but, morgan freeman, i have established over the last hour, is your story is not too sad to be told it has been a story of joyous kayious, triumph, the occasional disaster, but above all great fun. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> piers: been a pleasure. >> has been a pleasure. thank you very much. >> thank you. it has been a pleasure. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com i'm zain verjee at cnn in london here are the top stories. opposition activists in syria say security forces fiertd on protesters in a damascus suburb just as arab league monitors arrived. this video said to have captured that attack. cnn can't verify its authenticity. opposition groups say at least 130 people have been killed since the observers began their mission. 17 human rights groups say they're outraged after police raided their offices in cairo on

thursday. egyptian authorities say they're investigating whether the groups are getting illegal foreign funding. u.s. state department official says egypt must stop what it calls harassment. time has run out this year for india's proposed anti-corruption law. parliament's upper house failed to vote on the plan to create a watchdog agency before the winter season expired wednesday. as samoans go to sleep over the next few hours it will still be thursday night there. when they wake up, it'll be saturday. the pacific island nation is skipping right over friday because officials have decided to change time zones. the move will put them on the same schedule asamoah's biggest trading partner's. those are the top stories. i'm zain verjee. "world business today" starts now.

good morning from cnn london. i'm charles hodson. i'm andrew stevens from hong kong. welcome to "world business today." the top story this friday, december 30, the final wbt of the year. penultimate. anyway from austerity measures and anger on the streets to bond yields going from bad to worse, it's been a rough year for the eurozone and there could be more of the same to come. traders have had a turbulent time of it, too, as major stock markets slumped. we'll take alike at the best and worst performance. and it's been a quiet christmas for occupy london protesters, but eviction from their central london camp looms in the new year. and as the year draws to a close, we have seen a modest rally here in asia following those gains on the u.s.

overnight and ahead of a higher open in europe, charles. things at least in the final trading day are looking a little better. >> yes, i think we are seeing a certain amount of buying going on here. it doesn't take much to boost these indices. clearly the trade does continue to be thin. now we have seen a continuation of the gains we saw on thursday from the bond auction in italy, and also boosted by positive u.s. employment data. obviously you're going to say, yeah, these indices are all down for the year. we'll get into that later on. certainly if we look at let's say the xetra dax there. that's up by.25%. ftse just up a tiny bit. the zurich smi up by.51%. >> charles, stock markets here in asia rounding out the year with something of a rally. take a look at this. we've had two days of falling

prices today. we've got a if you more green arrows which is quite nice to see. thin trade in europe because of the holiday period. the gains here are tracking what happened in the u.s. overnight. shanghai, you'll see they're up by 1.2%. that came despite some new manufacturing numbers which shows manufacturing orders contracting for a second month in succession. that happened in december and in sydney the market there, as you say, bucking the trend. down by about.25 of a percent. let's take a look at what's been happening for the markets over the year. the performances over the past 12 months. i want to start here with india, which is, would you believe, the worst performing major market in the region. as you can see there, quite clearly it's been going down pretty much since day one. the main reason for that, inflation and rise interesting rates pretty much all year. another market that's been heavily in the news this year is of course, thailand. would you believe it's one of the region's best performing

major markets. it was as you see here, just about even until here. that was the big floods, and then we had, of course, the big fall. it has recovered just a little bit. it's down by about 1.5% for the year. so thailand down nearly 2%. new zealand down 1%. the other big major markets, australia, for example, down 15% and the anythinikkei, all of th i'll illustrate this, if you look at what happened in hong kong, this is a good guide, if you like, to thor as a whole. in the summer months we saw the fall here. that was two things, contagion in europe and also the u.s. debt ceiling and the falling credit downgrade in early august. that was pretty much repeated across the major markets around the world. of course, sir, if i can just

get the nikkei up here. we had the big falloff on march 11th. we did have a semblance of recovery then. as we headed toward the end of the year, the same sort of problems. there is one extra problem with the nikkei and that was the yen. very strong yen all year hurting the big exporters which hurts the overall market but there is, actually, one market that finished higher. the gicarda was the best performing market in 2011 up by almost 3%. that came despite that familiar fall you see there in august and october. remember, charles, i was in indonesia a little earlier this year and there was a real buzz about the indonesia economy taking off despite what was going on around the world. certainly the investment community has gotten on to that. >> congratulations to the

indonesias. clearly they got a lot of things right. here in europe let's look at our whoas here. precisely a year ago today the u.k.'s telegraph newspaper ran the headline here italy's debt costs approached the red zone. they said concerns were growing that europe's biggest debtor may slip from the eurozone's stable core into the high-risk group on the periphery. now the ten-year yield or interest rate that sparked those concerns was 4.83%, a rate, the paper implied, that italy might struggle to repay. fast forward a year from now and you know where we are. you might get a sense of deja vu reading the headline today. italy bond auction highlights the nation's woes. something is different. the ten-year yield is now 2%

higher. perilously close to the 7% mark that economists view as unaffordable. 6.98%. how do you feel about paying that even on let's say your mortgage. but of all the world's new prime minister's, mario monti could have used to describe this week's debt sales. the one he chose was encouraging. man with a smile on his face. earlier bob parker from credit suisse gave richard his outlook on italy's money problems. >> the positive is that italy's maturity of its debt is long and over six years, but a lot of the debt comes up in march and april. that's going to be a testing period for italy as to whether they can refinance that maturing debt. the other concern which worries investors, they don't like political uncertainty. whereas in spain we have a strong popular mandate for the new government, in italy we have

a technocrat government. we don't know whether it can maintain parliamentary support. >> italy's new prime minister is nothing if not optimistic on thursday. he unveiled a number of measures to grow italy. they will boost investments in public work and offer incentives for research and developments. italy is about $2.5 trillion in debt. the pm wants to balance the budget by 2013. he called on other european country's to follow italy's lead. >> translator: the problems that the markets have today are primarily problems of european nature and, therefore, a common solution needs to be found, one that is unified and firm. a solution could not have even have begun to begin in europe. if italy, the third largest economy within europe, had not got its public accounts under control. >> earlier this month italy's parliament approved an austerity

budget of $39 billion. andrew? and, charles, certainly the highest profile casualty of the year's eurozone debt debacle was the former prime minister, silvio about your la skoen any. this one was just too much. just like the premiere's of portugal, ireland, greece, and spain he lost his leadership. matthew watched the battle to bring berlusconi down. >> reporter: this is a vivid demonstration of just how much opposition there is here to silvio berlusconi. tens of thousands of opposition people here demanding he step down. >> he want to destroy him. >> reporter: for his part he has rejected calls to step aside, but it may soon be out of his hands. >> reporter: there was a sense the tide had begun to change.

they gathered momentum. the legal battles in which he was embroiled dominated his time and the headlines. then came the debt crisis. the markets finally lost fate in his ability to turn the country around and they pulled the plug. i read the thinking. this was it. he was out in a matter of days. >> reporter: ber lus skoenfully's arriving in his motor kad. the crowd has gone wild. thousands of people have gathered to give him a sending off. >> translator: i have done it because of my sense of responsibility. i have done it because i wanted to avoid italy being attacked again by financial speculation. i have done it even though i have obtained more confidence of the parliament. >> reporter: it really was one of those historic moments to witness what felt like an entire country turning against its leader. >> today is the freedom day. today this is the freedom, the liberation for italy.

>> reporter: i think it must have been a humiliating moment for a leader who really loved to be loved. in the end he was despised. >> matthew chance reporting there what happened in italy. let's swing across the western mediterranean with spain. they're wrapping up with sweeping with new austerity measures. it's said to approve freezes in the minimum wage and civil servant hiring. that's even though a budget for 2012 is not in place yet. we're in madrid and being joined now. what is being proposed here and will the people of spain actually accept it? >> reporter: hi, charles. that's the question, how the public opinion is going to deal with it. there will be in fact no surprises. he's sent a clear message.

he's saying it's time for austerity and rapid reforms. today in the second meeting the ministers will announce a package of measures directed to obtain this healing of spain's budgetary problems. they're going announce very specific things. for example, on the public salaries, they are going to be frozen in the next year. there will be no more hirings in the public sector and also they are slashing the minimum salary that now is around 640 euros. that's among some measures. the only good news, charles, today is about the pensions. they're going to accomplish one of their main electoral promises today to spanish people. he's going to raise around 1% pensions for the spaniards. they are 3.2 million.

they have seen their paychecks cut. it's not very much. it's now around 3%. at least there is some good news to send to the public today. the key for the government right now is trying not to upset everybody right now at the same time. >> okay. many thanks, indeed, for updating us on what the prime minister is contemplating by way of austerity measures. andrew? certainly be hearing a lot more on the spanish economic story over the course of 2012. let's return to markets though. the u.s. stock markets are up for a second to the last session of 2011. reports on housing, manufacturing, and employment all raising hopes about the strength of the u.s. economy. the closing bell rang the s&p

was back on track for a modest gain for the year as a whole. here's how the numbers settle on thursday. the s&p up over 1%. the dow slightly more. the nasdaq closing just under 1% higher. we'll take a close look at how the u.s. markets have done over the entire year with just one session to go in 2011. we'll have that for you a little later in the program. for now though let's take a look at how the final trading session could begin on wall street. here's a look at how futures are. right now the dow off just a fraction. the nasdaq continuing its gains from yesterday, charles. indeed. now let's turn to what's been an excruciating year for the euro and europe single currency could still be on the line in 2012. ahead on "world business today" we'll review what's at stake.

foggy looking hong kong. welcome back you're watching "world business today" live on cnn. >> you can barely tell it was hong kong. now the european debt crisis has been at the heart of investor's minds for about a year. as you can expect it's had some negative ramifications. the worst in the region was athens. it's been in a downward spiral since march there. having made actually some decent gains right towards the start of the year. now let's move on to london. that has been one of the region's best performing ones unsurprisingly outside the eurozone. actually, that managed to hang on to gains more or less until the middle of the year. there we are. until about july, august. then we had this big drop into august and september.

let's have a look at the dax though. quiet year until august again and then it went downhill. it's very, very striking. this is the significant pattern, actually, on all of these markets. fears of contagion and obviously the worry about german commercial banks. worries about the debt crisis affecting them as it spread perhaps to italy, spain. we have seen a pretty volatile tail end to the year for the dax. let's have a look at the cacaran and paris where we've had a very, very similar pattern. you can almost overlay these graphs on each other and see very little difference. they've been pretty much in lock step. both of the markets are down by 16 to 17%. let's have a look at zurich. it does tend to go slightly its own way. we did still see the same kind of pattern towards the start of the year. more of a decline there through

july. same sharp drop in august. it has managed to crawl back some of those losses. arguably, since about i suppose the start of december we've seen an upward trend which might be maintained into the new year there in zurich. that is the year that was. what's ahead for the eurozone? cnn's fareed za car yeah assembled a panel of experts. >> i think there's probably now about a slightly just above even chance that it will survive, but very uncomfortably large possibility that it won't. i say uncomfortable because the precipice that that represents for europe is a very scary one. >> i would probably give it a little better odds than that. more 60 to 70% range. i think it's striking that all of the people who have been predicting that it would collapse, they wouldn't have believed in june that it was still around in december. they were sure it was gone long before, and i do think not just that the europeans are looking

at the precipice, but so are the chinese. europe is china's biggest trading partner. i think there are other sources of funds. if it really comes down to it, there will be -- there's the funds available to make this happen. the real danger is miscalculation of timing. >> for more forecasts for the year ahead tune in to the very first gps of 2012. that's on sunday at 9:00 p.m. here in london. >> interesting comments there, charles. certainly pretty bear on the future of the euro. even though it's expected to continue, certainly not convinced. this year also saw the birth of a new movement. occupy wall street. in fact, the occupy movement protest world went across the world. demonstrations sprang up across the world. anger against economic inequality clearly hitting a

nerve not just in the u.s., but worldwide. protests are still going on in some places, including the united kingdom. occupy demonstrators have been camped out st. paul's cathedral in london since october. city planning officials plan to set a date today to evict them. the judge hearing the case said he won't make a decision until january 11 at the earliest. charles? now next china unveils ambitious plans for the final frontier. we have details on the exciting space program. beijing is putting the brakes on foreign investment in car manufacturing. those stories are next.

the price of gold moving back up today after falling for the past few days. still off its august highs. this friday we're at $1560 ang ounce. it's still worth remembering where we started this year. gold is ending up by $156. welcome back. you're watching "world business today" live on cnn. let's give you some other business headlines that we're following this hour. new business guidelines in china are encouraging some types of foreign investment in car making. chinese state media are reporting that beijing wants to encourage the healthy development of a domestic auto indust

industry. beijing's new rules are beginning. they say they want to promote energy saving and environmentally friendly technologies. the new guidelines take effect on january the 30th. american airlines parent company will be delisted from the new york stock exchange. the announcement came after the close of trading thursday and saw its share price retreat to 38 cents. now it was widely expected after amr filed for bankruptcy last month. china has announced ambitious plans for space exploration including launching a manned space station and planning to build space stations by the year 2016. beijing's ultimate goal is to put a man on the moon. so far it has not committed to a timetable for a manned lunar landing. now fears of government default. the u.s. credit rating downgrade and the soaring price of gold. a wild ride for the markets in 2011. felecia taylor looks back on her

experiences covering the volatility.

from cnn london, i'm charles hodson. i'm andrew steecvens at cnn hong kong. you're watching "world business today." let's check in at the european markets today. we're seeing the gains which we saw only half an hour ago gradually dissipating. we're seeing the three year main indices in london -- frankfurt, paris edging down very slightly.

zurich smi hanging on. the only thing i can say in europe's favor on that one, charles, is it was worse here in asia for most of the big markets. that's how the numbers ended today. investors in the positive mood in the final trading day of the year. broadly higher across the region. the nikkei up. shanghai up despite some new manufacturing numbers which suggest that the manufacturing sector will continue to contract. but if you look over the entire year, the nikkei, hong kong, australia, all down around 20%. shanghai down around 21%. it's been a tough year for the markets across this region, charles. now reports on manufacturing and pending home sales in the united states came in better than expected on thursday.

that helped u.s. stock markets rise. here's how the numbers settle on thursday. the s&p by just about 1% to the good. little bit of change there. dow added just slightly more than that. and the nasdaq closed just below the 1% mark. although italian jobless claims rose more than expected last week, investors chose to focus on the positive trend of the last month. 381,000 americans filed for unemployment benefits last week and that is up 15,000 from the week before. it's been well below the 400,000 mark for the overall claiming for each week in december. analysts say a prolonged streak below that mark is a reasonably decent indicator of job creation. these things are slightly touch and go, andrew. charles, let's take a look now at how the u.s. markets have performed over the past 12 months. of course there is still one more day of trade on wall street, but the pattern obviously has been set by this

late stage. that is what it looks like over the past 12 months. the dow, as you see there, comfortably higher, 6.1%. not spectacular, but certainly it's better than europe or indeed asia. the s&p 500, that is the broadest measure up by just under.5%. the nasdaq needs to climb back by 40 points or so to get back into the green this year. let's just focus a bit on the dow because it is the market we talk the most about here on "world business today." as you can see, this is the story of the dow this year. it was comfortably higher at the start of the year, up over 6%, but it is still now. it was up 6% at the end of the year, but it's somewhere off this peak we saw back in the first half of the year. this is what we are talking about. this is the part we've seen pretty much across all the major markets across the world this year. this was the summer, august,

going into october when lawmakers in the u.s. were arguing about raising the debt ceiling. the u.s. lost that prize aaa rating. we had this explosion of contagion fears in europe. that is the story there. you see it incredible. you see the incredible volatility we've seen in the last three or four months of the year. the s&p 500 and nasdaq have followed similar patterns. the nasdaq only one of those three that is still in the red for the year. could change in today's trading. charles? investors on wall street needed a strong constitution throughout 2011 as we saw, maybe nerves of steel. that is of course the year we just h. wide springs on the dow, high unemployment and a government debacle over raising the debt ceiling that cost the united states its sterling credit rating. felecia taylor guides us through a tumultuous 12 months for

traders. >> we had incredibly bad economic numbers. there was job creation of only 18,000. unemployment was at 9.2%. people weren't sure when we were going to get out of that mess. we kept getting bad economic news. >> we're a day closer to default and still no deal on the debt ceiling. >> reporter: so the market was really already m a turmoil before we started to see that eight day huge gyrations of up 200 points, down 500 points. i started to reaching out to the traders i know around the world and talking to people literally all throughout the night. what was happening was you were seeing the asian markets feed into the european markets and down to the u.s. markets. >> you'll have this unsettled volatility although i think if the macro data starts to come in stabilizing, then it will stabilize. >> stocks plummeted on thursday as fear gripped investors and would not let go. >> reporter: i had never seen

anything like it in my life, and i think i was on the floor of the new york stock exchange that day because i remember looking at traders and seeing kind of just the fear in their face. it was about 8:15, 8:30 in the morning that i started to hear word from traders on the floor that the united states could possibly be downgraded. it's interesting, when there's a rumor on the floor of the new york stock exchange, there's always something to t. where there's smoke, there's fire. these traders know things before anybody else does. sure enough, before the end of the day that's what they did. >> breaking news. for the first time in history america's credit rating has been cut. >> reporter: one of the reasons was because there was so much political uncertainty in washington. gold was running up, and it kept running up. it broke 1800. that was amazing. it was unheard of. >> reporter: so you're looking at december contracts at 2,000.

you have a level at 1785. >> reporter: i went to the pits, the gold pits. it's incredible, the energy with these guys that were trading contracts back and forth. >> this is where the action is. the game's in gold. >> open at 21. trading three lines. >> reporter: people go to dollars and gold as a safe haven. that's the one thing people really believe in as substance. they put it in their safe deposit boxes. these are things that are tangible as opposed to stocks that aren't. they really couldn't put their fingers on anything that was concrete and that's what made it such an unbelievable story to follow because it changed on a dime. it changed every single day. >> felecia taylor reporting. 2011 was a year defined by jobs gloom in the united states. the unemployment rate stagnated

around the 9% mark for much of the year. panic was sparked in september when provisional figures suggested no jobs had been added in the previous month. that data was revised upwards heralding a relatively positive end to 2011. an average of 143,000 employees have been added each month just in the last quarter though. as of november the u.s. jobless rate stands at 8.6%. that's its lowest level, by the way, in three years. obviously high in relative terms. now 375,000 people are applying weekly for unemployment benefits. run about 380 actually. that is, either way, the lowest figure for 3.5 years. the stark reality is 7.2 million people are now receiving those benefits. as president obama knows all too well, that isn't an easy problem to solve, andrew. certainly is not. well, from google plus to the ipad 2 and kindle fire, new

online tools and gadgets have kept the tech sector humming in 2011, but along with the good and the great come the bad and the downright ugly. it was a year that moved simply too fast for a few former titans of innovation. consider, for example, kodak. believe it or not they invented the digital camera back in 1975 but it's failed to keep pace with the rise of digital photography. this once great company is now just a shutter click away from bankruptcy. and then, of course, there is the cisco flip video cam. the once popular gadget had its share of followers for its low price and ease of use, but was quickly superseded by the video cameras built into smartphone. finally, we had blockbuster and we had borders. once upon a time they were both meccas of home entertainment. online marketplaces like amazon

and netflix have turned both into bankrupt has beens. a little sad in some ways, charles, but that is the price of progress. well, we've looked at those tech turkeys that got a good stuffing in 2011. will, google got off to a bad start as it missed forecasts for the first quarter and concerned invoesors with its expenditure. the investment appears to have paid off. social network google plus is now adding thousands of users daily. the android operating system is dominating the smartphone market so that's all to the good of google which is there at the top. the company's stock, in fact, up 7% for the year. mobile rival apple has had its highs and lows. obviously among the former success of the eye pad 2 and the iphone. this is the middle one that's green in color. obviously chief among the lows has been the loss of the

founder, the great visionary, steve johbs. he would have been pleased to see the company stock up by 25% for the year and way ahead of the competition in the tech sector. let's have a look at one dark horse. ibm, big blue. may look insignificant on this chart, but in terms of percentage increase, it is outperforming the two giants above it this year. here we are. look at this. up by nearly 27% since january, and that is even outdoing apple, andrew. okay. good to see that big blue is not down and out yet. that's it for this edition of "world business today." as charles said, the penultimate edition. we'll be back in a few hours from now. i'm andrew stevens in hong kong. you're watching cnn which is the world news leader. an aarp...

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now the big guy comes up to bat, hitting .342 with 92 rbis and 36 homers. [fans whirring] [ding] announcer: chill raw and prepared foods promptly. one in 6 americans will get sick from food poisoning this year. keep your family safer. check your steps at foodsafety.gov. this week a special edition of marketplace middle east. a year of political upheaval as the winds of change swept the arab world. change in the economic and political landscape. we take a look back at the year of the arab spring. 2011 has been the year of dissent. it all started 12 months ago

when a two nearby shan fruit vendor lit himself on fire when he saw no opportunity in his country. since then we've seen uprisings through north africa through the gulf. this week we look back at some of the key people we've spoken to during this year of arab uprising. >> democracy has to be taken, it can't be given. in this case democracy was taken by egyptians through popular revolution, and that always brings turmoil. >> this is not the first problem that arises in our region. there was the iran iraq war,

there was the invasion of kuwait, there was the liberation of kuwait, there was the invasion of iraq. we've had more than our share of problems. >> reporter: the fact that the old order is changing in many countries doesn't mean that what replaces it is necessarily the right thing unless we manage that process properly. >> the countries in the middle east are facing difficulties because of the disruptions and the cutoff from normal business activities.

we are hopeful that things will settle and that egypt will take the lead for better reform and other countries will follow suit. we've been chained. whatever now we see is good. >> we're going to see turbulence across the middle east and north africa right through the year 2011. what's going to happen across the region is going to be either evolution where government's try and forestall popular movements toppling them by making concessions, by opening up the political system. you can have a successful revolution topple a dictator, but whoever becomes the leader in egypt and two nearby yeah

still has to face creating jobs. >> reporter: jordan was hit with a wave of unrest as protesters took stot street over corruption, unemployment and poverty. let's take a look back at our interview with king ab dull la. i asked him about the arab spring and the biggest challenges ahead. >> the arab spring started economically so there's a lack of confidence because there was a problem in our country as there is throughout the region with lack of jobs and poverty. how do we get an individual away from voting for somebody because he's from my tribe or from my village to voting for people that come out with an economic, political and social package? that's going to be the main challenge of democracy. >> reporter: the first thing the business community says we need to tackle corruption. >> absolutely. >> reporter: the people around you shield you from the real corruption that's on the ground in this society. it's not a big economy. can you goyou get your hands on

the root causes today? >> one of the problems is we have to have more transparency of government. we have the anticorruption department that is being involved more and more. they need more capability and more qualified people to move into that. the other thing is you can't have people hide behind corruption. there's a couple of cases that are out there and have to be seen all the way through. there is corruption as there is in other countries. it's not to the extent that people feel. as awe lewded to, there's a lack of confidence with the government. that's always going to be out there. transparen transparency, government, the rule of law and creating the right mechanisms to change corruption we can turn it around. >> reporter: it's interesting, they point to you because of your role, of course, as king to do more. >> as the king of jordan i've got to set the bar very high. so when we're talking about economic, political and social reform, this is why at the beginning of this year i said,

listen, what we're trying to achieve is a two to five-party system representing left, right and center understanding it's not quite mature here yet as quickly as possible so we can have an elected government. >> reporter: most people as you know don't focus on this but this is a very expensive arab spring. your tourism has cost 20%. costs you $4.5 billion a year. this is the reality that could be with us, what, another three to five years? >> throughout the world, i think. it's not just limited to the arab world. we're seeing this in europe, wall street. there is a backlash against private sector and privatization. we felt it here in jordan, but we have to change it, bringing in the private sector and foreign investment is the best way of defeating unemployment. i'm pretty clear on the steps that we need to take for political reform over the next year or so, but i think what keeps me up at night, most

leaders around the world, is actually poverty, unemployment and the economic crisises we face. >> reporter: not just in jord done but in the region overall do we need to think in a much more urgent manner to solve the problems? >> yes. when you're talking about the need for 85 million new jobs for young arabs, men and women, over the next couple of years, that is a tremendous challenge. i think a smaller country like jordan has a much better ability to maneuver out of this, it's just the countries with large populations with these problems, it is going to be many tough years ahead of them. political reform is economic reform. they have to go hand in hand because one will cancel out the other if we're not successful. definitely there's a lot of money in the region. it's just how do we capitalize that and use that as tools to really challenge and be able to take in the largest cohort in history that this region has ever seen. >> reporter: unemployment, poverty, and a general lack of

opportunity. these were the root causes for the unrest in the region. when we come back we explore the economic issues and the road ahead for the middle east when "marketplace middle east" continues after this.

increasing youthunemployment and a general lack of opportunity were the main economic drivers behind the arab protests in 2011. despite the region having high enrollment rates in education, the number of unemployed youth is still high at more than 25%. africa follows close behind at 21 percent percent. youth unemployment in latin america is more than 16%. we now take a look back at some of our key interviews for the year addressing the economic issues which led to the arab protests. >> i know that our major problem

is the 50% poverty. and people will complain more and more because we have not yet started to deal with the major problem we have, the economic situation, the production, the investments, the unemployment and so on. we are in turmoil and you cannot do that while the turmoil exists. yes, indeed, there will be difficulties and people will protest more and more. >> we have been focusing on those at the bottom. we have really strong social programs. we've created net 1 million jobs over the past 12 months and since the crisis job creation has been more than 2 million. so we are trying to address that problem, no question about it.

i think it's anybody's challenge. >> there's a lot of huge interest in investing in asia because there's a lot of opportunities and nobody wants to see egypt fall down, go down the drain because of the impact on the entire region. we have the human resources, we have the financial resources. just what we need is to see a proper transition. once we have so-called stability and people know what to expect tomorrow, i think we will be able to move forward but put a lot of priority on those who are disenfranchised but making sure also that egypt is ready for business.

>> the biggest challenge, time. to find sustainable solution for the employment, we have to manage that through the education, better education, and the education that will help our young people to be able to find the job and to create other venue for the country. >> reporter: for more about the program you can check out our website cnn.com/mme. send them via e-mail to mme cnn.com. that's all for this edition of cnn marketplace middle east this week from abu dhabi. week from abu dhabi. we'll see you next week. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com