now russian authorities are investigating the mysterious deaths of nearly $300.00 endangered seals that bodies have been washing up on the shores of the caspian sea in the region of dagestan russia's fisheries agency says it could be because of an infectious disease but also what they call external reasons. just a quick look at the headlines this hour now before we go on in the united states more than 2700 people died of covert 19 on thursday with officials warning that daily toll could continue for 2 or 3 months america has recorded more than 210000 cases every day on average this week meanwhile in europe tougher knock down measures have been called for as countries report record rises in infection rates and deaths in all the headlines european union leaders of agree to cut carbon

emissions by at least 55 percent by the end of the decade the reduction compared to 1911 is a step up from the previous goal of 40 percent and his promise nearly $670000000000.00 to help countries in industries that it dependent on coal to transition to green energy one of the men found guilty of the murder of lebanon's former prime minister has been sentenced to 5 life terms salema ash was tried and sentenced in absentia he was found to have played a leading role in the bombing that killed rafi kerry and 21 other people in 2005 i actually has been found guilty of conspiracy terrorism and homicide. ethiopia's government says it's returning eritrean refugees to camps in northern 10 they fled to the capital jaring fighting integrate between local forces and federal government soldiers the u.n. says their return to to grace so soon is unacceptable but ethiopia insists they will be safe. to date we still have no access to the region we are extremely

concerned for the safety and humanitarian needs of eritrean refugees in ethiopia large numbers of youth of refugees have left camps due to insecurity and the lack of basic services or lack of basic services and they are now in may kili and the book we along with our partners have also not had access to the 4 refugee camps which host nearly 100000 people in more than a month. a bill to legalize abortion in argentina has created a major hurdle after it was approved in the lower house of congress supporters waited all night and celebrated when they heard the news the bill now goes to the upper house where it might face resistance. as the headlines counting the cost is coming up next is they without jazeera. american people have finally broken america as i slid. down. more dangerous looking.

with the election behind us the republican party dumptruck the. us politics. the bottom. hello i'm daryn jordan this is counting the cost on al-jazeera your look at the world of business and economics this week accusations of being an $800000000000.00 super spread a hate this information and lies is it time to break up facebook for killing off the competition. the rise and fall of the middle class the pandemic destroys 2 decades of poverty reduction but this time it's urbanites who've been hit the hardest we find out why. the last oil and gas front maybe

a is selling off licenses to the world's biggest oil companies but environmentalists are concerned that fracking for shale could destroy elephant habitats and water supply. now $70000000000.00 in revenue $1800000000.00 active users and worth more than $800000000000.00 facebook must be doing something right in catering for the world's desire to connect but there's a darker side to mark zuckerberg social media company some say the platform has pushed holocaust denial genocide and it's a super spreader of false hopes and it's accused of being a home to anti vaccine is political conspiracies and disinform ation so just how did it get so big well it crushed the competition through acquisitions copycat products and throttling news content providers. well the only time it's been held to account was for the misuse of data by cambridge analytical which also worked on president trump's 2016 presidential campaign during that time the network was used

to spread misinformation facebook was fined $5000000000.00 a slap on the wrist for such a huge company but it may be hit with another anti-trust lawsuit possibly in november that's according to the washington post and a biden victory could see the social media company being broken up facebook along with the likes of google and amazon have been forewarned by the democrats that they're abusing their market positions facebook has been accused of being a monopoly and pretty much competing against itself after the 2012 acquisition of instagram and the company has been accused of tinkering with its algorithms to give more prominence to right wing sites zuckerberg has even courted right wing commentators and regularly talks to trump's son in law jared cushion a face book was used to promote genocide in me and mob and its india operations have been accused of allowing right wing politicians to spread hate all to curry favor with prime minister narendra modi's ruling party and let's not forget the

site was used to broadcast live the murder of scores of muslim worshippers in 2 new zealand mosques so far only google has been hit by a us lawsuit for anti competitive behavior the case focuses on payment it gives to phone makers to make sure its search engine is the preferred choice the european union has successfully sued google for abusing its power on android phones favoring its own products in search results and stopping websites from using rival ads sellers only know google has paid more than $9000000000.00 in fines to the e.u. so there's lots to discuss here joining me now from st gallon in switzerland is miriam by 10 miriam is assistant professor of law and economics at the st gallon university miriam great to have you on the program. so how likely is it then the breakup of facebook and other big tech companies well the digital chief of the european commission said yesterday to be cautious with this instrument because we

would have very lengthy legal proceedings but one question also is what would breaking up big tech achieve for consumers an important thing to understand about these platforms is that their networks and so they become more valuable as more users join them and that means that already big platforms tend to become bigger and we have to ask ourselves if we were to break up a company like facebook if the result would simply be that the process repeats itself and we end up with one big social network once again yet it's interesting miriam that the e.u. has been more successful than the u.s. in taking on companies like google facebook microsoft what do you think is behind the success doing that well the e.u. seems to have been more active in the past couple of years in this area with investigations into google and apple and facebook and germany as well i do think that the u.s. is catching up now i think there's just more willingness now in the u.s.

politically and maybe just among people to do something and to rein in the power of big tech so how would you then go about limiting the power of facebook would you split off instagram split off what's up. well as i said splitting the software breaking them up we have to see if that's going to be the solution with facebook and whatsapp one of the main concerns for consumers in the end is the data that are being collected about them and so and i trust has some instruments that we can use to do something about that big dominant platforms are not allowed to abuse their dominant position but i think we'll need instruments outside antitrust as well will need privacy laws data protection laws to stop companies from collecting too many too much data about us and from using the data in ways that we are we don't agree with and that's an interesting point you make miriam because in the old days

competition rules came down to price but now as you say it's all about personal data so where do we start with putting a value on data as a commodity and limiting companies like google and facebook to our personal data. that's a very difficult question indeed a lot of people have been writing and thinking about this how do we value this data for and i trust authorities it's difficult to say well this is too much data collection and for consumers it's difficult to know is this too much will we'll see a prize that gets higher but we don't always know what data are collected about us and so again i think that's a a problem that not only and i trust and the authorities can solve but will have to look at other ways we'll have to strengthen data protection authorities. make sure that they're funded well that they have the resources to enforce rules and data protection like in the e.u. we have the general data protection regulation that make sure that companies are

limited in what they can do with their data i personally think that's a more fruitful way forward then trying to value the data for say but in enter trust we'll need to have a look at the value of data in other areas such as merger control we might want to look at acquisitions when companies have a lot of data even if they might not be making a lot of profit yet so how do we then miriam good about improving competition i mean some of the big tech companies seem to just copy what's out there i mean even facebook has attempted to make its own version of ticktock. well i think there are several instruments one in competition law is that we might want to strengthen merger control and so that means tougher standards maybe we want merging parties to prove to us that an acquisition is beneficial. other than breaking up big tac we might want to have a look at all the companies that big tech companies have been acquiring in the last couple of years but we might need to look outside of competition law as well and

look at regulation as i said data protection regulation but maybe other types of regulation as well for the behavior of these tech companies so let me get a final thought from you miriam i mean if any country is going to implement the break up of these big tech companies it has to be the united states mean we all remember when they forced microsoft to unbundle internet explorer from its windows package and ironically that opened up the way for google's browser absolutely well so that's something that i think the u.s. is looking into now and their investigation into google it's a bit similar to what the european commission did in 2018 essentially looking at tying unbundling a saying well you're a dominant company and so you cannot use your market power in one market to try and gain market power in another market we'll see if they can stop google from for example making google chrome the standard browser on lots of lots of phones i think

that would be one way to start for sure room by 10 great to get your thoughts thank you for talking to counting the cost thank you thank you. know the last 2 decades have seen a remarkable reduction in global poverty but that is all about to be undone by the coronavirus pandemic those falling back into poverty are not the people you'd most likely associate with being poll the world bank says the new poor relatively well educated living in cities and towns and in middle income countries so where all those. income countries well there in south asia and sub-saharan africa the pandemic will push up to $115000000.00 people into extreme poverty this year which the bank defines as living on less than $1.90 a day so what can be done to help the new poor and reverse the rise in poverty well to answer that and more let's talk to karen in a sanchez part of though she joins us via skype from washington d.c.

where she is the world bank director of the poverty equity global practice coding a great to have you on the program so what exactly is pushing the middle classes back into poverty do you think what the emerging evidence about the impacts of coverage 19 and the associated economic crises on household does us is that these impacts are significant they're felt broadly and they're likely and i seen very fast our projections suggest a bag of in 1000 will push between 88 and a 115000000 people into extreme poverty these year and that number could go up to 150000000 in 2021 and these new poor mostly will reside in middle income countries and look a little bit different from the existing poor meaning those that were poor before the current crisis in the sense that they are relatively more her than their relatively more educated they didn't to work in the informal service and

construction sector they are not however coming from the middle class and instead we see these groups who was are the most affected what we call be economically in secure and sometimes the best by the middle class in some of these middle countries so what so what's you know we are driving this as you were asking is really a combination of 2 themes very significant declines in labor incomes do you do job losses and which cats are cross the border in many countries and 2nd a reduction in not only were income particularly remittances from domestic and international migrants tell you let me jump in there and ask you was was lock down the right thing to do them for these low and middle income countries. i think when we think about these we need to remember that this issues were remade at a time where very little was known about the virus and governments had to take policy actions and make policy choices under conceivable and certainty and and even

though we do know more now about the short term impacts of covering 1900 crises there's still a lot that we don't know about the potential long term impact or the nature and shape of the record so in that context our focus has been in some poor dean government's efforts are as they've tried to under 100 protect lives and on the own hand do you know support life he has protect those life so it so let me jump in here i mean do you think there was an alternative to the lockdown i mean was there any way to have kept these economies going i think it's i mean frankly i think it as i said it is very hard to tap i think he inside we can all have to hypothesize about you know things that could have been done differently but i think we need to focus on the fact that in many places even in the context of lockdown significant efforts were made to as i said protect life on the one hand through you know a health response and at the same time protect life which was one of the main concerns that we had particularly for the poor under ponderable and it is worth

pointing out i mean this ends a 20 year decline in poverty reduction but what was behind that reduction do you think you're right that you know the last few decades have have been witness to unprecedented progress in extreme poverty reduction with the global extreme poverty rate falling from 35 percent in $992.00 under 10 percent earlier these year and even though the experience of countries you know is different i think there are 3 factors that we can really play into in understanding these these very positive trend that we saw 1st economic growth if you will to a large extent by an increase in international trade was critical degenerate new economic opportunities 2nd. investments in human capital you know health and education and a rapid increase in financial inclusion of the poor on the other of all basically meant that these groups were able to take advantage of those new economic

opportunities and then finally this is a period when we've seen a very rapid expansion particularly me there are no income countries of safety net programs programs that protect those that were lifted out of poverty from the morning back into poverty again so it's really a combination of those new factor so kelly let me ask you to gaze into your crystal ball and i mean assuming we are able to get a vaccine how long do you think it will take to reverse this decline that as i said you know we're in the midst of the worst reversal in poverty reduction that we have seen as we are starting to morning very big systematically you know in 1990 s. i think it's quite clear that reimbursing india's will not be easy and we not be quick our projections show that forward the raid signal of poverty rates will be about 7 percent by the year 2030 based on historical growth rates and if you mean one pre-season you know port 80 and they could be after 8.6 percent if you

know they were to increase by one percentage point for a year over the next decade which given what we know about previous pandemics is actually quite likely to happen so in this context what's very clear is that we need swift significant unsustainable action by governments and development partners to promote and support a strong recovery somebody who has these reversal argument that absolutely so just talk us through quickly carly you know what governments need to do because if they do spend more where does that money come from. so in these 1st few months as i said earlier the focus has been very much on vibe in the pandemic on protecting households on for and given the magnitude of the shock that has you know it requires significant resources so we see governments across the world using a variety of strategy is to deal with this including a station of existing spending and one possible mobilizing admission all fiscal resources but you know in many cases these efforts have not been enough given the

needs of the moment and that's why the world bank and the i.m.f. together we've been g. 20 countries have supported their suspension of that service payments for low income countries in order to create additional fiscal space kaleena such as power that we have to leave it there thank you very much indeed for talking to counting the cost thank you thank you very much. well brazil is the world's 3rd largest food producer but new data has revealed that more than 10000000 brazilians are going hungry and as the coronavirus pandemic plunges more people into poverty that number is set to get worse. reports. there's no shortage of healthy food in this bustling street market in rio de janeiro a covert 1000 pandemic may have crippled brazil's economy but it still produces enough to feed one 6th of the earth's population something president shade balsam model made a point of reminding world leaders at this year's u.n.

general assembly. up is that despite the international crisis brazil's agricultural production never stops and we produce enough to feed 1000000000 people. yet more than 10000000 brazilians experience of your food insecurity according to government data just released by the brazilian institute of geography and statistics and that was before the coronavirus pandemic now the situation is worse than places to live in poverty has always been a problem in brazil but the poor were invisible the pandemic is showing how goes truth ace and i cloud used to organize tourism events in austria she returned to brazil for a short visit but ended up staying to work as a volunteer in a soup kitchen most of these people in this line lost their jobs to the recession and the pandemic like follow me down by who left his small town to look for work in

rio de janeiro i don't even know the coronavirus left me stranded here and homeless but at least i'm getting fed and can use the public bathroom to bathe 3 times a week. according to unicef survey during the 1st months of the pandemic the number of hungry in brazil rose dramatically. seeing ringback one in every 5 brazilians went hungry or admitted not having enough money to buy food the population as a whole lost about half of its income but families with children and adolescents suffered a bigger loss of 63 percent brazil is still the world's 3rd largest producer of food much of it is sold abroad last year brazilians exported $32000000000.00 worth of agricultural products to $180.00 countries but experts are warning the government that the country means back on the united nations hunger map it's

a place brazil had left 6 years ago. now is often described as the last oil front to rear it's a country that's known for its uranium and diamonds but in the last few years the oil industry has been beating a path to its door but no commercial deposits have been found yet but that hasn't stopped oil companies from snapping up licenses to drill recon africa small canadian oil company plans to begin drilling in the north of the country there's thought to be around 11000000000 barrels of oil in that area but most if not all is shale and that has an environmental activists up in arms because they believe it will endanger local wildlife and communities recon africa is drilling in the maybe as can go basin where the country has the largest elephant population it also supplies water into neighboring botswana's vango delta. so let's talk to scott evans he's the chief executive officer of recon africa and joins us via skype from

dallas scott welcome to the program let me ask you 1st with all the meticulous work that goes into the search for oil how much on and gas is there offshore and on shore in the media west thanks gary for having me on the show where we're really focused on the on shore so i can answer this question for here and we're working which is the conveying collision so this is a brand new sedentary version recently discovered 8750000 acres northeast and northwest blood clot in the canada that we see over the 3rd party experts 100000000000 barrels that's been generated now that will all be recovered but we see it to be potentially the large key giant petroleum oil field sizes so significant resource and scott how does that then compare to neighboring countries and the rest of africa. well i think that it would you know again we're any expression face of there's uncertainty here but i think it would be comparable to

some of the fields of steel say you know a new door next door. so we again we're looking at a field size distribution at this point but with again i think it's significant and of course if you do manage to get to the oil this could be a huge boost to the namibian economy which is currently worth around $15000000000.00 and with a population i think of around $2000000.00 people this could change lives couldn't it well you know it really it really occurred nearly a it 'd uses approximately let's say $26000.00 barrels a day right now success for us a lot needed to be the next quarter of oil and cheap probably more poorly powered tendons will gas can not only generate income for that's this interest self inspires a lot of other industry with a new generation of power and just tell us briefly scott a little bit more about this patch in the mid the way you plan to do your drilling for oil sure so again northeast corner of limited north best possible and we're all

within the current gas or so it's an area that's been lightly populated you know some agriculture but an area that is well served by infrastructure you know one of the things that attracted us to community is that you know general overall a good infrastructure very stable government the terms are of this culture look quite good you know so it's a great place to do business but where we are is is a again a in the kalahari desert so we have to be mindful of taking care of that yet and that's an interesting point you make scott because it's also an environmentally sensitive site it's a huge elephant reserve it's has a conservation area world heritage sites and of course a source of water for neighboring botswana. yes we are absolutely focused on environmental social governance and our operations we are following all intimately in regulations and policies plus international best practices. the things you refer

to we refer to as no activity zones areas where we won't work we'll have a buffer zone around them and this is going to include the parts reserves rivers deltas community sites we have a local expertise you know these have to be looked lead ball practices but we're going to make sure that we do everything in a proactive manner and of course the oil price at the moment stands at around 40 dollars a barrel that's pretty low is that going to hinder your ability to explore for oil scott. we are quite well funded we have an exciting story and you don't see a new basin you know i'm a geologist every day or so and $40.00 gets on sure given we're looking at conventional whereas of course we do think that we have a good economics could be better for us but we're proceeding with our program and it's our 1st well at the end of the year so let's just go back to the environment for a 2nd i mean can you 100 percent guarantee that when you frac for this oil that you're

not going to damage the local area including contaminating local water supplies. well and so that too pointed out 1st we are going to be fracking we don't have a plan to frack we're looking for conventional reservoirs that don't require that the so you won't find that in our players or in our or or anything like that so frac exam part of it we want the virtual reservoirs that flow naturally on their own 2nd part we are very focused on lot of resource management so what does that mean that has 3 basic tenets protection of the arc or management of it as as you mentioned there also are surface water management drainage and then also due to earlier buffer zones so we have to steward the environment we have to make sure that the loop used keep going to risen every culture. we don't we have plans in place and great cooperation with the little partners to do so scott evans

we have to leave it there thank you very much indeed for talking to counting the cost thank you very much thank you very much there are no good. and that is our show for this week but remember you can get in touch with us via twitter he was the hash tag j c t c when you do all you can drop us an e-mail counting the cost of al-jazeera dot net is our address and 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 links and entire episodes for you to catch up on well that's it for this edition of counting the cost i'm darren jordan from the whole team here thanks for joining us the news on al-jazeera is next. from mother to daughter an ancient craft kept alive by a bustling matriarch. from start to finish. all traditions

intertwined with new designs making this family's place unique in tunisia has a rich tapestry. a thread on a jersey though. we're told technology can help tackle the spread of cold at 19 but our tech solutions the best solutions we're starting something that seems like it's in public health very quickly becomes a measuring what data is being collected where. hourly rate looks at the limits of tech and the potential of other creative ways to deal with the issues we face track it when tech tools go viral episode 3 of all hail the lockdown on al-jazeera. as joe biden prepares for the united states to re enter the paris climate treaty boris johnson and u.n. secretary general antonio terrace co-host

a virtual meeting of world leaders we'll bring you live updates and in-depth reports as countries struggle to meet their climate targets special coverage on al-jazeera 'd. the white house piles the pressure on the f.d.a. to approve pfizer's coronavirus vaccine for emergency use across the united states . from doha everyone i'm kemal santa maria this is the world news from al-jazeera president elect joe biden's unveil more of his top picks for cabinet posts just 40 days to go now till he's sworn into office. we will reduce emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 the european.