they to realize that a large scale military conflict would be too costly for them as well and as we can see from the recent attack on the tankers in for jr so i think you know restraint is needed and. i don't think you know that those capitals would really wish for any kind of large scale mage conflict. thank you for talking to large as they are. now palestinians aren't going to take part in a conference about their future organized by donald trump's son in law jared pushtuns expected to unveil the u.s. presidents a long awaited blueprint for palestine and israel in bahrain next month events expected to raise tens of billions of dollars for investment in the occupied west bank and gaza but the palestinian prime minister says they haven't been consulted about the conference mohamad chatah it says any u.s. plan would probably favor israel and be financial blackmail the palestinians where

you are going to. use the cabinet stresses that it wasn't consulted about the reported workshop and neither about the content nor the outcome and or the timing of it clarifies that the financial crisis that the palestinian national authority is living through today is a result of the financial war that is being waged against us in order to win political concessions we do not submit to blackmail and we do not trade our political rights for money. as an executive member of the palestine liberation organization she told al-jazeera talks one succeed while the rights of palestinians are undermined. this is not a peace plan so i can't be rejecting a peace plan that i haven't seen this is just a workshop as a set and workshop and anomic workshop in which they can bring israel to meet with the arab world and with the whole region and with private sector in order to invest in the west bank and gaza the 2nd is not a peace plan it is something that the question i thought of as a businessman i don't know how successful he is and that's another way up again and

of maintaining a sense of control over our land that resources let's not talk about with rejecting what americans will have rejected at the thing so quite a lot of the agreements to the basic requirements of the components of a viable peace process. if you want a proper handle of the region you can start. by taking unilateral steps like recognizing jerusalem as capital of israel or undermining refugee rights or refugee institutions and organizations refusing to talk about settlements as illegal refusing a 2 state solution the 67 borders let all that be undermined all the basic issues and now they're saying let's carry out you know cosmetic changes which we can make the prison cell of the palestinians a more pleasant less pleasant this is at a lack of understanding of the issue of the region need to abraham has more from

ramallah in the occupied west bank. referred from the palestinian prime minister mohammed a study of this morning dead and he said that the palestinians were not consulted in the words workshop that is expected to be held next month in beheading and we've heard from him in previous occasions saying that palestinians do not trade politics for food and that the solution to the palestinian cause should definitely include a political aspect and not just an economic one we've also heard from the palestinian president's spokesperson who said that the palestinians still to give an answer with that they are going to be attending this conference or not but they are not expected to be attending and that has been a previous conference in which palestinians have not attending we've heard from palestinian businessmen as well who said that they do not want or do not intend to join this conference the main issue here seems to be that politics should be the main issue on the table and not just economy time for

a short break here in al-jazeera when we come back pleading innocence in south africa the former president jacob zuma urges judges to drop corruption charges u.s. carmaker ford announces major job cuts but they won't be on the production line or not stay with us. i know there were scenes of very heavy rains over parts of southeastern china recently in fact that weather system is just now tracking a bit further towards the south you can see the bright white areas of cloud that we've had on it and there's a given us some very heavy downpours and we could expect more over the next couple of days so for taiwan expect more heavy showers here and they stretch down into the southern parts of china and then into parts of vietnam and it's this section that's going to intensify and push northwards as we head through wednesday so more of us in northern vietnam and across the border into the growing she province of china i

think here is where we see some of the wettest of the weather meanwhile across towards india here. there's a lot of thawing draw a weather around for pakistan there a little bit more in the way of cloud that's also just now affecting us in the northern parts of india as well this central paul they just incredibly hot now as you'd expect at this time of year temperature poor jews they should be around $44.00 degrees will have a few pretty monsoon showers i think for the southwestern parts so here water to those showers are likely to be rather heavy and for sure lanka looks like the monsoon is already started here in the south that's what we'd expect at this time of year towards the west and things are pretty unsettled across the arabian peninsula at the moment we've had a lot of showers around and still the chance of a few more over the next few days. on counting the cost as the u.s. ratchets up the pressure on iran we'll look at the strait of hormuz the most valuable waterway in the world sri lanka's tourism industry takes

a hit after the easter sunday attacks and flying cars as the future just to run. the cost. of. millions of dollars are being stolen in a scam that starts in the philippines and scritches across the globe one i want to exclusive access to this cutthroat underworld through a criminal turned whistle blower on al jazeera. welcome back to the top stories here this hour iran has announced it will quadruple production for low enriched uranium comes a week after iran officially ended some of its commitments some of the international nuclear deal by the trunk of ministration. iran's foreign minister

has hit back at the u.s. president's latest threat saying it won't be intimidated by genocidal taunts earlier donald trump tweeted that if iran wants to fight to the end of the country's major said he would prefer an economic invasion. of palestine's government has rejected the 1st part of donald trump's so-called deal of the century the u.s. will co-host a conference in bahrain next month focused on economic development for the occupied territories. dundon says has been announced at ford the u.s. carmakers making $7000.00 workers redundant offices worldwide that's 10 percent of its salaried staff ford wants to make $600000000.00 a year in savings as a gears up to build more electric and cell drive vehicles for the future let's bring in john henry joins us live now from chicago john so what's this restructuring about and break it down for us when you. well there and at ford workers woke up this morning and saw an email date stamped 8 30 am local time

telling them how many of them would be losing their jobs and the answer was 8000 as you mentioned now that's not nearly the $20000.00 that some analysts estimated might be necessary and these are also white collar workers these aren't assembly line people that's about 10 percent of their white collar work staff so significant changes at ford on tuesday they'll find out how many of them will or which of them rather will lose their jobs why is this happening it's because the industry is restructuring dramatically ford had a sales increase last year in north america but it had losses in asia and europe and latin america and so it's trying to compete there on the standard car market meanwhile it's trying to compete with tech companies like tesla and way mo which are making electric and self driving cars so the company plans to spend $11000000000.00 in total to restructure it for industry in which there is self driving cars that people maybe don't own but that they hire for the day among other

things so it's a complete restructuring for ford this is just the beginning that we only really know about $1000000.00 of that $11000000000.00 in changes that they have planned and this follows up on a similar plan by general motors which made even deeper cuts of i think it was $8000.00 workers for them that's about 15 percent of their white collar workforce so this is an industry wide phenomenon that has really hit the u.s. auto companies which have been largely making one kind of car for the u.s. and other types of cars for the rest of the world and john is this related in any way to the ongoing trade war between the u.s. and china. with a trade war hit just as these automakers were having a tough time already their sales were slumping and then general motors and ford each say that those tariffs have cost them about a $1000000000.00 and that pretty much puts the lie to the trumpet ministrations contention that it is china that pays these tariffs in fact it is the u.s.

companies that are importing that steel and aluminum that come into the united states in order to make those cars so if you add up all of the savings in the cuts that were announced today that $600000000.00 you talked about well that's not quite that doesn't get you all the way to the $1000000000.00 they lost in tariffs so tariffs are definitely hurting their companies but president trump hasn't really acknowledge that when general motors announced it was shutting down 5 north american plants recently he tweeted in anger that they should keep plants open particularly the lordstown ohio plant it is not coincidental that those are also places where trump does particularly well among voters so he will definitely fight this he claims that tariffs are not hurting us industries but i think this is the evidence that in fact the opposite is true all right john hendren then chicago john thank you. google's parent company alphabet town suspended some of its business with chinese tech giant huawei saying it's complying with the u.s.

government has new who always smartphones won't have access to google's play store where users download popular apps including g.-man and you tube it will maintain use of the android operating system open source licensing but google won't provide way with any technical support the u.s. is trying to blacklist the company around the world several countries about from development to their 5 g. mobile network citing security concerns the chinese tech giant says it will continue providing updates and to sale services to its existing smartphones tablets well on a tongan is a political analyst who advises the chinese government on economic development issues he says the u.s. is trying to cripple the competition. basically this is a very clear attempt to cripple hallway it's kind of like in the old days the u.s. when confronted by russia over sputnik going to the moon they said we're going to outcompete you we're going to show you the best and the brightest and what we can do but today it seems more about tripping up the competition we don't have to

compete against you if we can cripple you this is going to be a long term situation in terms of what beijing can do hopefully it won't but it could quite possibly say that for security reasons they will be banning broadcom qualcomm who have also joined on the train with google and keep all of those out make it almost impossible from the do that then this is what i would call a hard fork where you're really going to see a real change in basically 2 camps going ahead with their respective technologies you could see apple's sales plummet this is one of the other realities of this trade war is that these types of international stories are going to impact more and more nationalist china and they will shy away. from buying apple and other u.s. products remember this is a over $350000000000.00 a year market where u.s.

companies are selling in china and that that would have disastrous consequences for american businesses especially on the profit lines of south africa's former president jacob zuma has appeared in court hoping that judges will throw out corruption charges against him zuma is accused of food money laundering and reckon tearing some of those charges relate to a controversial expose when he was the deputy president prosecutors say he received money to cover up an eagle purchases of combat equipment for the south african navy i mean it was outside the court in pietermaritzburg. jacob zuma supporters have been waiting patiently won't take to hear from the former president he's expected to address the people here only time from now on and that's off to a court proceeding say pietermaritzburg wrap up on the 1st day of arguments where zuma story is arguing that she didn't stand trial this is for a number of reasons one of them is that jacob zuma was charged more than

a ticket ago and even though those charges were true and then reinstated his lawyers arguing that given the amount of time that's poz. the trial shouldn't happen at that time and should proceed now he's going as also claim that the charges against jacob zuma are politically jordan and they also say that he is being spied on illegally by the government now these are the arguments his lawyers will use in the coming days as they try to convince the force the jacob zuma shouldn't stand trial people outside certainly believe the former president they say he's innocent they say he still supports him as long as he meets if they're here until the end however the prosecutors in this case it jacob zuma has been responsible. the name of the case it's taken this long because of some of the tactics he was employed the moments that he's managed to get and they believe that

jacob do not assume or rather should be held accountable for what south africans are ruling. in that jacob zuma received payments from a french arms manufacturer for use political protection when they were supposed to provide a provide free kits to the south african navy. prosecutors in sweden have taken the 1st step toward seeking the extradition of the wiki leaks founder julian assange on allegations of rape which he denies they've made a formal request to a swedish court for assad to be detained his count is serving 15 weeks and a u.k. prison for skipping bail sweden dropped its case against him in 2017 but it was reopened after his eviction from the ecuadorian embassy in london last month assad is also wanted in the u.s. for cyber hacking. ukraine's new president a lot of me as a lenski has used his swearing in ceremony to dissolve parliament triggering

a snap election the comedian turned politician also said his 1st priority is to reach a cease fire deal with pro russia separatists journal reports. an event that only months ago seemed unthinkable the inauguration of comedian and actor volodymyr zelinsky as president of ukraine. a legitimate zelinsky. only president the mockery me zielinski has become president before he's character in a popular t.v. series servant of the people is a schoolteacher whose improbable rise to the presidency is built on a campaign against corruption zelinsky his own rise now taking up the role for real was built not on clear policies but on public distrust in fact little is known about his policies instead ukraine is taking a chance on a man with no political experience rejecting a political class that many voters feel has failed them corruption remains rife and a war in the east that divides the country continues with no end in sight the

landscapes problem here is that people didn't vote for him they voted against the establishment against the other candidates the people who have been running ukraine for the last 25 years and so and you saw that today in various reports from the ukrainian parliament they want massive crowds supporting zelinsky so selenski popularity isn't really very deep in that sense it's more an anti vote than a pro vote supporters sees alinsky as a breath of fresh air among his 1st steps a pledge to call early parliamentary elections he's referred to some m.p.'s as petty crooks and a promise to end the war with russian backed separatists said your thoughts of nice you know i'm ready he said to do everything so that our heroes don't die. that's something he's pretty decisive petro poroshenko wasn't able to do and while

poroshenko did make reforms that helped ukraine stave off economic collapse voters decided he hadn't done enough to rid the country of corruption selenski will be under great pressure to do better. was a presidency that breaks with tradition got off to the most nontraditional start no flashy convoy for volodymyr zielinski who chose to walk the streets to his swearing in ceremony high fives and selfies also not hallmarks of previous administrations all of this clearly styled as a fresh start for ukraine even though no one really knows what president's alinsky plans to do or is capable of jonah al-jazeera. the headlines on al-jazeera iran has announced it will quadruple production for low enriched uranium that comes a week after the country officially ended some of its commitments under the

international nuclear deal which was abandoned by the from the ministration so he has more now from tehran. well it follows on from what we've heard from senior leaders in iran in the past several weeks of course president hassan rouhani not very long ago earlier this month announced that iran would begin on cooperation with part of the nuclear deal very much a reaction to the nuclear sanctions placed on iran by the united states donald trump's white house the president from the white house attacking the framework of the deal itself limiting iran's ability through those sanctions to get rid of stockpiles of enriched uranium and heavy water in accordance with a 2015 nuclear deal iran was not allowed to keep stockpiles of potential weapons making materials and it was selling that to russia sending heavy water to oman getting enrich uranium out of the country well that abounds many follows intensifying rhetoric between the u.s. and iran its foreign minister has hit back at a tweet from the u.s. president saying iranians won't be intimidated by what he called

a genocidal. post and that iran wants to fight it'll be the end of the country later said he would prefer an economic invasion. palestinians aren't going to take part in a conference about the future organized by donald trump's son in law jared cushion is expected to unveil the u.s. president's long awaited blueprint for palestine and israel in bahrain next month events being held to outline economic aspects of. where you are going to measure this a number of years the cabinet stresses that it wasn't consulted about the reported workshop and neither about the content nor the outcome and or the timing of it clarifies that the financial crisis that the palestinian national authority is living through today is a result of the financial war that is being waged against us in order to win political concessions we do not submit to blackmail and we do not trade our political rights for money. a major redundancies have been announced and forward the u.s. carmakers cutting $7000.00 workers and offices worldwide that's 10 percent of its salaried staff for the saving $600000000.00

a year as it gives up to build more electric and self drive vehicles of the future . for those with the headlines the news continues here on al-jazeera after counting the cost states have done so much of. hello i'm has i'm sick and this is counting the cost on al-jazeera your weekly look at the world of business and economics this week as a u.s. strike group steams to the strait of hormuz we find out how important the world's oil gateway is. plus the economic cost of the terror attacks in sri lanka as

violence against the muslim minority spreads. and the future of transport can this 1st 5 c. to electric flying car take on the might of google and. so the strait of hormuz is a critical waterway to the world for middle east oil and gas produces about a 5th of the world screwed pastas through this narrow strait between amman and iran after the united states pulled waivers for nations trading with iran a string of alleged attacks on tankers and drone attacks on pipelines have increased tensions add to the makes washington ordered some embassy staff in baghdad to leave and it sent a u.s. strike group into the region as defense analyst alex go topless as more the

flagship of carrier strike group 12 is the nuclear powered u.s.s. abraham lincoln one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world weighing in at over 100000 tons it carries some 90 aircraft including an early warning aircraft and several scorch and suffice it jets each with a combat radius of. 380 kilometers well beyond the range of most coastal artillery and antiship missiles alongside the carrier a fleet of ships the act is more than just protection they're powerful radars can see into a country track hundreds of aircraft and they carry the weapons that can destroy targets far inland. in the open ocean it's very hard to intercept and destroy a large modern carrier group but the abraham lincoln will be operating in the relatively confined waters of the gulf much closer to iran shoreline and its costar missile batteries so what does iran have its air force's antiquated but for many years it's been producing missiles like this the collegiate fars a large antiship weapon with a range of 300 kilometers iran does have

a sizable submarine fleet with several more russian made kilo class subs that are quite enough to sneak up on the u.s. carrier group the u.s. of course it just hasn't deployed at sea it sent 4 b. $52.00 bombers to al a date air force base in qatar they don't need to fly into enemy a space they can be loaded up with the latest weapons such as the just some stealth missile invisible to radar and able to hit a target at up to a 1000 kilometers away. this all adds up proposal expression of american military might it's also aimed at sending a potent message to iran. alex joins me now on set to talk more about this so alex what message is the united states trying to send iran here a mixed message at best there are regular military deployments taking place right now it's highly unusual that there isn't an aircraft carrier group in the region. we have a large air force base just down the road here in qatar it is highly unusual that

they don't host bombers there but the announcement that they're sending bombers and aircraft carriers sounds like it's a ramp up in capabilities were an actual fact is business as usual what has changed is the rhetoric and the rhetoric is far more bellicose than it used to be and when you heard of a load of increased tension a lot of military hardware in the region the propensity for a mistake or an accident or something intentional or otherwise that will get us into a general conflict is much higher now what do we know then about this alleged sabotage of the tankers on the coast of the u.a.e. and the the oil part the saudi oil pipeline what's going on there at the moment we know less about the subject of the ships it was announced by the emir ati's and the saudis that there had been sabotage on the ships themselves the no one norwegian

shipping company said that one of its tankers had been damaged by an object to be in the hold even though the damage was minor. the next day which many analysts say is not. an coincidental is that you had an attack on a pipeline far inside saudi territory now this shows a real jump in who feed drone capabilities it was attacked by a drone traveling very slowly evading a sophisticated air defense system that managed to attack a pipeline in the same latitude as riyadh hundreds of kilometers inside the country . this is something that has never been attempted before and they succeeded and this shows a real jump in what the who these are capable of how we should topless thanks very much and you can read a lot more about alex's thoughts on this on our website at al-jazeera dot com. we join me now via skype from geneva is jeff como luciano he is an ex-pat

a geo political energy and director of the executive mosque in oil and gas at least schip program at the graduate institute in geneva thanks very much for being with us so the oil markets have risen by a 3rd over the year and they are surprisingly relaxed about recent developments in the gulf what do you make of that well it's doing that well in a market process reason but we should not forget over the past year if we count 12 months. the price has been higher than is fully in fact he does so clearly between. $86.49 go nuts and so will you be out at 727273 so we are. in the meat that age. the market is very accessible because it's not clear what

he's going to happen and there is significant that is there are already in case of some of the consequences what's the end game here for washington then i mean president trump has been trying to get troops out of the middle east but his national security adviser john bolton appears to be running the show if you talk to a lot of people despite both sides saying they don't want war what do you make of that well exactly i think the magic of this but it's not just my helmet so but the internet there are people that are looking at the submission or her legs because they they see an american musician that these rowing all went group are up there on the dates and so i personally don't believe that mr trump is the president sarkozy or truly it's with the war so is all. letting his security advisor said. being that this will result

cave in on the fact that we're going to organize those things here and with katie and the events of the last couple of days drone attacks on a pipeline the alleged sabotage of tankers of the emirates the u.s. is telling some embassy staff to leave baghdad as well it appears to be coordinated to whose benefit where it's not clear who say that the. depending on the through sort of behind it which we both know. maybe the signal is that. why the saudi arabia and all you know that out there that is my able to buy for us the thought of the gauge and the strait of hormuz. that is one possible interpretation but you're not we could also be done you know those who are essential if they're the b.b.c.

or phrase or which or their words. or that much that is and what kind of disruption would closing the strait of hormuz do to the global flow of oil if that were to happen. well exactly i think the issue is that there's always a basis of closing off the phrase over most of it should be their mind that 1st of all rooting the seriously is not very easy and safe from the it's not necessary because frank there is that in fact it's and the fact anywhere in the gov for this has been a sense that in the doing the exactly on the war it does not succeed is. not be this is this action or withdrawal out of the. things that might be there was the seriously set up in this case that said or it is always

possible that things roll beyond the same chairman or maybe years before us some time to go through or by accident in that case it's very difficult to put these. 2 camo loose yani thanks for being with us thank you but china has vowed to defend its companies after u.s. government decision to place white and 70 of its affiliates on a tray black place calling it on reasonable washington believes equipment produced by the chinese company could be used to spy on the u.s. already has repeatedly denied those allegations i did brown reports now from a tech trade show in tianjin. what you see here is at the heart of the trade dispute between china and the united states the 2 countries are competing to be world leaders in artificial intelligence robotics and 5 g. technology. showcasing its achievements while away china's national tech champion

its expansion plans in the united states now seem over after the u.s. put the firm and its affiliates on a trading blacklist an issue too sensitive for this company official to discuss i guess the country operates the company so sorry. but he's confident while way will still thrive in other markets so now laid her with your fire level. we hope we can cooperate are the best other countries while away officials had anticipated this move and on thursday the firm issued a statement saying the transactions wouldn't improve safety or security in the united states and would only harm consumers and companies it doesn't bode well for the full 3 trade talks between the 2 countries u.s. firms are present here in the mood among one technology representative surprisingly upbeat levy is in very hard to sell us technology in china today because of the

trade move i don't think i saw in summits years chinese is open for the all the different you know the products here and our attorney is the customers is what i think. america. pronounce is one of. the theme of this exhibition is artificial intelligence in china the technology is widely used in surveillance and facial recognition cameras. especially in the far western province of shin jang where they monitor track and rate members of a largely muslim group known as the week goes this. the company manufactures many of those cameras and has been promoting its expertise here but officials didn't want to tell any reason you can't even use the u.s. government has once more targeted one of china's most successful companies leading executives at other technology firms wondering who will be next.