at less than 30 percent and with temperature is expected to drop for the next few days. the outlook is bleak. the hong kong, most vulnerable people, for most of the pandemic cases here remained low and hong kong watched as other hospital systems around the world struggle to cope. now cove 19 infections here are exploding, and as prostration, the government wasn't more prepared for it. clearness, al jazeera hong kong, ah ha, what he does here. these are the stories were following the salam, a ration back to separate us later in eastern ukraine has announced civilians will start being moved to russia because of a rise of violence in the region that on yet later says russia has agreed to provide accommodation for leaving for those leaving with women children and the elderly to be taken. first, child stratford has more from novice. he loved car in southeastern ukraine. they

had ukraine oversee very, as they had been from the get go in recent weeks as this has escalated. very much of she keen to refute, to deny any kind of military plan that they are alleged by the, by the surprises as having. but this announcement certainly is significant. we cannot, of course, in any way confirm that this means that they was going to be some sort of military escalation in the near future. or, we know that russia continues to deny that at least has any plans for invading ukraine. meanwhile, russian president vladimir putin will oversee new drills on saturday, involving strategic nuclear forces and the launch of ballistic and cruise missiles the kremlin denies. it will further inflame tensions, but the west braden has been holding talks with bella, russian president, alexander lucas shanker. in moscow. and says the joint trills are a defense against growing nato military activity. she would just nitty go world

conditions at today's talks. we also discussed strengthening our joint defense space of russia and belarus. we agreed again to take collect of misses for strength and security of our countries in the face of the growing military activity of nato countries near the borders of our states. we also focused on the joint military exercises which will continue in belarus until the 20th of february. i should say that these exercises are totally defensive in nature and do not threaten any one. and in other world news, at least one person has been killed in ireland after being hit by a falling tree, caused by storm units. the storms also battering the u. k. way the record gas of 195 kilometers per hour ripping off parts of the roof of london's o. 2 urena millions of people having more to stay home. hundreds of flights have been canceled. those are the headlines and what has been a very busy news day. stay tuned, though al jazeera will have at the stream coming up next. but now teaching it you can watch out to see what english streaming live on. i tc channels plus

thousands of outgrown grams award winning documentaries and death news reports. subscribe. take you cheese dot com, forward slash al jazeera english. 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 continued 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. aimed to answer that. it was recently featured at sundance film festival. here let's take a look. at 7 gram is a drilling industry project that tells his story of your smartphone through your smartphone. using augmented reality, your phone contains around 7 grubs of array of precious materials such as,

tungsten, casita, right cobalt gold. one country has these minerals in abundance to the democratic republic of congo. and those i sent shelves in making no device to power from today . we have come to embrace and that have completely changed the way we communicate. 7 gram exposes to human consequences and to manufacturing or by electronics house, and offer solutions to prevent more abuse and injustice from reaching go. i lecture me to discuss the app and the impact of mining on t. r. congo were joined by corinne. ben khalifa, the director of 7 grams. he's in berlin. sarah, he's having me as an associate professor globalization at the university of antwerp embassy seat in cuba. as a professor at the catholic university of chicago in eastern dia, congo, he focuses on natural resources in 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. tell us about 7 grams. like where'd you get the idea for this? well, in 2015 i was in eastern congo and it was photographing outside of miners in the golden catheter mines in cuba, north cable. and i realized photographing it was my smartphones to where you know, extracting the romito was in a hiding my hands. jen product and i mean, i thought there was something to do about that. ah, i must have struck in a sense of irony that, that the very thing they were digging out of the rock there you are 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 get into place, but here we are dis,

up 7 grams is, is available. know everyone in the world. one of the things in it that, that movie 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 up. i was always enemies to find time to always, to come resources to take down on the b b, b. so word ends i weeks become a month to become years. the story chances that he's kidnapped. he's turned into a child's older and then into

a minor. so he captures a lot of these stories that i think kind of one character. how did you meet him? what's his story beyond just us? he davis so many people like shelves in eastern congo and this is, i think might have to drama. so shelf was someone that we had a chance to discuss with and completely understand. but he went through happens to live in the area where he was abducted to know in decided to give his story, but to remain anonymous because it was very important for him that would never be put in danger. or one of his timing was he said, i'd like to bring you in at this point. what i'm thinking about chance here. how common is this? what's the, the scope of, of this situation? yeah, if there are so many, i think no minor in here,

they have different stories. they are nearly a quarter 1000000 people and you have any portion, justin integral sector and you have so many out of me being dog. so be a big percentage of their companies population. just surviving on isn't 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 nodding. oh, said arthur checked herself 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 in pits 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, an e b 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 gold miners describing what it's like working there. jack missouri. sig for him of love 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 bucks, in order to get to where we need to reach new sadie, we're lucky moseto, patsy lip as 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 our bank or to rely on my chair. and to cascade.

you slammer, uniform. that was his hey, 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, yes, so there is a one thought 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 miners. 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 detailing that come along the material. but in addition to that, you have more toxic elements like mercury acid that i did in the processing of these materials. so they are so much for much adamant that either need a healthy for humans or for organ is in the environment that come along in this process. so yeah, and 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. 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 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, corporate tips, and to work in legal zones that have been established by the comedies 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 development that we see in the sector is an in than civic cation of extraction,

in the sense that there is now use of new technology such as i and i 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 held hammers and chisels is now more and more mechanized, which in turn it has positive effects on the productivity, but it also has additional negative effects on health. i'm so we see a number of changes, but when we look at the working conditions at issues of health and safety, we see barely any so cream when, when you look at the really horrible conditions on the ground, you connect the dots from, from those people to the companies are that are profiting who re looking at who's making the money here? yes, i'm a sorry. no. realize 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 congo 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 was no pressure from the consumers. and there was 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 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 there's 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 the 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 they have 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 a says dell technologies is committed to the responsible sourcing of all materials, which includes upholding the human rights of workers at any tier of our supply chain entry and then 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 tell 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 cause 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 corps, which might have purchased less from c m k k, which might thus have instructed ismael to stop purchasing cobalt 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 in 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 boycotting doug the results of eastern congo. absolutely kinda, it's working 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, 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 the devastating effects 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 dog 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 is 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 face 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. so, 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 into supply chain that we can like replace these dirty conflict notes,

whits colleen notes. and it's just not as simple as that. so of a basil can ask you if you were saying that we don't want a 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 into mind. most of them were, some of them were living in conditions that were so poor that they on the way to survive was to go in them. and so like it's 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 them that's want to help at all. so the 1st thing is,

at what price are you trying to get a waste companies like a pause this line. 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 costs of these products, just a few grams that are used to produce this, that forums and by electric 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? they are cobalt. how poor do? because he theory minors become when you can no longer gets what they can produce.

they have to go back growth. the foods they can eat, 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 need of more pressure to the sky. but me, if the president of we are congo recently, address most of the speaker he looked his get. he said this, now we have noticed for 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. oh,

god yeah, god. yeah. let's see how much accountability falls on the government of d. r. c, m president, just getting i'm, i don't think unfortunately it's, it's quite easy to make a very good for the school speech to the mom says. but like when you have to look at the concrete and the government is doing the miners, there is not much issa. 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. the 2nd thing is you have to take into accounts. congo is one of the countries we've, the purists budgets if you have companies like they slam

april which have like a, something times the budget performance. 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 a long musk when it comes to decisions that are made on the quote. so i don't see much change from the government, and i also don't have the highest expectation because they 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 the right for this is so i really wouldn't be a bog blaming the government from what is happening. i think their responsibility. but if i want to bring in a couple of voices from you to before we in the show here, one m is sergio romano. if the world really wants the success of africa, it should 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 on look 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 this situation? i think with our nurse, we're gonna start to repair our phones were going to start recycling our phone. only 20 percent of the electronics i was actually recycling. 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 engineered as

a smartphone, i'm sure you can find a way to buy from are to the miners in instant congo, the resources you needs 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 of the supply chain initiatives. these privates arms bunch initiatives i'm, we're voluntary and we have seen the limits of dis, of 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 thumb like a shift back to give her giving more responsibilities to governments and,

and legislation that this actually, um, that, that, that's a, it's mandatory i, we also see mandatory to diligence requirements style, so i think that's very important. i'm also for the government, which i know sir, but you're hoping to port 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 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 guest for joining on the stream today. and for all of you out there watching. we'll see you tomorrow. ah frank assessments for china will benefit from the 0 call it strategy if the rest,

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