believe that yes, development has to be, but the development not at the cost of your property market, the cost of you people in market the cost of fuel environment monsoon floods this year, have caused damage. in many areas of karachi advice mantra, see if the natural protection offered by the islands is also voted the city could feel this. an environmental disaster, like a good guy. and that's have a look at some of those headlines here. now the syria now pharmaceutical company, astra zeneca and oxford university, say late stage testing of their code in 1000 vaccine shows. it's highly effective. they say can be stored at fridge, temperature, making it cheaper and easier to distribute. journal has more from london. it is shown to reduce severity of symptoms in those who slip through the net to just mild

symptoms. that's a massive advance in itself. it is cheap to produce. it is easy to store and distribute it much more moderate temperatures than its competitors. as you laid out there, which makes it far more accessible to the developing world to poorer parts of the world that had feared they might get left behind it all of this, which is why it's already being dubbed vaccine for the world. the leader of forces in ethiopia is to grow a region is denying government troops the surrounding the main city. mackellar, the government insists its soldiers are in so doing it, though as a distance of 50 kilometers. on sunday, it gave the tikrit people's liberation front 72 hours to lay down arms. the group is refusing, the saudi arabia is denying that crown prince mohammed bin sandman, met with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu. the saudi foreign minister tweeted, in response after the israeli public broadcaster reported a meeting,

took place. u.s. president elect joe biden is set to make cabinet appointments. in the coming days, his longtime adviser, anthony blinken, is expected to be secretary of state. while jake sullivan is being lined up as national security advisor, hong kong pro-democracy activist, joshua wanless pleaded guilty to unlawful assembly during last year's protests. he was joined in court by fellow activists, agnes and ivan lamb. the 3 will be held in custody until sentencing. next week, it could face 5 years in jail. says it's identified the parents of a newborn baby found in a bin hamad international airport. the infant's mother left the country and is counting the cost now.

hello i'm adrian finnegan. this is counting the cost on al-jazeera. a look at the world of business and economics this week. as the cost of the pandemic pile up zambia defaults on its debts. as private investors wrangle over who should take losses on their loans. and the debt tsunami means that central banks are considering the unthinkable negative interest rates, but are investors prepared to pay governments for the privilege of lending to brazil is no longer one of the world's top 10 economies. many brazilians face a painful financial future. with soaring food prices and house prices,

the g 20 rich countries club struck an historic agreement on restructuring debt for some of the world's poorest nations. the move goes beyond the current deal to freeze debt repayments until june next year. that is significant because it includes china. beijing has been reluctant to sign up to any deal that would cancel or restructure debts, which china accounts for 63 percent of overall debt owed to g. 20 nations in 2019. it's not exactly how much money china is owed, but various estimates say the country has given out loans worth $1.00 trillion to 5 trillion dollars in the past 20 years. and that's a problem. the united states and many western private lenders have been unwilling to discuss restructuring debt for the poorest nations because they don't want to bail out beijing. china has gone as far as classifying state lenders as private institutions to avoid scrutiny. most of the money has been spent on rolling out its belton road initiative to build infrastructure and increase its influence in mostly

developing nations. its law, jess has come a huge cost for many of the 138 patients who have signed up to the program. despite that historic g 20 deal, a number of countries, a close to defaulting on their debts. as the pandemic decimates economies, zambia became the 1st african default of the covert 19 era. it has the backing of many n.t. debt campaigners who are encouraging more nations to join zambia in threatening default. zambia's problems predate the pandemic. it's africa's 2nd biggest cop exporter. and as copper prices tanked, it found it more difficult to meet its payments. it's thought the country has $11000000000.00 worth of debt. negotiations have hit a wall because of debts. it has to china. it's thought that zambia owes china about 3000000000 dollars, but china won't offer debt relief unless it gets $200000000.00 in a river is paid 1st. private lenders aren't willing to give zambia new money,

the fear that it will be used to pay off china and not without good reason. zambia said it may draw down $700000000000.00 worth of chinese debt. zambia has also been in talks with the international monetary fund for a $1300000000.00 loan. let's get more on what could be a gathering storm if more countries to fold on that debt from london by skype are joined by elisa strobel, senior economist for sub-saharan africa at i.h.s. market. and he said good to have you with us. our earth to zambia get into such a financial mess. yes, economic mismanagement and a lack of fiscal consolidation over recent years underlines some aspen intell difficulty. additionally, in a decline, transparency over debt on the chinese lenders, including alleged off balance sheet, chinese loans to state owned of prices. and the fact that some, if they were step restructuring over i.m.f. and gateman add to the debt,

then the some in authorities have been under them to secure an i.m.f. support program since late 2017. that would more concessional financing, leaving told it like sterile duck. therefore, to increase sharply and also inhibiting the government's ability to secure to agree on short term fiscal imbalance of payments funding from other multilateral institutions such as the african development bank. what is that they've been doing with the money that it but it's borrowed. there are allegations that the government might have been spending it on winning elections rather than helping the economy. yes. while some parts of the borrowed money went into recurrent expenditure, including salaries. well, other parts went into infrastructure projects including millisecond and ola $1200000000.00 us $1.00 project. however, there were concerns raised over allegations of arctic she pushed price inflation and some of the infrastructure projects. as i mentioned, a list 2nd dollar a project. also there are various direction allegations that support there were

thore of mismanagement of funds as a result in september 2018. as some donor, foreigners have a suspended their donor 8 support for or the some b.n. government bacha, it here by in particular the financing of the cash and spare programs as well as the agricultural sector where particular negatively impacted by these suspensions. and is that why china is reluctant to offer any debt relief? well, china, mainland state backed lenders are very unlikely to pursue full scale in depth relief, an up or a death for structuring in stat. this is because that forgiveness can set an undesirable example to other dept or seek more favorable treatment on chinese loans . especially if this will be politically currently difficult to justify given china manus economy beginning to recover from the impact of the covert 19 virus outbreak

in stat china mainland. lucky to provide depth relief on a case by case basis, which may include, for instance, extending the payment period, a temporary waiving of interest payments. if lending is not already on concessional terms, offering for the credit to default or marginally forgiving debt by either reducing project scope or depth to act or to agreements for some of the commodity rich countries in particular. like and go lower. you mention i go to other any other countries in a similar situation to zambia? how many more zambia's are there out there? yes, we see for verity of countries next year to see the debt service burden to build up sharply such as force of vatican amid and kenya, kenya as government, refusal to access relief under the g 20 depths of

a suspension initiative heightened fiscal risks beyond their receiving of the emergency code 19 funding for the majority of african countries. however, debt initiatives by the g 20 and the i'm african country have run 34 countries. african countries that have received emergency funding by the i.m.f. . these packages have east external liquidity pressure somewhat. and the extension of these initiatives lorson on payment risk somewhat currently until mid next year . are other concerns that be a could be heading the what the same way as in bob wait. yes, yes, because we do not see any near term improvement in this regard. some enough, the artist will have to prove to private lenders as well as the i am math, that government debt will be placed on a more sustainable half and a show of policy credibility in order to unlock emergency funding. that is so

necessary. however, because of the upcoming elections next year, that would and will fire spending. we expect i.m.f. and gauge meant for the unlucky prior to that. also, the i.m.f. warned that some guess replacement of its central bank governor last august led to an increase in the political control of a monetary policy resulting in a weakening of some b.s. policy credibility. and thus delaying discussions with the i.m.f. for the basis for really good to talk to your county because many thanks indeed for being with us. my depression, thank you. the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged brazil's economy, which is predicted to contract by about 5 percent this year. economic analysis shows the south american nation is no longer ranked among the world's top 10 economies. many brazilians face

a painful financial future with soaring food and house prices now is a serious market. yaquis have reports now from rio. 'd 'd it's tea time in this slum in rio de janeiro. c c baker sounds his horn to announce fresh buns for sale, but they cost 50 percent more than in january. prices in general have become absurdly expensive since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic unemployment is at a 14 percent record high. and many here are surviving on the government emergency aid, which will only last until the end of the year. for brazil's poor, the future looks bleak, but investors are also worried. the country is no longer part of the world's top 10 economies. brazilians used to boast the 9th largest g.d.p.

. now they ranked 12 on the list, according to a report based on data from the international monetary fund. brazil's productivity has been declining, sees 2015, with the pandemic, the economy will shrink an additional 5 percent. besides that, political uncertainty has helped devalue the brazilian reale, making it one of the world's most worst performing currencies. a weak currency favors exports, but the silver lining is that double edged sword. with less food being sold on the domestic market, prices have gone up. most brazilians, like a shooting up at ross and are not interested in the country's international ranking . they're worried that staple foods like rice and black beans are 20 percent more expensive. it's not only fuel prices that went up construction material is also more expensive. these rigs, for example,

cost 30 percent more than before. the pandemic lost his job as a truck driver and moved his belongings from an apartment or neighborhood to a shack. and uses my palate to have a roof over my head. in this movie, garden of economy minister paul again just says brazil, bro, once the pandemic is over and he can finally implement market friendly reforms. but for most here, what matters now is putting food on the table. the economic recovery promised by the government still sounds like a long, hard, uphill battle money and i kept, i'll just sirrah, rio de janeiro. extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures south of the financial crisis in 2008, central banks poured trillions of dollars into buying up government debts to make

sure the cost of borrowing didn't get out of hand. quantitative easing also helped grease the financial infrastructure, making sure that banks could continue to learn money to businesses. central banks are very much at the limit of what they can do to keep economies motoring, but there is a new tool that has and is about to be deployed. negative interest rates, simply put, that would mean investors would pay the government to hold forms. consumers may have to pay banks to hold their money, and borrowers pay less back on the mortgages that they have. the bank of england, which is set rates of north point one percent, could be the next to introduce negative rates. ok, let's bring in our regular contributor bill, i'll have faced chief executive of the macro high. if belle-isle, what are negative interest rates? and what's got us to the point that we're thinking about using such unconventional tools. now that's a very good, good question. i mean, negative rates really does sound like we're in some kind of fantasy world. that's

essentially where when somebody takes out a loan rather than paying interest, they receive interest. and so this is something central banks have started to engage in of the last 45 years. why as an investor, what would i, would i pay a bank for their, for their debt? and why as a saver what i, what i pay a bank to hold it. now that's a very good question and i think there's a few answers too to that question. you know, one is there's still a convenience factor whereby the alternative is to hold your, your money in cash, which would run then require you to store the money in your house or under the mattress or in a safe or something like that. and this is not just going to vigils, but this also applies to companies as well. companies would have to store all of their cash in a physical location. and that, you know, would be quite onerous than that there would be costs associated with that. so the thinking is that there's a level of. 'd interest that somebody would be willing to pay for

a bank to hold their their money. and so in that way, there is scope for negative rates simply to be a charge for holding your money. now if the negative rates are too negative, then there would be much more often move for people to store cash themselves physically in some way. but at the moment the rates, while they are negative, they aren't sufficiently negs. if the people to make that switch they have been used before, it's, we've been in particular, has a mint, has it, has it helped economies where it's been used to the price? the trouble here is that many of the countries that did introduce negative rates like sweden and euro zone, they also introduced lots of other measures that the same time as well. so for example, these countries in gauged in quantitative easing, which meant that the governments also started to buy government bonds, which push down long term interest rates in those countries and push down mortgage

rates those countries. so at one level, it's hard to disentangle the 2 in general, what you can say is that after these countries did introduce negative rates, you did see these economies start to improve economically, their growth did pick up. however, inflation, which is the thing that the central banks really wanted to increase didn't really increase that much at all. so it does seem like after 34 years of central banks doing this, you know, there is some reluctance to push this too much further. it seems like most central banks now have decided not to really go down the route of pushing rates even more negative. what about wealth inequality just does it, does it encourage households to take on on more debt that they can't afford? yet there is a real possibility that that could happen. the, there are a couple of different issues here. one is that if you do have negative rates, people are more reluctant to put their money into savings accounts. so instead they

may start to save in more risky investments, so they may go into equities or high yielding corporate bonds. so there is that possibility. but then the other side is also that, you know, are these negative rates passed on to households for them to be able to borrow and make to raise themselves? and that's less clear what we have seen is that the negative rates and also the quantitative easing have pushed down interest rates in general, which is then had allowed people to get say, for example, lower mortgage rates and through lower mortgage rates, people have been buying houses a lot more so in that sense, there has been this increase in asset prices and not everybody owns a house. it tends to be, you know, richer people that own houses and able to buy it with ease. and so you are seeing there is this inequality that has been building since we have seen the introduction of next, the rates below are going to completely change the subject. now,

a massive trading block is coming into force covering a 3rd of the world's population. and a 3rd of the world's economy. do you think that the u.s. is going to counter china's influence in this, this new trade pact with its own trans-pacific trading pact? i think they will. i mean, it's been quite evident that you know, under the trumpet ministration the us started to withdraw from various multilateral agreements, you know, with asia, with europe and so on. and this allowed china and other asian countries to form their own trading blocks. and so they, they had their own version of p.p.p., and more recently now the r.c. e.p., which has china in that trading block. so what you've seen as, as the u.s. is withdrawn from the world from these multilateral organizations. the rest of the world has started to form their own trading blocks. now this will be an issue for the u.s. . the u.s. does have a new administration well, so it seems at least with president biden, and the noise we're getting from the u.s.

side is that they are, they are very much motivated to reengage in multilateral agreements. so my sense is they will try to enter some kind of or some new version of g.d.p. with asian countries. the challenge for them is that these agreements in asia have already started to be formed, you know, with this new china trade agreement. so that challenge for the u.s. will be to somehow enter into this stage where all these agreements have already, started to be formed. so it will be a bit of a challenge for the u.s., but i do think they will try to launch their own asia u.s. trade agreement. but as always, good to talk to you many thanks indeed for being with us. thank you very much. climate change and overfishing are endangering many species in the rich waters around antarctica. the major threats are top priority at a conference in chile, where scientists, a pushing for a protected marine park around the antarctic peninsula. a latin america editor

lucien newman reports from santiago to waters around the antarctic peninsula and not only home to unique marine animals but also to their means of survival. they eat krill, a key species in the southern oceans eco system. but all this is in danger of extinction because of overfishing around the antarctic peninsula, which is why the commission for the conservation of antarctic marine resources is being asked to approve a proposal for the creation of a marine protected area around the peninsula with signs that the show in the data gets particularly dedicated, but also very important for the whole world. why are you saying that antartica into the rest of the world? this current goal, the humble current, is actually a current that comes from the antarctica. and it brings all this coal rich water on might very innocent by also be retained oxygen because it's cold. so the current

also create huge amount of life for a mass bigger area. the definite article, the only way to oakley, have more feet, even in the future or to have a life in this planet is likely to. but they, some of those places that are key for the balance of the planet. for the 3rd year in a row chile and argentina, jointly asking the annual meeting of the commission to declare parts of the peninsula off limits to commercial fishing in the southern oceans. unique environment supports species that can't be found anywhere else on the planet. so the idea is to manage in a different way fishery and activities occurring in the area by and in this that includes areas calmly called non take songs

where the fishery will not be allowed. but there is resistance, particularly from russia and china. argentina says there's no time to lose, but even the money said, argentina and chile have taken the initiative because if something is not done soon, it will be all of humanity that will be damaged. we ask the countries that are considering vetoing this proposal not to do so because we need this. humanity needs is. his plea for the rational use of marine resources is backed by all the best available science. which in the past has been the guiding light for the 26 commission members. but for some countries, that may not be enough to see in you an al-jazeera sent out 0, has obtained recordings of one of the world's most wanted men trying to negotiate immunity from prosecution. the billionaire financier, joel lowe, is wanted for his role in malaysia's multi-billion $1.01,

m d b fraud scandal. marion jolly has our exclusive report. just a warning, it contains some flashing lights. he was once 2 tourists for his digs and lifestyle luxury, real estate and supernaut all boarded with one m.t.b. money. but today the malaysian finance see a job is on the run, 130 c. in the united states and malaysia. in recordings of change exclusively by, 000 is heard for the 1st time trying to khalid deal with the haji among hammond's government. soon after 8 historic election win in may 28th. just on the phone to jolo protests since the missile used the office to return all the assets purchased with one aim to be funds

i think used to lucia, not former f.b.i. special agent. deborah love provocateur, worked on the agency's initial one m.t.b. investigation. you know, it's like the bank robber who gets caught it is like, well if i return the money, then i don't want to be charged with robbing the bank. well, you still robbed the bank, and in this case, you are robbed of the development fund. and there's strong evidence he deed,, according to the man who led the f.b.i. is one m.t.v. investigation until recently. and i think we're very confident that we will be able to prove involvement and his position in this scheme. in july this year, joe's coconspirator, malaysia's former prime minister, as you present, was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail, subject to an appeal for crimes related to wanting to be back in 2018.

jolo put all the blame not on him, but breed when the fugitive to justice has proved challenging. despite 2, interpol red notices against him and multiple passports canceled, he continues to evade authorities and travel. the only way they're going to happen is through corruption and through the full resources of one or more governments. but according to the fugitive life on the run is not easy to use on, and he's still paying millions of dollars to lawyers and p.r. firms around the world. marianne jolie elegies in around and that's our show for this week. if you'd like to comment on anything that we've seen, you can get in touch with us tweet me. i'm at a finnigan on twitter. use the hashtag a j. c to see what you do,

drop us ally and counting the cost of al-jazeera doc. that is our e-mail address. as always, there's plenty more few online at al-jazeera dot com slash c.t.c. . that takes you straight to our page. and they can catch up on past shows. but that's it for this edition of counting the cost of a free and for the good for the whole team here in doha, thanks for being with us. but news on al-jazeera is next decades ago, manila was called the pearl of the orient. the manila metropolitan theater was once

a testament to the city's grandeur. but decades later, the theater has become a symbol of moneyless decay. now the philippine government is changing their government buildings. the universities and monasteries were just some of the many structures that were destroyed in manila during world war 2. but rebuilding a life and a city from scratch has proven difficult. and some experts say manila has never truly recovered from swan's, had, a vast empire spanning several continents. but by the 1940, s., the french were forced to confront reality. and to moms from dependence. and a fast part of a new documentary series, al-jazeera looks at how the colonial on rescue conflict in algeria and full scale war in indochina, blood and test french to colonize ation on al-jazeera. play an important role

protecting it would. ringback face a british drugmakers says that i have a covert 19 banks seen for the wall cheaper and easier to distribute than rivals and this is al jazeera live from coming up. ethiopian government forces say they've moved close to the to grow capital of mccalla, as the desperate situation for refugees worsens. a trial begins for former french president nicolas sarkozy accused of corruption.