breaks it to say well so what if we can't have been on as an tomatoes for a while the country's been through much worse what for some seems entirely pointless exercise a source of self-imposed blockade is for many others a small price to pay for getting rid of the malign influence of the european union yorkshire voted leavin the bricks at referendum by a small margin this part of the country is known for its grit and determination if no deal is as bad as many fear if pseudo medicines do start to run out they may very well need it's all right still to come on counting the cost how building a boat clad in flip flops is raising awareness of a serious issue. for first a week of term or for venezuela some world leaders are saying they'll recognize why not go audio the head of the national assembly as the interim president opposition efforts to replace nicolas maduro with the transitional government have been having

an impact on the bond market nearly all of venezuela sixty billion dollars worth of international bonds are in default but this week venezuelan government and state oil company p.d. vs abrams posted their biggest gains in a year investors are betting a change of government will help fix the world's worst performing economy but any new government will want to review deals made by its predecessor with russia and china will be looking at that next week in our special focus on venezuela who are its biggest creditors and what does the future hold for people there. here in the middle east qatar is buying up five hundred million dollars worth of lebanese government bonds qatar which remains under a saudi arabian led land sea and air blockade sees it as a good investment which will help stabilize the economy lebanon has the third highest debt to g.d.p. in the world and eight months on from an election politicians there still can't

agree to form a government moody's lowered lebanon's credit score further below investment grade on monday the ratings agency cited risks the government may default on repayments and the first foldable five g. smartphone the chinese telecoms giant hallway said it is launching it next month using its very own technology away is facing restrictions in several western countries of a concerns its products could be used for spying the company's chief financial officer main one joe continues to fight extradition to the u.s. she denies accusations the company illegally broke u.s. sanctions against iran or france slapped a fifty seven million dollar fine on google this week it is the first major penalty brought against the u.s. technology company since new e.u. privacy rules came into force regulators said the search engine giant failed to fully disclose to users how their personal information is used now from unpaid

coast guard members to absent airport screeners more americans are feeling the pain of the longest government shutdown in u.s. history but president trump and the democrats appear no closer to ending the political deadlock over the funding for a proposed wall along the border with mexico rob reynolds reports. a month of shutdown gridlock and political posturing a month of misery for eight hundred thousand government employees going without pay in a sign of just how bad things are now kraft foods corporation opened a grocery pop up store in washington giving away cheese macaroni mayonnaise and so on to cash strapped federal workers. the pain spreads across the country on coast guard bases and research laboratories along the borders and in airports the partial government shutdown is hurting families and disrupting vital government functions

for example the transportation security agency reported that about ten percent of its airport security screeners have been unable to report to work due to financial hardships we have to have been evidenced based conversation president donald trump and democratic house speaker nancy pelosi are no closer to an agreement i am here today to break the logjam on saturday trump offered temporary protection to about one million undocumented immigrants in exchange for funding his wall the plan includes five point seven billion dollars for a strategic deployment of physical barriers or a wall. democrats said no way saying trump must agree to end the shutdown before they'll talk about border security both sides have resorted to jabs jobs and juvenile antics speaker pelosi suggested trump don't plans for

a televised state of the union speech during the shutdown in retaliation trump snatched away military aircraft. palosi planned to use for a trip to afghanistan that kind of pettiness and as nothing for the american people and has reached a high water mark in my experience and i've been here all. last fifteen years polls show americans are weary of the dysfunction in d.c. about sixty percent in a recent poll disapprove of trump's handling of the shutdown. the economic damage is mounting according to the financial services company standard and poor's the u.s. gross domestic product loses one point two billion dollars each week the government is closed or about one thousand nine hundred eighty four dollars a second. jamie dimon who runs j.p. morgan chase the biggest bank in the us says if the shutdown persists it will reduce growth to zero maybe everybody should start stocking up on that mac and

cheese well joining me now from london is russ mold investment director at stockbrokers a.j. bell thanks for being with us so we've heard so many stories about unpaid government employees having to sell their possessions and going going on gum to go fund me pages and missing their payments and so on talk us through the effect that this is having on the us economically the longer this goes on or one of the ironies is at the moment it's quite hard for us to tell because of the government shutdown we aren't getting the normal regular monthly economic data that we would expect some of the releases that we could use to judge the u.s. economy aren't available the one that we have seen an independent survey on american consumer confidence from the university of michigan that's just reached its lowest level during the trump presidency so it does seem to be starting to have some effect and a negative effect one of the things that that is affecting it at the moment is this

this government agency the small business administration com process in new loans that that's having a really bad effect on small businesses isn't it he would certainly expect so i mean credit is the lifeblood of many economies so if small companies can't get access to it they probably have limited resources of their own it is a potential negative it'll be interesting to see again if they start to show up in some of the smaller companies sentiment service that the american government publishes as and when it gets around to publishing them which at the moment unfortunately it isn't and there's no doubt that this shutdown is bad for the economy but there's varying estimates at the moment on just how bad some say if it last so we ended january could knock a half a percentage point off of economic growth what's your view on this and could this lead to recessions well well that's a really good question because lots of economics were worrying about a recession last year anywhere though those fears of. been proven unfounded but the the what our white house economic advisory council member kevin hassett he actually gave some numbers out on wednesday saying he thought that each week that the

shutdown continued would knock around an eighth of a percentage point off u.s. g.d.p. growth now there are many forecasts out for the first quarter the moment the new york federal reserve is forecasting two point two percent growth so if you take mr hassett number literally multiply that by all thirteen weeks the first quarter you're certain looking at u.s. g.d.p. growth the celebrating to no more than one percent in the first quarter if those an earlier estimates are correct so that would be the worst number since late twenty fifteen and what effect is this having on investor sentiment in the u.s. obviously it was a rough year twenty eighteen many people took some took some big losses there how nervous are investors about the effect that this is going to have on the overall health of the economy. the moment they seem remarkably calm the s. and p. five hundred index one of america's major stock market benchmarks is actually up by five percent this year now as you said that's a big rally after the hammering that a lot of stocks took in the fourth quarter last year but there seems to be still

some confidence that this is a short term problem now admittedly speaker pelosi in the house of representatives a democrat has raised the temperature again by forbidding president trump from given the state of the union speech on the twenty ninth of january so that's the next step maybe she will be hoping that provokes some form of compromise from the president and in the in the present himself seems to be equating the success of his term with how the u.s. stock market goes so you would expect him to to want to start to find some sort of solution and some surge but at the moment share market investors got lots of other things to worry about oddly enough it doesn't seem to be the shutdown do you think this will set a precedent though for the future if and when this is resolved that mechanisms will then be put in place in the u.s. governing system to prevent anything like this happening again that if there's any any sort of political deadlock you can't use that the u.s. budget is as a weapon any more. well in theory congress could present on a president on with

a bill and ask him to take it all leave it so that there are things that congress can do this is the balancing mechanism that america house through its its bi cameral system the president says there are multiple of the reseize which means one power can become too dominant over all the others so i think the checks and balances are there the current unfortunate situation is we have a very very combative situation in washington where the two political parties will be filed in the bin for a very very long time i think the system seems to work pretty well at the moment the people operating it perhaps using its best effects ross mold good to speak with you thanks very much thank you and finally it washes up on beaches and creates giant floating waste patches in the sea the u.n. estimates the by two thousand and fifty they'll be more plastic than fish unless the industry cleans up its act mohamed atta reports now from lima kenya on an unusual project aimed at raising awareness. this is the bull to the heart of what is being hailed as

a plus to clear pollution flipflop as it's called is the world's first doll and highly over cycle ocean plastic recovered from the beaches of canoeist coastal towns. the boat was built here in lumber home of traditional small heated dull building and it's all seen by these man alyssa kunda and his team of craftsman our big dream was to have a big dowel going up to capetown around the world but then according to the challenger limited. we had this prototype to experience our sat down to prove ourselves that we can do it. for a long time this tiny condemn island was untouched by the outside world. is now at the receiving and before global tide of plastic pollution. a community of a few thousand people dealing with the problem of washed up waste which begins its journey thousands of kilometers away and according to the latest scientific studies the scale of the problem is much bigger than our fault plastic pollution is still

just limited to the east african coast it's a global problem with huge potshots of sea covered by plastic that is poisoning and strangling wildlife the united nations is now warning that there would be more plastic than fish in the sea by twenty fifty of drastic action is taken. those behind the flip people say they're doing their part to raise awareness on the growing crisis of plastic pollution we basically want to showcase to the world what you can do if you have if you use plastic sensibly that you can get plastic a second life and more importantly that if it does not make sense to have anything called single use it's just it simply does not make sense in this time and era to use something once and throw it away the boat symbolizes that the boat is now on its maiden trip to the island of zanzibar five hundred kilometers away the team

will be stopping at a very village and town on their way to tell people of the dangers of plastic waste in the oceans. the sort of money to flog it off it's marked with the beach so competition on a race between plastic waste boats built by some of lumbers children with the knowledge that plastic waste can be tom into something useful the team which has now partnered with the us clean seas program says they're planning to build a much bigger which can sail for the field and help in highlighting the potential of recycled plastic. and that is our show for this week remember you can get in touch with us by tweeting me at. and do use the hash tag j.c.t. see when you do or drop us an e-mail counting the cost at al-jazeera dot net is our address 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 for you to catch up. so that is it for this edition of counting the cost and as i'm speaking from the whole team here thanks for joining us the news on the edges there is next. rewind returns a care bring your people back to life from start with brand new updates on the best of al-jazeera documentaries in liberal i was the global floods and the like and the other student rewind continues with mono and me going into a war zone he said the first thing i look for is the exit it's not how to get it it's all to get out that nobody sees your pictures there's no point going to these places rewind on al-jazeera. russian filmmaker andrina christoph explores how putin's russia impacts the very

values of the nation the russians are famous for their cultural legacy but can traditional and conservative be the source of stagnation and authoritarian rule why wasn't the assume aided by the police to the she's ukraine six homosexuality the significance of who came to the russian elite is that she is like a feature who controls the cobra in search of putin's russia on al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera. and i welcome to the al-jazeera news hour live from my headquarters in doha with me and i have a problem coming up in the next sixty minutes one that successful rescue but more

the hundred people are missing after the dam collapses in brazil. i will sign a bill to open our government for three weeks until february fifty. dollars promised a temporary deal to end the shutdown ops stolen money from his point of war. one of the u.s. president's closest allies is the nation's to be charged in the investigation into question election meddling. was. and he's being lauded as a media venezuela self declared president calls for free and fair elections. at least seven people have been killed in a hundred and fifty others are missing in southeastern brazil after a dam burst at an ion or man a rest mine a rescue operation is underway to evacuate residents and stem the flow of mond that

happened in a town near the city of banda horizontally daniel schwann the has the latest on the wave of british foreign sludge was sent spewing into the countryside when a series of three dams collapsed the failed structures in august tailings dans filled with residue from iron ore mining the risky operation is underway to evacuate people from vulnerable areas in and around the nearest community below forty call neither town the prevent the needle efforts are also being made amid fears of widespread pollution to prevent contaminated mud and sludge reaching the redeal by your hydroelectric plant with the national water company said could happen in two days president job also noddle said he was sending cabinet ministers to the region to oversee the operation according to the fish while i own or mine is owned by the brazilian mining company vale they were part owners with the a straightly and b.h.p. billiton of the my name mariana also in the state of mena show rice ridge dam burst

its banks in two thousand and fifteen nineteen people were killed and the whole community is submerged by mud that was called brazil's worst environmental disaster they are officials have said they're very saddened by what's happening. if we miss you. it's with great regret that i confirmed the collapse of the dam i have no words to describe how disappointed and sad i am about what just happened it's beyond anything i could possibly expect i want to tell you that we'll do everything possible to help those affected. however environmentalist say the company and the country who fail to learn the lessons of the marianna disaster. which is the era that is fifty nine people have died in flash flooding and landslides and more than three thousand were evacuated from their homes as heavy rainfall and strong winds

pounded the southern part of the way sea island dozens of communities were inundated as rivers overflowed and burst their banks landslides and flooding are common in disaster prone and especially during the monsoon season between of tolliver and april. to the u.s. to the u.s. now with a long as government shutdown and history is over at least for now president obama has agreed to reopen the federal government for three weeks but the stopgap plan does not include funding for his border war with mexico the reason for the political deadlock with the democrats he says he's ready to declare a national emergency if negotiations hit another impasse and the coming weeks alan fischer reports thank you very much my fellow americans it's over for now i am very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government. after the longest shutdown in american history thirty five days steps are moving taking to get it

hundred thousand federal staff back to work but the funding deal is just for three weeks in that time republicans and democrats will discuss a long term plan here's the problem the president still wants his border wall the democrats don't want to agree to that but from the white house a warning that if he doesn't get what he wants i will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the constitution of the united states to address this emergency pressure had been building on the president to end the stalemate his approval rating was dropping senior republicans were leaking support and workers were warning of genuine security risks in the senate republican leader called on democrats to negotiate a longer funding deal that would include a significant investment in urgently needed border security measures including physical barriers in his rose garden address the president insisted democrats know

back the idea of a border wall that was disputed by their leader we don't agree on some of the specifics of border security democrats are against the wall but we agree on many things. such is the need for new technology and the need to strengthen security in our ports of entry a funding bill was agreed by the senate in december but attacked by right wing commentators donald trump blocked it because it had no money for a border wall his decision to reopen the government has led to new attacks from his own supporters but one former trumpet ministration official says he no gets to make a state of the union address to prove his case to save the union as we all know is a prime time address not just to congress to brief congress but also to brief the american people and i think i expect that the president will use that time to try to address the american people and discuss the significant issue that he has before them in the sport of offering donald trump said he was willing to keep the government shutdown for months to get the money for a wall he promised on the campaign trail mexico would pay for thousands of federal

workers will no go back to work after the president was judged the situation the consequences and the result is thank you very much allan fisher al-jazeera washington. now reopening federal agencies will be a slow process and many government work as a last minute is on has more from kansas city. president donald trump has already made the announcement that the federal government will temporarily reopen again but here outside of this federal government office in kansas city there is no sign of it reopening yet the parking lot is still empty the doors are still shut and locked it gives you an idea that it will take some time to get things back up and running after this government shutdown went on for so long over thirty days i did speak to a couple of federal government employees a mediately after the announcement and one of them who works for the field office of the internal revenue service here in kansas city she summed up her reaction in

two words angry and disappointed she said for two reasons number one she said because this is only a temporary reopening of the government for three weeks she said that's not good enough there's still a lot of uncertainty she also is concerned that trump said that the government would try to get them their back pay as soon as possible in the president's words she said that's simply not good enough they need the money now people are still very much hurting because of the financial hardship of not getting a paycheck for so long now in another big development in the us a longtime ally of donald trump has been charged with seven crimes as part of the investigation into russian meddling in the twenty sixteen election run just on is accused of being a conduit between trans campaign and wiki leaks and then lying about it as pain has the latest from washington d.c. . walking out of the federal courthouse in florida roger stone seems to be channeling his first political boss former president richard nixon the gesture of

a disgraced man who when faced with impeachment was forced to resign the presidency for stone his legal challenges are just beginning but he's vowing he won't testify against his long time friend he was president donald trump as i had said previously there is no circumstance what's. under which i will bear witness against the president nor will i make that rise to ease the pressure on myself i look forward to big for me and indicated special counsel robert muller says stone was talking to both the trump campaign and julian assange founder of wiki leaks about hacked e-mails from hillary clinton's campaign when asked about it by a congressional committee stole her allegedly lie we had a very frank exchange and then when a person promised to tell the committee the truth the indictment says stone sent an e-mail to him saying he should prepare to die and his dog would be killed as well

it's very interesting to see the kinds of people that the president of united states have surrounded himself with in this connection to the integrity of our elections is obviously something we have to get the truth about wiki leaks has denied doing anything wrong and the president reacted in a tweet again calling it a witch hunt and that there was no collusion but this is the first indictment to clearly link the hacked e-mails with the trump campaign and bruce fein says more charges are still possible you can issue what's called superseding indictment and add counts that aren't there necessarily in the first grand jury allegations so you can say you hold it to ratchet it up say all right if you don't cooperate we're going to bring in more indictments against you so that's certainly a possibility roger stone has been known for decades as a man who revels in pulling dirty political tricks who doesn't back down sending

that message by tattooing nixon's face on his back netflix even made a documentary about him i revel in your hatred because if i were ineffective you would make me he's about to find out if he's crossed the line from controversial to criminal. behavior al jazeera washington well the mother investigation has tried to get as close to the. as events in a circle as possible will than thirty people have been indicted all pleaded guilty so far more than one hundred charges these are the most significant developments troubles for manoir michael cohen admitted to several charges including tax evasion campaign finance violations and lying to congress he'll begin a three year prison sentence in march the form a national security advisor michael flynn admitted to lying to the f.b.i. about conversations with the russian ambassador traumas former campaign chairman paul manifold was convicted of financial fraud and pleaded guilty to conspiring against the us and charges have been leveled against russian intelligence officers

and another group of russians for social media campaigns designed to influence the election and hacking of e-mails lots to talk about and we're joined now by steve clemons he is the washington editor at large for the atlantic magazine and he's joining us now from the u.s. capital mr clemens very good to have you with us on al-jazeera on this very busy news day in the u.s. will starts with roger stone and how does his indictment do you think compared to the many others so far in this investigation i think roger stone's indictment is a punctuation point of extraordinary significance because we've been thinking that the motor report would be released fairly soon within you know within weeks we're maybe within a month month and a half but but for that to happen some of the other big fish in the story were sitting there on the table so in my book i had been under the impression and we had talked in the past that as we get closer to the release of that report we have some .