4 astronauts are on their way back to earth from the international space station that capsule will splash down in the gulf of mexico off the coast of florida the 1st crew to be brought back from the station by space x. as part of its partnership with nasa once it lands the company hopes to refurbish the capsule to be used again on the future missions. it's good to have you with us hello adrian figure here in doha the headlines on al-jazeera india's coronavirus crisis continues to spiral out of control a record 3700 people died in the past 24 hours according to indian media and there were 392000 new cases the government is desperate to expand its vaccination program but it's struggling to meet demand al-jazeera as elizabeth brought on house war the vaccine shortage from new delhi the delis leader like many other regional leaders

around the country has said that they don't have enough vaccines to expand the vaccination program from saturday as planned the indian government announced a few weeks ago that from the 1st of may everyone over the age of 18 would be eligible but there just aren't enough doses to on my magistracy 5 also doesn't take into consideration the hundreds of millions of indians who don't have smartphones who don't have computers with internet connections the u.s. is sending hundreds of thousands of doses of the after democrat vaccine and also the materials needed for india to manufacture. the united states has begun pulling its troops out of afghanistan the taliban says that on the agreement reached with the trumpet ministration they should all be gone by now the commander of foreign forces in afghanistan has warned that it would be a mistake for the armed groups to attack the troops who are still. the latest round of talks to revive the 2015 iran nuclear deal and bring the u.s. back to the table appears made some progress in vienna but iran's chief negotiator

says that sanctions on tehran is oil and banking sectors need to be lifted the international organization of migration is concerned that more people will try to cross the mediterranean from libya as weather conditions improve on saturday libya's coast guard rescued 334 migrants they were found on 4 small boats heading towards europe and other rescue ships at sea watch for says that it witnessed the coast guard violently pulling the migrants back to libya against their will. have been taking place across the world to mark may day for international labor day in colombia the marches coincided with protests against government tax reform plans anger that continues even though president. has backed down over the proposal to be rid of those headlines more news fear of 0 after counting the cost next.

we understand the different. cultures across the wound sentimental value. and current affairs. this is counting the cost on al-jazeera people to business and economics this week . china's navy and its maritime militia terracing fisherman and antagonizing its neighbors or just defending their ancestral seas as beijing claims as the ones dominant u.s. navy lost control of the south china sea. also this week henry ford may be best known for his car company but he's also the man who gave the world the 2 day weekend but could the pandemic be assuring in the 4 day working week. and

environmental racism opposition grows to a pipeline that could put at risk the drinking water of black low income residents . in march more than $200.00 chinese fishing vessels occupied a reef in the philippines exclusive economic zone only the fishing vessels were manned by fisherman but by beijing's maritime militia which have been deployed in the south china sea to protect its quotes and says stroll sees china claims the whitsun reef as its own to the north in the spratly islands beijing has built military installations and artificial islands as china contest islands from japan to malaysia the united states is deploying more warships to the region right now in just the size of fleets washington has fallen behind so this is what the picture looks like china has 360 naval vessels compared to 298 for the united

states beijing's maritime militia is estimated at 3000 ships these are not benign but some are kitted out with lethal weapons and manned by x. naval officers but the united states has also the support of australian japanese and indian warships in this region even france and the u.k. are sending vessels to the region as well that's one simple measure so how much does china spend on its military well the official number in 2019 was 183 and a half 1000000000. dollars but it also funds the militia and various other security services taking its total spending to an estimated $240000000000.00 this is still short of the $705000000000.00 that washington spends on its defense budget and the total number comes to $934000000000.00 when you take into account the budget for homeland security the cia and other american agencies so with

a more assertive china the united states in the philippines of restarted joint military exercises after last year's cancellation due to the pandemic but the 50 plus year defense pact hangs in the balance because of the philippines president roderigo to tertius initial decision to walk away from it for counting the costs al-jazeera has more now from manila. the u.s. they are duros a bill to a strike group returns to the south china sea for a 2nd time this year the u.s. 7th fleet says the visit is part of its routine operations. but regional tensions are flaring because of china's reclamation of many areas and its use of maritime militia to enforce its illegal claims in the south china sea the u.s. considers the philippines one of its strongest allies in the region and these so-called balikatan exercises allow both countries to conduct joint military and

humanitarian exercises. they resumed this week after being cancelled last year because of the pandemic but they've been toned down that's because philippine president would be good at air to cancel the visiting forces agreement between the 2 countries early last year after a political ally was denied a u.s. visa but faced with widespread criticism and mounting public pressure there to announced in november he was suspending that this issue for 6 months. the turtle has declared since it took office nearly 5 years ago the he wants an independent foreign policy that is free from america's influence and his so-called pivot towards china policy is seen by many here as an attempt to appease the country but it come under attack by letting beijing did mean and abuse our country the

president is only signaling that we are weak that we will not stand up for ourselves and our interests despite 2 weeks of public outrage a deterrent to has remained silent over the occupation of the wits and reef in the south china sea by hundreds of chinese military vessels the arrival of china's maritime militia and fishing pleaded with grief in my opinion is designed to put pressure on deter today who are equally case and whether or not he's going to terminate the losing forces agreement last week u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin spoke with this counterpart in the philippines secretary they'll be in there in zinah to discuss the situation austin proposed measures to deepen defense cooperation but many here believe this will prove difficult unless the visiting forces agreement is fully restored dogon al jazeera manila. right let's get some analysis from dr graham on webb he's the

adjunct fellow at the us rajaratnam school of international studies he joins us from singapore graeme great to see you there again in singapore give me your thoughts on the top line on the story the united states says there's 3000 ships in this region what's your reading of that my reading is that this this assessment by the united states under 10 centuries is an accurate one are there has been a quiet expansion of china's maritime in the shower or what the last decade alone this is not a new concept for the chinese military in particular the people's liberation army needy which feels this capable it's a concerted attempt by the chinese military to try and create a force multiplier sorts over the wide expanse of the south china sea graeme can you explain for me one particular aspect of this which is kind of intriguing and compelling i guess in equal measure officially the militia isn't there to do what

everyone else thinks the militia is there to do officially at some levels the militia doesn't even exist but on the other hand president xi jinping has spoken about it in public so there's an acceptance of the reality but there's a denial at the same time there in lies the problem because yes he has talked about that the central make a military commission the c.m.c. which oversees china's military forces nancy an act has also referred to this idea on the shark it's a very established traditional concept for chinese strategy in fielding gerlach type forces traditionally on land but now at sea so this is not hiding about it i don't think there's still this element of you know possible deniability because you know bush come to shove the these vessels operating at sea. anted of being operated by fisherman i'll get you happy to receive some amount of training for what we know

in being able to operate in some of our era military style if you like but if you know that there's a limit the possible that deniability because they're also trained to to jettison whatever small munitions that they need carry the radio set which they use a communicate with conventional chinese naval. officers to control that or the body as well and so it that's that there's this there's this ambiguity about that which makes it a very we get problem if it's a creative device but seems to me as if it could potentially be quite sinister so key question for the united states if you're a naval slash military planner in the pentagon how much of a real threat are you thinking this militia might be it's a it's a very difficult problem because. you really can't exchange. physical shots

or a shot across the bow can be very difficult because in terms of the moves of the of the lord established rules of the road heaving with vessels we're talking about mabel ships. that you know that sort of make up this this arrangement. maritime militia i'm not quite. knowing of course the chinese of us average this and because of the efficacy of maritime the shot ability to disrupt naval patrols stand in the way and hold the fort if you like before 'd the mainstay conventional evil forces that people brought in here. get the measles but have also followed suit copycatting effect going on where i came in states like vietnam and down the road the philippines i'm very sure will take up a very similar approach sort of fighting fire with fire because of the atticus york marathon when the shot actually as you were at the. the philosophy to hold these forces accountable because of their possible tonight does this mean that for the

united states if there's copycatting going on on the part of vietnam and potentially in the future on the part of the philippines fold that together with the militia by definition being the kind of force perhaps that the united states didn't anticipate or didn't see coming does that mean that china in effect. runs the south china sea in a way that the united states doesn't anymore and perhaps can never do in the future and i think we have ended up in that situation where the chinese essentially forget tough by virtue of that of that presence not just the occupation of east i learned or artificial i own all features that are drawn into islands but also by the fact that you know that a treat 1000 strong maritime militia is costing the net far and wide for the time the navy and for the chinese military in general that is exactly the kind of anti

excess and you denial sort of flour approach that the chinese by design have wanted to feed for a long time mind you really are trying to defense budget is a 3rd of the american defense budget so the chinese have to make on just can't we are not the are expanding their conventionally naval forces they are trying to field several our aircraft carriers to operate in the south china sea but the maritime militia is a very effective instrument to sort of plug the gap until the chinese navy particularly matures and becomes a force to be hunted to be what are your to be reckoned with graeme thank you so much we must leave it there graeme on web there talking to us from singapore thank you. us politicians and activists are rallying against the. action of an oil pipeline in the u.s. city of memphis environmental activists say it puts at risk the drinking water of

low income residents a majority of whom a black the former vice president al gore has called it a case of environmental racism manuel republic reports. for months residents in south memphis have been fighting against the construction of an oil pipeline dorsey says she's worried over what it might mean if a proposed oil pipeline were to cut right through the neighborhood she's lived in for most of her life my. why now would be buying it the rule man may behold there's a growing movement among the local population against the plans for the energy project the concern from activists like justin j. pearson is over the ground being proposed for the pipeline which is expected to pass over the memphis awkward for so one of the most severe negative consequences is to our environment they're planning to build a $1500.00 p.s.-i crudo a pipeline atop the memphis sandakan for what supplies drinking water to over

a 1000000 people in addition to this they're building at the top an area that's the most seismically active in the southeastern part of the united states. the pipeline would also pass through box town a predominantly black neighborhood that critics say is already exposed to pollution from several nearby industrial sites in recent weeks a growing chorus of voices have spoken out against the project including at least 28 members of congress and former u.s. vice president al gore it is reckless racist it is a real we're trying to stop this i climbed it's called the i tell you i climb the memphis mayor just came out of yes that days ago which gave us all some great it encourage when the 2 companies i know believe the city with threats of lawsuits i do that everywhere even though they're legal theories are often nonsense but let us just standing up because the black citizens of memphis and they're not white allies

are standing up to say no more of this and our middle races a controversial aspect of this pipeline and others like it across the united states is the use of nationwide permit 12 which allows phone. fuel companies to fast track projects like the bay haley a connection pipeline the parent company responsible for the project valero energy corp did not respond to our request for a comment but the company has defended the project promising the pipeline will meet environmental standards. almost a century ago the 5 day working week was born after henry ford decided workers with more leisure time would buy more cars he was right now with many people flipping open their laptops and working from home during the pandemic there is a desire for some not to return to 5 days in the office well they may be in luck a number of companies that have switched to a 4 day working week believe productivity and employee wellbeing has improved and

spain is preparing to pilot a 32 hour working week sometime this coming autumn comes some 20 odd years since france kept its working week there at 35 hours let's get more on this initiative with huge on junk a research on the labor market and director of the welfare state research cluster at the university of kent in the u.k. welcome back to counting the cost is this a fad or is there a genuine momentum here that will introduce it and keep it i guess becoming part of the status quo of how we work i don't think this is a fad i think after expression depend on make a lot of countries as well as companies are seeing the benefits of having shorter hours not only because of the productivity issues that you've mentioned but about worker retention recruitment as well as kind of addressing some of the societal costs of long hours work such as mental health issues burn out etc and increasingly we are seeing movements from across the road to really get this movement at

a national level even but capping the working week at 35 hours as the legislation stands in france is different to working from home you know so this is being spun i guess by employers or by big companies is saying this is actually a good thing for employees mental health but sometimes a lot of people don't actually like working from home because it increases that feeling of isolation it increases not having those watercooler moments not interacting with people in the workplace and getting the the dynamism and the synergy from actually having a face to face conversation. absolutely other things i do want to point out though the 4 day week working from home are 2 very different policies having said that i think another reason why the 4 day week has become more popular is because as people work from home the idea working 40 hours in the office becomes absolutely it so it is more you know we easy or to kind of get rid of the idea that working hours

necessarily lead to productivity or a commitment of workers and introduce wrecking from home and for a week at the same time about those isolation issues and having that collaboration with colleagues except truck i definitely see the point in that difficult content being able to see each other also kind of at a whim maybe at hockley does have an influence on maybe collaboration or kind of these moments where you find ideas but this doesn't necessarily mean that working from home should not be introduced it's more about how do you then make less a virtual water cooler spaces are very chill collaboration areas where people could actually really have time and kind of space to think about these issues as well so you know there are issues but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't introduce these policies certain regions in spain are going to be experimenting with this towards the end of this year autumn time in northern europe how do you judge and how long

does it take to judge whether this has been a success or not because if the companies are making more money they would say yes it's a success if we're spending less money or no money moving our staff around spain that's a win win but it might not be a win win for the employees well i think it takes a while it's not something that you could just kind of gather evidence and then make a decision in the couple of weeks time i think dick specially given that going for a 4 day week is really entailing only huge to disrupt in the way we think about productivity our work processes and the way we work now that doesn't come just you know in a day or 2 that takes a long process where. there has to be a lot of discussions between employers and employees and that i would say i can't give you an exact date but i you know it would take months if not a year for those processes to really take place and be efficient enough for us to say actually this is the benefits the other thing is that a lot of the benefits actually don't only come in through the productivity per hour

but actually in terms of reduction of cygnus you know retention recruitment issues where we are getting rid of eliminating some of the costs of the existing work cultures that we live in so those things take some time and again you know there might be some hesitations by even workers in introducing these were the weeks although in general we do see that there is more of an excitement and it has it ation it will take a while for people to get used to it as well and as people spend less time at work they will start enjoying things outside of work in terms of spending time with family spending time doing more proper leisure other than t.v. watching which really will reap so much more benefits in terms of societal costs as well do you think this will catch on around the world you know we we're well used to people like jack ma the billionaire co-founder of but big e-commerce in china he says he's a firm believer in the record 996 rule isn't to you work from 9 am to 9 pm 6 days

a week you rest on the 7th day that's how he thinks you should make big money. i think that approach is wrong and really have you know as a part of this very large kind of academic community that looks at working hours and this impact not just on productivity on but also on the social cost there is so many social costs that come with it well to begin with is not very productive those very long hours and resulting in lower productivity and you even actually end up making a mistake to the point where it becomes negative productivity for most workers i'm not saying all but for most workers also the long term costs of that so we're going to tend to burn out easily they go into sickness and absenteeism which is not disruptive only for the workers but the whole work group or the company as a whore there's a huge implications in terms of the employee you know the impact it has even on the partners and children's children suffer emotionally psychologically even their

cognitive development may be hindered if parents do not spend time with them so i don't think that's necessarily a way to productivity and again we see so many evidence pointing to that direction in fact working shorter hours can be beneficial again for the individual for the company but us as a society as a whole is specially when we think about the social costs of very long working hours again it might be that in the very end you know introduction 40 a week may be a bit costly for certain companies where you do need to introduce more workforce to the company but having said that on the longer run in terms of retention recruitment hourly productivity but also ensuring that workers are not burned how workers are productive not just some for that they are that we are for a long period of time data not moved to other companies or leave the labor market altogether these are the kind of the benefits we can see and the benefits that

impacts society in terms of societal wellbeing and welfare and terms a reduction of health costs can be really immense huge enjoyment we'll have to leave it there. great to talk to you here this week on counting the cost for inviting me now the crew of a cargo ship abandoned in the kenyan port of mombasa have now been trapped on board for more than 18 months they've not been paid for even longer they rely on handouts for food clothing and medicine al-jazeera as malcolm webb has been to visit them. it's moses' mooney's job to look after the crews of abandoned ships he took us to one the m.v.t. in on it's more dock an years coast one and a half years ago it on loaded a cargo of construction materials here at the port of mombasa and it's been in this channel ever since waiting for instructions from its lebanese owners that the syrian crew has never came the only way to meet them has by climbing on board.

since they can't leave the ship so i will get. this into action that was the last of the missions and there's a. moment. many many stressing like this i was. the ship's crew haven't been paid since months before it was abandoned the port city of mombassa is just there it's only about a kilometer away so close but yet so far for the sailors stuck onboard covert restrictions in immigration rules when they can't go on the land plus if they abandon the ship they risk losing the wages that they're owed in some cases up to 3 years and so they're confined within the decks of the ship which they say i've come to feel like a prison for is a whiny the ship's cook sailed with it to turkey romania and russia before getting stranded here he has a young child back home in syria and. the mother has with us nobody feels what i

feel i'm stuck here and i wish the owner could feel what we feel if his children were here he would know what we feel i have been away from my family for 3 years. they've been confined in these cabins and he wait for a resolution and they're not alone around 6000 seafarers face the same problem on hundreds of ships abandoned by their owners. the crew here has depended on food and water from a charity called mission to seafarers brought regularly by moses he says ship's owners try to push abandon cruise to their limit they wanted to propose a crisis to the city they want to get tired and leave this year so that they don't pay us some of the crew their wives left to them because let us to continue our live with modern celebrity abandon cargoes can be a problem too. it was an abandoned ship cargo that caused the devastating explosion

of lebanon's capital beirut last year. the crew of m.t.g. non-home their ordeal will soon be over a court in mombasa ordered the ship to be sold in an auction the owners didn't respond to our request for comment but news day for nothing is just no good but now we sound like. some late breaking friends and good morning we say our goodbyes and leave the crew waiting for whoever won the auction to pay up and if that happens they'll soon be leaving too and finally flying home to thousands more like them around the world still going nowhere malcolm webb al-jazeera mombasa kenya. for this week but there's more for you online at al-jazeera dot com slash c 2 c. take you straight to a page with entire episodes to watch again whenever you want peter told me from the

counting the cost team here and thanks for joining us the news on al-jazeera is next. a tale of 2 presidents. venezuelan military defectors. american must nice. and a bizarre yet old dangerous attempt. at regime change in the bolivarian republic of venezuela. people in power the bay of pigs let's on al-jazeera. well if we cannot have palestinian my government was certainly not allowed britain to control french palestine would be an outrage but then we need to find another solution before we come to blows just 100 years ago britain and france made a secret deal that would influence the shape of the middle east for centuries to

come and so. now we can draw on the. psych speak out lines in the sand on al-jazeera. a hopeless situation in india a wreck or daily death toll with no side of a let up as the coronavirus wave continues to sweep the nation. out of a very unforgiving this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up the u.s. troop withdrawal finally begins but not fast enough for taliban leaders. a day is marked with vile.