simms, families have started to bury the dead as many as 116 people remain missing. and in the u. k, the weather office there has issued a rare red warning for southern and central england storm unice has just made landfill and its extreme winds are expected to cause danger to life. it comes just days after another storm called power outages and transport disruption. in some areas, schools have been close in the army is on standby to provide for the support ah paralysis check out the atlanta or an out 0 and russian back separatists in easton, ukraine of accused government forces of north you attacks on friday. at least 500 explosions have been recorded along the front lines. that's in less than 24 hours. shall stratford hurts more from mary pole in se ukraine. interestingly this morning there. busy are reports coming from the dpr authorities?

that sir, the separate is controlled area, the self declared in its people's republic, saying that at least 70 shells, ukrainian shells of landed in areas around done at school. they say that there are some areas that are without electricity. obviously we have no way of independently confirming that also the ukranian side this morning saying at least 60 shells landed on this side. there were reports also of least 2 soldiers being injured in those attacks. years president joe biden is expected to hold talks with nato allies in the coming us at your insecurity council meeting on thursday. his secretary state that sounds deep, lincoln accused moscow looking to manufacture an excuse for war. a rescue operation is under way in greece, after 5 for a count on a ferry with 288 people on board vessel was near the island of cor full at the time on its way to the port of brin dizzy in italy. a court in india has

sentenced 38 people to death and 11 more to life in prison. they are met a bad bombings. 14 years ago. 56 people were killed. at least 200 were injured in a series of explosions in the state of good europe. in hong kong be health care system is near breaking point off to a record surgeon covey. 19 cases. hospitals have reached 90 percent capacity. patients being treated in makeshift opener spaces in mexico, the government is under increasing pressure to investigate the killings of 5 journalists, which should occur in the 1st 6 weeks of this year. hundreds of people gathered outside the military headquarters to wanna where president tons of his men were. lopez over the door was wholly unused conference. all right, you're exactly headlines. more news coming right up after history. i've talk to al jazeera, we ask, do you believe that the threats of an invasion of ukraine is currently the biggest

threat to international peace and security? we listen, we are focusing so much on the humanitarian crisis that we forget the long term development. we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on al jazeera. i welcome to the stream um josh, rushing, sitting on for for me. okay, today or smartphones rely on a range of rare minerals to give them their magic. but what is the continue global demand for the latest gadgets mean for people taking up precious materials in places such as d. r, congo, a new mobile app called 7 grams ames to answer that. it was recently featured at sundance film festival. here, let's take a look. at 7 gram is doing the distinct project that tells the story of your smartphone through your smartphone. using augmented reality, your phone contains alone, 7 grubs of a precious meter else, such as tungsten,

casita, right cobalt gold. one country has these minerals in abundance, the democratic republic of congo. and those i essential does in making go devised about from twos. we have come to embrace and that have completely changed the way we communicate. 7 gram exposes to human consequences than to manufacturing or by electronics house, and offer solutions to prevent more abuse and injustice from li tingle electronics . to discuss the app and the impact of mining on to our congo were joined by corinne. ben khalifa, the director of 7 grams. he's in berlin. sarah here, having me as an associate professor globalization at the university of antwerp embassy, see now. cuba as a professor at the catholic university of chicago in eastern dear congo, he focuses on natural resources and the environment. oh, and i should mention one more guest at the table is you, if you're watching this on youtube, see that box over there?

we have a live stream producer waiting to get your comments to me so i can get him in the show. we can all be a part of this discussion. speaker discussion cream talks about 7 grams. like where'd you get the idea for this? well, in 2015 i was in eastern congo and was photographing outside of miners in the golden, cassandra mines in cuba, not cable. and i realized photographing it was my smartphones to where you know, extracting the romito walls and hiding my hands. jen product and i mean, i thought there was something to do about that. oh, i must have struck you in a sense of irony that that the very thing they were digging out of the rock there you were actually using in that moment to capture that moment. yeah, i mean, it was just like a moment where you, you realize something is so extreme and, and also you see the horrendous condition in which they are working. i know to magically i had a d i. d took a few years to put that into place, but here we are,

disappear, 7 grams is available, know everywhere in the world. one of the things in it that move be the most was chance a story here we went, we have a clip of that. the animation that this is, is really beautiful. check it out. i was always enemies to find time, to least, to conquer resources, to take down the b, b, b. so word and 3 weeks becomes a month to become yours. the story chances that he's kidnapped. he's turned into a child's over and then into

a minor so he captures a lot of these stories that i think and kind of one character. how. how did you meet him? what, what's his story beyond us? us? oh he, he davis so many people like shoals in eastern congo indices. i think one of drama so shall see was someone that we had a chance to discuss ways and completely understand what he went through happens at his to leave in the area where he was abducted to know, he decided to give his story, but to remain anonymous because it was very important for him that these life will not never be put in danger or to one of his family was the sale. i like to bring you at this point. what i'm thinking about chance here. well, how common is this? what's that? the scope of, of this situation have. yeah, there are so many. i says, no miners, interior, congo. they have different stories. ah,

they are nearly equal to median people and you have any portion just in the gold sector, and you have so many other minerals being doc. so be a big percentage of their companies population, just surviving on the art is an all minor. it's actually the 2nd biggest employer right after i grew culture. i want to bring in a video comment from someone in our communities that associate professor at the university of natalie said arthur checked us out. roughly 70 percent of the world's supply of cobalt is mind in the democratic republic of the congo. and this cobalt is mind an appalling conditions. i've spent months on the ground in the congo and seen hundreds of thousands of peasants, including tens of thousands of children, kate and toxic filth and grime, and pets and tunnels. eking out a sub human existence on a dollar or 2 a day to dig cobalt out of the ground and feed it up to the supply chains of mega

cap tech. and evie companies around the world. much more needs to be done to raise awareness of this human rights catastrophe. and much more needs to be done to alleviate the sub human colonial conditions under which cobalt is mind to power our lives every day. yeah, and from there actually want to take us right into a bit of video we have we're it's it's couple of gold miners describing what it's like working there. second. awesome. see good for him. of lemon was the anthro cool . it is really serious, but we enter here like animals. we have to walk on all fours and if we get tired, we screwed along in our buttocks in order to get to where we need to reach the sadie. we're lucky. moseto flat. see, when they paris, you know, we don't get sustenance, we don't even have the means to find soap to wash ourselves. and if we have no motivation now, if we don't find gold, it's difficult to eat or nay on a bank or to rely on my chair and to custody slammer and uniform.

that was his he and you were saying there's a quarter 1000000 artistic minors just in the gold sector alone that are basically living this existence. do we have any kind of numbers on what the impact is on their lives and what the impact is on the environment from this kind of mining? oh, yeah, so there is a one, but that is a necessary to understand. so mcclockey distracted this very clearly for every ring of call that is produced, you need 20 tons of material that is extracted from the ground. so all of these things are the ground being, are these underground being taken out is either briefed by the minor. so this is a very dusty environment, they work in or goes into the rivers and in the reverse you have fish and from any

organisms which suffer from it. and this is just like the, the tailings that come along the material. but in addition to that, you have more toxic elements like mercury, some that i did in the processing of these materials. so they are so much so much adamant that either need a healthy for humans or for other organ is in the environment that come along in this process. so yeah, that's a great environment sir. this is a slow moving disaster. i mean, we've heard about this for years. why are we still here talking about it? yeah, that's a very good question. i mean, in terms of the working conditions are very little, has changed on this by the fact that there has been quite some attention at the international level for this issue i'm, since i would say since about 15 years. ah,

but not much is changing. and, and there is while on the one hand, and we can maybe talk about a global supply chain initiatives later. but also a lot is changing insights that the are congo in the art is not as moscow mining sector. and 1st of all, there's a number of formalization initiatives that require minors to group into miners, copper tips and to work in legal zones that have been established by the congress government. so they're working on that. but in reality, we see that especially for gold, which is more easy to smuggle less easy to control that at least 95 percent of the gold is still produced on illegally and then so it's not registered. i'm another, a development that we see in the sector is an in than sophistication of extraction,

in the sense that there is now use of new technology such as cyanide nation. and there is mechanization through the use of ball mills. so the sector that was previously purely art isn't the, let's say, using hand, tell tamares and chisels. it's now more and more mechanized, which in turn it has positive effects on the productivity, but it also has additional negative effects on the health. i'm. so we see a number of changes, but when we look at the working conditions at issues of health and safety, um we see barely any so cream when, when you look at the really deplorable conditions on the ground, you connect the dots from, from those people to the companies there that are profiting who re looking at who's making the money here? yes, i'm a sorry. no, it's just odds. yeah, i'm just billed on what you said, sarah,

because look, this is an incredible piece of technology engineering that when to create, this is amazing. and it changed to what was said earlier. so no, we can do days, but we can't follow minerals from eastern co go to china with all these intermediaries. i think we can do it. and i think those companies can do it to just not doing it because there is no pressure from the consumers. and there is no interest for them to change the supply chains. but i think, and i do believe they can do it and we need just to, to put more pressure. i mean, i'm just not saying it's simple obviously. but those, those, those and talk we're talking about it is exactly what is needed awareness. and i think one of the ways to put pressure on this has been through the courts, perhaps, was a lawsuit filed here in the us. unfortunately, the judge tossed it out last november. but we have a comment when the lawyers who help present that lawsuit were the group that filed a lawsuit against apple tesla, google, microsoft in dell for using cobalt mind in the d. r. c. by children. we represent

16 families that had a child, either maimed or killed while mining cobalt for one of these companies. all of the companies, even though they claim their policies prohibiting child labor and their supply chains. they deny any responsibility, even though they have the resources and the power to fix it. a conservative judge through the case out, but we've appealed already and we're going to keep fighting until we get justice for these children and the others. okay, there's a couple things he mentioned there that i want to touch on. one is the stream reached out to apple tesla, microsoft, google dell for comments on this. we received a comic back only from dell and it says dell technologies as committed to the responsible sourcing of all materials, which includes upholding the human rights of workers at any tier of our supply chain and treat them with dignity and respect. we're working together with our peers, suppliers, and their stakeholders to address the risk associated with mining operations and

conflict afflicted in high risk areas and helping ensure the human rights of all who worked in those communities are upheld. so that's what dell says, but i want to point, now we can go to my computer here again, i want to point out what the judge said and the lawsuit, because cream, you mentioned all the intermediaries in between. and my question here is, are those are they being used in a way to obfuscate the source? and if so is that a winning strategy? here's what the judge said in this particular case, and i'm quoting from him, it might be true that if apple, for example, stop making products that use cobalt, it would have purchased less of the metal from mccorr, which might have purchased less from glen core, which might have purchased less from c m k k, which might thus have instructed ismael to stop purchasing coal bought from child or to snore miners, which might have led to some of the plaintiffs to have not been mining when their injuries occurred. the judge said,

but this long chain of contingencies and all its rippling, glory, creates mere speculation. not a traceable harm. so if the system is designed for all the middle men to create office cation, is this judge not saying, yep, that's a winning strategy. well, i think we need to do something about it. there is people under grounds that are suffering and there must be better ways to, for those companies that are some of the richest in the world. the most wealthy us company in this world. i'm sure they can find a way to do to source and not it's not about by putting the resource of eastern can go up to the canal. it's walking with our to the miners on to go on to find a solutions and a completely believe this is possible. and yes, sir, it was all said, is, is, are the big companies doing enough here? yeah, maybe i'm, i want to point out that there has been

a shift in recent year in those so supply chain initiatives for us. i think it's in a positive direction. and previously you had a very strict focus on conflict minerals. and so, for instance, in the u. s. dot frank act, the conflict minerals from the, the are congo, were singled out, which had as an effect, that buyer stopped sourcing minerals from the region, which in turn had a direct effect on livelihood. so this has been well documented in academic research, it, it had a devastating effect on minors on their families, on the whole population. so the solution is definitely not stop sourcing from the region. now, there has been a, an acknowledgment of this issue, and nowadays companies are shifting more to words responsible sourcing. so it's the idea of due diligence that companies are monitoring the risks in their supply chain and acting upon these risks. now now i do have a couple of problems with that. and the 1st is that the framing in which these

risks are dodd, is very much done by the downstream companies. and so he does not rest necessarily corresponds to the priority concerns of the people on the ground. and, and secondly, i mean there's your frame something as a risk in your supply chain. so the framing is very much direct to where it's the lead companies for an or does all minor it's. he cannot identify this as a supply chain risk, right? if he is faced with extortion, it's a problem that has economic, political, social, gender, cultural dimensions. and that is affecting his, his body, his family, his life on a daily basis. and so i think this, this links a bit to the idea that a, that there is a quick fix to this issue. and the supply chain can be fixed and that we, if we identify risks at particular notes in the supply chain that we can like replace these dirty conflict notes,

which colleen notes. and it's just not as simple as that. so of basil can ask you if you were saying that we don't want to boy caught these things. what should we do? where from from your prison a position do you see pressure should be applied to change what's happening? yeah, i think it's very important to, to understand how life is for these minors before they got in their mind. most of them were, some of them were living in conditions that were so poor that they on the way to survive, wants to go in. and so like conditions in which they are, are horrible. it's really a nightmare, but they had much worse before. so saying that your daughter, these minerals or you don't pick from, then that's won't help at all. so the 1st thing is,

at what price are you trying to get a waste companies like a pause design. so they, they have the ability to take at least minerals, these very precious mineral coming from a tennis channel at a fair price. and theo make profits because it is a transmission. they represent a very small percentage of the actual cost of these products. a just a few grams that are used to produce the said the phones and victor cars. the 2nd thing is something i have seen so much energy being spent on developing technologies and like our cobalt free batteries. just to be able to stay away from this by the price a t is no minus bring. but the problem is, how poor do they become when you stop taking their calls? how poor do cassie theory miners become when you can no longer gets what they

can produce? they have to go back growth. the food speaking eats, be isolated in a portion of the forest and probably die from hunger when they have a bad season. so on a human perspective, i think there is in it. oh, pressure to the sky. but me in the president of where we are, congo recently, address most of the speak to religious getty, said this, oh yeah, good point is on it. but as i recall, yeah, we have noticed with some years that people come into our country with empty hands and pretend to be entrepreneurs and then leave with billions in their pockets while we remain poor. that's why i came here to speak with our partners. so we can understand each other on a number of things from now on. this needs to be a win win partnership. we won't accept any other partnership. only a win win part was i don't believe you got your gun. yo yo,

i am. he was susie, how much accountability falls on the government of darcy and president discovery and i don't think are unfortunately it's, it's great easy to make a very good political speech to roused, emma says, but like when you have to look at the concrete r and the government is doing the miners. there is not much as though sarah said earlier, you can see there are no changes usually you have for this is that are not adapted and that so much energy is put into really making a change into the autism. or the 2nd thing is you have to take into account congo is one of the countries we've, the purists budgets and you have companies like they slam

april which have like a, something times the budget for firmware. so in terms of power print that you think kids, he may be the lead of his be pro, but he, he has very little to say to team coke or long mosque when it comes to decisions that are made on the cobra. and so i don't see much change from the government, and i also don't have the highest expectation because i know how difficult it is when you don't have enough money to make concrete change. you don't even have enough money to do research and understand the situation on the fields. you don't have enough money to put up right for this is so i really wouldn't be a bug blaming the government from what is happening. i think their responsibility, legacy. i want to bring in a couple of voices from you to before we in the show here. one of the sergio romano, if the world really wants the success of africa is ship, protect, and help africans to rob progress and not exploitation. here's a common off

a twitter from kwame, i guess a. what does the director do personally to ensure connelly's people are protected from harmful conflicts. as a result of getting this mineral that might make huge profits after selling smartphones and cream and look up at that all on you. i'm going to put me in that group to what can i do here as the consumer? what can we all do as the consumers in the situation? i think with our nurse, we're gonna start to repair well phones. we're going to start recycling our phone. only 24, some of the electronics i actually recycle. so there was an ecological problem in this, but there was also a lot of resources that could get back to the supply chain and definitely ask those companies and showed and that you value the fact that those devices are produce without violence, without injustice. and there was ways to do it, we understand it's not that easy. but again, if you can do something engineer as

a smartphone, i'm sure you can find a way to buy from are to the miners in eastern congo the resources you need at a fair price. and that is a win win for everyone. it is a win win for those companies because then stop supporting business and injustice. and sarah fairly quickly here. what international structures need to be put in place? what international authorities are there to affect change in this? well, i think we now see an evolution to wertz, more public regulation because these supply chain initiatives, these private arms by initiatives are we're voluntary and we have seen the limits of dis, off like the willingness of companies to invest in this to invest resources in this and so the, the court case that was mentioned already here is one example of um like a shift back to give her giving more responsibilities to governments and,

and legislation that this actually, that, that's a, it's mandatory i, we also see mandatory to diligence requirement style. so i think that's very important. i'm also for the government, which i know, sir, but you're hoping the court case of the judge already throughout bills are less than hopeful it's less than what i wanted here. but as we know, the lawyer said earlier that they are gonna pill back. listen for viewers, get your phone out right now. we're going to show you a q r code where you can take a picture of this and you'll be able to get 7 grams on your phone, i phone or android, and you'll be able see this incredible a, our experience. thank you so much to my guess for joining on the stream today. and for all of you out there watching, we'll see you tomorrow. ah

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