these are busy days for the ice master who keeps checking the quality of the ice we are measuring about 9 and a half centimeters today. which is which is quite good but still not enough for us to get on the ice without heavy material only a few more centimeters are needed for the 11 cities still but looking at the weather forecast there won't be enough ice again this winter that brings mixed feelings for peter was desperate to escape detour but condit has thought of the event getting the go ahead but then being cancelled due to the button that make step fasten al-jazeera kinsell mir the nat'l and. i robot to send in doha to the headlines and al-jazeera former us president donald trump has praised his acquittal in the 2nd impeachment trial he was accused of

inciting deadly capitol hill riots in january the 6th democrats were 10 votes short of conviction as republicans largely swung behind the former president to shield him from responsibility. 57. days for ease 3. 2 thirds of the senators present not having guilty the judges responded john trunk former president you know states is not guilty as charged in article peach but top senate republican mitch mcconnell launched a searing attack on trump even though he voted to acquit the former president there's no question no one there president trouble is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events. of the day. no question about. the people who started this building believe they were acting on

their wishes. and it struck. in other news demonstrations against b.m.r. as military rulers continue for a 9th day the generals are granting themselves new powers to monitor and detain people involved in the protests activists are troubled by the increase in nighttime raids by police the military seized power in a coup in favor of the 1st. italy's new prime minister mario da he's been sworn in . the former head of the european central bank comes to power as italy deals with a pandemic and its economic fallout the previous government collapsed in the dispute over the handling of the outbreak drag his cabinet is a mix of technocrats and politicians from a broad coalition. the news is going to continue here on al-jazeera in about half an hour after counting the cost by what americans be thinking and doing right

now it should be a bad idea they don't care about their work is all they care about is making money is not going to be locked out of the calling for them to load the defense budget to be the bottom line on u.s. politics and policies and their effect on the world. is a than this is counting the cost of al-jazeera look at the world of business and economics this week diet public services regular power cuts and water shortages where do the ranks all wealth go also this week the 1st covert vaccine to win approval was based on m r n a technology doesn't represent the future for investments into cures and nigeria's huge oil industry underperforming polluting and wasteful after more than 3 decades can the government get

a grip on the industry. now ranked as the 4th biggest all producer in the world you'd think iraq had the financial resources to weather the pandemic and drop in oil prices but that's not the case it's fragile economy is struggling to cope and they may have to turn to the international monetary fund for assistance it has already devalued its currency by almost a 5th enabling it to eke out more did ask for dollars or this is the syncs appraisal of the world bank a precarious political situation weak health care system ineffective social safety nets rampant corruption and the lap of dated service delivery all amplify this fragility and have fueled largest. protests across the country or that begs the question where does all of iraq's all wealth go

a lot to 90 percent of iran's budget is dependent on oil exports this is budget is $113000000000.00 almost half of that budget is spent on the civil service but about 20 percent of those salaries go to people who do not exist in other words corruption it's deficit that's of course the difference between the money it raises in the money it spends is expected to be about $50000000000.00 a bank that will fill the gap by possibly collecting $6000000000.00 from the i.m.f. by turning to international investors but also by raising taxes on civil servants and pensioners so iraqis are being asked to carry the burden of corruption again it's not only the people who are fed up with the government businesses of long complained about red tape in some provinces want to bypass the government and cut their own deals for investment and bob province is one it was retaken from eisel control 4 years ago al jazeera simona faulty in reports from ramadi.

for years after it was largely freed from eisel construction in iraq's western anbar province is booming. once complete this mall in the provincial capital of the mahdi aims to be the largest of its kind in iraq. these projects are needed in this province and according to our assessment in feasibility study we believe this project will be successful how precious the jobs have been created at a time when iraq suffers from economic downturn and rising poverty rates just minutes before this project started i was unemployed the project helped many young people to get jobs and it has helped reduce unemployment in the province. it's estimated unbar has a non us sector investment portfolio worth $2000000000.01 of the highest among iraq's 18 provinces the director of un parson investment commission says the relative stability around ramadi over the past few years has created

a business friendly environment. and society believes in the authority of the civilian government because of that we haven't had any armed groups for years so no one is allowed to carry weapons except for the government security forces. the local government wants to develop vast untapped mineral and gas resources and says it needs to attract more foreign investors especially from the gulf but the sunni province is demanding more leeway to circumvent the shia led government in baghdad known for its cumbersome bureaucracy and widespread corruption. we hope the central government gives us more authority in energy and electricity production many international companies proposed projects in anbar because of a limited or a forest in the complicated procedures of the central government things are going to light with. the local governments push for investment doesn't just aim to

develop unbiased economy it also underpins its political ambitions for greater autonomy from the central government in baghdad. but some businessmen say decentralization alone won't solve their problems this investor says it has taken more than 2 years to complete the paperwork for his hypochlorite plant and blames the local and central governments equally. he has spent millions of dollars but has yet to receive a license he didn't want to speak on camera for fear it might further complicate the process experts say until the government overhauls its regulations few foreign investors will take the risk of setting up shop here. al-jazeera simone of all things in reporting there from ramadi right let's discuss then where iraq's all wealth has gone joining me now from london is adamant about julie amad is the chief investment officer of the a.f.c. iraq fund and a board member of the credit bank of iraq good to have you with us so our

colleagues at al-jazeera arabic have reported that about $9000000000.00 is going on salaries for people who don't exist i'm wondering how does a problem like this continue for so many years in iraq it's not like everybody doesn't know that there are these ghost salary issues going on in iraq well i think you've hit it on the nail everybody knows that we have a large number of ghost employees whether the figure is anywhere near the $9000000000.00 i think that's open for debate simply because we don't have precise numbers we have at best at best guess estimate because the the government itself does not have a precise number of its own employees that's one of the challenges we have the budget recognizes we have 3200000000 and 2000000 employees however no one knows that true or not so the 9000000000 is is maybe it's exaggerated but the the the

damage it does to the overall economy certainly is not exactly everybody knows there is this problem of go salaries in ghost employees where is the accountability this is been going on for years it's not the 1st budget where this has surfaced right absolutely absolute this is definitely something is going on 20 years however the important thing to keep in mind and to notice is that we are discussing the side effects i mean when it comes to this when it comes to corruption when it comes to all of these things the things that we all in iraq if you ask an iraqi is as he or she would say we know about this stuff how are we looking at the symptoms. you know the this kind of corruption is a symptom of a system that is at fault so fundamentally we have a core issue of the system that our current system of. in which by every ministry every department every unit is pretty much taken up by certain parties that create a condition in which such corruption takes place is it deeper than the us or all

the quota system of divvying up budgets some might argue it's actually deeper than that it's that the politicians and the parties don't really represent the centers of power it's the armed militias and factions behind them in some cases foreign governments that really control the reality of iraq i think that that is always exaggerated i mean definitely it is the political parties that make up the system whether they have something somehow foreign or domestic or other affiliations that's secondary the nain issue is the structure of the system it's a it's a structure of the masses itself that is what is at fault because in a way if you think about the difference between what i mean the most hostile so basically is the same illness that we all have in the middle east one way or the other which is the public sector becomes the way that citizens sort of get rewarded

the difference between iraq and everywhere else is that we have become you know we create a monster version out of that frank and version of it because we have multiple power centers and they all go after their own interests or it was the bottom line for this when we're going to have to turn to the i.m.f. to ask for money foreign investors are going to bring in the cash or is it going to be the taxpayers of. the thing is it's a multiple thing in a way the problem with iraq as as you know is that we on our budget is structurally unbalanced in that the public sector payroll takes over every. in a low to medium low oil price environment ok with we have right now is you know all right brant are at $60.00 and so we all feel relieved but that is a cyclical issue secularly long term there is less and less demand for oil so let's forget where all prices are right now because not this year we're talking of 60 last year we're talking of 20 so you know that's highly unpredictable however for

us or what is structurally imbalanced public sector pay takes over almost everything so at some stage if we don't fix our house we need to go to the i.m.f. and the i.m.f. would say sure but to give you the aid you have to restructure the public sector pay or another other items if that happens certainly you will get foreign investors just witness what happened 2016 when egypt embark on its own program that the i.m.f. approved or it gave it an extended front facility which was about $12000000000.00 and foreign investors flocked into egyptian bonds so if we fix our house if we fix our structural imbalances because unlike many other countries even when things are terribly wrong iraq is incredibly wealthy look at last year last year was a terrible year for us in terms of low prices yet we still sold something like $42.00 to $43000000000.00 worth of oil so for us it's not

a question of revenues it's the mismatch between revenues and expenditures that eat up all these revenues and that's really what what we need to fix if we fix it with the i.m.f. work and blessing in terms of a program that is actually real and credible then foreign investor would come otherwise we iraqis have to pay for it and we already pay for it because we allow the public sector to be everything leaving no room starving the investment in underlying infrastructure so in a way it's us and the government we need to wake up our thanks so much with a box of thank you. that. is tradition and then there's innovation for a long time traditional vaccines were made by weakened or inactive viruses or parts of them and this certainly has been successful in helping to eliminate everything from measles to polio but the breakout technology of the covert 19 era has been

messenger r.n.a. it sends a code to your cells to develop an immune response the leaders in this field by on tech the german company owned by the children of turkish immigrants has seen its stock surge 300 percent in the last 12 months u.s. biotech company madonna produced a vaccine that was 95 percent effective the best of all vaccines produced so far its stocks surged 778 percent and it's not surprising that big pharma have been buying stakes in these manufacturers astra zeneca is the biggest shareholder in madonna the 7.7 percent stake and glaxo smith kline which had a troubled attempt with its partner to develop a coded 1000 vaccine has bought a 10 percent stake in german biotech cure back. this is where the technology gets really exciting you see it offers the potential to create drugs and vaccines for cancer which kills in 1000000 people worldwide well joining me now from about the

capitol city of morocco is dr as edina brahimi as a d. is the director of med biotech a medical biotechnology lab and the head of the biotechnology lab at the robot medical score good to have you with us so in technological terms just how important is to science and humanity or actually thank you for having me to talk about this technology but it's a great a think an amended maze that we could do it actually this is the reason we thought it would be a dream for many years but no i think we are getting closer and closer to having this technology applied and actually been able to produce proteins and cure a lot of the diseases that we couldn't actually think about it but to make it easy to understand actually the technology is kind of the the software of life so what you do it gets you bring it and information genetic information to the cell and the cell will be produce and any protein can both that you need or to correct any

defect that you have through the expression of this protein so give me an example of maybe some of the diseases which we haven't been able to treat in the past which we might now be able to do with this technology and r.n.a. well actually all of the genetic diseases meaning that one gene is defective and in the cell it clear a clear will be able to do it so cystic fibrosis actually is one of them cystic fibrosis actually is than one protein that is the the safety are brought in that is a really have enlarged with patients and it's not working so it would be easy if we think theer a clear bar it's easy to bring this amorally that is correct form. of the senate and bring it to the senate and the senate will be able actually to produce the right protein that we go to the membrane and be able to function correctly and that will save a lot of people and lots of pain so it's

a lot of examples but cancer would be another one that's we could come back to it all right i mean eventually cancer and cystic fibrosis how far are we away from finding a cure for those diseases where that's a 1000000000 question actually but then just trying to say that's a game actually the dream to have this kind of technology is not from today's for many years ago our and they think we were dreaming basically to reproduce what we could do the same could do naturally so we thought since the beginning if it would be possible to do the same thing to correct the defect that we have in people the only problem with that is just the the body on the says they have they're on because i'm of the fence and the every time we're brought up this ember day the software of life for the 2 for the correcting the defects the bra the body or the says will be rejecting them so now we hopefully get to the point where we can

actually and that's one of the nicest things about scoring this will be able actually to bring this proteins the body will take them the sale will take them and be able to produce them so i think we're not that far from the 1st application and we have to combine that with another technology that is a really great or soul is the noble prize of the seed of crisper cost 9 and chris because my system is going by of correcting they're actually the defects on the d.n.a. so that if we can bind this to technology i think the future will be i have no idea how can be the future. well outside of the united states and germany is anyone working on that future using this kind of technology particularly in the developing countries but i think now i don't know nothing that then is that many countries working on that even in developed countries actually because this technology stayed kind of in these 2 countries but i think now with the corporate 19 and the success

of the incredible success of this tour in a vaccine we'll never thought that we have a vaccine with 95 percent if it were say that something we would seem to be out and they're seeing that lots of people are thinking about it's and they think the solution for all this country is it's too good to this technology new transfer and they think it's it's feasible let's end on a nice positive optimistic outlook especially since we're talking about covert thanks so much as a dean thank you thank you thank you very much nigeria's oil industry has been dogged by allegations of mismanagement corruption and environmental damage the government is hoping to get to grips by rehabilitating refineries cutting down flaring and cleaning up oil leaks amid trees takes a deep dive into nigeria's oil industry. this is one of nigeria's government run or oil refineries in the city of port harcourt but most of his

operation has been shut down to upgrade equipment and facility the government plans to hand over these money losing ventures to invest just run after decades of mismanagement. africa's biggest oil producer has turned from self-sufficiency in refined petroleum products in the 1970 s. and eighty's to now a net importer of the product. it's for plans continue to operate well below capacity and sometimes shut down for months off we should say that has to stop what we have done different now just to make sure that we know what we're doing we know who would do it i would go back to go to the front of the to find a deal done such a way that you don't normally stick somebody delegate that project and that is well on cause. there's a new urgency to complete the commercialization process nigeria has been hit by a lot on prices and a weakened global demand. the government desperate to shore up its revenue base

sees that he find a risk as a way out of an expensive fuel import regime subsidized at more than $2000000000.00 a year. all industry sources say between july and september last year the country imported more than 5000000000 liters of refined products. a subsidy program that allowed those connected to politicians to steal hundreds of millions of dollars annually has cost the government huge losses in the past it's crap the subsidy 3 years ago but still the losses continue to mount there will have a lot of side what does with the jeep when just will be delivered and ultimately will come to when i get out become the public it will implode but in the us i because of vision some nigerians say they are cautiously optimistic even is not. violence and probably wrong. in spite of the age of the technologies that produced them over 50 years ago they are still refineries of that age around the world of

the us to fully functional so i think they can be rejigged to a point where they wish to come back to the functionality in such a way that the big government of nigeria it peoples of nigeria still have stake in the refineries they do oppose the community has been living in the shadows of 3 gas plant points since 1970. people here say the players damage their lives and livelihoods. every way. our roofs don't last. probably. no good work. life has moved because of that but. for us to get fish now would i have to. care less. he says compensation paid to some has done little to ease their pain and they aren't alone

why it's like these birds throughout nigeria's or rich delta. oil companies still find it more convenient to burn away the gas even though it could be used to generate electricity an estimated printer 3000000 cubic meters of gas is being flared every day for 174 points like this costing nigeria about a $1000000000.00 and when the government says it's a waste and if stopped could add $3000.00 megawatts of electricity in a country that to struggling to generate $4000.00 megawatts. because of the difficulty in enforcing a total ban in 2019 nigeria launched an ambitious project to increase domestic use of gas and export this it hopes will cut the waste and save lives and the environment the fact that it's in better mentally friendly it is cheap it also in there was quick industrialization and growth and we didn't learn feel out of time he said it's an issue where we can continue to lead men and that's why this project

will do 2 things one is to deliver on previous attempts to have a trust african gasified land which will deliver gas truly military into europe and also to deepen the gas consumption country in boosting domestic consumption government is also promoting the use of compressed natural gas in vehicles but the most effort is to see a drastic reduction. in guest larry we are actually giving out those flares to people to manage and we believe that. will be able to take care of all the gas flares within the next few years as. the government is hoping that the petroleum industry bill in parliament for 20 years will soon pass and attract more investment in oil and gas. a boost to gas or tonight is ation and help minimize flaring i'm told in communities like it was a cool may have to leave with the damage caused by the gas players blazing at their

doorsteps. workers educate and eva but to flush out trucked oil in boulder creek as all comes to the surface a boom truss the sludge for evacuation it's a job the contractors hired by all john child must quickly accomplish before the tide returns the cleanup is due to litigation against the company following a massive oil spill in ogoni in 2009 is this walkies to remediate. creek. after the next phase will be the restoration. among groups and monitoring so far is a $1000.00 hectares. while shellings contract to say they have done a lot to subsides the nigerian government led decontamination effort jointly funded by the shell company is off to a slow start. heavy machinery is now deployed farther inland to excavate and treat

contaminated soil we take it from what we had planned but we're trying to see what we can do to catch up they still a lot of work to do to catch up i mean to take. an assessment by the united nations environment program 1st published in 2011 shows that pollution from more than half a century of oil production was worse than or originally thought the report recommended a $1000000000.00 fund to clean up alone an area covering 1000 square kilometers the work which began success later could take at least 25 years to complete much of a is a wasteland this is dead fish and crustaceans no longer spawn here farmlands fish ponds and even underground water supplies have been polluted by hydrocarbons leaking from old pipelines we could play some activists in the region are less impressed with the work so far.

one. how many years. and that's not the only concern significant amount of all 3rd continues in the region father complicating the process of reversing the environmental damage experts believe 15 to 20000 square kilometers more of nigeria's oil producing region require the attention orgone is currently receiving they fear that unless the entire region is decontaminated or going as clean up me in the end be a waste of time and resources as rican tabulation could occur. am address from nigeria there and that's our show over this way but there's more for you online about the 0 dot com slash c.t.c.

where you can catch up on past episodes that's it for this edition of counting the cost i'm sam is a ban on the whole team here thanks for joining us the news and al-jazeera is next . as information on governments responses to covert 19 across the world emerges so to as a deeply disturbing question. people in power investigates allegations of systemic discrimination against pandemics disabled victims and asks has there been a shameful failure to protect some of the world's most vulnerable citizens. disabled victims part 2. examining the impact of today's headlines didn't matter you're rich or poor what your religion is you are battling this and damning you're staring at it in the face and you're dealing with it setting the agenda for tomorrow's discussions that are unfolding on capitol hill

international filmmakers and world class journalists bring programs to inform and inspire you each and every one of us in the responsibility to change our 1st place for the better than al-jazeera. to respond to john trunk former president you know states is not a goat is cherokee article the. u.s. senate has voted to acquit the former us president of high crimes and misdemeanors in connection with a january 6th riot on capitol hill. about this and this is a civil live from doha also coming up.