forty three million dollars last year she vanished from public view in june and nothing had been heard of her until now she has issued a statement on way bo which is china's equivalent of twitter she says that she's been experiencing unprecedented suffering i'm ashamed of what i've done and she apologized to her many fans now it could well be that the chinese authorities who've been investigating other stars a sending out a warning that this is what could happen to other celebrities who avoid paying tax it seems that in the case of fan being being she had been understating what she was paid in her contract and the authorities seem to say this is become part of

a widespread trend that they're determined to deal with and that's our show for this week if there's anything you've seen that you'd like to comment on you can get in touch with us you can tweet me i'm at a finnigan on twitter please use the hash tag a j c t c when you do there is as always plenty more for you online at al-jazeera dot com slash c.t.c. that takes you straight to our page which has individual reports links even entire episodes here's a catch up. that's where we end this edition of counting the cost i'm adrian for the good from the whole team here in doha thanks for being with us the news of al-jazeera is next. thank. you.

al-jazeera.

this is al-jazeera. hello i'm daryn jordan this is the out as they were news hour live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes president trump supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh looks set to be confirmed in his position by the u.s. senate. a white police officer who's killing of a black teenager sparked protests in chicago is found guilty of murder. the nobel peace prize awarded to you z.b. activists in a doctor for their work to end sexual violence. and fears that more than a thousand people are still buried under a hotel in a housing complex flattened by the earthquake and tsunami in indonesia.

welcome to the program brett kavanaugh the man nominated by donald trump to maintain a five four conservative majority in the u.s. supreme court is one step closer to his goal republicans say an f.b.i. investigation didn't find any evidence supporting sexual misconduct allegations against him but democrats say the probe was a sham well the senate now agreed to advance kavanagh's nomination and a final vote is due on saturday wells in jordan as more from washington d.c. the motion is agreed to. the u.s. senate is now taking what should be the final step needed to approve brett kavanaugh for the u.s. supreme court thirty hours of debate and a vote the process has been delayed for nearly three weeks due to allegations of sexual assault a special senate hearing to review the allegations and a one week delay for the so the f.b.i. could investigate thank you. senator jeff flake a swing vote was pressured by sexual assault victims in to calling for the delay

and yet despite protests out of his office and a review of the f.b.i. support blake says he will vote yes on capital and you kind of oh yes tomorrow. something big change so i don't see. what would happen to. but anyway i'm glad we had a better process cavanaugh was already a contentious choice because of his conservative views on abortion gun laws and presidential powers but in mid september it was revealed christine blazin ford had accused him of trying to rape her when they were teenagers i've never sexually assaulted dr ford or anyone or as capitol tried to clear his name his testimony before the senate judiciary committee raised new concerns was he too hot headed to be one of the united states' top judges possibly for decades even the former u.s. supreme court justice john paul stevens called kavanaugh unfit for the post to the

supporters called this criticism slander and insist kavanaugh should be approved judge kavanaugh was publicly accused of a crime and his reputation and a livelihood weren't state so it was only fair that his accuser have the burden to prove the consensus is that the burden was not met republican lisa murkowski said on friday she would not vote and kavanagh's favor but two other so-called swing senators signed off in support of the nominee moving capitals confirmation that much closer to the finish line i didn't know if i had him for the day and i will vote to canned firm chads cap and. the u.s. president donald trump has chaired the u.s. senate's just to hold its final debate and vote but the outcome of won't be known until all of the senators have actually cast their ballots and not a second before rosalind horton al-jazeera capitol hill let's speak to republican

strategist charles moran in washington d.c. he served as a delegate for donald trump during the twenty sixteen republican convention before the elections let's talk first about senator susan collins a speech and it seemed to be thoughtful intellectual and she robustly dissected all those hot topics abortion gay marriage religious freedoms and so on what do you make of it thanks for having me on today susan collins the speech was exactly what america needed to hear today she started from the very beginning going through the time when president trump announced brett kavanaugh as his nominee to fill the vacancy on the supreme court went through the pros and the cons that were being lodged by different interest groups on both sides conservative and progressive and then proceeded to go through the timeline and really addressed every major issue that had come before her recounting her own conversations with the senator and then other conversations that were excuse me senator was having with brett kavanaugh but

also some of the concerns that outside groups had culminating with the events of last week with dr ford's testimony kavanaugh follow up testimony and then explaining her rationale why she was going to vote for mr cavanaugh today ok and then many people weren't surprised that the democratic senator joe manchin declared his hand but do you think republican lisa murkowski can still justify her no vote. i think after listening to senator collins a speech today lisa murkowski is probably giving her decision another thought i really think that senator collins and speech really just walked through the solid evidence why you could vote for kavanaugh and not have any kind of real problems as a republican a conservative or even somebody who supports the me too movement who supports women's rights and what's going on with the larger conversation about sexual assault at the end of the day senator collins made the argument that you know in

this country you're innocent until proven guilty in the political considerations here really can't distract from the fact that that's the standard of justice that we have in america and i feel like she's voting yes ok so five weeks to go until the midterms the clock is ticking kavanah of course will be old news in about a week's time so how can republicans men telling them amend some because one thing kavanah has done it's fired up progressives and it's fired up the democrats doesn't it. absolutely one of the biggest concerns that the republicans had moving into this election cycle is that too many of those voters who came out and voted for president trump in two thousand and sixteen were just going to sleep through the twenty eight thousand elections we've put that aside we now they know that our voters and the voters on the left are awake and they are paying attention in the midterms in a way that they have never seen before the republican party needs to stay on message that means president trump needs to stay focused on point of the great achievements that the republican party under his leadership has been able to

achieve like trade reform tax reform health care reform a booming economy these are all solid things that are impacting average voters pocketbooks as long as the republican party continues to focus on these things and not get distracted by antics and these other distractions the republicans should have a good ability ok and a good justification to win leadership again in the house charles moran a final thought from you i mean some analysts saying the g.-a people just about retain the senate but the problem of course you face is the house and what about the race for governor as i mean that's the election that nobody's talking about that's exactly the point i'm very concerned about the governors' races these are the governors now that are going to be overseeing the census which happens every ten years in america that will be determining the new lines that are being drawn for the house of representatives and state legislatures across the nation so these governors that we need to get reelected or elected now as republicans are the ones

who are going to be drawing those lines that will help determine the future of the congress's political leadership for the next decade to come so that's the one set of races that people aren't talking about and we really do need to focus on those thank you very much for talking to lodges in. now for the first time in decades a jury in chicago has convicted a white police officer of murder in the killing of a black teenager officer jason van dyke has been found guilty of the second three murder of lacan mcdonald in twenty fourteen the policeman shuttled donald sixteen times as the teenager held a knife by a side of john hendren was in the courtroom and joins us live now from chicago john so how unusual is this verdict by the court. well it was this unusual daryn if you look behind me this is chicago's that magnificent mile and this is during rush hour but just about an hour ago it was completely shut down with protesters you can see some police officers remaining behind after that protest but hundreds of demonstrators were here and they were

originally concerned that they were there were going to be protests over the verdict but in fact because it was a murder verdict they were celebrating it is rare that a police officer is charged with murder here in the u.s. and especially here in chicago it is rare or still that one is convicted but what happened was after these two thousand and fourteen shooting about a year later the video came out and that video showed look kuan mcdonald a seventeen year old young man with a knife in hand but not aimed at everybody walking away from police as he was shot sixteen times and that officer officer jason van dyke was convicted not only of second degree murder today but of sixteen separate charges of battery one for each of the bullets that he fired at look on mcdonald now his lawyer says he was something of a sacrificial lamb he said under the current environment he couldn't have gotten

a fair trial and they had tried to move that trial but his lawyer also said that they were possibly looking at a murder one charge of premeditated murder charge that would have meant a life sentence instead he has twenty years or so depending on what the judge decides to give him down and public backlash. killed so what does this verdict mean for the city of chicago. well if the city was prepared for a massive uprising chicago is still scarred from the one nine hundred sixty eight riots after the death of martin luther king so you have a few officers behind me still but they were there twelve thousand in the city about her. half of them had been deployed all around chicago and they were prepared for a massive uprising and that's because demonstrators said if there was a not guilty verdict they wanted to shut down the city instead what happened is that the city said its workers on the buses were jammed before rush hour with people going away and these crowds that have gathered around the town instead of

celebrate it there has been to my knowledge no property damage but what the demonstrators have said is this is just the beginning this isn't about this police officer it's not about this case they will go around the country and ensure that young black men are not shot by police staring into john hendren in chicago john thank you now the nobel peace prize has been awarded to two people leading the fight against the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war one is treated thousands of abuse victims in the democratic republic of congo the other is a survivor of sexual violence and trafficking in iraq has more from. at home they call him dr miracle denis mukwege a congolese gun ecologist who's helped countless women who've been subject to sexual violence as a weapon of war. belongs to the minority yazidi group among thousands of women and girls subjected to a systematic campaign of sexual violence i soon find is in two thousand and

fourteen she's now an activist who speaks out for those women who can't or won't. he humiliated me every day he forced me to wear contacts that didn't cover my body i was tortured i tried to flee but one of the god stopped me all those who commit crimes of human trafficking in jenin.