we will not allow the face of syria to be darkened by terrorist organizations yet. we stress the territorial integrity of syria the sovereignty of syria and the unity of syria the independence of syria should be set there's a very high priority and this is what the people of syria want sri lanka's prime minister has survived a no confidence vote in parliament the opposition call for the motion after accusing runaway of economic mismanagement he needed one hundred thirteen votes in the two hundred twenty five member of parliament to defeat the motion. and then asia's state oil company says a ruptured undersea pipe caused the massive oil spill off of borneo island at least five fishermen have died since the slick court file on saturday events are being held across the u.s. to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader martin luther king jr at his memorial in washington dozens of people gathered for a rally calling for an end to racism cain was standing on the balcony of

a memphis motel when he was shot dead on april fourth one thousand nine hundred sixty eight as the headlines all have the news out in twenty five minutes time off the inside story which is next. hello i'm has a seeker this is counting the cost on al-jazeera your weekly look at the world of business and economics this week there's a new way to trade oil a crude futures contract was launched in china find out what it all means for the dollar and oil exporting countries. the africa c e o four and twenty eighteen way

into africa trade was a hot topic of the world's largest gathering of the continent's private sector. plus a push for better regulation of the digital economy has led to a rocky end of quarter for big tech. all this week history was made when the shanghai international energy exchange launched the first crude futures contracts priced in chinese renminbi or you on it is an attempt to turn the global oil market on its head but china the world's biggest oil importer buys around nine million barrels of oil every day and it wants to use its own currency to price the world's most traded commodity you've heard of petro dollars but what about petro you on the u.s. dollar has been the main currency for oil futures contracts so launching a contract in its domestic currency is a sign that china wants to you want to play

a bigger role in global oil trading china's also taking on the world's most used oil benchmarks brant and w.t. i crewed which are both priced in dollars but shanghai traded oil is still far away from earning benchmark status and taking on the petro dollar won't be easy. we're joining us now from london is maidana asia analyst and vice president of research at energy aspects thanks very much for being with us so first off what does this mean then for the major oil producers particularly here in the gulf region who have always traded on the u.s. dollars. for now it doesn't mean many changes the oil is still going to trade in the u.s. dollar but increasingly over time there will be more transactions in r. and b. this is not a game changer yet this is not at all the r. and b. the chinese currency seizing the u.s. dollar but it does mean that increasingly some of the flows will go in r. and b. this gives chinese refiners and domestic traders the ability to buy

a crude using their own currency but again the transition to the dollar will still have to happen so just picking up on that then what does this mean for for the oil consumers like china that they are going to be trading on their own currency what is that what implications does that have going for i mean the goal is for china to establish an asian benchmark that will reflect chinese consumption and sort of chinese and more broadly asian demand patterns but in the near term we have to bear in mind that roughly seventy or even more than that of the people registered on the retail investors so there is a huge risk of speculation being pretty rampant on the irony and to begin with we are seeing quite a lot of movement that is fueled just by the need of chinese mom and pop investors to find a place to put their money so we shouldn't place too much emphasis for now on this is a reflection of chinese consumption needs but again as the evolves and as the contract

specific so i am doubt it will become a better reflection of how china is consuming oil and how much it needs on a forward basis does this have the potential though in the future to challenge the u.s. dollar dominance in oil trading i mean i think that's still highly unlikely i mean if we're looking at a ten fifteen outlook perhaps but for that to happen we would need the chinese currency to become freely convertible we would need other countries to open up to settlement in the r. and b. but again the first and the primary issue will be currency convert ability and for now the chinese gover. and is very reluctant to loosen currency controls and to give it up to free trade and how much of a challenge is that going to be then for foreign investors because the goal here is as well is to get more. foreign investors to buy into chinese or futures. foreign investors are very cautiously starting to trade on the i any they can hedge their

r. and b. exposure but again it will be more of limited transactions on the i need to try and get a sense of how these are happening what the irony could become is a storage play in asia so because there are storage tanks associated with the irony it could be a venue for foreign traders of foreign investors will be mostly traders and people with the physical exposure to bring crude to china store it offshore and then deliver it elsewhere into asia so there is the element of hedging the currency risk which i think a lot of foreign investors are used to but before this becomes a more widely used tools again we would need the chinese oil market to open up much further and the chinese currency to liberalize a much deeper way than it is currently. and we've heard a lot of talk over the last year about the chinese president xi jinping one built one road initiative this this initiative to develop ties across

europe the middle east and asia could paying in pain for one penny in one for oil how is that tied into that when it's all part of china's you could call it empire building it's laying the infrastructure and then laying the physical infrastructure and then the financial technical foundations for china to become the hub or the center of a broader trading universe if you will that it revolves around the silk road there are actors that do pay an r. and b. in that are willing to accept those trade offs more often than not the producers that are willing to buy an r. and b. are the ones that are under sanctions or that have limited access to global financial markets and therefore it is a double edged sword for them right now so again the currency of the r. and b. will increase in a war i'm seeing it increasing global transactions that is part of the belt and road but for china to become. a truly global player it will also have to relinquish

some of the controls that it likes to hold on in the foreign in the domestic market and again that will take time but what's the likelihood of that of that happening of china's government loosing loosening the reins so to speak it's very hard to see that happen in the coming five years. they still have a lot of domestic challenges that they need to meet and those and i think the government sent increasingly under siege and ping is that the state and the party needs a very firm control over that if liberalisation was the trend in the ninety's i think we're very much thing a reversal of that so china is very much willing to become a global player but under its own terms and whether the global market in global investors are happy to take that on i think we're not seeing a huge amount of appetite for that yet recommit and thanks for being with us thank you now technology stocks have had a dramatic we got one point the so-called fang stocks of facebook amazon netflix

and google saw their worst one day loss as a group but by thursday they managed to end the quarter higher and it's all because the business models of tech titans like facebook a beginning more attention from regulators and stock market valuations may have to be adjusted if the current business models are forced to change and the way our data is used is something john a whole explores now. britain fielding every single time the man who murdered josh is an illegal alien they were asked to pave the way. to brussels political attack ads are nothing new the reason aiming there but a carefully selected audience so-called micro targeting what is relatively news the use of personalized data by political campaigns to find out almost as much about you as you know about yourself in terms of the whole ethos of influence and persuasion you know every every every post everything that you like these are all bits of data that are going towards building

a profile against people that want to say knowledge is power so it's really surgically and been able to predict and influence people's behavior at the heart of the scandal involving the political consultancy cambridge analytical and its alleged use of data from fifty million facebook profiles is the charge that personal data has been used to distort and undermine the democratic process but the easiest way that you can influence someone's behavior is by can't continue to be showing them something time and time again then they become unconsciously influenced and therefore take comp attention on the new belief system the point of most political campaigns is to change beliefs and attitudes so is there anything wrong with targeting voters in this way cambridge analytical has boasted that its cutting edge micro-targeting campaign won the us election for donald trump that sparked outrage and indignation of course especially among trump's political

opponents but it's worth remembering that a previous president is also believed to have won the white house thanks to online micro-targeting none other than barack obama and with considerably less outrage and indignation as a result well i think the segmentation that they are doing now which came realists go doing now is very much the same thing that barack obama did in two thousand. and it's world it's trying to make the advertisements as relevant and personal to people and voters as as possible benedict pringle is an addict executive who also runs a blog on the sometimes dirty business of political advertising he's day job and his sideline have much in common while campaign techniques become ever more precise winning elections is after all a sales job i think that the margins in the trunk election and in the preference that referendum were so small and the number of people that were in play the persuadable voters were were so few that the number of ads

that were run the amount of money that was spent in targeting them would have undoubtedly had an impact on the result would it change the result impossible to say well it impacted at least you know a decent chunk of the persuadable voters absolutely so micro targeting is a winning strategy that's here to stay and the more data we put into the system about ourselves the more data is available to influence to persuade and to change the way we think. now reports that u.s. president donald trump is looking to change the way online retailer amazon is regulated sent its share price plummeting earlier this week catch your lopez whole diane reports. thank closing bell the price of amazon shares had dropped by some five percent in the course of the day that's a loss of close to fifty billion dollars to shareholders. this is a consequence of

a report that president trump is and i quote obsessed with amazon but i applaud the formation of the innovation council and angry at its owner jeff bezos here in a conversation with president trump during a round table at the white house the last time amazon suffered this scale of loss modeled this tweet in august of last year amazon is doing great damage to taxpayers retailers declared president trump towns cities and states throughout the u.s. are being hurt many jobs being lost perhaps not coincidentally bizos is also the owner of the washington post that has been twins with amazon in disparaging presidential tweets the report quotes an unnamed sources saying trump has wandered allowed if there may be any way to go after amazon with antitrust or competition law despite this being the domain of the federal trade commission and the justice department the white house denies there is any specific policy being considered against any specific organization we have no announcements and no specific policies

or actions that we're currently pushing forward are considering taking the president has said many times before he's always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses in this is no different going to always can look at different ways but there aren't any specific policies on the table at this time. an assurance that may ring hollow to shareholders who have lost billions as the possible consequence of a president once again publicly thinking aloud all right still to come on counting the cost of a rebranding of tourist towns in the mountains of cyprus. for first when stocks are included in a big international index it means millions of dollars of foreign investment will flow in that's because index track of funds by law have to buy stocks that make up these indexes so let's look at this week's decision to include saudi arabia stock

markets in a key emerging market index run by footsie russell from march twenty ninth seen a lack of prompt inflows of about five billion dollars from funds tracking the index rival global index m f c i will make a decision in june on whether to include saudi stocks that could mean a further ten billion dollars would pour in boosting foreign ownership of saudi stocks and foreign by interest is something the saudis will be chasing if a plan to list part of the world's biggest oil company saudi aramco goes ahead and you may have seen some headlines this week about the world's biggest ever solar project saudi arabia and japan softbank signed up to a two hundred billion dollars solar mega plan it will feature the biggest battery ever made and networks of solar panels across the saudi arabian desert and several analysts are cautioned the current agreement is not binding and could be revised now anger is growing from some consumers in somalia over the rising cost of

shopping and eating out and because of the first five percent sales tax in nearly thirty years the government says the levy is crucial for somalia's economic recovery mohamed atta reports from mogadishu. we're going to shoes leave the beach is a sign of somalia's growing sense of optimism at its coffers with shaded table sit clients mainly middle mogadishu's welfare elite sipping expensive coffee but these days they're having to pay more for their food and drinks the government has just introduced a five percent sales tax for the first time in almost thirty years many are unhappy . i just paid three dollars of tax yet i don't trust the government they have missed my needs revenue from other sources including don't know if child this tax will not be different than the reaction of somali traders to the tax has been more dramatic. shops and stores in mogadishu spalling but car market which is

a lifeline for the city and surrounding areas remain closed for days the traders were particularly and get by the governments and sisters that they pay the value added tax up front for the mother said we had meetings with the prime minister and his finance minister to voice our complaints the meetings was inconclusive we've been decided to shut our businesses in protests. businesses have since really opened signaling a fast round of victory for the government in one of their last we explained that there was no going back on the stacks and that it must be paid for the sake of the nation of somalia people relented and now more and more people are stepping forward to register for taxation government officials say live in you from taxes will be distributed across the regions of the country to fund health care education infrastructure and security tax collection is also a key condition for that relief for somalia from the international monetary fund

and the world bank somalia also around four billion dollars most of it interest and penalties on nearly three decades all made to the former military government whose overthrow in one thousand nine to one and plunged the country into years of lawlessness. that makes it almost impossible for mogadishu to access money from international organizations like the i.m.f. forcing it to rely almost entirely on aid for its budget with some some loss of to please the optimism that somalia my top i'm bucked and the road to solve reliance but in taxing a mission the class in little more lives than almost three decades officials admit there policing a daunting task. this week africa's biggest companies have been meeting heads of state and investors at the annual africa c.e.o. forum this year's two day event held in ivory coast featured discussion and debate around the economic and industrial challenges facing the african continent it comes

just one week after the leaders of forty four african countries signed a framework deal to create one of the world's largest free trade blocks but nigeria and south africa two of the continent's biggest economies have yet to sign up so into africa trade and getting rid of barriers was a hot topic at this year's c.e.o. forum where joining us now from london is reza harney chief economist for africa middle east research at standard chartered bank thanks very much for being with us so what do you what do you take us as the main theme from this year's africa c.e.o. forum. well there's certainly a lot of growth optimism at the moment and this stems from what we've seen on a global level we started twenty eighteen with expectations of growth in almost every major economy and understandably this is feeding into commodity prices it's feeding into individual african economy is however a more consistent theme has been this great you realized in the recent past that

global growth alone is not going to do it for africa there are still very big economies nigeria for example something of a fragile recovery having come out of some very difficult months now performing positively and to having emerged from the recession but a great deal more focus that's needed on domestic reform and i think that sense of reality is something that is shared by many different african economies the worst might be over in terms of that three year adjustment to week a commodity prices but there are still considerable challenges ahead and one of the things that was talked about this forum is this whole idea of moving away from outside investment and getting africans themselves to be bigger players in their own economies how how important is that do you think it is is that something that

is registering with many of these countries and their governments this has been a growing theme and certainly even through those recent years of slower growth in africa generally we have seen greater interest from african companies african multinationals investing in other countries we think that this is likely to be built on over the coming years it is all through all african c.e.o.'s who are most closely in touch with the opportunities in neighboring countries so we do expect to see is the theme that much more cross for the investment however it's also necessary. to take a border map pro economic look at this for most countries in africa there is still a need to dramatically scale up the investments that we're likely to see either on the public side or the private side the fact that we're seeing other african businesses more interested in investing in the neighboring countries is

a good thing but it can never be the complete response to the challenge that exists and that is that most sub-saharan african countries are still in need of a great deal more investment than they are currently seeing where are the surpluses going to be generated that's certainly going to be a case for investment from the rest of africa as well as the rest of the world and what about the african companies themselves. there is an expectation broadly that some of those very difficult financial conditions are giving way to perhaps what might be the expectation of greater growth greater volumes growth in the years ahead we shouldn't forget the context of this if we look back on recent experience it has been a challenging time in many condom is there were issues to do with shortages of foreign exchange which key commodity produces an only just recently starting to work out of the operating environment in africa has been more difficult as we saw

governments drug lng in some instances to keep up with payments banking systems were impacted loan growth has been weak in many different countries and it's really only in twenty eighteen where we expect to see something of a more robust economic recovery taking hold which will relieve some of those pressures to do with that difficult operating environment and there is also this drive across the continent to bring down the trade barriers between individual countries their efforts as well for towards open skies to to make travel across the continent more efficient how does that factor into all of this and improving all of these economies there are needless barriers that make it difficult for one african corporates to be investing in another so the fact that forest such as the recent ceo's form means that people are starting to talk about these issues is and the

expectation is that there is going to be something in the way of delivery to address these unnecessary barriers that is only something that can in the business environment that can lead to more positive outcomes in the future. all right good to speak with you reza hahn joining us there from london thank you and finally tourism is booming in cyprus as the island works to recover from a damaging financial crisis five years ago not all areas though are reaping the rewards sammy said then explains how the government is trying to change that it's hard to fit into a post card just how nice it is to be away from the subzero temperatures back home we come to savor is because i know you're in the grain is snowy and cold and we wanted to go to spring to see flowers and maybe to seem. it's a familiar story the abundance of beaches and sunshine has attracted steadily increasing numbers of tourists to cyprus. that has seen the economies of coastal towns boosted

as the number of visitors reach three point six million last year officials expect the number of tourists to reach a record level in two thousand and eighteen many head for seaside towns of course leaving places in the mountains like up at three a here not as frequent as they could be a fact the government says it now wants to change. is ready for change has souvenir shop in calcutta three a gets its first visitors of the afternoon. the town is one of several in the trudeau's mountains facing declining numbers of tourists. government talk of reviving tourist towns like hers is raising her hopes i think it's a very good idea because high living in the mountains and will be very happy to have more tourists because we're living you know. all of us when it's hung jobs here. the government is unveiling a plan to increase visits to tourist spots left out of the boom sixteen billion

euros are being set aside to upgrade infrastructure and another million to improve hotels is to give a new branch of science in the local areas the mountains for example to find out the way of life for blue suit but it's not only on the beaches but on the mountains as work. that way of life is struggling in those mountains as visitors dwindle so does business and people end up migrating to cities a newspaper can pass the time when you hardly have a customer in your restaurant but it won't reveal a new chapter for your town for that many are hoping the government's initiative will rescue them from a sticky situation and that is our show for this three grammy can get in touch with us by tweeting me at has been seeker and do you use the hash tag a.j. c t c when you do or drop us an email counting the cost at al-jazeera dot net is our address and there's more for you on line at al-jazeera dot com slash c t c that

will take you straight to our page which has individual horse lengths and entire episodes to catch up and. that's it for this edition of counting the cost and has a secret from the whole team here thanks for joining us the news on al-jazeera is next. i really did bad thing. would i be able to forgive somebody like me a convicted war criminal seeks out the survivors of a prison camp to apologize for the crimes of his past i just can't believe that

even better showing. the unforgiven a witness documentary on al-jazeera my old team ascalon back. there's nothing but. new yorkers are very receptive to al this because it is such an international city they're very interested in that global perspective that al jazeera provides. this is al-jazeera. hello i'm maryam namazie this is the news hour live from london coming up in the next sixty minutes. shared.