covert 19 and protesters in poland, her rallied against a court ruling that could outlaw all, or almost all forms of abortion. please declare the gathering in warsaw illegal and try to block demonstrators. poland already has some of the strictest abortion laws in europe. and last month, the constitutional court ruled to ban abortions of fetuses with defects which the government yet has yet to implement because of the unrest. at least 3 people have been killed and a further 2 are missing. out of flash floods hit the italian region of sardinia, strong rains, and winds of batter the island since friday. parts of the town of beauty were submerged in water and cars buried under mud. residents have been advised to exercise maximum caution. not your desire of means. they'll run a reminder of our top stories. ethiopia's prime minister says the week's long

military operation in northern t. grey region is over, the army says it's taking a troll of the capital mccully, but the leader of the 2 great people's liberation front to keep fighting government forces. there are violent scenes during protests in france against a planned law that makes it illegal to film and publish police officers faces anger against the proposed law has been fueled by a video showing police beating and racially abusing a black music producer grant. a virus infections in the u.s. have doubled in november compared to last month. more than 205000, new infections were confirmed on friday, pushing the total number past 13000000. and there are concerns. infections could continue to rise. following the thanksgiving holiday weekend, mike hanna has more from washington d.c. . a number of testing centers have closed for the holiday period. so the amount of testing being done is down. so the figures may well be even higher than they appear at present. so of great concern to health workers and health officials and pointing

to to the fact that the impact of the massive travel during this holiday week can only be properly gauged in a week to 10 days. and they are fearing that these horrendous statistics are likely to get even worse. the u.s. appeals court has thrown out donald trump the latest attempt to contest the presidential election results. judges unanimously dismissed the lawsuit that sought to challenge the state of pennsylvania's malin voting law. they also say trump's lawyers failed to prove in single mail in ballots was fortunately cast or counted. joe biden won the state by more than 80000 votes. of course you can follow those stories are recovering on our web site at al-jazeera dot com and back with more news in half. and i hope you can join me until then. it's counting the cost to stay with us. we understand the different similarities of cultures across the our

current affair. hello, i'm sam is a band. this is counting the cost on al-jazeera. your look at the world of business in economics this week. president xi extends his grip across china and hong kong. taiwan could be next as beijing, navy, and trains missiles on the country. what will the u.s. response be? also this week a failed decades old policy of unfettered, free market economics. what next for a chilly day as the people redefined the economy to eliminate inequality, class tax, the rich argentina starts a debate on who should pay for the pandemic before the question. many countries are

starting to ponder. china is tightening its grip on hong kong new laws imposed by beijing disqualified for lawmakers for being unpatriotic. that prompted 14 pro-democracy lawmakers to quit as president. she is consolidating his power, scrapping a 2 term presidential limit. he's crushed voices opposed to him and has taken a firmer grip on the autonomous region of detaining millions of wiggers in hundreds of internment camps. and she may not be done yet, is next focus could be the island nation of taiwan, which it claims as its own territory. she has gone as far as saying it's inevitable requirement for the historical, rejuvenating the chinese nation. but just how feasible is this, when, according to the south china morning, post china has deployed its most advanced hypersonic missiles to its south east

coast as it prepares for a possible invasion. that's because taiwan's president saying, when has refused to accept the one china principle, it's moved more marines closer to taiwan and held invasion drills. despite the pandemic, china has increased its military spending by 6.6 percent this year, as it sees every increasing threats. china has built the world's biggest navy, a fleet of $350.00 warships to stake its claim to the south china sea. that's raising concerns in washington, which is pledging to counter and expand its warship fleet from 293-2350 5. president trump, for his part agreed last chance to sell $100.00 harpoon antiship lascelles worth $2400000000.00 to taiwan. but also sold one point $8000000000.00 worth of land attack mobile missiles. it's all part of taiwan's hedgehog strategy to resist an invasion. president elect joe biden hasn't expressed a view on taiwan yet,

but he has assured japan the u.s. would help defend the disputed senkaku islands, which beijing claims to the trump administration has signed a 5 year economic deal with taiwan. despite objections from china, the deal falls short of a full blown trade deal. well, joining me now from singapore is in chongqing. he's the associate professor of political science at the national university of singapore. good to have you with us . so china's being quite assertive when it comes to hong kong, when it comes to the we will taiwan be next. might it be facing an invasion? i think an invasion is probably a bit a bit far off at this point in time, but certainly it will be putting on more pressure on taiwan. we've been seeing increased military activity an increase in the frequency of flights, milledge,

of military aircraft in the, in one sort of talents, air defense identification zone and also a round one crossing the median line. these are efforts, i think, to put more pressure on taiwan to suggest to its government and people that they should not behave in ways that the p.r.c. doesn't like. has china legal, the ability right now to do an invasion if it wanted to some point to things like the number of landing craft and say in my view, one thing to point the missiles and fly more across all the key components. i'm missing, right? so an all out invasion, i think it's going to be challenging. it's going to be challenging for several reasons. one of course, is the logistical capability of lining crop of aircraft to support an invasion force is, of course, the weather and the time straight to the seas that can be a bit unpredictable. getting large amounts of people and material across can be

a bit tricky. and of course, crossing that expensive want that would mean that, you know, these vessels could be picked off from the town on site. so there's a high amount of risk. i don't think it's that feasible for china to do at this moment because an invasion is, i think, quite an extreme measure. the lots of, of the course of measures that china can possibly take that don't get into the asian territory. however much more assertive beijing months to be taiwan would be much of an international backlash. so i think it depends on how the ash happens if beijing engineers' a situation where it looks like the townies side is being really egregious or excessive, then perhaps they'll be less of a backlash. or if the tony side does something that is on its own accord, that is highly unacceptable. and the eyes of the international community, meaning to say that if taiwan, you know, actually decided that it wanted to decline depends right away that it wanted to

act in ways that provoke the p.r.c. actively without, without you know, having reason to do so. but short of those, and i think those are very unlikely scenarios because taiwan has a leadership that is pretty common. seems to know what it's doing. so in that sense, that whatever response to trying to caution, especially if it gets increase of his, he's excessive. i think there would be a mortgage rational backlash. how much of it would there be whether that has an effect on changing china's course of action, i think remains to be seen. but i think in general, there is going to be a lot more resistance and happiness to a chinese excessiveness, but we haven't seen the u.s. president like joe biden take a position yet on taiwan. why? i think what we've seen him do is to talk about his, his proxies in terms of people who lincoln,

who was the presumptive secretary of state, talk about increasing ties and improving relations with taiwan. so presumably that is reflective of his position. the reason why president biden elect biden himself has not come across, i suppose, is because he does not think that the taiwan issue needs to be put on a priority. it doesn't have to be at the focus of u.s. foreign relations right now. and of course, we also know that his focus is his declared focus is on the pandemic. it's on fixing the u.s. economy, so he probably doesn't want other issues. going to include it to get in the way of that primary agenda. while we've seen taiwanese buying more u.s. weapons, president from giving taiwan these critical weapons. this is all polly guess of taiwan's hedgehogs, perhaps trying to get as much as they can out of the current u.s.

administration. so the talent side has been trying to increase its defensive capability for while this current tranche of weapons sales, you know, it's, it's come up at a time where, how it has been faced, facing increasing pressure from china. i mentioned the military activity from the chinese side. so in that sense, it makes it's, you know, it's quite clear that the tolerance i would want to up its ability to be a hedgehog, to be able to at least impose costs that are pretty heavy on china. should china choose to be well rested? i mean, the whole idea of all for the tell inside is to make an invasion, make any sort of course of attempt difficult. so there's always going to be an element of doubt in the minds of the chinese dissing me because that would cause them to hold back. right. so this current round of sales, you know, feeds into that strategy. given the fact that china has upped the ante on its on its side. so it's surprising the u.s. is selling weapons to taiwan. the u.s.

still doesn't have a full blown trade deal with taiwan. i think this gets him pot to the administration's general reticence and sensitivity to, you know, opening up mall more trade deals. so actually, for the trauma administration, this is already, i think, pretty significant step. right. it's not so gone through with the new trade deals. it's renegotiated existing ones, so that's on the trouble ministrations on the other. i think there's also recognition that the u.s. public is not as ready to be more open economically at this point in time. so i think in terms of the economic relationship with taiwan, that trade arrangement is probably as far as it goes, as far as as feasible. what outgoing administration goes as far as probably the u.s. public can stomach. well, the time being, of course,

taiwan is still very interested in getting a free trade agreement. and i suppose those negotiations will continue, and we may see something later down the line in the biden, and in this region, has been good talking to you. thanks so much. thank you. it all began with students protesting about a hike in metro fares, but it's mushroomed into something much bigger long before ronald reagan and margaret thatcher, chile was a test bed for unfettered free market economics or neo liberalism, under the right wing dictatorship of all gusto. pinochet, that experiment in the 1970 s. was continued by democratic governments from 990 to the present day. pinochet's rule was an economic failure posted to ship the economy has performed better than its neighbors, but it has failed to address inequality, access to pensions, health care and education were left to the free market. the people finally got to

vote on the constitution, the outcome, a landslide, to scrap the charter in favor of more government intervention in the state. so what now? well, there's a long way to go before the people of chile see any change or joining me now via skype from london is latin america economist at capital economics. good to have you with us. so chill, there's been this 6 steps, success rather story for developing countries for so long. what's gone wrong? well, i think if you look at chile over the last few decades it's, it's been a regional performer in latin america in aggregate sounds. but i think one of the issues is that, and all of the citizens of enjoying those gains in the economy. i think there was a sense among many of the citizens that the benefits only went to those of the top . and that's why we saw those mass protests last year calling to reduce inequality and provide better public welfare provisions for things like education and health

care. so i think even though in aggregate the economy's done well, possibly those towards the bottom end of the distribution haven't been able to enjoy as much. so when you look at those people on the streets, as you said, that basically does that vindicate what economists like. joseph stiglitz have been saying that neo liberalism has undermined democracy for the last 40 years that trickle down economics hasn't worked. i think it depends on whether we look at an absolute or relative sense. i mean, i'm not sure those have moved our party over the last 40 years, but these, you know, they're both free market principles because the economy was growing fairly well. and so most people are in a better position than they were say, 40 years ago. but if you look at over, no sense, then income inequality has widened, then there's a feeling amongst those at the bottom that have seen others and their wealth and

income massively escalate. whereas in a right of sense those so the average person, it's maybe not increased as much. so i don't think it's necessarily fair to say that, you know, liberalism has just totally fail is probably just been more of a case that it hasn't done enough in insurance to certain benefit. everyone right now it is a long process of changing the constitution. right? yeah, so there's still a long way to go. so we had the referendum last month where she lands voted to have a new constitution. as part of that vote, they are also elected to have their new constitution drafted by a constituent assembly nor citizens, rather than a mix of citizens and current politicians. and that constituent assembly will be elected in april. and that assembly will then have to draft

a new constitution and there have to be a 2 thirds guarantee for any clause that goes in to a new constitution. and that process will take about a year, and then the new charter will be put to another referendum in 2022 for the people to vote. and it's only at that stage where there may be a new political system in chile. so we're looking at years before we know exactly what the people want, those then thing on the horizon that we can say, that's probably one of the changes that's going to be introduced. i think the main thing we could see is a shift towards greater state intervention in the economy. ok. money that was my children's pensions. education, health care? yeah, exactly. so a lot of the protests that we saw last year were calling for things better. public welfare provision for health care, education, pensions, and it looks like the state level papers are all in or 3 parts of in all of those

sectors. you know, and that could be a positive for the economy. i think for education and health care in particular, if it means that there's more good quality and widespread provision of health care education that could boost the potential of the economy. if it means that there's a more, more knowledgeable, more educated and healthier workforce. but there is, there is, of course, a risk that the state sector goes too far and if they venture into other areas of the economy where this, perhaps a better left to the private sector, there's a risk there could crowd out the more productive private sector. so at this stage, it's probably too early to say whether that be a good or a bad thing for the economy. so was about finding the balance is no, well, there will be any need for spending to increase, right? but the government does have some room to maneuver right, with debt 30 percent of g.d.p.

. one thing that she hasn't favor is that it's deposition is very low, especially compared to others in latin america. and so we've already seen the minox quite substantial stimulus during the crown of us and ek, but about 12 percent of g.d.p. on things like wage subsidy schemes, for example. and it looks like and the latest budget have said that they're going to continue keeping spending fairly high over the next few years to try and stimulate the economy. because there, the public finances came into a crisis in pretty good shape. all right, thanks so much for your thoughts and analysis on that may kill that. thank you. argentina's congress is debating a bill seeking to raise billions of dollars from the super rich, but one off taxes meant support families who've been hit hard by the pandemic. today's about reports from want to silence argentina's tax

by and how it should be sliced and made an economic crisis has become food for lively discussion when our site is. and now for the 1st time deputies are set to debate imposing a wealth tax on arjun times who have over $2000000.00 in assets, thousands took to the streets outside congress to show support for the new tax and the government of out of the farm. and this, it wasn't as if we are seeing a very delicate situation in argentina with people struggling to find food, people who have lost their jobs. so imposing a tax on wealth is necessary to the tax under discussion would amount to 2 percent for individuals with assets worth more than $2500000.00 and scale up to us, much as $525.00 old from wealthy citizens holding their fortunes outside the country. argentina is desperate for funds as they coronavirus than democrats had a devastated impact in the economy. poverty rates are close to 50 percent,

but commercial chambres in the country warning that a wealth tax in this context could have an impact on potential investors who already see the country as negative for business. several nationals are fleeing the south american nation, claiming that doing business in argentina is complicated and unprofitable volatile politics, price and currency controls and state interventionism are part of doing business. here the law is being debated as argentina begins discussing with the i.m.f. . how to play over $40000000000.00 in debt or says the opposition will vote against the people this kind of taxes per recession. it's not a tax that will promote investment. on the contrary, the problem is how this tax is being discussed and the public protests by the government, which it's a climate against business, there was no discussion. the only intention is to show that they are champions of

the poor when they are getting into the austerity measures demanded by the i.m.f. and the us. but president of the, for a member said the new tax is meant to aid public coffers to cope with a pandemic of funding that we are living in terms of where solidarity years to be the role in congress. we see the debate on world tax. what is being debated is whether those who have more can express in terms of him agency in solidarity with the rest of the country. i difficult times for argentina, years of recession and inflation and the impact of the pandemic have left millions in need. finding balance between providing aid and stabilizing the economy is seen as crucial to help the country leave its economic troubles behind. as the promise of vaccines sends stocks to record highs, some governments are already thinking about how they're going to pay for the cost

of the pandemic. but is it premature when the recovery isn't expected to kick in until late 2021 at best? let's get some analysis from jamil afterward, director of investment strategy, a german fin, tech company nagger good to have you with us. so governments are looking at a range of things from like tax increases to austerity measures. is this the right thing to do? you think? absolutely not. look, similarly, livelihoods have been impacted by this, were that stupid jobs. loved ones who are unfortunate circumstances from this pandemic. and even lots of governments are just now, except we are still in the early stages of the contents of the economic rescue plan . so it would be very premature to be moving any kind of out of this money. but to me, let me jump in and be the devil's advocate for these governments. if they've got bills to pay, they've got bills to pay. what are they supposed to do? so government center that's stuck between a hockey rink going to have place because if they kick the can down the road,

it could be impacting future generations. for example, this millions of millions of people, young school, kids who have not been at school for many months and they do not want them to be impacted potentially 10 years, not at the same time. one that is hundreds of millions of people who are still going through forms of patches from this economic, a personal actions. it's insensitive to be doing this now, and the vaccine has not been approved yet, nor has it been rolled out distributed and prove that it's going to work for a mass amount of people globally. so what the government centered have to do, and what's happening right now is that hands are tied around for folks because jet debt to g.d.p. has increased to 362 percent this year just to get some figures on that done. but if stocks this year and around 320 percent, so over the past 9 months, 10 months, it's grown in some forms of 8 and other government such as not to get into them, have not spent this much money into governments. since wartime. civil talking about, the early and mid 1940, s. and yet this economy specifically the u.k.

. it's still the worst impacted by this pandemic across all industrial and g 7 nations that give some kind of appetite towards what this style. and that has been the big problem. but essentially it until we get back to a recovery that has a flat road. we know the vaccine works. we know that things going slow. he's voting gradually, get back to normal because the moment we've got done, we've gone and we've had a trapper like situation essentially until we get on a straight road. we don't know how successful this is going to be, and that's why we have to get back on snow before we can decide to say how we're going to begin to pay that money back. of course that has to be paid back is correct conversation, but it's not a solution that has to be so today. so i think a of a, of all the i.m.f. is saying they're saying wait until the, the recovery becomes really well established. i'd definitely do not only with the, i.m.f. but on the board, central banks, it was the i meant the service that this pace of recovery is going to be uneven.

it's not the kind of narrative to say that every economy is going to go through different situations such as they have already in the end of it. but the federal reserve chair, which is the u.s. central bank, drew. it's going to say that when there's a condom, it does get back on to an even folks in the normal will be different to what it was before. listen to be a huge group of people which includes employees isn't a cause business. this is also going to include many sectors that are going to continue to need to pull, and that means by support. they need to have more government aid money to help more stimulus the needs and most interesting measures. and actually the nudge in the direction right now is that government still has a influential role to play, to do mole a buddha for the economist to get back. because one of the lessons from the global financial crisis, i know we don't talk about some of it was 13 years ago. but one of the lessons was that actually the governments that got me fast enough, that's why the recovery took as long as 10 years or so. we were still talking about

it even before this pandemic. now this pandemic, we might get a hoot by 2021 and some sort of lexi, but we certainly do not want to be talking about it 5 years or so from now, which is why for the next one, yet the support has to remain in place. hopefully 520222023 action bank can then be put into place as well. so how to get this debt issue back under some sort of sustained, i could show it to about 2020 to 2023, the readies bump. a vaccines have been approved at other markets getting ahead of themselves and all this optimism. i set prices are always the 1st things to press stuff again very early and i'm going to use that comment at the i.m.f. . it may just recently, the disconnect between asset prices is basically means global markets and the real economy is tremendous. it's even larger now than it already was that we can have this year. and that's where we were before there was a big discrepancy based essentially markets believe that destruction going to be approved in days and weeks and i'll be fingers crossed. that's to be the case. but

i also believe that things are going to be very, very quick, innocently a sudden recovery. but you also felt the same thing at the beginning of the 1st wave of we were in that interim period. megan, where things were starting to be reopened up. but that they did not take into account that we have to step back and that would rock restrictions to come into place once again. so that's a place that's a prices always do this, but it does not mean that the economy is justified in the right place. the disconnect is tremendous. all right, always good to have you. thanks so much to me and thank you. and that's our show for this waiver. remember, you can get in touch with us via twitter, use the hash tag, a.j. c.t.c. . when you do more drama, say about counting the cost. about desir, i don't know that is our address. there's more for you on line of al-jazeera dot com slash seething, saying we'll take you straight to our page, which has individual reports, links and entire episodes for you to catch up on. that's it for this edition of

counting the cost time sammy's. they banned from the whole team here for now. it's goodbye news and i'll just share is that after world war 2, france's great empire began to unravel in vietnam to most of what he was trained themselves into the streets bursting with joy, kissing each other. and algeria years and the last, if the indochinese manage to beat the french army, why not ask the decline, continues an episode or 2 of blood in tears, french decolonization on al-jazeera captaining a leading used team at 16 years old. takes determination to add to that, staying on top of your game at school. the whole family bands together and shares the sacrifices necessary for a son to have a shot at becoming

a professional footballer. by tunisia, home game on a jersey if europe is prime minister says the military has taken control of to graze regional capital, but forces there to keep fighting the observer robin, you're watching. i was there a lot. my headquarters here in doha are also coming up violence in paris as protests continue against a new security bill that seemed to restrict the right to report on police brutality . also anger in iran over the assassination of a top nuclear side.