postal policy body and seized on an apparent anomaly perhaps even an absurdity in the global postal rate settings system which is overseen by the universal postal union or the u.p.a. you an agency of the united nations the issue is that you policies make it more expensive to mail get this items from the us to china than the other way around late last month the administration sent a memo seeking to alter the policy but the u.p.c. has not demure and has deferred a decision to the next u.p.c. meeting with doesn't take place until twenty twenty which seems to place the u.p.c. in the trump of ministration on a collision course. as we told you yesterday european union authorities have opened an investigation into amazon related to how they have treated merchants selling on the amazon platform

while the investigation is in its early stages we thought it deserved more attention and we do that now and please be joined by our friend and i trust attorney andre barlow and by r.t. correspondent peter oliver who joins us from the e.u. in berlin gentlemen welcome thanks for being here i'd like peter you to sort of step the stage and get out some of the issues that are going to be investigated. ok well what's. the european commission is looking into and this preliminary stages where that amundsen abused its position as the platform which was selling products from a policy that is like let's put this in a simple example say i come up with a product let's call it all of this would differ with sell them through amazon amazon can then see exactly who's buying my product who's leaving comments on my product. and they can essentially use that is market research to then roll out

their own version of my product and sell it in some cases a cheaper price they're investigating it whether this is being done and if it is being done whether it's legal or not and it's really really not a great great summary peter and an amazon when you think about. it when you think about amazon being this huge monolith and and out there with all these advantages many advantages i think some would probably construe as monopolistic and and now they are as peter said calling the data from people on their own platform i'm sure it's a condition of being on the platform they call this information from the merchants it appears and then use it for their own advantage what sort of antitrust issues might this raise in the. in europe and in the united states it's similar what you're really looking at is what is the relevant product market what

is the business line that we're concerned about is it the amazon platform is it e-commerce in general if we're talking about e-commerce amazon has forty to forty five percent of the market right now and i think you know that will entail a and now a sense of market share and discussions and information from the retailers to determine whether amazon actually has market power so the questions are really related to do these retailers have some other avenue to get their products out onto the internet so they can make sales or are they really beholden to amazon and they have to serve through amazon if you can determine that they they do have market power that amazon does have market power well then in the e.u. the a dominant firm has a special responsibility not to distort competition so this would put amazon in a bad position if the european commission were able to show that. amazon does

indeed have market power in the united states little bit different because we're talking about a consumer welfare standard and there the analysis really is about the you know what is the alleged and i competitive activity does it lead to more consumer harm or benefit great very interesting peter i do so impressed when i first read this because it's different than you know we're all concerned about facebook and google getting information on privacy from individuals and the merchant certainly had information on individuals buying habits that what that's what amazon wants but this is actually going sort of protecting the businesses the merchants right so margaret best competition commissioner just really impressed me what do you make of her and she been doing these sort of proactive things for a while. yes buggery investigated the. woman of big business she's spoken about in hushed conversations in private members' clubs

she certainly has form when it comes to trying to slap big fines on big business in july of this year full point three billion euro fine was given to google that it was deemed that they abused their position that dominant position as a search engine to promote stings on mobile we also look back to last year apple ordered to pay thirteen billion euro in tax to dublin that was after it emerged that the tech giants had a sweetheart tax deal with the republic of ireland and they were told that they had to pay that back vest it was a long run of the even smaller scale company says cyprus ways they were told that sixty five million euro of aid that they'd been given the state that they had to pay that back in fact is that of previously. being on her radar

this was over two hundred fifty million euros of taxes they were told they had to pay to look for two hundred fifty million euros small potatoes to a company the size of amazon this type of fine that could come in though if they're found to have done something wrong that could be much much bigger if you remember vesting in her role as the european commission of the competition she has the ability to impose a ten percent fine of global turnover and that of course could be whopping if they decide to push through with this investigation further against. and andre i mean i guess you know amazon may be just a monolith unto themselves but are there other companies that you can think about that might have these sort of issues around the world well i mean amazon is there's no equivalent to amazon amazon in terms of e-commerce with respect to data in general look facebook google they have similar problems that they will have to face

you know likely here in the united states and you know future investigations in europe and peter lassally are there any obvious potential other culprits as you as it were in the e.u. that. may be going after. well imus and really is the big boy when it comes to e-commerce in europe as well books of course should this be a full investigation e.u. officials are very quick to point out at the moment that it's a it's a it's not an official probe as of yet that will take shape over the next two months should they dig something up but if you're looking at the in terms of amazon and it doing this type of business over fifty percent now all of products sold on amazon was sold by the party vendors that's a lot of vendors giving out information if amazon is then using them to sell and roll out their own products they could well be in trouble we are saying amazon doing very well here in german. my own house four apostles from i was in arrive

just this week in france they've been doing the best to pick up a drop off there so i'm isn't really the big boy he had but this was talking about a five hundred five hundred forty five billion dollar business in europe there's plenty of others out there should be caught doing something wrong it could well have an impact so i know this trying to do similar things elsewhere in europe under a barlow and peer oliver i thank both of you and peter i know it's to late there in berlin thank you for staying up and doing this always helpful and thank you we appreciate your expertise as always thank you. this weekend in london the long battle over ownership of british broadcaster sky will come to an end the bidding war between twenty first century fox and comcast will culminate in an auction where the final price tag could reach thirty six billion dollars so who will win and what will they get for their money and what role does disney play in

all of this here to map it all out for us as conservative commentator steve steve welcome back give us a sense of what has happened to get us to this point so far well this battle's been going on for quite a while the battle over sky and its assets you might recall in july during the heat of the battle for fox between disney and comcast comcast said ok we're going to withdraw from this and we're going to concentrate our efforts on getting sky so they have a lot of face to save here if they get beaten out by fox for sky it's not going to look too good now let's point out that fox owns thirty nine percent of sky and in effect disney owns it which we'll get to in a second because they are purchasing fox why is sky important because they have over twenty three million subscribers pay t.v. subscribers throughout five countries in europe they also have original programming in news they have a lot of sports so you're go to expand your reach whether. you're disney or whether

your question is a fox or whether you're comcast so it's an important get for both companies and explain two things in one if you can steve so how will this auction work and what role will does the play ok well disney is calling the shots for fox so far comcast has the highest bid at thirty four billion and fox is in the thirty two and a half billion so it's kind of a secret auction so because they have the low bid fox is going to go first and if they refuse to bad comcast wins if they do bad contest go second if they refuse fox wins if they do but then there's a third and decisive bid but i say decisive it may not be because even after the bids are in and they're all counted in the high bid is in these shareholders have two weeks to decide do we really want to go with that company after all fox owns thirty nine percent maybe we want to go with them disney has that has an incentive to drive up the price because they own thirty nine percent the fox shares and if

they decide to keep it or sell it it will be worth more very interesting as always steve we thank you for your insights on this conservative t.v. and radio commentator steve walz we have a great weekend steve you tube. and time now to squeeze in a quick pause for the promotional cause but hang here because when we return we look at the big business of sports branding with our tease regina hamm plus archies rachel blevins considers a classic car the incredibly iconic volkswagen beetle the bug which is being terminated a dual citizen the c.e.o. of ford which hillary welcome back ok so let's start with the baseline on the u.k. economy i mean it's been doing pretty well of late we've talked about it we talked about it recently with regard to taxes but they've got a one per one point five percent growth rate i think their unemployment is like four percent it's been going down so they've got some really positives but set the stage with going to be. the economy actually is done better than people expected

remember that actually the bank of england had to raise interest rates again this summer because there was the originally the fear of inflation you know so it has done better than expected because a couple of things though the pound is still somewhat weak a thirty year low about i think one point thirty today and then you also look at you've got interest rates but also look at exports exports go to ninety percent of other countries outside of the e.u. so the exports are continuing outside of the e.u. despite uncertainties you've said a few times here or you know not just any deal it's got to be a good deal i mean what do you believe a good deal would be entailed well actually what i keep saying is that no deals better than a bad deal if you don't want a bad deal or yes correct you're right but what is a good deal for the u.k. a good deal is to be able to trade still with the u.s. the commonwealth and all the other nations that the u.k. trades with today like i said it's ninety percent of all exports rather than just to the e.u. and of course still be out of trade with friends in the e.u.

and then also of course the issue is about the porous border and the irish border and have that border secure you know tell us just about the other one just i when you talk about that but we talked about this these geographic indicators and i want to get to that again we talked about that solution out there you think it'll be resolved but what about the irish border what's the key thing there ok the key thing is is that you cannot you have to have frictionless travel and trade so you don't want to have all these you know with the lines people can't talk about the lines you can't have it be sort of this would almost be like with inside the u.k. if you had to have that border there so what you want to have over the u.k. wants to have is they want to have a deal that would protect that irish border and not make it sort of a customs hold up it needs to be a frictionless movement of trade and briefly that other issue i know has to deal with services the u.k. seems to be accepting goods and food but not services where the real issue was their issues around services are that they wanted to be sort of looser. services

and that's quite simple it's because in terms of exports to the e.u. don't forget there's a trade deficit when it comes to goods and that is that there's obviously all of europe want to trade to the u.k. i think we talked about before that germany one in seven german cars goes into the u.k. so you've got all of the european countries wanting to trade with the with great britain and the u.k. however with services it's the other way around on the u.k. exports more services so of course there's going to be a clamp down there i think overall we need to look at it as senses eventual going to going to prevail right now there's a lot of grandstanding a lot of that comes from the e.u. where of course they don't want the u.k. really leaving if the u.k. can cherry pick the best parts of being part of the e.u. that sends a negative message you know what it's kind of like and i know this analogy may not sit well with many people but this is like this is rather like a religious cult or a sect or even a club but if you let one person leave you have to show them because otherwise everybody else wants to leave there's this talk right now obviously after the swedish vote the swedes moving

a little bit right of us what's it then there's this next talk you know with the with the darts and of course the exit and then also the baltic nations are very happy if the e.u. lets the u.k. cherry pick what they want in terms of services goods and services the movement of trade that is a message they can't send to the rest of the e.u. that's what happened in salzburg that's why they've put their foot down and it's a lot of grandstanding from them and on both sides but the european nations need the u.k. to trade with a great synopsis so intelligent thank you henry ford c.e.o. strong margaret absolutely. there has been a longstanding relationship between sports and the advertisers that has drawn in countless buyers and their dollars for years are to america's regina a deeper look into the world of sports and advertising exactly how deep the money runs. the multi-million dollar sports industry shows no signs of slowing down from major soccer events to college football bowl games money from advertising flows

into these outfits and the alarming rate but only twenty five percent of all advertising brands are seen as meaningful across the global sports market according to brand finance four of the largest sports dedicated advertising brands are nike adidas under armor and gator aid with the other brands taking the top spot depending on the sport well known athletic apparel companies like nike and their jordan brand have boosted their profile by partnering with famous sports teams their latest venture being the famous soccer club perry st germain already worth two point eight billion dollars in two thousand and sixteen the partnership will add to p.s.g. is already sizeable nine hundred seventy one million dollar value revenue amassed by sponsors for the n.b.a. for example exceeded almost one hundred sixty six million dollars with state farm and playstation nabbing the top two spots according to nielsen sponsors of sports are starting to put their advertising revenue into new products streams for their sports obsessed customers papa johns is one such example as they offer pizza

specials during local and regional sporting events if the home team wins that money enabled founder john shatner to contribute money back to the university of louisville and sit on its board as well as local impacts to the economy this relationship between sports and their advertisers has long reaching impacts and many will only see profit margins kid to new to grow in the coming years. and we are joined by the aforementioned regina that was very good thank you so much so the difference that we were speaking about earlier i found pretty fascinating the the sponsors the branding in the u.s. you know they really like the teams but not so around the world that's more players explaining that they do is so you can look at some of the biggest players in the world will start with lionel messi everybody knows his face everybody knows where he's from he's from argentina plays for the spanish club f.c. barcelona there are tons of endorsements he is about worth over three hundred forty million dollars but isn't dorson feels about seventy million dollars one of his

biggest being formally worked with adidas now he works as nike that was worth a proxy about ten million dollars a year and now of course he is sponsored by a one of the biggest chinese telecom companies they pay about six million dollars a year for their deal they signed in twenty sixteen his book face is everywhere jaguar has them as well so you know you see messi you think money you know so then you go you want to they would the tennis world to see roger federer one of the best in the world as well he recently was sponsored by burl of pasta about forty million dollars for that deal an extraordinary number for you know pasta pennies i like to call them and he also sizes luxury brands as most of the tennis world like rolex and swiss chocolate makers being appropriate he's from switzerland so they also have a deal with lindt chocolates but you want to go all a part to the other side of the world you're going to talk about the ship korea he is one of the most well known tennis players in japan and of course asian brands love him he signed a deal with unique low ten million dollars tension fifty million dollars of that

extension very interesting and i just note we're about out of time but there is all this debate about capper to joining with nike and people were saying what a bad move the numbers that we were talking about earlier show nike knew what they were doing they made a good move for nike made a great move they have already raced some of those issues they had in september in their stock they've been about thirty six percent they sold their jeans up think you so much we sure appreciate you. and the original volkswagen beetle or bug was known far and wide mostly because of its design it was even the star of a movie the love bug in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight goodall herbie i was speaking with our friend lauren fix the car coach and she called it the car of peace love and rock and roll but what has become of the beloved beatle artie's rachel blevins as the story. volkswagen has announced that it will be discontinuing production of the beetle a classic car that has been

a global icon for decades the original volkswagen beetle was first made in germany and was produced from one thousand nine hundred thirty eight until two thousand and three they designed started out as an idea from nazi germany leader adolph hitler and it was available for sale in the united states starting in one nine hundred forty nine production had a high in the one nine hundred sixty s. going from around two hundred eighty thousand cars produced in one nine hundred fifty five to more than one million cars produced in one nine hundred sixty five demand began to shift to asian imports in the one nine hundred seventy s. which offered both a better quality and higher fuel economy the original beetle will be remembered for having the largest production run of a single platform with nearly twenty two million vehicles sold volkswagen then introduced the new beetle in one nine hundred ninety seven was featured on more sleek design and was manufactured in mexico but it drew criticism and was followed

by the beetle eighty five in two thousand and eleven which had a style that was closer to the original beetle even though volkswagen tried a number of public relations campaigns the newer models were never able to gain the same traction as the original beetle volkswagen was also the subject of a scandal in two thousand and fifteen that cost the company more than thirty billion dollars and resulted in criminal charges for some of the exact bolts wagon was caught rigging up to eleven million vehicles with software to cheat emissions test in some cases the cars were polluting our rates up to forty times the us standards this scandal caused volkswagen sells in the us to plummet and initially and the number of people considering purchasing the car either new or used also dropped when the new beetle was introduced in two thousand and three it's max prices. is around twenty six thousand dollars today's twenty eight thousand version of the beetle goes for around twenty thousand ultimately the financial damage from

the scandal and the fact that the new wear and cheaper versions of the beatles never gained the same popularity is the original has led to the end of one of the world's most iconic cars and washington rachel glove and art scene. and that's it for this time thanks for watching you can catch boom bust on you tube dot com slash boom bust are two ever great we can see you next time. in twenty forty you know bloody revolution to tikrit the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests to be creasing the violent revolution

is always spontaneous or is it you know lawyer here i mean you know i lived with video of me in the. school in the middle of the former ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty four. of those who took part in this today over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. delegates and. i'm just as i said. there was a building also up. in the him a new question about how they. look. for the little

guy we. don't want out of the modern i don't want to go about. something good morning. mr need to. own. a shuttle stem and we have been down. in the world. you know that a little warmth and you know. this i don't know. it's hard to imagine decades after the war a nazi don't was still active. in the ninety. in seventy s. cret intel had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mass murder and slavery at auschwitz a german company grown untold developed from the divide

a drug that was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy it turned out to have terrible side effects what has happened to my baby is anything paul you know she said is just cut short arms minix a little mind victims have to this day received no compensation they never apologized for the suffering that. not only want the money i want the revenge. it's become an international norm to say women's rights are human rights but in a world where women make up the majority of university graduates this may not be true how much more women's empowerment needs to happen before gender face policies become redundant. ministries police forces and city administrations of many countries depend on one corporation and another by mike was hoping the board doesn't want the rise of the

god of this is not the guns. that got into the city at the last also bribing them proprietary software you don't know the source code isn't that such a security risk when you have a black box operating in the public i think microsoft dependency puts governments under a cyber threat and not only that. this is a selling. this is. done with the old patients stopping there was a sting of a fund is up and describes in the fine.

if. terror groups claim an attack on a military parade in iran killing at least twenty four people is the country marks the anniversary of its war with iraq. the u.s. state department accuses the syrian government and its allies of assisting terrorists in the country coming up we examine whether or not the claims.