it is represents. 8 years of hundreds of engineers at the laboratory thousands around the world a total of over 4 pounds and human years of investment and already a detail in this picture has caught scientists attention that rock on the left the one that looks like a hunk of swiss cheese and there are a number of different geological processes that can make holes in iraq like that and to the science team is now thinking about what might me in one of the questions we'll ask 1st is whether these rocks represent a volcanic or sedimentary origin and both of those would be equally exciting to the team ultimately perseverance may dig up evidence that life existed on mars at some point in the ancient past that could be a sign that life is widespread in our solar system our galaxy and the far flung reaches of the universe and that we are not alone robert oulds al-jazeera los

angeles. the sound is there and these are the top stories al-jazeera has seen part of a confidential u.n. report which finds donald trump's ally and private security contractor erik prince violated an arms embargo on libya the report to the security council reveals how prince sent foreign mercenaries and weapons to war honey for half dollar and 2019 and he was fighting against the internationally recognized government in tripoli. protests against me and mars a military coup have entered a 3rd week with gatherings in several cities including gangle calling for a return to more prosy while the mandalay there are reports of tear gas being fired as more from bangkok. we understand the last couple of hours in the central me a massive mandalay. protest that was taking place in the docks on the edge of the

irrawaddy river the security forces both police and army fired tear gas at a large crowd that had gathered in order to disperse them those protests had happened apparently quite spontaneously when the army went in to try and get the dock workers back to work they've been taking part in the civil disobedience movement that spread across myanmar at the moment there's been severe flooding in indonesia's capital jakarta triggered by heavy rainfall up to 180 centimeters of rain was recorded in some areas that is 24000 residents are affected. a quarter moscow has rejected an appeal by kremlin critic alexina valley against his prison sentence but it has shortened his term by 1.5 months earlier this month he was sentenced to nearly 3 years for violating his parole. was the headlines when you see here on al-jazeera right after counting the cost which is coming up next teaching you just the way english streamline channel. plus thousands of

our programs will be documentaries and dan. subscribed to you she would slash al-jazeera english. hello i'm come out santa maria this is counting the cost on al-jazeera your weekly look at the world of business and economics this week the prosperous president vladimir putin's $1000000000.00 palace on the black sea it may just be the tip of a very wealthy iceberg not new claims the imprisonment of an anti kremlin campaigner and a moribund economy well it's not a great look for russia's longest serving leader also this week main stock for the rise and fall has little to do with the actual core business is a different kind of investor sending markets to new highs but wall street is

challenged by this new generation we wonder will the democratization of the markets . and we'll take you to kenya as well where there are fears the country could become a dumping ground for plastic from the united states. so when kremlin critic alexei navalny return to russia in january brought the crowds out to protest against the russian leadership of course novelli was promptly arrested tried and jailed for 2 and a half years but if the protests are anything to go by russians have become extremely described told by president vladimir putin and the economic gloom the russian economy shrank more than 3 percent last year the biggest slump since 2009 that decline is not as bad as many other countries but the underlying problem is that real incomes were falling well before the pandemic began in fact last year the average russian had less to spend than they did back in 2013 and then there is this

russia a $1350000000.00 palace on the black sea now valmy released this video as he flew back to moscow and he claims the palace was built for president putin it's $17691.00 square metres it's got 2 helicopter pads and. hockey rink a secret tunnel leading up to the sea of ali says it is the biggest residence in the whole of russia all of that would have been uncomfortable viewing for the kremlin though it did deny the property belonged to putin but it did raise many other questions ones that have been around for more than a decade as part of leaked diplomatic papers and investigations by western intelligence agencies in short how rich is russia's president well let's just start with his last financial disclosure that was 2018 persian said he had a salary of $8600000.00 rubles which is about 115000 dollars that is his official salary his military pension interest and investment gains but there was

a claim back in 2007 from the russian political analyst stanislav skee that putin effectively controlled holdings in the energy companies gun for gazprom and so. they were worth about $40000000000.00 at the time for their part those companies deny putin holds any stock in them fast for another 5 years or 2012 and he told the bureau of investigative journalists that putin was now at $70000000000.00 and then in testimony before the us senate panel and to the russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election bill browder the chief executive of hermitage capital management said hey believe putin was worth $200000000000.00 brother was once the biggest investor in russia and his lawyer magnitsky died in a russian jail whilst investigating corruption and i'm very pleased to say he's with us this week on counting the cost from london bill nice to have you with us thanks for your time great to be here 200000000000 without giving away the state secrets how did you get to that number. well i mean that calculation and

a very broad brush way which was to say i think the way that putin operates is that he allows the oligarchs of russia to get rich as long as the oligarchs share 50 percent of their wealth with him and and so that's a simple calculation of at the time the oligarchy top oligarchs wealth was $400000000000.00 and i assume that he had half of it now since them and that was a while ago i think as well as probably increased because he takes a share of everything that comes in and and there's been a lot of stuff that's come in over the last 50 percent that that surprises me well what you have to understand is that. the oligarchy. that basically are functioning at his pleasure and so it's not like in a normal country where if you get rich you have a rule of law and you have property rights and your money is yours in russia all

these people got rich because of him and that they could all have their money taken away as again because of him or words they could go to jail or they could be killed him and putin has made it very clear. back in 2003 he arrested the richest all of arc and russia a man named mikhail hart a kosky he was the owner of an oil company. he put him on trial and he allowed the television cameras to come into the courtroom and film the richest man in russia on trial sitting in a cage. and so if you were one of the other all the guards in russia at the time you were sitting there panicking thinking my god i want to go and sit mccain and so after a lot of cops he was sentenced to 10 years in jail jali guards went back to prison and said what we have to do to make sure we don't sit in jail and and that's when he said 50 percent wow and there's a lot of anecdotal that nobody can prove that these are all private conversations but there's a lot of anecdotes that back that up going right up to the u.s.

government and u.s. treasury which sanctioned people like you not eat them chink of the owner going for a company just mentioned as being buttons cashier fundamentally is there an issue with the late of being rich donald trump for president the united states he was rich if mike bloomberg could become the president he was rich silvio berlusconi in italy he was rich as well i mean this is this is nothing this is they come be wealthy. well you used a few examples of very compromised characters like berlusconi and donald trump i mean in theory there's that mean that there's arguments both ways what one is that if you're rich you don't need to get rich by being president and you can read you know in a in a pure and truthful way. you know. there's also an argument that behind every great fortune is a great crime and so you know it really depends on character to character but in putin's case he is for he was for sure just a low level bureaucrat before he became president and definitely didn't mean

business interests behind him and so for him to have become this rich in office is just a pure absolute. corruption situation so all those protests that we saw when alexei navalny came back to russia they indicated displeasure let's say with that i'm a poet and the numbers that came out do you think that that indicated it is that it is a strong movement that it is i mean i don't know how much you can say across the board for russia because it's such a big country and has a lot of people there but is there growing discontent with those in across the board with specially with things like the palace coming to coming to prominence. well you wait what you have to understand is that the people in russia. the money that has gotten is it belongs to the people of russia that these people in don't have don't have health care they don't have education the roads are full of potholes it's all the money that should have gone to the people has gone to hooten

in a 1000 people around him and so they're furious and they're tired they're hungry and so the protests are absolutely real some of them are absolutely supporting alexina valby but some of them are just like outraged at their standard of living and the fact that the president lives in a palace with ice skating rinks and stripper holes in the basement and they're barely getting enough money to buy potatoes for the winter. does pose and does the russian government acknowledge though that there is an economic crisis in the country are they sort of saying actually where i can say well i think at this point it's impossible to deny that there is an economic crisis we're going to i mean in this stuff just to russia but everywhere with kofi annan but. you know that group controls the state television and he tries paint as rosy a picture as you can probably possibly paint but the problem is that then if you're hungry it doesn't matter what what's on state t.v. you're hungry and so when you come back to the question out real is the protest it

took place over 90 cities in russia hundreds of thousands of people just the number of people arrested was 11000 people 11000 people arrested because they tried to arrest as many people as they call it there are not enough jail cells wrong people get arrested tell me about international reaction to what's going on there obviously it comes to a point with no volley and you have the state government saying you must be released and they say only sorts of things but then you have a country like germany which has business interest with russia it has the nordstrom to pipeline project and it's not going to touch that is it. well and worse than germany is that you have the european union as a whole and the european union as a whole has to set its foreign policy based on 100 percent consensus of e.u. member states and so you can and putin has wormed his way into certain. member states like hungry for example he's got very very close and i would argue corrupt

relations with bigger orbán the president of hungary and as a result of that all it takes is one country or bomb a country with oregon or cyprus or malta to completely watered down the entire e.u. foreign policy towards russia and so now i fear that that whatever reaction there will be and there will be a reaction but i'm sure that the reaction certainly be watered down by putin's very clever ways of forming his way into and diluting foreign policy the bill browder with his views on what's happening in russia at the moment thank you for joining us we do appreciate it. thank you. now flows before perves main starts wall street bets if you know what any of those main then well done you a younger and far more in touch than i am what you might have heard though is a lot of fuss about stocks in something cold game stop now with those sorts of

phrases which are now part of the stock market lexicon we have to say a new generation has taken many of the old hands by surprise and seen the market go to new highs they make bets using new trading apps which of democratized trading the show but their biggest fads actually laid waste to the multi-billion dollar hedge funds who've been short selling the stocks we will demystify all of this in a moment with our guests after this report from kristen so they me in new york. you have to have some type of faith of you in the stock market i don't think all of it is just skill i think some of it is also maybe it's his daily ritual of lighting sage but lately pablo battista has been lucky he made $11000.00 selling game stop stop and since losing his job as a cook working from his bronx apartment as a day trader it was really paying off we up a grand voice we got the ground but then the platform he was using called robin hood started putting limits on trades i saw it like these guys are trying to stop

me when i'm at my peak leading up to game stop i had already been making money making a lot of money since 2019 the volume of trading by small time investors like him has grown from 10 to roughly 25 percent of the market. they're credited with boosting game stop from under $22.00 above $300.00 a share outsmarting hedge funds who bet against the struggling retailer robin hood and other platforms have since come under fire for imposing the restrictions sparking a downturn in share prices the ire of investors and an investigation by congress robinhood c.e.o. said they had no choice in order to cover the trades a claim questioned by investors we actually did not do this in the direction of the market maker or hedge fund so we were really unprecedented. in order to

protect the firm and protect our customers we had a limited buying. stocks without ever setting foot on wall street pablo and other so-called retail investors have been collecting their financial muscle with the help of technology and social media hitting institutional investors right where it hurts their bottom line. but even before game stop sounded the alarm the market was at record highs a trend experts say is unsustainable brock pierce is a former actor who's made millions investing and believes it's the hedge funds not individual investors who need to be restricted what we're seeing is the democratization of the financial system a line is being drawn which side of the fence you stand on are you with the people or are you with a small group of institutions that are profiting from killing companies oh yes rip

and. as for pablo he knows investing comes with risks in my savings account and basically i said yeah so they're all my money in the stock market probably wasn't the smartest thing to do but that's why i think i'm kind of where i'm at right now because i took that risk risks he believes he. and other individuals are entitled to take new highs 8 every week. so that report possibly leaves you with a lot of questions so we've got it 2 trading styles into trying to make some sense of all of this in lima sol in cyprus we've got kind of puff who is the head of investment research at f.x. primus and in london is jimmy mad who's the director of investment strategy at the german finned take not so good to have both of you with us today jimmy i'll start with you in london. i'll do the i'll do the really short basic version bored millennial zz time on their hands technology get their hands mucking around with

stocks and that could be the simple story but is there actually an element of truth in this that the the the great disruption that we see these days is a great topic irish some correlation we look at the retail index of the s. and p. $500.00 which the layman sense is the biggest stock market index in the united states of the major $500.00 companies now the retitled against the macuntil somewhat near 20 percent of the overall market which is a big jump from previous years and if we look at the daily both you and global market volatility we have a 20 percent move of politics now from the return audience which is up nearly double over the past 10 years and yes we could say that the global market volatility over the past one year has decreased appetite perhaps lockdowns have also helped and since i'm looking at how it's divided your money however i would say the global market volatility in the headlines because of this volatility are the major reasons why people are looking to how to invest but if you go ahead i'd say go for a populist like plus 14 at its strongest weekly level is luscious the 1980 s.

british pound and some of the volatility or prices on it's a decorative territory for the 1st time in history so i do think the global market that looks at the headlines i would crease an appetite an awareness towards the investment trade and audience however of course no concept or so increase the encouragement to look up of things to do specifically how to manage your money at times what incomes you all know it being stretched if you. so there is some truth for the however it's not the only factor in play so when the game stop story came out jamil you maybe went that surprised sort of we were maybe heading down this sort of road at some point now that was still a surprise i think i would so we're going to start was completely different because resort a little bit of a wild wild west stuck up between the retired audience who feel that perhaps they have not been able to benefit from the opportunities of financial markets on the other side of the world but what we had the french the major institutions and overseas they paid a lot of money generally up the global market volatility of the past when you have this wild wild west that jamail tells us about i mean if that was all happening online it was happening on reddit for example platforms which aren't new so why now

is it just the more technologies coming through more discussions turning online the apps the robin hoods and all that are out there and people are are really taking advantage of it now come on i think there are a few angles that we have to consider so 1st of all yes we've had these message boards for for more than a decade now but i think we've seen a number of structural shifts happening in the marketplace for retail investors be dominant late so 1st of all we've seen a 0 fee trading being introduced we've seen access to really high quality information for retail retail investors but also we've seen the game if you cation off the trading activity so i think that the retail investors have become really active in the marketplace and if you at the elements of people having a lot of spare time and they're having spare cash on their hands in the form of government government stimulus i think then we have the grounds for situations like just game stop to take place and i also think that we should consider that the

perspective of maybe retail feeling a bit of on just after 2008 when a lot of the boys got a bit of a bailout from the government and you know the general populous was sort of left behind to deal with low g.d.p. growth and also low recovery in the chops maybe i'm a bit conservative but it sounds all terribly risky to me i know that's the nature of try to but you know shouldn't the fundamentals of a. still be the most important thing in the end i think we have seen a lot of capital flowing into momentum so i don't she's in general so i don't even mean reed said i also mean on the institutional side so i don't see much difference between retail chasey momentum in the form of game stock versus let's say institutional following comments in the form of what for instance e.t.f. so definitely fundamentals were not considered when we talk about the game stop situation but i do see that there was a bit of a lot a lot by the retail just going after the for the benefit of the big 8 jamail that

you want to jump in there are so you got to say something. at some point you've made a key critical point there and so some fellow guests look the s. and p. $500.00 if we look at the 35 percent drop that it's so true on that much period of last year when the begin to make that was the biggest drop that we have seen for many many yes but only took $125.00 trading days interest roughly 4 months to recover from that kind of a bunch of if we look at previous crisis it took something like $1500.00 trading days which between $4.00 to $5.00 trading is so definite that kind of momentum that we've seen of markets has increased appetite across the board but not just across the region or gets to across these situations that we buy the house they should look at ok if governments and central banks are kids and you've got the money into the market that they can explain you're sending this message oh and it doesn't go to what's the message that the supplier of markets we're going to put a piece of the sextape here with the u.s. china trade sentients of 2002 central banks that isn't policy we saw it last year

too because the pandemic but basically the message has being that if there's a problem in markets that the somebody somewhere is that the and that increases appetite across the board in terms of buy low sell high cliches a lot of cliches that should many educated investors have to be educates was in the sun the risk the high and those spaces have been that based on the mechanisms of the market we've never seen such an official markets we have today when we got markets their record highs of all time highs but we all know that reality level we're nowhere near that kind of sentiment in some sort of global economy spin the news today exactly and i want to come back to that in a moment but let me just quickly on see jimmy about regulation as well because you've described this sort of crazy market in crazy well that's going on there will there be regulation of the likes of wall street bets and then the robin hood at and the things like that is that even possible. it's possible but i think that needs to be regulation across the board because again saying you know about those kind of retail ups makes out like they're the only ones of the victims of school those who

can be exploited on the global market mechanisms that goes far beyond those so i think that the hedge funds the institutions the banks the you know the all of the participants in global financial markets they have their own broaches play in the products that it's an either or different aspects have to be looked at it cannot just going to be tropic ations or individual audiences are going to reach the audience undercounts or 20 percent of data volume but still a much higher number than we used to be that means that there's some even more significant proportion by under 6 of the contributors and those contributors also have to be looked at the same light as the breach at all to get a final thought for you then because jimmy wales made the point about the markets being at record highs they must be a chance of a correction at some point we can't keep on this trajectory forever that to mean 100 percent correct him deciding the fact that you know we see a lot of momentum at the moment but i do see volatility in the 2nd half of 2021 and i think that would be a few months a shell of sources for that so i would say that inflation could right in certain

pockets of the economy i would say we could see volatility from the 2nd stimulus package that the republicans are now to pose in the senate and i don't see that being approved it's certainly i would say once we see any sort of cut into $41.00 k. flows. we could see a bit of a pullback in the equities to mail ahead and kai pavane side that both of you could join us for this discussion really appreciate it. thank you. got to end this week's edition in africa kenya which you may or may not know imposed the world strictest ban on plastic use some 4 years ago but environmentalist fear the country is now under pressure to weaken its resolve they're accusing the american plastics industry of trying to influence a trade deal so it can actually increase its waste shipments under the guise of recycling alkan where has the story from nairobi. sifting through

mountains of garbage isn't a clean or safe way to make a living at it how to get tongues are collected not clear plastics she can make about $4.00 on a good day. maybe. because. we are not employed by anyone we are here because of poverty the plastic we sought belongs to a company they are the ones who make money out of it. she's among hundreds of people who work at this dump in kenya's capital nairobi they're part of a small recycling industry which struggles to cope with the piles of waste that grow with the economy whatever can be recycled is separated and bagged up ready to be taken away organic matter eventually decomposes and then if you look closely at what's left is just plastic which can take more than a century to decompose environmentalists say kenya's plastics problem is about to

get much worse because of a free trade deal that the government is negotiating with the u.s. many of america's largest oil and chemical companies who profit from plastics represented by a lobby group called the american chemistry council he wrote to u.s. government trade officials suggesting that kenya could serve as a hub for u.s. made plastics in africa enabled through the kenya u.s. trade deal. kenya's environmentalist are alarmed james who gave years one of them he started a campaign led to kenya planning plastic bags 4 years ago he says america's plastics industry wants to increase its trade here and the dumping of american plastic waste america. to small nations. that. you know would be good but not for other countries so i'm trusting small nations. into accepting such a deal we mean we are going to investigate you have made so far some gains

at the ready being reversed for generations soft drinks here have been sold in glass bottles which are returned and refilled but plastic is taking over it's more profitable for plastic manufacturers a waste for the dump the american chemistry council says it's not seeking to override kenya's existing regulation of plastics and kenya's trade minister was denied that any such proposal is on the table the environmentalists are skeptical but say president joe biden now has a chance to change the direction of negotiations. already struggling to deal with its own growing plastic waste the environmentalists say more plastics and more dumping would be disastrous. and that is where we'll leave you this week but i want to know what you think and what you want to see on the show as well. use the hash tag c t c as well as what you think one of the cost of. that is it for this edition of

counting the cost i'm come all santamaria from the whole team thanks for joining us the news on al-jazeera. water an essential resource for all humankind across europe pressure to recognise water as a human right and put its management back into public hands is increasing i think that the european commission would be very very train was a privatisation on anybody is the only field. those people who see every 2 years something to invest a profit of they want are. up to the last drop on al-jazeera examining the impact of today's headlines it didn't matter you're rich or poor what your religion is you are battling this and 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 persons place for the better than al-jazeera. form. this is al-jazeera. hello i'm sam he's a than this is the news hour live from coming up in the next 60 minutes a confidential u.n. report accuses former u.s. president dog trumps ally erik prince of breaking an arms embargo and supporting the libyan warlord calling for after. all.