of 2011 tourney chang has more from tokyo. wednesday's decision here, the tokyo district court does set an important precedent. the financial responsibility for the focus shima nuclear disaster lies not with the japanese government, with a tokyo electric power company, tapco. this decision is very complicated. the court has essentially ruled that a handful of former executives of tapco have to pay out $95000000000.00 us dollars in compensation. that enormous sum is clearly going to be appealed and appealed. are ongoing, already with decisions yet to be made by the supreme court. furthermore, this case was brought by shareholders of tapco, not by the vent to individuals involved in the disaster. and so a decade on those he lost their land and livelihood in the folk, ashima disaster still waiting to be fully compensated. ah,

what you all deserve me, said robinson doha reminder of all the top stories. a nationwide curfew has just ended in sri lanka, there was brought on by massive protests against the countries leadership. now thousands of gathered that the offices of prime, minnesota needle walker, i'm a singer demanding his resignation that he's taken over his acting president after got the by roger boxer fled the country. joe biden is arrived in israel on his 1st visit to the middle east as you, as president. he's promised to advance israel's regional integration by the we'll also meet palestinian leaders in the occupied west bank. greater stability greater can action. which critical is critical. why my are for all the people of the region, which is why we'll be we'll discuss my continued support. even though i know it's not a near term it to state solution. that remains in my view,

the best way to ensure the future of equal measure of freedom, prosperity, democracy for israelis and palestinians is like the united nation says progressive be made on a deal to secure the export of ukrainian grain. it could go a long way to addressing the global food crisis. the agreement was made during talks and it's stumble and evolve, forming a coordination center to ensure the safety of supply rates. yes, inflation. the june had a 40 year high of a 9 point one percent, which is high that economists had predicted price. the food and housing are increasing much faster than average us incomes with black and hispanic americans. hardest hit members of parliament for the british, conservative party of halifax, voted 7 who replaced forest johnson. jeremy hunt and holly were eliminated from the leadership contest. well, richie soon, i can penny mordant, hold an early advantage. hundreds of emergency workers in france,

a battery while possible southwest the blazes spread spreading due to hostile windy conditions. about 27 square kilometers of already burned. 6 water bama aircraft being used to douse the flames and thousands of residents and taurus have been told to evacuate. you can holiday stories on a website out there and dot com is updated throughout the day. more news and half now with me, but next it's counting the cost to stay with us. joe biden is set to visit israel, the palestinian territory, and saudi arabia in an ultimate test of foreign policy set during his election campaign. were ending all american support for offensive operations in the war in yemen. what we've done by the actions that we've taken is not to rupture the relationship but to recalibrate as russia and china compete for influence over the region at a moment of going to upheaval with us get back in again, bite me in the middle east on al jazeera with

hello, i'm roll matheson and this is counting the cost and all the 0, your weekly look at the world of business and economics this week. what's the price of rebuilding ukraine and who are going to be the real winners? also this week, almost 830000000 people around the world when hungry in 2021 and that number is rising. why is the world moving backwards as it tries to eliminate hunger and malnutrition? plus zimbabwe is currency crisis is getting deeper. why have people lost confidence in banks and the economy? ah, ukraine's president letting me zalinski says he thinks is going to cost $3.00

quarters of a trillion dollars to rebuild his country after the war. now, even as the fighting continues, western leaders from dozens of nations, international organizations and the private sector of been talking about how to rebuild ukraine money, se ukraine needs another marshall plan. that was a huge economic rescue deal that was devised by the us to rebuild europe after world war 2. now the challenge of rebuilding a nation after a conflict is plex businesses and politicians have a crucial role to play. billions of dollars are at stake. researchers of the world economic forum say private investors going into a war torn country, made a positive business case for investing and unstable conflict. written places may be looking for a functioning state with working institutions, able to give sustainable investment. investors often have skills and experiences that can support governments shattered by fragility and conflict. there will need to be opportunities for public private partnerships to kick start growth and work

together. citizens and local businesses must be part of the plans and backers from outside can help foster transparent and efficient money management practices. or joining us from stockholm is toby on backup. he's the director of the stock home institute of transition economics, and he's also a board member of the key school of economics. so thank you very much indeed for being with us. so the world economic forum has produced a long list of requirements that investors would need to be in place before they would move into a country like ukraine to start rebuilding. that's a long list to take off isn't how tough is that going to be? well, it's going to be tough for ukraine us for any other countries that comes out to the situation like this, obviously. and i think we have to remember all of these lists have to start with some level of security in ukraine. so some sort of end to the aggression from russia needs to be a starting point for most of these investments to come. i would think rebuilding

ukraine makes for great publicity, but politicians are likely to be using taxpayers, money private investors. are going to be looking to make some sort of profit in terms of the practicality of doing something like this going on past experience. how likely is it that ukraine is actually going to get the rebuilding support that it believes that it means well, it's going to require a lot of of strong reform efforts. i think the 1st step per solar to been taking with the iraq session process getting off the ground pretty pretty well the last of the weeks. we also have very strong support from international leaders that will help ukraine to move along on the path. but of course, there's a lot of issues to be dealt with on, on the road ahead in terms of the actual investment itself. how could companies and indeed governments, because there's a say they're using taxpayers money be guaranteed that the money that they're

investing is actually going to be used in the projects that they believe it is going to be. we have seen historically in places like afghan, austin and iraq and, and other crisis at areas in the past where the amount of money that's invested isn't actually the amount of money that gets on the ground. is that a facility for creating some sort of guarantee? well, i think do rebuilding some of the institutions that, that deal with corruption and rule of law is already on, on the short list of things and priority lists and things to do for the ukrainian government. and i think this will be key to this. i also think perhaps, to remember that ukraine is the democratic country that i think has become much more united in this war. so i think there will be a much more strong sense of common purpose and direction in the whole country there compared to some of the cases you just mentioned where it was much more fractional lies in terms of the domestic politics. i in that sense i think ukraine has,

has better. ready hopes of making this a successful rebuilding process. one of the things that we've seen in the past when there's been investment like this is that companies, countries go in on the stipulation that any work can ins and that is done within the country actually goes to companies within those countries. so essentially the money becomes a cycle, it goes in to those companies, but it then goes back to the original and come to the original country. who do you think are going to be the financial winners out of any rebuilding plan for ukraine? well, i mean that, that sort to discuss, i guess, but i mean, we, i think the international community has a strong common interest to make sure that the winners of this is going to be the people of ukraine or not are specific companies that, that we want to support, i mean there's a long history of, of talking about untied aid, for example, where we do not support our individual countries from, let's say sweden or u. k or, or, or wherever the country is money is coming from. so i think this will also be important

here. so the international community needs to do its own work on, on governance and anti corruption as well as ukrainian site. is there any mechanism within say, i don't know the world bank, for example, any global mechanism that could oversee the level of investment and, and the money that is going into ukraine to try to keep track of what is being put in place? well, i mean, you're mentioning the world bank, which is course is an important national play. i think giving the accession process . i think the you needs to be very heavily involved in this funder lie. and her said that they are setting up the platform to coordinate donors. so i think something like that will be needed to, to really help ukraine coordinate the outside world and make sure that these issues of transparency and an anti corruption. this is dealt with properly. there has been a lot of discussion about whether or not russia should be made to pay for some of

the vet rebuilding process. how likely do you think that is and how would you enforce it? i think there is plenty of, of rush to nurses that are seized outside of russia's border. but of course it will be probably a very long legal processes to, to make a transfer of those assets to, to ukraine. so i'm in terms of times over ice, and i'm not sure when, when that money could be made available to ukraine, but it's going to take a lot of legal processing. i'm sure. part of the conflict has seen a lot of damage done to small and medium businesses within the side ukraine, and as is commonly said, small and medium businesses are often a driving force for any countries economy. what is the risk? do you think that the projects they're going to the rebuilding projects they're going to happen in ukraine are going to be on the larger scale and the small and medium business sector is going to to miss out?

well, i think it would be quite natural. it's small and medium sized enterprises become some contractors to a lot of these processes. so i'd, i really don't see that a, something for them to miss out on. but i mean, it's also going to depend on what kind of skills they have in those businesses. so maybe part of the solution will be retraining. some of the people that have been working in, in other sectors in the past to be part of the reconstruction process. coming back, i was director of the stock home institute of transition economics. so we appreciate your time. thank you very much indeed. thank you. united nations? it says nearly 830000000 people around the world went hungry in 2021. and that number is set to rise this year in low income countries where agriculture is key to the economy. livelihoods have been affected by the impact from coven 19 and rising global inflation. let's look at syria, for example, where wheat is an essential crop in a deteriorating economy. the many depend on bread as their main source of food. our

correspondence in a quarter explains how farmers in the north west who are struggling with drought and high production costs by becoming increasingly dependent on imports of grain. before the uprising in 2011, syria was able to feed itself. but years of war, and now a severe drought has made this nation a net importer of weak over the past 2 to 3 years at the whole country has been hit by a crippling drought that its impacts are felt mostly in the north east, which is traditionally the bread basket of the country, her let alone areas that are in the north west of the country, or regime held areas. the rise in global prices, sparked by russia's invasion of ukraine, is threatening food supplies to many people in syria. the country is among the 10

most food insecure nations in the world. 12000000 people struggled to get enough food. many of them live in the opposition controlled nor do we have limited incomes. and yet we have to rely on expensive imported tweet. because one of the land in this region is mountainous, we can grow much wheat and lands where we can be grown are not accessible. vast areas were set on fire by government forces during the conflict and irrigation channels were destroyed. and even though there is now less violence, front lines still exist. and i know that we are close to that position whose many people can reach their land because it is dangerous humanitarian organizations, as well as the local authorities, are helping farmers to produce more food. but it's costly to plant crops, so is transporting the harvest due to high fuel prices. fuel is also needed to pump ground water to make up for what is being described

a serious worst drought in 70 years. and the opposition held area and the noise production won't be enough. them as in this year, 30000 hector's were cultivated, but the low rainfall and high production costs her farmers. a ton of wheat costs $450.00 and we will have to import more than $30000.00 tons this year. the average annual amount of we production before the war was 3700000 tons. this decline to 1800000 tons between 20152019 harvests are shrinking, and farmers are fighting to survive. and with more than half of serious people already hungry, the agricultural crisis couldn't come at a worse time than other shows. ita was cindy hallman as a senior economist of food security and nutrition, and the food and agricultural organizations, the united nation. she's joining us now from rome. thank you very much. indeed for

being with us. what is driving food insecurity? there's about 4 major drivers that we've been analyzing, leading to this optic and hunger that we're observing. one is conflict, so complex to becoming more protracted and complex. and then we have new context like the war or in ukraine. a big one also is climate extremes, climate variability. he says he extreme heat flooding store this extreme climate. weather is also creating havoc in terms of production prices, and that's a big driver in terms of food insecurity and hunger. and then the 3rd one, which is actually more growing in prominence, is the economic slowdown and shocked weather is caused by the co pandemic. and the measures put in place which disrupt supply chain, people lose their income. so these economic shock really create

a big problem for people to access to. so those are the 3 big drivers and then the other one that's very important is inequality. so we see that while he has been going down in the last few years, high income quality or in inequality in terms of access to services like health or basic services in terms of sanitation and, and everything or is equal. so this is, i, inequality is also a big driver behind food insecurity. so when you get the shock like an economic shock of economic downturn, the market price increase, where there's countries that have high inequality, we see that the effects are much greater. one of the countries around the world that being had hardest by this. well, i think, you know, the coven pandemic, we saw you know, that the largest global recession that we've seen in

a long time. and so we saw hunger increase and insecurity increased in every country around the world. so that was quite a major shock. if we look at the number of people that are hungry, our latest estimates show that since 2019, before the 750000000 more people are hungry. so it did affect every country around the world. however, we do see hunger is increasing faster in africa. the percent increase is higher. this is just about low income countries. if you've been talking about this is hitting all parts of the world. are there any areas which have surprised you, which you wouldn't normally expect to be unaffected by this? that have actually been have had an impact. well, i think, you know, for, for the results were seen, you know, everybody expects, you know, the bad news about africa. it is got the fastest growing number of people that are hungry. it has got a drought. it's got conflict, it's got economic shocks,

you know, high levels of inequality. i think that's kind of expected. but i think what's unexpected is the high levels of food insecurity increasing in latin america. so if we look at not in america, the increase in this been doubling in terms of food insecurity since 2015. we also seen, you know, rising the level of obesity and overweight, which is also a very big problem in terms of malnutrition. and so the point of nutrition is critical for people productivity for their, for their health. and we see that increasing around the world. and that's related to the high cost of, of nutritious foods. and i find that correctly, the worldwide financial support for farmers is about $630000000000.00 us dollars. and the u. n. has said that a lot of that doesn't even get as far as the farmers. what kind of impact does that

have and, and why is that happening? if you look at the support, the $630000000.00, most of it goes towards trade barriers, price incentives. and it's very focused on, on, staple crops, dairies, and neat, well vegetables and fruits and more healthier items are also penalized or even discouraged from production. so we're also calling for a re look at how government you're spending their money. a healthy diet is 5 times more expensive than a basic energy diet on staples, cindy haldeman, we really appreciate you being with us and al jazeera. thank you very much. indeed . thank you. zoom bob way. his bottling hyperinflation, which has led to a loss of public confidence, banks and conventional pension systems. many are now looking for safer ways to protect their investments. autotask reports from norton or capital of become a safer option than the local currency. ah,

with inflation maybe reaching 192 percent in june and above is dollar foss, losing its value. investing in tackle has become a safer option for some people here than the local currency and investment they can see and trust. i think they oversee choose how many units they want to, to invest in i'm. it's also barbara dollar related investment. there's $13000.00 units available for investment. one units is equal to under cages of life total the expectation is that the price, the value of the capital, appreciates in time and maxim bobby's dollar. and if clients went to get paid out, the investments are valued and they gave a cash back for people in zimbabwe and other african nations cathel have long been a source of wealth in many rural areas, there used as currency to pay school fees. now similar schemes are being offered to

people in urban areas like any investment they are risks, animals can get sick and die from trout and diseases. but they also ways to increase their potential when they drug their feet or they they did they did they give that to the young us. that's you're interested said bitter bank and going to the bank and put money. indeed to get get eroded to buy in fresh here. so i said that i am investment or what unit asset managers say more than bobbins are looking for ways to protect the savings against inflation as economy struggles to rebound or i think it will gain traction and we're very excited for a 3 interviews. we want this to be the thrust of, of starting to develop the national heard and, and to 2nd to exporting of beef. i'm and that,

that all just support for the local industry. for now, at least tackle seemed to be a more stable currency than the local currency. one way of trying to preserve investment value in a country we, some citizens have lost faith in conventional methods. how do matessa? al jazeera norton, zimbabwe from johanna spoke. i'm joined now by yvonne ma hunger. she's the managing director and head of the africa research economics at renaissance capital. very good to have you with us here. and inflations. no hit 800 percent in 2020. it's a 131.7 percent in may. how bad is this going to get? do you think? well, i think that certainly more upside. so yes, we have seen inflation creep up. um, we saw it come down last year around a 50 percent unit in the mid of the year and then start to pick up once again as the currency came under pressure. so the most recent print is a 192 percent for june. and that reflects the depreciation that the currency has

been coming under to your question. i continue to see for, for the upside risk to inflation. and that's in part due to kweisi fiscal operations at the central bank that is putting the current under pressure. and in addition to that, of course, the spike in commodity prices. ok, let's talk about the what the central bank is doing. why is that having an impact on the guns? well, we in a situation where by the government is constrained in terms of financing, and that's related to the fact that the country is officially and that debt distress, which of course, limits the access to external financing. i'm so in a situation that presents itself as a current b, where by the government is constrained on the fiscal front, or you do find that the central bank is stepping in and i'm having an quasi fiscal role essentially, which includes monetizing the budget deficit that of course is adding to the inflation pressures that we are see. also being blamed, i believe,

are covered 19 on the ukraine war it's, i, i can understand what you're talking about in terms of the central by how do those other 2 fighters play into this coverage. as you can imagine, x, the government expenditure had to pick up a ticket on the health side in terms of containing a defect of the pandemic, and also providing measures to try and support households and businesses that had been em duct, but impacted by the pandemic. so that of course, pushed up spending and now we have the um, the ukraine invasion, which as of course, resulted in prices of fuel and food including fertilizers, picking up the government of zimbabwe. does a subsidized inputs into the agriculture sector including fertilizer. so that's putting a put pressure on spending. and as i, as i mentioned earlier, the government is constrained in terms of financing that don't have the options of external financing that other countries that are more credit worthy to. so you do find that the said, the bank that step in and monetize is the budget deficit on oscar more more about

the, the, the role of the central bank in this because it's being accused of actually creating the situation. the 1st place by essentially printing lots of cash, where it was being advised by economists not to do so. is that a fair accusation? do you think that is part of the problem at to be fair? the, on the fiscal side, at least the authorities have tried to maintain a very small deficit because of concerns around financing that particular budget deficit. but given the constraints that not just bobby, but several african countries have faced during the course of this been demick. it's this said the bank has that to step up in terms of quasi fiscal activities. in addition, a, you have a situation that that's wip by the official currency is ova exchange rate is over valued. i'm sitting at her aunt, he had been a t as in, baldwin dollars, a to the us dollar. and then you compare that to the palo market exchange,

which is at over $600.00 to the us dollars. so that is also a part of the problem that the authorities are currently managing an over valued exchange rate, which is putting pressure on the current the, the para market rate up to depreciate. one of the things that we quite often seen situations like this in other countries around the world is that to you end up with 2 markets, you run end up with one with the official currency. and of course you end up with a blank marker. so in this case, possibly u. s. dollars is that's what's happening in zimbabwe. that's exactly what's happening and unfortunately does imply accounts for subsidy. so essentially, what happens is exports is to ask to surrender their proceeds at an o valid rate, as well as those buying dollars on the problem market are subsidizing those debt can access dollars at the official market. and that's the situation we are seeing now in zimbabwe. if the us dollars still has such a grip in zimbabwe,

do you think that there's any mileage in the country returning to using the euro stall? or do you think that the government of president ellison managua, would actually be open to that idea? i think we're already moving towards more dollar eyes does. and bob, we assume that what we had between 20092019 because essentially what's happening is this in baldwin dollars. as you know, a currencies meant to be a store value, a medium of exchange in units of account. and if 4 people, tough competence in the currency, that's currency has to hold value. and that's not the case current. be an, an inter, bobby. so yes, currency does tend to depreciate over time due to inflation, but the rate at which this bobby dollar is or is experiencing inflation is resulting and such an a huge loss of competence on your c. miss. baldwin, son, residence seeking, alternative sources, a including

a these gold coins that have been produced in audits trying just hold a valued tens of assets, ivana, murder, we appreciate your time and thank you very much indeed for being with us and cathy me and that is our show for this week, but remember to get in touch with us via twitter news, the hash tag a j t c t c. when you do drop us a line or you can drop is an email. our address is counting the cost at al jazeera dot net. but those more for you online, i'd ology 0 dot com slash c t c. that's going to take you straight to a page which is good, individual reports, links and entire episodes or you catch up on that's it for this edition of counting the cost. i'm ra matheson, the whole team, the science for joining us. the news analogy is next. ah ah

ah ah, he got we getting with a getting a gun, eating mont dining ideals, the french republic, islam proclaimed. but just what ease modern france in a 4 part series. but the picture takes an in depth look. episode 3. 0, now to 0 river. ah .