and deep space as well as developed car iraq all those are included in our plan china's space station is a fraction of the size of the international space station that's the only one currently in orbit china is excluded from using it several western governments are concerned debatably use its space technology to expand china's military but its leaders say its progress and space exploration will only be used to peaceful needs between you al-jazeera beijing. the top stories now on al-jazeera coronavirus cases and deaths across india have reached a new global record highs as the country grapples with a devastating 2nd wave more than 3600 deaths and nearly 380000 cases were reported on thursday but millions of people turned out to vote in regional

elections in west bengal sparking fears that the state may turn into a new epicenter. meanwhile palestine's 1st election in 15 years could be delayed the president mahmoud abbas says israel hasn't yet confirmed of palestinians will be able to vote in occupied east jerusalem the parliamentary elections or show job for may the 22nd while a presidential vote is due in july joe biden is marking 100 days in office as president of the united states on tuesday here addressed congress with what he called his blueprint to build america promising trillions of dollars in investment in jobs infrastructure and education 100 days since i took the oath of office live tomorrow and all for family bible and her nation we all did it was in crisis the worst pandemic of the century the worst economic crisis since the great depression. the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war now.

after just 100 days i can report to the nation america is on the move again. alexina valmy has appeared in court for the 1st time since ending a 3 week hunger strike the kremlin critic attended a hearing by video link to appeal against his conviction for defaming a war veteran a separate court cases the siding with or his opposition network should be labeled extremist. the kurdistan government says at least 3 people including a child have been killed in fighting at its border with to g q stan the violence broke out at a water reservoir that both sides claim as their own the stream is that x. taking a look at the growing food crisis in lebanon that have no use in half an hour by.

hi i'm femi outaouais today on the strain what kind of a crisis in lebanon let me show you what that looks like these are groceries that you could have bought in 2019 for 10000 lire and then 2021 using the same amount of money this is what you were telling this is what economic collapse looks like according to the a while back i want to bout the population in lebanon living in poverty so how are they coping what does this actually mane and also what are their leaders doing to help them that is a show today in

a nutshell you can be part of the conversation by jumping on you tube i mean pot comments section thank you for being part of today shared. honestly i believe that more than 50 percent of the lebanese citizens are not celebrating ramadan and even if they did or they tried to celebrate ramadan i'm afraid of what's coming after. this months based on we understand that events the economic situation and everything that has been going on in the country what german army and well basically we needed the international support to have a better country and we forums and we change but now lebanese citizens are looking for their basic human rights needs they're looking for medication for food and medical assistance i think that my country needs and that it could have been on needs a medical now more than ever. hello zaina hello awesome and i mean we are going to dig deeper into this does lebanon need america what with that my record look like

1st of all saying i've got to have you on the stream introduce yourself to international audience well i'm a correspondent with al-jazeera i've been without as you know since the launch back in 2006 i have reported from many countries and lebanon is among them the awesome welcome to the stream good to have you introduce yourself to having this i am the general supervisor of lebanon crisis response plan and advisor to the ministry of social troopers for social protection under the law thank you for joining us on the stream and how let alone welcome your bloodstream tell everybody who you are what you do. and the communication manager plan and your call software development and be a good establishing 2011 with your bible based 1st syrian support to see as i think you and we've expanded over on the go to guy can't guess get to having on the stream when you were listening to joe maloof write that you reached out picked up a pen i knew what points to poised to tell us what go

a well he said you know lebanon needs international help the international community has repeated time and time again that it is ready to help but what they want to see is that the political class which really has been responsible to running the economy into the ground mismanagement and corruption for so many years there needs to be a new leadership a leadership that is ready to carry out who forms and fight corruption so the international community is ready to help america well no you're just going to need a political class to think more about the country and its people instead of their own personal interests awesome food the government's perspective how do you explain to people in lebanon what is going on right now with our economy how would you do that. actually i was in a sad it's commutative over the years but nowadays in 2020 we had like all the difficulties of the years and all the problems of the years like happened today in

2020 we had the fiscal economic deterioration we have the pandemic garbage we had also the explosion of the port of beirut so all these compounded crises left us with the situation we are and having poverty rates very high and more than 50 percent actually our numbers say and indicate that we have more than 60 percent of the total of binny's population living in poverty and 25 percent of them are living below the extreme poverty rate which means that they are under the risk of starvation in this is this is shocking stooping to shocking thing you'll walk in the engineer world what does this mean what are you seeing can you share a story with us. definitely i would start with the most shocking story because i think the impact of the economic crisis has left many people helpless and

pushed some of the people to take even extreme measures such as a committing suicide here's a story for example. one of the reasons story that happened is that there is this kid. who had been in the school activity of which the teacher asked them to bring a 1000 to be used to buy a sandwich from outside the school and when the kid approached the father to ask him for the money the father did not know what to respond he was able to afford this amount of money to the kids and eventually he committed suicide so people are living in marks of stress that they're not being able to afford anything but they can eat people are exchanging they they're sending their furniture and they're selling. the tickets. just for in exchange for food that they can provide and by the end do they do that there so really. the situation is really leading on the ground there not just looking at this report quite recently that you take lebanon

faces tough from a dam and then in saying food prices there was one point in a point when a woman said how are the poor going to eat how are they not not even a sort of i prophetical question but a real we cannot afford food so you know yes it's not it's not longer just the poor it's the middle class the middle class has plunged into into poverty we've watched people wait for she would hand out they're given commons of boxes with rice and and oil just to be able to survive through trances have increased 5 fold people are just dying their basic needs you just walk down you know a commercial district shops are empty nobody is even buying clothes the other day i was at a mall and i asked how much a shoe. as for a toddler a $1000200.00 lebanese pounds at the official rate that's $800.00 and the black market rate that's $100.00 but we have to talk black market right now because

that's dominating trading because there's there's a lack of dollars in the country and i just looked at the shopkeeper and she looked at me and she says you are shocked it's not even my salary i can't even afford it and that's when they pay me my salary there's a lot of desperation unemployment is on the rise as the economy it needs billions of dollars and then that's why i go back to say you know politicians who have been governing this country for decades they have a responsibility for the sake of the people they need to move aside they cannot you know cling onto power because the international community is not going to help if they don't fight corruption and there's not going to be and i've heard this word time and time again from western diplomats they've been saying there's not going to be a blank check this time they need to take action so there are many stories like this shopkeeper who you know she just looks at others and say ok you're buying that shoe for your toddler it's not even my salary so it's really really difficult times not

just for the poor it's now the middle class and there's great a brain drain doctors nurses and they're leaving the country as well and lebanon prided itself with its you know medical sector it there was medical tourism in this country and now hospitals are barely able to cope i said i would love to play a comment this is from professor lessing rasul and he is from an investor the american university of beirut who came up with the for 2 solid index it is a very simple idea it is a maze and chopped salad of all of these principles and. they've tried at american university a favorite how much it cost into buying gradients from one to another for this is what he told us and you have a listen and then respond at the end of us and thank you. at the beginning of the month of ramadan we wanted to see how inflation is going to affect the lives of people in lebanon so we look at the end the excess of a douche and the next which traces the prices of the main ingredients basic

interest in the salad and we discover that actually it increased 210 percent from $220.00 to $21.00 when we looked into what could cause a basic standard or basic a start for a family of 5 including for doing this soup and other basic items we actually allies that will cause their family something like weiss or more than the minimum wage for sicken to be in the country is it really as challenging and we might actually see even more challenging times in the coming weeks and months. challenger has got agreement on the front rank the head of my command. that yes i understand and he saw through your eyes the devaluation of the lebanese pounds made the prices very high and also let's not forget the merchants

monopoly over the basic ingredients and basic food so like it's something catastrophic and i don't want to be catastrophic at least we are presenting the problem and of the. like stream i want to provide people with hope but at the ministry of social affairs we did 3 things 1st of all we have a national poverty targeting program that targets the people or the families that are below the extreme poverty line so we are providing now with the cards with vouchers for about. 2550000 tamil ease ok and we are are negotiating with the world bank a loan for a program called an emergency social safety net program so that i don't say so much every v.a. sions this new program will will allow us to scale up the. benefits

216-0000 families additional to the $50000.00 in general we will reach 210000 time at least also we are preparing down to launch a compensation scheme program for the removal of subsidies because this price of the 1st 2 should not are presented is because the goods or the ingredients of the fatah are. not provided in subsidy price so it's in the market rate price so when we provide the people with a car that allows them to buy these basic food and services then we will help them achieve. gate beasts rising and problems and provide and currency their security we are planning now to target 750000 detainees families by june so that's a very huge challenge it's the biggest logistical operation in the history of

lebanon i know it's very difficult we will have so many problems challenges and grievances as well but we have to move forward in order to provide the poor with all the support and let's not forget the syrian displaced because also 9 out of 10 syrians placed in lebanon are under extreme poverty line imagine this number so lebanon basically nowadays is a country resided by vulnerable communities from all nationalities unfortunately so in peace we in partnership with the university are you and d.p.w. be unicef and other you and agencies we are providing also a social safety net us and let me just plain aisling is that enough ok. no i don't think that this is an else what is happening now is just a temporary solution but it's not a permanent solution because. it's just more of a morphine shot if you do provide people with subsidies you help them approaches so

that the items with. a less prospect but then what then what is the brits going to do happen so i think we should be addressing the problem that the as serious as we can. think sample. that put it even with the subsidies actually i don't know if you heard about it but but. the prices are going up the price of the bread no going up but $3.00 times and the family is there for family and they started a move that. the host just talked about and goes also partly to do with the subsidies so. i don't think it's not the solution and it won't help solve the economic problem. the talk of the quabbin more seems to allow me to say that you are right in the in a way or another. now we are amid the storm so we have to provide the people with

it was do mitigate and really easy in order to build of the storm so that they rise again after the storm passes away so we have. to do this now and at the same time impact of all this work on a better little programs in order to provide us with an exit plan out of poverty it's not that we are providing cards and that it's wrong we have to have an exit plan. that provides us with the tools in order to get out of poverty level in our perspective we hear we all respect that we're here at supply let me bring you something from the heart of the storm this is on that and he was talking about what he's been doing recently in lebanon have a listen i just traveled back from lebanon last week where we went to visit syrian refugee camps we were distributing food packs fresh meat fresh bread to these

refugees and we also asked them how they're coping with on this year and what a lot of them said was it's a struggle for them especially because they don't have an income one of the syrian refugees don't have an income so they struggle and they rely solely on charity aid and as you can imagine due to the current economic crisis that's not helping any of them either. so you know there are so many layers of challenges that lebanon has right now including lifting off food subsidies including. because the list goes on and on and on. yet yeah most multiple crises how do you even communicate that and how or even lebanese people living for that. well well it's very difficult but yes i'm fine understand you know you want to help the poor but these are ad hoc decisions and i mean when you're taking a lot of time the world bank you used the word negotiations there is already a deal the world bank has set conditions the lebanese government has not met those

conditions other asking is to not allow law me to say this and i know you are you are not right because i was negotiating with the world bank and they know exactly what is going on we did yes and we signed the agreement but the parliament of lebanon did have like some. some insights or some justifications for the deal and then now we are waiting to be sent to washington d.c. to the headquarters of the world bank so that the board of trustees of the world bank like confirms the agreement if you take into consideration be very that the have you vetted the families who are supposed to receive this i mean the world bank and everybody else for that matter is there a bit concerned that only supporters of the government are going to receive this aid they need this you know i'm not going to get into no that's not the damage because we are we have did we have done a b m t testing questioner in collaboration with the world bank w f

b and others as well so we have 50 questions we will do household visit and all this is monitored we did and we had a grievance for the 1st time in history of lebanon so we have to to give like credit when we work properly and we have to criticize when we don't so let's be clear we did i meant eager events and for the 1st time in the history of lebanon technical audit so we have to do to say that we abided by all the the standards of the international scene and i'm sorry i meant i haven't had a lot of people on here want to talk to all 3 of you some got to ask you briefly to respond to some of the comments that you have inspired right now and i want to start with this is from last my possible possible that how is lebanon coping after the blast the pain for plastic. this is feeling. yeah it's not coping. been on i'm going to talk 1st of i'm an in-joke respect of

being heard the blast was a. changing point in the past that we're doing. we changed our interventions so so here's the thing. all the programs that we've done throughout the last 9 years are just being shattered after the blast because after we've reached a point where 80 percent of brick is only focused on education protection and the likelihood now it will buck 2.0 where we have to focus our it it is on providing the basic needs for the people but if the provide him with the catalyst and we need right in the shelter so basically we are now under survive and everyone is knocking everything people do not care about education anymore they do not care about the issues of gender based violence. it seems like all of the effort is gone and this is paving the way for really alarming problems so for example child labor is on the

rise again many of the people are forcing the state to quit school because they need to work to provide their families with a piece of bread on the table by the end of the day and you have early marriage on the rise again we've done a really good progress but now with the economic situation forced to do that again i know that there's so many evil people in here should you mind if i just share some more of those questions with your co panelists all right so this is your highness yeah he says and i'm going to ask him for a very quick response here international help is essential for lebanon to overcome this crisis you don't have to agree but i'm really interested in your instant reaction go ahead. definitely international community the international partners and friends have contributed a lot in the past for lebanon especially in those 3 but definitely the needs are massively increasing and also we have scores if you have resources nowadays in

lebanon and we cope and play and we really really need this help from the national community and what it's huge of you are on point with your questions this one is for you saying or this is from valar unemployment corrupt politicians who have been governing the nation for many years we need men going to add and women of integrity who have a true love for the people instead of themselves to editorialize that the politicians are like matthew saying i go ahead. well they ran the economy into the ground there's mismanagement corruption and governance. i mean people have lost hope have lost faith in those who are in power warlords who turned into politicians who it's been 8 months since the government resigned in august in the aftermath of the beirut explosion and yet these politicians are fighting over influence and in the next government then it's not only internal power struggles

there's also reach to all dynamics at play because lebanon's politicians are tied to regional international players and lebanon is the battleground of proxy states where where basically lebanon is is a card so for these politicians lebannon and the lebanese people are not the priority. people take to the streets yes they were not the majority a lot of people still you know follow their their leader as their sectarian leader is for for many different reasons some are afraid of the alternative or the alternative really has not presented itself people are still afraid you know because there's this lack of loyalty as as a nation and as a nation state but that this protest movement fizzled out it was met by a militarized state people found and used this really to keep on taking to the street when you're up against power which is ready to use all forms of violence you know to keep people off the streets so

a lot of lebanese have lost hope those who can have left the country and that's why i talk about you know brain drain and s. and i wasn't criticizing you for the sake of criticizing but it's been a year and a half what have you you know not you what have those in power done for the people to 3 months ago people young men were in tripoli and demanding jobs saying that we cannot survive when there is a lockdown if we don't work today i can't put food on the table that any government official respond to them. no they shot at them they killed one young man so this is what i am studying i'm not saying you know and people are worried and the world bank is worried and they're rightly so who are the families who are going to get these these foods uganda are they going to be people who really need help or people who are going to vote for these politicians in the upcoming elections next year so lebanese have lost hope i've reported from many countries across the world conflict zones i've covered wars but watching

a country slowly die slowly collapse watch people the depression the anxiety and watching the leadership only thinking about themselves and not the people that i have not seen you know in my career and i can say that i've i've seen i've seen quite a lot also i personally agree with you is coming i think you are coming in and sitting in the hot seat basically on the strain and talking to not just asked remote us out of your audience and also the office of paper in lebanon as one more comment i want to share with you and let it come of the back of that and that will wrap up i shall have a listen despite all of this the lebanese government is stubbornly refusing to take any meaningful steps progress in a crisis daily invited to people's right to an adequate standard of living. how do you want grandmother's home i had my respond to zain and to the lady i'm not

here to defend the government but also it's nice to. like to be to be objective ok this government came in february 2020 ok and in less than 6 months they experienced the. relation of the economy and they give you a show the pound also the pandemic coverage that affected the biggest and strongest countries in the word and then the explosion of the port of beirut and let's not forget that in lebanon 40 percent of the population are not only binny's from displaced syrians and palestinian refugees so all these compounded crises led to this also thank you so much we appreciate it with thank you very much we appreciate you being on the show then and also saying as well each of your questions well point thank you for the part of today's discussion is why not me the

last time you hear from zeno on awesome really appreciate and thanks for watching us you next time on the story. a tale of 2 presidents. venezuelan military defectors. american muslim race. and a bizarre yet old dangerous attempt. at regime change in. the bolivarian republic of venezuela. people in power the bay of pigs

limits on al-jazeera. a series of special events is being planned to mark the 100 years since the creation of northern or but brags it has renewed old tensions and put irish reunification back on the agenda al-jazeera will be reporting from both sides of the border in this milestone moment for irish politics . a small boy and his brother rescued from war in gaza by the red cross i hold it was a time when we were 1st placed on a red cross truck now a world leader in crisis management and a highly regarded doctor in chicago who still misses her homeland just one day possibly thinking of returning to jordan al-jazeera world meets 2 successful arab doctors in north america arabs abroad the humanitarian and the healer on al jazeera .

al-jazeera is news night on the biggest stories of the week delivered to your inbox plus analysis and opinions that have the world. subscribe and be part of the conversation. her war. hello i'm barbara starr in london these are the top stories on al-jazeera coronavirus cases and deaths across india have reached a new high as the country grapples with a devastating 2nd wave more than 3600 deaths and nearly 380000 cases were reported on thursday but millions of people turned out to vote for regional elections in west bengal sparking fears that the state may turn into a new epicenter elizabeth parana reports now from new delhi.

is inconsolable lot to hearing of her mother's death.