products they associate with the childhood memories to take with them before leaving hong kong for good. he says he still of his customers an opportunity to better understand the cities evolving identity, the chance to be nostalgic and he carry those memories with them wherever they go. jessica washington out as her uncle, indonesia, morabe volcano has erupted the volcanoes located in the yoga carto region and its been spewing out a hot ash for up to 7 kilometers. min api is one of the indonesia most active volcanoes. it was already on the country's 2nd highest alert level. you can find lots more on a website billing address for that is w w, w dot, all the 0 dot com ah, this is odyssey with these the top stories. it's been 3 years since the world

health organization declared. the corona virus. i break a pandemic, believe 7000000 people across the globe lost their lives to cove with 19, since the 1st case was reported in the chinese city of war, han, china's parliament, her. busy son, lee chang, as the new premier, they replaces li, keeps young her retired after a decade in the role, the premier was the head of the government and the highest position under president . she, jan, pain. iran and saudi arabia have agreed to re establish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies. it comes after 7 years of heightened tension and confrontation. china helped broke of the deal. california financial regulators have shut down silicon valley bank. it's the largest failure of a u. s. bank since 20 weight the from failed to raise fresh capital love to be affected by higher interest rates. it's suspended trading after its shares plummeted and that prompted depositors to withdraw their money. creating

a run on the bank. this see people have been killed and 14 have been injured in a blast, and afghanistan, northern bulk province exposure to place and a sheer cultural center, which is supported by a run. many journalists having gathering there to celebrate national journalist day . early on thursday, the provincial governor was killed in a suicide attack in his office. italian coast guard has laws, multiple rescue operations to saver on 1300 migrants packed on to several boats of the countries, southern coastline or than 3000 migrants have reached italy by boat since wednesday . that's more than doubled the number for the entire month of march. last year, 2 palestinians have been killed in the occupied west bank by 21 year old man. was shot by it is really southland friday. meanwhile, a funeral has been held for a 16 year old boy shot by is really forces. he was sick at the hospital, but he died later from his injuries. 79 palestinians, including children have been killed by israeli forces, or settlers. since the beginning of the year,

at least 13 israelis have been killed by palestinians in the same period. those, the headlines, the news is going to continue here on al jazeera, after counting the cost. bye for now. talk the law will. the law, when with neither side, willing to negotiate is the ukraine war becoming a forever war is america's global leadership, increasingly fragile. what will you at politics look like as we had to the presidential election of 2024. the quizzical look us politics. the bottom line with hello, i'm adrian said again. this is counting the coastal al jazeera, your weekly look at the world of business and economics this week. china's changing

ping accuses the us of blocking his countries. rise at his government sets the lowest g d p target in decades, is beijing's reporting. both of us will it outpace the u. s. also this week, the un cold for a revolution of support for the world's poorest nations of the summit. and doha, the president of below week tells us how least developed countries could reach that full potential. plus cutting edge gene therapies, a potentially life saving medicines. the drugs come at an astronomical price. come a cost people down at who should foot the bill. ah, choosing thing headset is the thomas, china's president with sweeping changes to financial and tech regulation. the chinese leader is bracing for a tough competition between the world's 2 largest economies, and he's made it clear he considers the u. s. at important threats to his country's growth, blaming what he called an american lead campaign of suppression for his nation's

troubles. she's read direct criticism of washington comes after the nations set its lowest g d p target in decades outgoing chinese premier lee could chang announced a g d p target of judge 5 percent. so this year, at the opening of the national people's congress, lee said the government aims to create around $12000000.00 urban jobs, keep the unemployment rate at around 5 and a half percent, and boost the defense budget by more than 70 percent. he's also vowed to support privately owned businesses and encourage foreign investment. china's g d p expanded by just 3 percent last year. well, short of the official target of around 5.5 percent. but the economy appears to be rebounding strongly after the pandemic manufacturing activity in february, for example, expanded at the fastest face in more than a decade. however, chinese officials warned of risks ahead. the u. s. as imposed several restrictions

on china's access to high end technology over the past few months. but a new report by the australian strategic policy institute found that beijing leaves the world in $37.00 out of $44.00 critical technologies, and is in a position to become the world's top technology superpower. among the fields dominated by china and drones, machine learning, electric batteries, and nuclear energy. the united states leads in just 7 critical technologies, including space, launch systems, and quantum computing. the u. k and india are among the top 5 countries in 29 of the 44 technologies. or joining me now from london is douglas mac williams. he's the executive deputy chairman of the center for economics and business research. good to have you with a set douglas champagne claims. washington for his country's economic kirk slow down. how much is america's trade war and the export restrictions really impacted

china's economy? is it to blame? well, direct sport so done by about 6 percent. so it is a partial factor, but i think the recent problems in china have a lot more to do with. first of all, the problems of coverage and the way it exploded after they opened up a bit and. and then the recovery from that i don't think you can entirely blame washington or cut or china's woes. what do you make then? of her, china's modest economic growth outlook. it's g d p forecast. i mean by, by anyone else's standards, it would be pretty good, but by china's, it's pretty low. you still my went from the back to say that if you think fight the sentence mothers just look at what the rest of us. again. i mean, when you climb higher up the mountain, the ag center and the possibility of growing it, double digit rates is no longer there. 5 percent for

a huge economy like china is still a pretty decent rate of growth. incidentally, it's not ended. the chinese governance will cost, it's also awful cost. we think that's roughly what they're going to be achieving now. and that's a pretty healthy lick for a steady, sophisticated economy. not you think then that the base of double digit growth for china a well actually over now they can't, they don't have the labor supplies to achieve that. and they didn't have a head room. i mean, when you stopped for a very low base when your economy is very low income, you've obviously got up with the loss of scale used to grow. but china is now a sophisticated economy. you can't grow sophisticated candidates at 10 percent of paintings moved to type in control of a bodies overseeing the finance like the scientific and, and technology sectors to how do you think that's going to affect the chinese

economy? it probably won't have much effect on growth in the short term, but these are the sorts of things that insidious the slow down your rate of growth over a period of 1020 years. so it probably means that looking at in quarter century is time. there are a column they will be, will have been smaller because of the extent of the government interference. and one of the things that you really need in the mountain wells is creativity. and if the government is trying to restrict crates, unity, it will slow down the rates of chinese growth attorney and think tanks at the china could be in a position to become the world's top technology. super power in the future. should the us be worried? they said this, i think a 10 out of 14 technology in china is going to be in the lead. and i don't think that's a wrong assessment, but i think they're talking mainly about physical technology. and as i said in

creativity is the biggest driving goals. and i think the way the chinese government is running the is reducing their ability to get the greatest amount of creativity as the chinese population and as a chinese enterprise. so my guess is that they won't do quite as well as the trend and think tank things. while i think the americans still got quite a lot going on and they will be able to take advantage of their much 3, our environments over your organization had predicted some time ago that the chinese economy could outpace the us by 2030 to 2036 do you still see that happening? it's pretty inevitable that china willing to take the u. s, because the population is 4 times bigger than that us. and so it means that when g d p per capita reaches only a quarter of the american, a chinese gdp, mathematic will be bigger, but there is no prior to being 1st in this world,

china will still be a relatively less sophisticated economy. and it will simply be an economy with a lot of people in it. so that's the way it's going. it will happen. i'm, i'm pretty certain, it's just when it happens is less that we now think it would be later. right now. it could even be later than that. it could even be delayed towards 2040, but there are roughly the same size even now. and the gap will narrow as we move on that does china's economic plan, doesn't involve any, any big stimulus packages president, she is called on the private sector to help in the, in the fight alongside the government. can the private sector be an in economic driver and of a lack of stimulus packages or announcements on stimulus? a mistake you think when they run out of m initiative, it is a lot more difficult for them to push state control, spending and so on. now,

with all the packages that have happened, the money that's been used up for the property venture zone, but i think it is realistic to expect what they've technically call in china. revenge spending, which satisfaction, frightening, but what it actually is the spending that was suppressed during the coven period, when there was a lot of locked down. so on people bills are huge savings and they're expecting that the private sector will unleash the savings and turn them into spending. and there's already pension sign that people are buying many more clothes. they're buying many more tronic goods and of course travel has suddenly just taken off. so it's not perhaps the most appropriate met him. but you know, i mean, travel is exploding as a expenditure item. and i think it is reasonable to the chinese government to expect the private sector will actually be the thing that drank the economy for the

sun. is this modest, as we said, economic target, this g d p, a target actually achievable? do you think? i think it does depend on whether they get another buyer to cope. it's because the vaccination record isn't fantastic and it also does depend on the rest of the world. now most of the news we've had in recent months, the rest of the world has been said, the positive and everyone's rising up the graceful costs. and i think that is supported for chinese economy. good to talk to you, douglas manufacturing date for being with us on counting the cost. my pleasure, thank you very much. ah, the walls least developed countries or l. d. c's are defined as having an average national income of around $1000.00 per person. more than $1000000000.00 people live in those $46.00 nations, and many of them survive on less than $2.00

a day. barely half the population has access to electricity and only one in 5 can plug into the internet. rising food prices, high debt, climate change and diseases such as coven 19 a wearing them down even more will will lead, has gathered at the u. n's least developed countries once in a decade, summit in catalyst capital to revive commitments to the doha program of action. the plan focuses on 6 areas, including how to eradicate poverty and hans trade deal with food insecurity. and how best to tackle climate change. the u and has called on wealthy nations to provide $500000000000.00 a year to help those nations boost their economies. cutters announced a $60000000.00 financial contribution. elders here is natasha, good aim, spoke to the president of below iep and the chair of the l. d. c. group blazer is chuck, where up at the summit here in doha, she asked him 1st, how least developed countries could help to solve their own problems. mallory has

2063 to be calm and inclusively wealthy, self reliant, industrialized nation, mid up a middle income. it me is for us, the 1st 10 years that we started our last year implementing our movement toward that realization. every country needs to have that and then align their own vision with the doha program of action. which is a consensus built over the years by countries not just the list develop involving the others, the development partners so that we are working in a concerted effort. bring in synergistic gather that spar

explanation of development. for example, malory's case, we wanted to concentrate in the immediate future on agricultural commercialization and mechanization so that we can grow large volumes, crops, diversified across the section. add value to this same have many industries across the country and export. so we earn a more money to be able to access goods and services that we may not have presently . and so if i could, culture is emphasize in the manner we are thinking. even do mega farms to out great extent and then tourism. and then mining, we had a g o mapping of the country with maybe we didn't have anything. and yet they are

minerals gemstones that are, you know, being discovered in ru tire and graphite. so we think if we can immediately have investors come work with us, the story of malawi will be different. so will be the stories of many of these list, develop countries. what would meaningful progress look like when it comes to assisting least developed countries? i see a development in terms of the doha program of action, leading men in nations to graduate. there are certain a developmental matters within the program of action which must of necessity be accomplished online universities and

stuff like this. and sure, and the youth and the women are included in all of this processes. it means everyone's hands are on deck. everybody's work in toward the fulfillment of this. there is an outstanding issue of public debt and loan conditions by the ins and high interest rates. how can these things be reformed to help address the specific challenges of least developed countries, the reforms that we demand. even the debt relief that we demand is not necessarily because we just want freebies or something for free. it is because there's a realization much of the developed world has soul developed by actually exploiting

the natural resources in a way that has brought more problems than solutions. and so you cannot ass, for example, smaller nations who have contributed very little for example, to this whole issue of cobrin emissions. asked them to do something different from the way they developed and expect that they would do that with that any assistance because they're all manner of things that are happening there, which call for you know, climate justice really and a re thinkin' of the whole process of lending institutions where sometimes they're not necessarily giving you a hand up, they're actually perpetuating a dependency syndrome that needs to be broken. and so we need to rethink this

things and, and, and ask the tough questions as to, is this really produced in what was intended? how long have these institutions been there? and how is it that others are still struggling? the manner in which they are? the un secretary general slammed rich countries and energy giants for burdening l. d. c's with what he called predatory interest rates. $25.00 developing economies spent, bolden 20 percent of their revenues on servicing debt. the international monetary fund has been criticized for imposing tough conditions on countries seeking loans. the i m f told, counting the cost that it's pushing for more action on providing debt relief. to the 2nd, the general i know has been calling for greater action. the managing director of the i math has also been calling for stronger action to speed up the delivery of debt relief to those countries who, who haven't sustainable. that's and who need debt restructuring. i'm and that we

put forward a number of proposals to try and make the process smoother and faster so countries can, can, can restructure there that sooner rather than later. not gene therapy works by adding a new gene or repairing a mutated one inside the body to treat or pure rare and dangerous diseases. the one time treatment can potentially save the lives of millions of people, but that the world's most expensive drugs, how systems that ensure a struggle to cover the costs making access to the therapies, very limited. so how can they become more accessible? that question was top of the agenda at last week's genome editing conference in london from where joe hall reports one of the key issues being discussed at this human genome, editing summit among scientists, ethicists and policy makers, is the prohibitive cost of genome editing treatment for read diseases caused by

a single cell mutations think sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis huntington's congenital blindness, even cancers, and h, i. v. the problem exists because of a combination of onerous government regulations in the development of any new treatment, often by companies that have profit based in the private sector. so that the process becomes cumbersome. the costs, jaw dropping really high. in fact, one treatment for a red blood disease and is the most expensive on the planet. currently, costs $3.00 and a half $1000000.00 for just a single dose so that it becomes a question, not just of easing those government regulations, but also of securing government funding for research. and that means persuading taxpayers that they should be paying for research into red diseases, even though huge gaps remain in treating common elements. so while the technology exists, that could help the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world,

taking it main stream could become one of the next great horizons of human genome editing. well, joining me now here in doha is colin baker. i was here a science and it's a colleen, why our gene therapies. so expensive. scientists have new tools and techniques that can correct the human genome inside the human body. that's a very big deal. we're and we're talking about serious diseases that affect a small populations with great severity. so that's a tantalizing problem to solve. the problem is it really raises 3 difficult issues for the market. one, you have a small patient population too. you have drugs that are very expensive to develop and traditionally have taken a long time to develop that might soon change and 3, these are one time use drugs. when you combine those 3 factors, you get a real question about how to price them. and the pricing that we've seen has been astronomical. we see a new record breaking drug almost every year. now our drugs for blood disorders are

for neurological diseases, have soared above $2.00 and $3000000.00 for a dose, obviously big. charlotte leads a return on its investment, but the price is fair. furnace is a really tough question to answer in this particular environment. because you do have a lot of scientific questions that still need to be answered and an avenues of attack that still need to be resolved before we get to sort of a mainstreaming of these types of drugs. how to deliver them to the places in the body where they're needed. you know, some diseases are easier to attack, perhaps in the bone marrow or in the back of the i a certain genetic blindness that's inherited. and these are places where we sort of know how to deliver drugs, others for say, muscle, or perhaps diseases that affect the brain. and the central nervous system might be a little harder to deliver. so some of the techniques and technologies that are required to get there still require investment, but when it comes to fairness, the regulators are asking the same question and you have some drugs makers in europe as was in america who pulled their products mid development because the

regular simply said, look, you can't charge more than a certain amount for this drug. and the drugs maker said that's not sustainable for us. and they pulled mid development, leaving those few hundreds of patients with very serious conditions in the lurch, which seems desperately unfair. ultimately, who should foot all of in a public and private insurers were to step up and, and, and pay these astronomical costs. it's difficult in canada, you had a family that spend that raised over $3000000.00 to try to fund a therapy for their own child. they, they raised that through, through sort of means, like go fund me in, in europe where you single payer health care systems. you know, you are going to have panels deciding how to allocate these resources in the u. s. where you have private insurers and you have families putting the bill, you'll start up companies that are going to try to figure out financing methods. you have guarantees within the treatment plan that if the drug fails, some of that money might not be owed. but if i mean in the end for, for instance, the sickle cell therapy, that's presumably going to be approved by the u. s. f. d a this summer. this is a partnership between the drugs company that wants to make this drug and deliver it

to say 30000 people in the coming years. but at the moment is working with academia . and so you have the, the sickle cell patient coming in through a trial program funded by the university of their cellular 6000000 people with, with sickle cell, most of whom are in sub saharan africa. were many people as we were hearing earlier, a poor, there's no way that they can afford these kinds of a therapy. is it going to be available to them? this is a really interesting problem because in africa, you do have these, these robust genetic, a sequencing data basing research efforts led by groups like h, 3 african, many of their representatives where we're at this conference talking about how, how a pipeline could be developed to move some of these therapies from the places where they currently are, and it's just inevitable that they will be in places that are highly resourced at the moment. because you do need large support teams to deliver these therapies. it, you need complex systems and some of the resources that may not be available in, in, in, in, in facilities in the developing world. and how to move these therapies to the

developing world. and some of the research that is being done on the african continent is going to aid that effort. one of the big hurdles that, for instance, the bill and melinda gates foundation is trying to overcome is how to move some of these therapies from a procedures that are done out of the human body, where you remove cells edit and placed them back in with, with a fair amount of infrastructure around that process to something that can be delivered in the human body, what's called in vivo when we cross that barrier, for instance, for turing sickle cell or for addressing some of the complications of h i v. you know, you can really start to see some of these therapies, although the costs would remain high, being available to be delivered to the places where they're needed most were not there yet. the big question will cost eventually come down and when well, will an inflection point come is a really important, a sort of goal to try to reach and, and there are many research organizations and, and private companies that are trying to get their news therapies and new technologies like crisper, which has only been around for about 10 years. crisper cas 9 is a combination of a protein and a bit of genetic code. it was found in nature. it's,

it's both amazingly accurate at being able to, to reach targeted genetic mutations and also correct them either by deleting them interfering with them or even replacing them with a could with bit with the gene that functions. this is a model that some scientists liken. it's not the same, but likened to the m r ne approach we had after covered where you have one platform that could be attuned to attack a spectrum of different types of disorders. that's extremely interesting. and then as you get some of these technologies approved for, for the delivery of these drugs, you know, you sort of have an iterative process where you have generations of drugs that follow. so it, it is believed that, that, that we will see sort of a roadmap to, to, to cheaper options and more widespread options. but we're just at the beginning of this process now. colon. let me, thanks cindy. a science editor, colin baker. and that's our show for this week. don't forget if you'd like to comment on anything you've seen, you can get in touch by tweeting me. i'm at a fit again. please remember to use the hash tag

a j c t c. when you're 2 or you could drop us a line counter, the cost of our 0 dot, that is our e mail address. as always, plenty of all for you online at al jazeera dot com slash ctc. that takes you straight to our page though you'll find individual reports links, even in time episodes for you to catch up on. but that's it for this edition of counting the carstein. adrian finnegan for the whole team. here though, how, thanks for being with us. the news on al jazeera is next frank assessments this treated provides us with this hopeful moment when countries could come together and stop putting in place. the rules allow us to treat this global cummins with the attention it deserves informed opinions that she threat please should have climate change as the center of the agenda and not the all the shadow by the board as it has been critical debate. chinese side should we be shape when ukrainian leadership. you've been talk about austin,

you could go inside story. on al jazeera al jazeera goes beneath the waves with a team of women determined to save the dolphins. we all share the same responsibility when needed, something floaty was actually amazing on a man using a variety of scientific techniques to study their behavior. we can monitor them and report their vocal quotas and behavior. we're able to how they're adapting for their new environment. women make science dolphin sanctuary on al jazeera. ah ah, hello, i'm serial then. yeah, it's great to have you with us. this is the news. our live from doha coming up in the show today. it's.