then unpick spirit we believe that the move will not win support from the international community and are doomed to failure. the japanese billionaire is looking for 8 people to join him on a trip to the moon on board a space x. flight in 2023 years uncle was a well says he'll pay for the entire journey and wants to recruit people from all kinds of backgrounds and what he calls the dia moon mission bizarre is a fashion mogul and art collector he was named as space x. his 1st private passenger to the moon 2 years ago. see what you have to say with me still robin a reminder of our top stories police say they've obtained intelligence of another possible plot to bomb the u.s. capitol 8 weeks after it was breached by donald trump supporters as a result a house of representatives session churchills for thursday has been canceled mike hanna has more from washington d.c.

the house then apparently deciding not to go ahead with that session tomorrow to complete its legislative program this evening so certainly there does appear to be a reaction from the house it will now it is reported not be sitting tomorrow because of these threats now it must be noted too that the senate at this stage appears to continue with its proceedings it is debating or possibly debating the coronavirus relief bill but no indication that the senate itself will not be sitting in the course of thursday so at this stage the idea that the entire capitol is locked up down not completely correct. the international criminal court is opening an investigation into alleged war crimes in the palestinian territories it says it will take a not a partisan approach into possible crimes by both israel and the palestinian armed groups the u.s. has joined israel in opposing the investigation washington says the court doesn't have the jurisdiction because israel isn't a member of the i.c.c.

. has seen its worst day of violence since the start of the military coup just over a month ago the u.n. says 38 people have now been killed witnesses reported seeing security forces firing into crowds with very little warning. the u.s. president says the move by 2 states to ease coronavirus restrictions is a big mistake the governors of texas and mississippi are lifting nearly all measures from next week despite warnings from health officials biden says it's critical that states follow scientific advice brazil's most populous state is tightening restrictions as the country records its 2nd straight day of record covert 90 deaths polos governor says the health system is at breaking point present tribal sonora is threatening to cut off federal funds to any governor who opposes lockdowns and you follow those stories on our web site at al-jazeera dot com updated through the day but with more news in half an hour next it's counting the cost to stay with us. he

comes to life. is not. a club. in front of the loudest. and political dissent takes center stage. on the resistance the ultras of russia casablanca the fans who make the. fully back to grow this is counting the cost on al-jazeera look at the world of business and economics this week one of the world's biggest exporters of emissions is preparing to mine the seabed for walmart cereals no way may sell the image of green living but it's got very rich off exploiting the worst economic tsunami been 300 years the biggest budget deficit since world war 2 its biggest tax generated

diminished by breck's it how lonely you case finance minister where the books and china is export of cherries to china hit by social media rumors we talked to the vice minister of trade. thank you for joining us no way became the 1st country in the world where the sale of electric cars over took those powered by combustion engines a remarkable achievement for a country that in another world 1st plants and the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025 but like most headlines is a huge contradiction in no ways comment change credentials while the country is western europe's biggest exporter of oil and gas and has managed to save one trillion dollars and its sovereign wealth funds from exports last month they are auction off $61.00 offshore production licenses yes it plans to drill for more oil and. gas that includes some 125 licenses to drill in the arctic barren see

a relatively unspoiled corner of the planet while it continues to reduce emissions at home its export emissions overseas mostly to china and facts noways the 7th biggest exporter of emissions after cotta the top 3 being russia saudi arabia and australia not satisfied with exploiting national resources of its coast the demand for green technology could see norway start seabed mining it could license companies as early as 2023 to start mining for copper zinc cobalt gold and silver metals that are needed for wind turbines solar farms and electric vehicle batteries off the coast the norwegian university of science and technology says they could be up to $21700000.00 tonnes of copper more than the world's copper output in $29.00 t. deep sea mining could generate up to $20000000000.00 in annual revenue for no way towards 2050 combat to around $61000000000.00 from oil and gas in $29000.00 and create

about $20000.00 jobs based consultancy by stat energy has estimated but it's not the only country that plans to mine the sea beds for minerals china and japan have similar plans joining us now via skype from bergen in norway is speak to holguin he's the program director at the institute of marine research and professor at the geophysical institute of the university of beg and very good to have you with us peter thank you for your time so why is there a rush to mind seabeds well i think there may be several reasons it's been coming back the last couple of years but actually 3040 years ago there was also a rush and people realize that there were minerals on the sea but i think no there may be so reasons the research electrification of the economy. and the various suppliers but in this realization. general honore and i would also add that some of the supplies from from learned based mineral exploration there is

some geopolitical aspects not all minerals are available on every market and people then look for other places to find these minerals as speaking of these other places many advocates of seabed mining say china has a monopoly on rare earth minerals so we must all find other reserves you agree with that well i understand their concern that when resource is located only one place and you need it for a long term whether it's china or somewhere else it doesn't really matter you'd like to have more and more supplies and more eternity of so it's an understandable reason i believe there are of course a lot of concerns when it comes to seabed mining t.v. natural as david as a moral one this year that deep sea mining risk creating quote terrible impacts that can not be reversed what are your thoughts on that how bad your damage be on the environment yes it could be bad hern and i think the jury is still out remember

the deep sea bird is the least known and well meant on and we don't understand how it works we don't even know what organisms are there how the eco systems are put together. you can save some and some some of them the advocates would would say that now we have a scientific study that says that if we do it this way it will not disturb very big area on the other hand i think we know so little about the deep sea environment and we need to know a lot more before you can approve activity so on with mining and speaking about right now off the coast of namibia for example the government of namibia and of years the diamond company are scooping up the sea bed to find diamonds which you know hardly is hardly essential many people would say and scientists believe that this could take up to a decade to restore the seabed there the other so that's a special case are you know they're close and under. yeah it shows that i mean not

only the interests that are expressed or not also applies i think to some extent to the the green transition and the need for minerals for electric vehicle batteries and so on and there may be other all the reasons why people are mine or want to mine and i think also in some places the oil and gas industry is looking for other things to do to use their technology and their base and would like to see new markets like activity for deep sea mining through which so so we should always be critical to the to the rationale for these various actors in the in this game the various actors including the united nations which is quite surprising the un issuing licenses for seabed mining in international waters which you know a lot of people find surprising and they're collecting the royalties to pay for u.n. work away not all compromised by commercialization i think yeah i mean that with the u.n. has it international see better authority which was created as a follow up of the convention on the law of the sea almost 40 years ago and that

came about because of the interest and the awareness of the world minerals on the seabed and people were putting this mechanism in place maybe not with the same environmental consciousness that we have today and the awareness of the of the complexities of the deep sea eco system so so that is an issue that we have to deal with here i have to ask from a norwegian perspective norway has done well from oil and gas but the rhetoric of advocating climate change policy says an easy when it's one of the top 10 exporters of emissions yes this this is a complicated issue and it's a political area which has many aspects to it. and there you can also talk about who is to blame for the c o 2 emissions is it the producer or is it the user of these products. and that's a political question what is the best way to solve it by putting you know putting

the responsibility on the producer or the you so. but of course for norway the oil and gas has been very very important in come to the country alone is politically difficult to turn down but particularly peter hogan thank you very much for talking to us about the sink you for your time thank you. now that break said it's done its biggest tax revenue generator the city of london has lost its status as europe's biggest share trading capital to amsterdam a shocking transfer of wealth as the finances of the country rapidly deteriorate and march 3rd finance minister receives so not an advocate of brics it will need to find money to pay for the pandemic when he delivers his budget a $2.00 trillion dollar economy some to its worst economic performance in 300 years the country is on course to report a budget deficit of $400000000000.00 pounds britain spain

a $1.00 trillion dollars in tax a year but the big question is what taxes to increase to pay off the deficit after a decade of austerity are the people of u.k. ready and willing to pay and according to the resolution foundation $2600000.00 people expect a new said jobs this year as about 8 percent of the working population. so what will the finance minister do joining me now from london via skype is not a fan blade the ad is an economist and chief executive at the new economics foundation very good to have you with us mater on counting the cost so should rising debt be a consent ensure no it shouldn't be a concern and it should be concerned for 2 reasons the 1st thing is that the key issue is not really the size of the debt it's the has sustainable that debt is and you ability to pay it down and we have this strange thing where the debt burden in this country looks big but actually the cost of financing that there is because of

0 to 60 negative interest rates is a historic kolo so actually if ever there was a time to borrow this is the time to borrow and the key thing is that 2 thirds of the long term cost of that debt is not into these really low interest rates the other reason why we shouldn't worry about it is because we've had a big change in policy from the bank of england and we're listening is that the bank of england is essentially underwriting government debt by borrowing bottoms so you know the barrington is essentially purchased about half of government bottoms and so those 2 reasons means that actually the dynamics around debt to completely change and so this is absolutely trouble policymakers to be in that but for a nation that simple is austerity and necessarily sometimes what is the fascination with containing debt that is a very good question i mean look it's born out of a long orthodoxy i did a good the rational argument is if our debt becomes too big if it's unsustainable

if the money markets think that we're not a safe bet because we can't pay back that debt and credit agencies decide to downgrade us that's bad for us economically that's bad for us i'm actually and it happens our capacity to borrow in the long term. the but the truth is that i think his argument has always been. the state because underlying them is a more or stronger ideological drive that essentially is trying to constrain public spending because it's trying to constrain the scope the space in the size of the state so i think when people have used debt as an argument for constraining the contraction of the public sector it's often been driven underpinned by the political and ideological piece rather than the economic piece and speaking of the political the you have joe biden the u.s. president the i.m.f. the u.s. federal reserve all saying that now is a time to spend spend money do you think the u.k.

is willing conservative party is listening that's a very good question i mean they are in so far as they have spent so you know our our our our deficit has gone up in the region of 400000000000 so they have been spent i think the piece that they maybe not listening to was the fact that you know what all of those organizations are staying in indeed organizations here is don't stop spending the economy is still really precarious as we come out of the pandemic as we start easing it businesses are in these people are struggling do not stop supporting and invest in the economy and this is where i think the government hasn't quite grasped this not least because if we look back at the all term budget statement that the chance he gave what he did it was choose to cut they today spending about 10 to 12000000000 every year so the drive to cut the drive to go back to consolidation is pretty strong and is whether those of us there are going

that the long term cost of that far far greater the little short term impact of increasing the deficit we're not interesting you say people are struggling and that's a reality where expecting what 2600000 people to lose their jobs how can the chancellor help me there are 3 things that he's going to do the 1st is protect jobs so you know if the government. did well to introduce the furnace they would have done better if they just introduced it for one or 2 year period rather that's a good thing that they've done but the philistines been a massive lifeline and has saved many jobs that would have been lost and so as we now look at easing out of looked and it's really important that the chancellor keep the furnace place for a period of time so i would say for a year but critically gradually move this into a part work part subsidize non-working scheme and what that would do is allow businesses to keep people on board and the states the government to subsidize the

time that people are working and in that time of the not working off or training so that you can get people sectors that might have to reduce the number of people employed like hospitality like the aviation industry you can train those people up and then try and get them into other jobs the 2nd is it's going to create jobs this is the time for the stimulus we're arguing they need a big green fiscal sit stimulus 20300000000 would i'm not 400000 jobs if they were to invest another 20000000000 in public services and social sector 700000 jobs and then finally they're going to support people it's really really hard for so many people out there and our social security system is completely inadequate they need to be think you have holy balls that are you talked about of course the u.k. is slowly easing out of coronavirus restrictions are the lockdown what do you think is going to have the biggest impact on the economy will it be the pandemic or bracks it has a very good question i mean i think in the end in the short term it is without

a doubt the pandemic i mean you know the economy shrank by 11 percent because the government essentially had to freeze economy that is unprecedented you know the scale of the impact you know the worst contraction and the contraction for 300 years so in the near term the condemn it is all consuming and it's definitely the. dr. reddy economic well as we have i think as we move into the medium term where we like the so short term sort of the pandemic is. there will be impact and we know there's going to be a break the impact of all that would actually suggest for a longer 202530 years and i think that's where it gets a player so it's definitely if you look at the numbers the u.k. is no worse than other countries and in part to do with the still pretty dynamic but that's been kind of marked by the big coated shock but as we sort of mill out and we saw the economy regains its rebounds the impacts of. a long road to recovery

thank you very much me out of a speaking to us me at a fund from the new economic sound ation on counting the cost thank you for your time thank you for having me now exports cherries from chile to china have taken a hit and it appears to be all because of a rumor unsubstantiated reports began circulating on chinese social media that traces of coal that 19 were found in some boxes a latin america at its embassy in yemen has a story from santiago it was all year long producers wait for this moment when their cherries go to the final stage of selection sanitation and packing before being shipped off to china for the chinese this color red britain's good fortune so they import cherries millie from chile to celebrate the chinese new year. but when an unsubstantiated story went viral on chinese social networks it brought misfortune to chile's multi-billion dollar cherry industry if the money from us are

not the same this was the result of non-official information in china a rumor that's provoked a steep drop in demand that our government is working round the clock with the private sector to see what we can do. when claims began circulating that some important cherries had been found to be tainted with coded 19 overnight exports plummeted from 500 to 0 containers a day australian cherry producers have also been impacted but not nearly as much as in chile which exports much larger quantities noice all know what we've never been formally accused of anything by chinese symmetry or customs with already stressed a story in the media that was never attracted by the ones who suffer most of the small and medium size produces who've invested everything they have and we've had to be singing basing on a good idea. the president of the exporters association says exports are picking up

but at the cherries are being sold at a loss and time is running out it's summertime in the southern hemisphere goods companies carries the click of a lead valuable because they are happy and shipped out a specific time for the chinese market but others like these great these cherries will spoil it in just a matter of weeks. chile has launched an intense counter offensive in china using intro and sers and scientists on social networks to try to convince consumers that their cherries are safe to eat all this is more than just bad luck it underscores just how vulnerable food exporters are to a negative tweet or story substantiated or not. you see in human eye latin america editor in santiago there let's get more now on those cherry exports where the road rager yang as well as chile is vital minister of trade and he joins us via xoom here in doha thank you very much mr young us for being with us so terry's

a 1600000000 dollar export industry for chile let me ask ask you 1st if you were surprised that the chinese government did very little to face down these almost why do you think that is well actually the governments at the local level made statements to clarify the situation and the public officials from the health sector in china gave interviews explaining to the people there that consumption of cherries and fruit were generally and food was safe so we have been in contact permanently with the chinese authorities we've got their support in terms of disseminating the proper information the proper news they issue is that this is a huge market and these you know we were expecting to sell over $2000000000.00 us dollars in cherry's so the report will said we were working round the clock to change the wave against these the fake news around consumption and i think we have

an impact in price that it's absolutely correct but we were able at the end of the day to be covered is let's talk about the relationship with china a bit more chile is a very open economy of course and there are concerns across political parties there that beijing is slowly taking huge stakes in the polygraph and their efforts to legislate against this right now why well this is something that is said i would say a hot topic in addressing today about it but it's where do and when. any country like china is which is our top trading partner it's natural that they also start becoming more important in in its investment in france and we do not have any city . in terms of investment that distinguishes or discriminates region or admits any country and that we remain as such but there is a discussion which for us it's something that should be consuming for instance

o.e.c.d. standards when thinking on doing some sort of rescreening which all countries including china if you do so that's an ongoing discussion we're not close to it but regardless of the mechanism what we want to convey to all foreign investors is that she is and will remain an open country which will not discriminate any origin or any country i would say china is a big trading partner they invest $1000000000.00 in the food sector alone again politicians in your country fear that china is taking advantage of the pandemic right now do you share those concerns well not really because the operations it's not that we have seen a jump or or or booming of chinese investments given depending if this was started to happen before and what we see is that there are a lot of opportunities to be grassed a very different countries in china and some in legislators certainly have more

concerns about it but we have faced it at the congress also trying to display the tools that they are the tools that also recognize better practices and that's the role that we want to keep and mending i let's move on and talk about the pandemic any threat is had on your economy vaccines of course are now being rolled out around the world and chile has the most advanced rollout of vaccines anywhere in latin america tell us how much damage the pandemic has caused on you today an economy well big in fact we will perhaps. own we were finished last year with a 6 percent decrease in our in our economy nevertheless were among the least affected countries along with precedent given the even them in weeks. ect bounced back this year and out because of it should expand by 5.5 to 6 percent you know that there is a big commodity prices boom right now and half of our exports relate to mining

so we expect to to recover and also one of the pillars of the thick of it is our vaccination campaign which is 16 lee and vicious we hope to get 80 percent of our population you know related by june and we are doing well so far more than 3000000 people in juneau today are back snape and we expect to close march with 5 so the government in that sense has made it the top priority at the betting you know on different platforms back scenes and again like i said in the beginning our principle is it not discriminating any potential solution so we can't face or we get astra zeneca we got so you know back from china we're talking with sputnik 5 as well and that i think that pragmatic approach i think has let us have the position that we have no terms of the rollout of the vaccination so missy and has your here in the middle east talking sovereign wealth funds looking into investing in

infrastructure and green hydrogen which is produced from renewables what progress have you made and what do you hope to get out of this visit well we talked about trade and the whole china for instance the south the trading partner but we are saying nope and small distant country need to again look for new frontiers for trade and that's what we're doing here at the d c c countries also given the momentum that their need is going through in particular the g.c.c. after the blockade. of a cutout and that and what we did in riyadh was to signed an historical 1st agreement with the d.c.c. which we hope will lead to start an f.d.a. negotiation with with the d.c.c. countries in the future and whether. also start just more trade but also more investment so that's why we are meeting with all soaring funds of g.c.c. countries in this visit because the additions that we have seen that we have seen in this country are going to bury world with the opportunities that we can offer

you mentioned green hydrogen according to macand see gillette is wary well positioned for that race in the future but we also talked about infrastructure we also talked about digital economy we are in by that we have invited these countries to join did their pact limited digital economy partnership agreement that we have with singapore and you've seen and and food security which. is very important for these countries and with chile has a lot a lot to offer us a very strong food exporter country thank you for your time a degree on yours is the vice minister for trade for chile thank you i'm going there and that is our show for this week get in touch with ass by tweeting me at for labatt a g.e. or drop us an e-mail counting the cost at al-jazeera dot net is our address 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 entire episodes for you to catch up on and that is it for this edition of counting the cost i'm fully back to

bow from the whole team here in doha thank you for watching news on al-jazeera is next. march on al-jazeera studio b. unscripted brings you 2 special guests in conversation exploring ideas and finding common solutions 10 years on from the tsunami that struck japan al-jazeera revisits the people most affected by the disaster football read books eric cantona presents a u.c. reason about iconic players whose influence has been as great off the page as on

its israel's full action in 2 years after the unity government's failure to pass the national budget up front smocked lamont hill cuts through that lines to challenge conventional wisdom. march on al-jazeera. almost 2 months after the storming of congress play some cover about a possible plot against the capitol thursday's house session is canceled. clubs in iraq with more challenges over life my headquarters here in doha also coming up the international criminal court sides italy best to gates alleged war crimes of the palestinian territories going israel and the us also.