not everyone is pleased with the final outcome of the reform law. hopes are still high the growing legal marijuana could lift the town out of poverty unfortunately the law itself may not be entirely on their side for al-jazeera mexico city. beijing says an out of control sanction of a chinese rocket is mostly broken up on reentry into earth's atmosphere the long march 5 rocket was launched 10 days ago carrying part of the country's 1st permanent space station. for the point of impact in the ocean somewhere southwest of india and sri lanka. let's take a look at some of the headlines here now just here and now it's been more violence in occupied east jerusalem and israeli forces cracking down on palestinian protesters for a 2nd day a palestinian president says at least 90 people were injured when police tried to

clear muslims gathering in the most sacred night of ramadan harry force it has more from occupied east jerusalem the israeli security forces have pretty much cleared a great deal of the square here close to damascus gate they are filtering people who are access into the old city itself but this follows several hours of pretty continuous. patterns of skirmishes where there would be brief respite. again they would either be bottles thrown plastic bottles thrown by palestinian protesters or seemingly without immediate provocation the israeli security forces would move in 55 people mostly schoolgirls have been killed the multiple blasts outside the school in the afghan capital kabul president says the taliban was behind the attack but the armed group says i still is to blame. the british medical

journal the lancet has warned coronavirus deaths in india could reach 1000000 by the beginning of august the government has been facing mounting criticism over its response to the country's exaggerating outbreak fighting is resumed in ethiopia see grey region preventing international aid from reaching civilians caught up in the conflict between rebels and the theo pin government the military says it had safety concerns 2 suspects have been arrested in the mall the zim connection with an explosion that critically wounded former president mohamed nasheed doctors say the 53 year old is no longer on life support from beijing says an out of control section of a chinese rocket is mostly broken up on reentry into earth's atmosphere ordinance but the point of impact in the ocean somewhere southwest of india. as the headlines . teach you around just the right english streaming on on you tube channel the

last thousands of our programmes will be with documentaries and didn't. subscribe to eugene it would slash al-jazeera english. hello and welcome i'm peter darby you're watching counting the cost on al-jazeera your look at the world of business and economics this week beyond petroleum time is running out for oil producing countries to get their economies in order as the world transitions to green technology we find out who the winners and losers are as global geopolitics are redrawn. also this week where the self driving

cars they were predicted to be on the road by no talks the founder of a start up was found a niche for himself derived technology. rich nations can spend their way out of the pandemic but it's not a level playing field for all countries colombia's efforts to raise billions from new taxes are scrapped after deadly street protests. the transition from hydrocarbons to renewables is gathering pace it's a transition that has the power to reshape geo political alignments as many countries become more energy independent policing energy chokepoints at sea using political capital to cover for his regimes and catering for volatile energy prices could become redundant there wouldn't in theory be a need for military bases in the middle east for those periodic calls for regime change and all out conflict. the united states has already reduced its reliance on

middle east oil thanks to the development of shale oil and gas fields if there was any doubt priorities are changing president biden is pulling troops out of afghanistan and shifting his administration's policies to the pacific and in particular to china mr biden also certain new goals to custom missions and has received commitments from other world leaders that the oil producers on notice and there have been more warnings u.k. energy joint b.p. forecasting a peak in oil demand within the next few years as the world transitions to clean a fuels that is backed up by analysis from energy consultancy wood mackenzie says consumption would begin a steep drop as early as 2023 it went further to say global oil prices could drop to around $40.00 a barrel by 2030 if governments push to reduce fuel consumption in step with un backed plans to limit global warming that will be

a huge shock to the budgets of the oil producing nations revenues have already been falling in 2019 oil revenue in the middle east half to 5 175000000000 dollars from more than one trillion in 2019 according to the i.m.f. even before the pandemic many oil producing countries were burning through foreign currency reserves to pay their bills saudi arabia has seen its reserves fall from a record 7 $137000000000.00 in august of 2014 to $428000000000.00 in february of this year so what does that mean for the oil producing nations well risk analysts very risk mabel croft believe algeria iraq and nigeria will be among the 1st casualties of a slow motion wave of political instability over the next 3 to 20 years he goes on to warn that time is running a friend girl or go on and kazakstan who fail to diversify their economies away from exporting fossil fuels. so let's talk to the author of that report james

lockhart smith head of market risk at various maple craft he joins us on skype from geneva james welcome to counter the car so your headlining 2 countries here iraq and nigeria what's the direction of travel for them do you think we think in this case you know they're really examples of a broader trend and you know we looked at the entirety of nestle exporters across the world and who really had 2 major perhaps 2 major takeaways from the research and the 1st was despite a little ground 0 s. vacation despite the paris agreement and 2015 despite the oil price crashing 2014 i really compelling prolapsed policy and price signals and almost no progress has actually been made yes in reducing want to export dependence so once you control the variation in commodity prices very few countries reduce their level of export and that's really and you have norway and qatar and although a man managed as well that's ready to do more with production problems than the health of normal exports in most countries actually double down on oil exports to

plug that revenue and the 2nd takeaway i guess is and this is linked to why we've seen so little progress so far is that diversification is really hard in many if not most and that's what is going to struggle and so nigeria in iraq are representative of that group a trend that people are able and countries and if i if i could just sort of unpack that's a little you know if you're a country that has built your economy and your political system your social contracts around producing and exporting oil and finding another way of generating revenue presents a double challenge the 1st challenge is economic as you call it build clusters of expertise technology bring in s.d.i. with technology transfer everything you need to build alternative and valued industries and the 2nd challenge is political actually building consensus across society and political elites the changes that happen changes that may threaten the best interests the russells already hard countries on you know try to act as little as. a rational choices but collections of individuals that often disagree and then

we have a context where it's essentially too late for a little early gradual 'd energy transition so the probability of more abrupt shift away from all in major consumer markets in the years ahead has increased ok you mentioned the gulf countries there at the beginning of your answer your tax cuts are oman for different reasons how the g.c.c. countries doing when it comes to diversification. they're actually doing relatively well so far i mean if you look at it you know you see at current absolute export mixes all over see how you can still meter as it has in your shares and for example in the case of qatar you know you can see it sort of trying to kind of creep up on the metals the metals rally chain as it were but they have as any key point is that you know they were certainly they they've shown slightly more diversification in recent years certainly in the case of qatar oman and actually u.a.e.

is what is a very important and positive example that and looking for the fuel they do have the institutions in place the house and the political will as a senior level to be able to make and make those changes but of course this comes with a very big and cowardly acts that. there's a distinction to be made between political stability in general and then political fragility so. for example saudi arabia has one of the highest tail risk probabilities for extreme political disorder in the world you know in our data despite its stability today and then you consider that you know certainly in our research recently we were looking at external breakeven so what countries need to pay for their import bills so in a future of the tension the sort all oil prices you could still see a lot of downward pressure on standards of living and successful diversification itself could also be politically disruptive why are bending you know a more traditional sort of all economy social contract barack obama's much vaunted pivot to asia never happened joe biden is definitely pivoting in that direction

absolutely what does that do to the relationship between the gulf the g.c.c. and friends of washington within the g.c.c. we will see in also what our soldiers bringing about the energy transition and aging we see an automatic connection between the u.s. pivot away from the middle east and towards asia and the energy transition per se because you know anything. as you alluded to there are many many different variables at play and you know washington is making the truckie lation unsurprisingly that china is by far the most significant challenge that the u.s. faces geo 'd politically and then you have a longer running changes in domestic political preferences in the us for a less and less interventionist role on going on the world stage and on the energy side it's certainly true that u.s. dependence on middle eastern oil has reduced already but that is an associate or at least more as a result of the u.s. shale revolution than because of energy translation but we will see a future under energy transition where the middle east does become less but it will

to us curriculums that in line with you know the latest policy music scene us in washington and that would certainly result in geopolitical changes in the region now those you political changes could actually be positive insofar as once the permanent guarantee of unconditional us support is removed that leaders have to start talking to each other because they no longer have you know in the case of u.s. allies they no longer have that sort of moral hazard to think backed by washington whatever happened so it's been very interesting to see you know comments from holland and solomon a few days ago around once who better relations with iran following reports of secret talks and of course that well i was there can be other there is still going to be many obstacles to conflict resolution including you know because of the role of. iranian in particular proxies throughout the region and just considering that we're dealing with very complex multi actor and conflicts but on the whole and we do expect a reduction in. u.s. influence there and we do expect it to have a role in changes in i think more generally less influences from the u.s.

is also going to mean more and more hedging by key u.s. allies so you know for example saudi arabia is interested a few years now and securing chinese investments and not in iraq or thank you very much thank you. for the. mosque forecast that his electric vehicle company tesla would have self driving cars. on our roads by 2018 well it hasn't happened probably due to the difficulties of mimicking our complex human behavior and very intuitive skill set that you do need to have of course to drive a vehicle despite that there are numerous challenges to tesla including alphabets way most general motors crews toyota and honda to all have yet to start making and trying to sell in any meaningful way so for drive cars and that's even before we think about governments around the world green lighting the necessary legislation wall street tech giants and the manufacturers of spent billions of dollars in the

pursuit of the ai holy grail and all fighting for the same piece of road but artificial intelligence and automated vehicles are also being trailed in other areas of the economy amounts in area that 3 year old start up a drivers is pursuing with the automation of vehicles used in ports well why ports well the $17000000000.00 a year industry is suffering from labor shortages and his technology can be retrofitted to existing vehicles so let's talk to the founder of ai drivers rough week swash who joins us now from london on skype welcome to counting the cost so why are ports an easy starting point for this kind of technology and yet thank you for having me obviously ports the immediate focus for autonomous technology you can that desperate need for a mobility automations and where these areas are privately or administratively on

behind. the fence areas so that the support from there and all prices and also. the simplicity out there actually finites the environment complexity our moneyman one other hand that operation complexities are a lot sophisticated compared to our site areas so there. areas could be easily i don't shape it and short or autonomous realty why did you target the ports industry why not try to work with say the airport industry airports have some of the leading edge technology for moving planes around isn't there a natural overlap there or even i'm thinking about railway stations for example as well yes your area rights and airports also requires are as a similar into structure as ports but. then many more. the mobility that the maximum safety measures for airports are very huge because you're

moving to aircraft which is multi multi 1000000 words and on the other hand in a seaport your meeting containers and amount of containers mused. a few 1000000 see every day compared to a montauk their aircraft moves around your saying and you've said in the past that you think your valuation will be $2000000000.00 in a few years time on the face of it that sounds like a lot of money but with with respect to you. chicken feed compared to the big big big hitters who are trying to get in there how do you play catch up. i'd like to say that we're already ahead of many companies out there trying to get your technology out on the roads because they are not just behind try to see how this technology can be implemented but they're also behind the regulations of this technology can be incorporated or authorized or regulated on the on the public

roads by the area that we operate obviously we have a huge demand tough needs and wants from our order prices and also we already understand why is this technology can be incorporated and regulated in this environment so if we can incorporate that within the port industry and implement this correctly safely and reliably and then this can be extended to our side as well so that brings us to probably ahead of many out there that they are missing that initial or fast stage of implementation knowledge special purpose acquisition company spec why don't you use that to go to market specs other recent and if it's a toy if taking a company is to i.p.o. and obviously we can see that drivers had that. compelling business operation for a spec i thing we are looking at something. you know when the time comes you never

know we have a we don't have to go through some creative way of going to i.p.o. because that god has a very substantial. value to provide for the industrial side so we do have a very good. compelling business operations and technology for both spec as well as i.p.o. so at the moment we are going to end the stage whichever comes fast or another hand that maybe we will never let's to be gone that route maybe some other company would be in charge interest to match with us or acquire or other purposes of taking our experience on their board to accelerate the of development. you're clearly facing the same challenges that everyone else in this still new technology is facing how long until we can reliably use self drive cars i mean you're in

london would i get into a self drive car to go around the m $25.00 at 70 miles an hour peak rush hour right now absolutely not if you came here would you drive around doha in a self-drive car at peak rush hour probably not not comfortably anyway i mean lots of things have got to change something not least public perception of control yes and there are and certainty. will come a serious generalisation of the traffic flows in a public area because you are always find someone. may not follow the traffic rules and require the true intelligence at the moment that there are sufficient computing powers and i can do almost complex processing decision making a lot faster than how human probably think when it comes to processing large amount of information it's obviously humans are extremely clever when they are doing the

reasoning right but when it comes to navigating in a complex environments on the road on the road but there are if we look at run a simplistic way you have a set of rules that you have to follow or change of lines you know which line connecting which line and understanding those lines and then understanding the object on those lines how the army behaving right if this can be put in place and enforce it the way they speak majors are implemented to get human drivers to respect the route traffic flows today we have a speed speak cameras they are majoring our streets speed on the way cause we have to drive you know as expected in the shop you really cannot drive too fast too slow by. as we are growing in this area and we will come with their their the traffic rule or law enforcement where people should drive you know respective to the traffic rules and the autonomous technology will be implemented to follow doing the

rules so when everybody doing you know what part responsibly and this technology can be provided with the reliability and safety ok we have to leave it there affix wash there in london thank you very much thank you spend spend spend your way out of the pandemic is the advice from the international monetary fund and the world bank that may be possible for rich countries but many nations are under pressure to figure out ways to repay their debt built up during the health crisis attempts by colombia's president even do k. to push through tax increases that would have kicked in next year have been scrapped the country's finance minister resigned after days of protests against the plans that left at least 17 people dead it was heavily criticized for punishing the middle classes at a time of economic crisis more than 2800000 people fell into extreme poverty last year half a 1000000 businesses have closed and the government's debt has soared to 108 percent of g.d.p.

over the last 10 years including spending on the pandemic the government needs more revenue to reduce the budget deficit which is predicted to hit 9 percent of g.d.p. ok let's get some analysis now with hiero lugo a condo director of executive and graduate education at northwestern university here in cass our hiero welcome to counter the cost to what degree was the tax increase an ideology from the get go from the very beginning. well this is the 3rd attempt that the government has has had to to try to improve the finances of the on the fs in the u.k. . before and then and did not find the 2nd census remember that if government. is funded by law your qualification that. that was able to keep him in power and with the support of several sectors in the country and a yes of course if the

government misjudge the plan and have little consultation and when you try to pats people for the eggs that he can expect out of a backlash and however the government itself is confronted now i've been thrown and it's probably finances remember that. there is an increase in external debt that jumped almost $20000000000.00 'd in one year. and that creates panic among the credit thus of columbia. rices the risk of that debt and of course the interest that they have to pay and also see as seen on the crease in the main income that that country has with which its exports. in 5 for the 2nd year number will be a phase of a deficit in the balance of in the coming on national finals abberation this year something like $2000000000.00 in deficit which is for a country that leaves from export is

a very big deal so the government tried to do is this. tax reform in the country where every where most of the burden was put upon the middle and middle and working classes and and not enough was being done that we took to avoid tax evasion so yes it reflects a bit of ideology but also reflects a bit of the of the challenges that the government have in front of itself how on pop. is the ruling party and of the scenes we've seen on the streets a reaction to that yes of course the could and government in colombia is becoming increasingly unpopular. he had just got 3 nephi's previous minister of economy n n and now has a point that. 2 a more conciliatory voice trying to gain some political space but he's losing a lot of this allies and you can see the polls suggesting that that will stop will

create that all they can to their left is a hate now in the in in most of the polls and in some predict that he could win and not only the 1st but the 2nd round of the british are lections and so yes it's not very popular you know very few people have to be the cabinet at that moment. to get house there and not shown himself to be. skillful in my view public opinion in implementing the program us. political meant of course or also all of the former president about a leader mr petro however has said he will simply print money to pay the bill of the covert pandemic that's quantz to be easing but what that means is print cash put into the economy and everything is ok for a matter of months but if you carry on printing money there are negative consequences to that. of course like me in inflation and in of course you know we

all remember that their way mt republican in germany and that's something that many governments hop in the mind of and by people who the government in colombia because 2 colombia has lost on tradition with a few exceptions of in bengal sort of in its finances so. a a bedtime story one of the 1st. presses will hopefully if talking about it i'm ok against the approach and how we see what that lead us in that in places like the neighbor in venezuela where the government printed and printed money and about the money were this that with less so so i would i would advice you know if i would have a position of vice i would advice to any careful without that but that the policy of course wanted it even at the moment if necessary in many countries they didn't let and that's what also model has done in the president for example where he

printed money and this or that money through social programs that's why people sort out will even though he's a right wing it's a right wing government is not facing the same type of protest that you're facing in that in colombia what you got in colombia it's a government that wants to finance its way out of the crisis by simply printing by where i'm a steady good program in a position gandhi that who wants to get the it's way out of the crisis by printing money so it's not a that neither of them are in a good place at the moment i would say you know this type of crisis our interest by increasing productivity by improving the conditions and the wealth of people at the same time and by balancing the economy and those are things that are very hard to do in the middle of of a crisis and having having said that you know duke has done some very interesting things with economy that possibly might be complete it might be able to

come back but politically he's not at the moment in a strong position and he could be facing various you just challenges hiero a condo thank you very much. thank you. show for this week but there's more for you online at al-jazeera dot com slash c.t.c. that will take you straight to our page with entire episodes for you to catch up on . that's it for this edition of counting the cost for me peter dhabi and everyone on the team here in doha thanks for watching the news is next. let.

the air. lifts. the air. out of the plant from moscow longer love that we are divided traveling the extra mile where are the media don't go we go there and we give them a chance to tell their story in 19054 young anti-apartheid activists were murdered by south african security forces if you solve the problem by the moving the guy then you could keep 36 years on a family's quest for justice reveal systemic resistance to prosecution the muscle

the conflict. and exposes the influence the former apartheid just time bushman still wielded in the new south africa my father died for this. investigation on al-jazeera. thousands more injured in occupied east jerusalem israeli forces accused of a strong thing. to me in worship during the most sacred night of ramadan. i'm sam and this is live from doha also coming up at least 55 people mostly schoolgirls are killed in a series of explosions.