And other officials from pyongyang the meeting would have been the first between senior officials from the two countries those are the headlines the news continues on aljazeera after the stream. News has never been more available but the message is simplistic and misinformation is rife listening post provides a critical counterpoint trying to bring mainstream you do narrative at this time on aljazeera. Ok and youre in the stream today were looking at the situation a. B. C. Data is the country facing economic collapse so we have a new austerity budget ongoing political tensions and many citizens are unhappy right now we are live on you tube you can send us your questions or comments and be part of the show too and imo they could be a lot of street protests in sudan have mostly been quelled and theres been a virtual media blackout but the conversation is extensive online heres a look at just some of the biggest hashtags were following about these austerity measures and protests today on the protests continues sudan twenty eight thousand detainees and that the sudanese regime continues arrests now are you in sudan or want to weigh in on this Program Tweet us. Stream. They have been called the bread protests anti a stereotype demonstrations began in january after the government of president Omar Al Bashir announced the twenty eighteen budget and further economic cuts the prices of basic household staples especially flour have steadily rising and sent people into the streets several subsidies like wheat pharmaceuticals where human ated by the government and the colosseum has been devalued to improve the local economy officially one us dollar is equal to eighteen sudanese pounds but im officially on the black market the u. S. Dollar is estimated to be selling for more than double the price the government has been investing in military as it continues. Fighting on several fronts for South Kordofan and the blue nile states on sunday the government released more than eighty activists to tango in the protests and a move ordered by the president but dozens remain in prison term. We will work hard to get rid of the reasons that have led to demonstrations and detention we will be in contact with all parties concerned we will keep and maintain the human rights and we will put an end to Political Polarization in the country for the sake of our nation. And one of those detained is my own i mean his daughter tells us that her father is a retired sixty eight year old engineer whos living on a limited income he took part in an anti austerity protest on january sixteenth and has been in custody sense with no news his daughter has started a social Media Campaign and she sent us this video comment. We demand from the Sudanese Government to release him to me as they have promised us all on. What is happening right now and just illegal and human rights that are hard to rest of the sudanese people is not the solution to the economical issues and challenges facing the country right now with joining us today. Obeyed is a member of the Ruling National Congress party and former advisor to the minister of information the governments point of view will also be represented by mackey to be the media counsellor at the Sudanese Embassy in washington d. C. He was unable to join us but sent a video comment with us on sat is a Sudan Political commentator and a ph d. Student and George Washington university and hard to comment mahmoud is a sudanese activists also in hard to mubarak is a pharmacist welcome to the stream everyone i want to start with some of the personal stories that were getting from people in sudan and abroad who are sharing what life is like for them and for their family members this is a good read on twitter she says rent has more than doubled in our Apartment Building with landlords requesting board a six month advance to compensate for any expected decline in the value of currency heres one more personal story i meant to do it ill direct this to you this is mohammad who joined us in our show december twenty sixth show on sudans protest he writes for regular citizens point of view the prices took a rocket to the moon daily means are hard to meet need to have to three hundred percent more money to get what you used to the countries imports cost higher he also goes on to say that for example the simplest example is bread in two thousand and eight one pound is twenty pieces of bread and now its one so you read stories like when you hear stories like that what do you think has changed since the last time you were on the show which was also that same show in twenty sixteen so i think. There are a couple of things that have changed but the most important one is definitely the lifting of u. S. Sanctions when we were here last time the government spokesman was focused on the removal of u. S. Sanctions and blaming the sanctions for all of the Economic Issues in sudan the sanctions were formally removed in september last year but what ended up happening was actually a trend going in the opposite direction instead of the economy improving we saw the economy get much worse and thats because the government was not planning ahead and dealing with what the result of the sanction was going to be the sudanese economy was actually insulated for a good majority of the time that the sanctions were in place and the government was able to control the money supply now the government was expecting the inflow and vesa of investments into the country that didnt happen because nobody is willing to invest in the current geo political environment of sudan but it actually also helped people take their money out so now people are able to withdraw money out of sudan much more easily putting a huge strain on the currency and on the economy overall so as long as the government is not able to actually deal with that problem its not going to be able to resolve the crisis at the moment someone here i know says the very first tweet on your twitter. Account right now is one from us and says i knew it would get bad so i withdrew all my savings we have to depend on acquaintances to bring us very center from my mother from abroad it is not available in sudan and it is critical made he said how are you dealing with this new austerity budget what does it actually mean for you when you go shopping. Ok to comment on the fact that shes finding difficulty for stitching her medicine or her mothers medicine rather than with a very common problem. The Dollar Exchange rate for medicine imports which caused. The problems last year in the civil disobedience it was the movement of the Exchange Rate from six point one to put to sixteen point eight. Members two thousand and sixteen and government bodies responsible for pricing policies. Said i retracted the prices at that time and he said that they will control it and maintain it but they were not able to do so because the problem is not is not mean it cannot be solved in this way. It is actually a problem of currency if the current rate for result of for exchange for imports of medicine. As twenty most of these. Seventeen and today is temporary as a so very few thousand and eighteen cents as at thirty sudanese pounds and that resulted in a problem for employers. If they have a bit of currency the central bank is not providing them with currency they have to buy cars from the black market to purchase medication as a result of all of this became an instability in the supply of medicine a lot of importance items have become scarce and unavailable. Some say are no commuters probably ready they want me for those important i can set the counts castle on available like what for instance. For instance today we have a few lifesaving i like maybe i can buy came an album and these are are important lifesaving medications that are not available. A lot of the Important Companies face a problem purchasing the dollar their rates much higher than that used for pricing of medication. Which makes them shy in investing a reinvesting in repurchasing medication to supply it to the. To the pharmacies and. Because of that it became and became a problem of scarcity of lack of availability as i had said it was the issue of sanctions was always used as an excuse but this is not the case the sanctions have been suspended and yet the problem remains and its getting worse by the day and were just bringing back the abdo here he is the adviser to sudans minister of information that. Can you explain to the International Audience why there is a new austerity budget. For the the. Most closely the improvement. Of a preferred to do b. Because. These information which reflects the. Rise. Of this is for the people the government is doing a lot of i think with. A. Little. The price of going to be proud that you did that are you saying that of the government maybe. It would be about. The government. That took the. Economy. To lift the t. V. From. The economy the reality comedy called if i can i like government. The government right now were not actually even to provide any sort of excuses for its mismanagement there is a one hundred seventy three billion. Billion pound budget right now and the budget itself has a sixty four percent deficit the government is saying its going to actually cover that deficit with taxes and its actually enable to do that because there is a lot of shadow spending thats happening within the government and unless that is actually addressed the prices are going to continue to rise the currencies continue to deteriorate spending to less so basically a lot of what actually ends up being spent is opaque we dont know how much the government is spending in reality we get a certain percentage of for example spending on the military on security officially i think in this budget its twenty four percent but according to a lot of very well respected sources thats as high as seventy percent and as we know as any authority on regina its number one for us and as the entire budget exactly on security so with as many of these offshore ten regimes we know that there is actually a propensity just to defend themselves and to continue to be in power when the me absolutely. For example twenty eight other no its not at least if you go on the web site. Now. And also the. Twenty seven pm. The government is intentionally blocking our access to information it is extremely hard for us to understand the situation what happened but from the village a lot from. Whats to go into doing is applying a certain measure of it thinks it will save it from this hyper inflation this and but sudan has been in a state of. Iraq time now and even during the oil years before the suppression of south the independence. Like imus it did get spending in arming in the. Gulf its militias roaming the country and i know you have this. Crazy theres no fixed number for it but you know so mad and i led what you are referencing its really actually what the majority of our community is also are been saying they think that too much of the budget is being allocated to the military so this isnt my bash she says the new budget is strongly catering to the Security Industry and the Productive Industries such as other culture dont receive any support to flourish another person eman highly right send that the Budget Allocation is higher than i believe is being said in any money use for military spending is causing this issue to get deeper and deeper sudans continued investment and war comes at a time when the sudanese pound is at a record low against foreign currencies so that im going to direct these to you people say that the budget has too much military spending in it whats your response to that. You know actually the bug is that to my brother given that you know the. Quality of that is a lot of amount of money to. Charity will result not now or tomorrow it sometime. Actually. Was money but one of the really really not to belittle your security or are you. Going to money this is this is more. Of the economy this is actually the pay of course of. The money that already made but due to some reflections of the people i think that the Government Holding a lot of the records. Only more strongly negative attention to hunger because im going to quit after a whole type of am because i know that you are not happy but i can hear you and that was that ok well try to claim that there is money to have been allocated to us production im asking what money went where you didnt understand my father i dont know exports the government is barely the countrys bill exporting anything to bring u. S. Dollars into the country whats whats been happening the past year there have been an influx of importing of goods that catering to a very Small Community basically whats happening right now is the government basically what they went on and denied the people even their money even the middle class now they are limited to their own money in the banks which it indicates and i think it indicates that this kind of corruption happening how can a bank deny me my money which i have in a current account i cant even withdraw my money right now because ive been to the. Do you mean do you think i mean i think thats a very good point because right now what we see is that people have actually lost confidence in the fiscal system there was a huge run on banks several weeks ago and it continues to today and the government. Has actually issued several directives that are contradicting each other and we see the central bank one day trying to create some sort of fiscal policy that is trying to resolve the situation and then the political actors the. Political apparatus comes in and says no this is this is untenable and in fact when the government stopped allowing people to withdraw their money it said that were going to have some sort of fiscal monitoring or fiscal tightening but at the same time within less than two days it came and said actually were going to continue to print money at the same rate which is going to obviously drive inflation to go up so there is a contradiction between the economists within the government and the politicians within the government unless that is actually addressed in the countries actually just going to continue down the slide rather i want to show our audience this from the republic of sudan the council of ministers big headline here Prime Minister reassured the flow of basic commodities for sixty cents how are you doing that hows that going. Arguing showing that people get basic commodities and they can if youre full of fuel and i have rights to the. People. And really the rising price of your. But really i think that the prices but there is no shortage of. Prices because these prices. Are literally by the. Government. To. Go through. A lot of. Different. Different. People to get. At is a price. I want to bring in here and i want to bring in just a comment that we got live on you to this is from charles weenie and i meant to do that you touched on this earlier but some ahead ill throw this to you in case you can help explain a little bit more charles says why has the economy gotten worse after the same sions where some would say lived it others want to know want to know they werent necessarily listed this is it but he was says u. S. Sanctions werent removed they were eased sedan still has stifling u. S. Sanctions attached with bogus state sponsor of terrorism does it nation and only when those things sions are removed ordinary sudanese see improved Living Standards did you see any change in your life so i heard after the easing of sanctions. Not at all in fact sanctions are always used as an excuse the problem is not the sanctions the problem is failure in policy itself this is an accumulation of policy failure from the independence or separation of south sudan. In two thousand and. Its a political failure and an economic failure. And in response to a comment earlier mr obvious that the government will be subsidizing in your budget. Some of the basic money i would like to know which cannot be things are going to be subsidized and also in addition in the senate are the weekend agenda which has been released recently or rather not released to the public we do not really have accept that but if speculated that two percent of the budget only two percent of allocated to health care and approximately three percent of allocated to education the rest of the budget where does it go so let me just remind you to. Read an outlet and somebody here at will with us on the stream in december twenty sixth at that time he said when he said this have a listen everybody would have given the government is the amount that it because amount of the budget that you have located through Security System i promise you to move this budget to stop investing gov and allow us to organize and i give you a week me ill give you three days and the government will be overthrown by the people because you are putting all i want to into protecting you so this is. Called of the war that you mentioned because of the war that you talked about you dont want to understand the war is to side the government. So that my day he was talking to. Me and hes the media counselor at the signees embassy in washington d. C. He said do you want me to organize lets organize you send us some pictures let me show them to our audience here on my laptop what are we seeing right here. What were seeing is the aftermath of the press conference that the government called for the prison of corporate or prison when they are now is that they are releasing the pretty danish so we had the families and friends of detainees we gathered at the prison anticipating our loved ones to come out but it turned out that its all just a show and media showed as they only released approximately thirty persons and they deny they deny there is all of us so the families and friends of the side that were staying were not moving an inch unless we see our loved ones this happened spontaneously but its in fact its a result that added to the all of the past year but people have been protesting you have been speaking up because the circle of anger has expanded you pick this government its now creating enemies in trouble im a commodity spoke of the world but yes there is a war in the periphery see the world how putin economic what everyone is really concerned about it how to get about their. Food and so i could i fear you know i want to i want to add mahmoud i hear you there i want to hear i want to share this tweet you might agree most likely with this persons ohare says the price hike has been followed by civil unrest in which hundreds were arrested few were released and the rest are being kept hostage this person says in prison according to a statement from the government now the government is represented by the u. S. Embassy here Mackey Mcnairy says that these protests have been infiltrated by armed groups heres what he told the stream we shouldnt mix between rebel movements and Political Parties or art of movement and Political Parties because the public demonstration. Could be hijacked by the art of movement that they want to the top of the region by many shias and by armed groups not by peaceful demonstration activities and you need to link deeply to the situation of sudan. So i could do that youve been following the protests online of course you have family and friends back in today and what are they telling you do they do they mesh with what mr mcguinty said absolutely not basically what were seeing on the streets here people are fed up people are tired there are families that are unable to afford basic commodities basic goods to eat to go to school the price of transport has gone up people are spending you know the measure of time is no longer a measure ment of is normally by months but how long your salary actually lasts and not one so the reality is right now what we are seeing is the political opposition is trying to actually take advantage of this economic crisis and trying to mobilize people but the government as weve seen is actually very willing to crack down severely its arrested most of the leadership of the Political Parties people are not able to mobilize on the street to speak to write in the newspapers journalists wrested International Journalists are also have been detained for example so the government cannot come in tell us that there is a there isnt a crisis because there is a crisis you can follow the. Right here at aljazeera dot com news and you can see all of the stories on our dot com as far as this conversation is concerned i have time just to thank i guess at an ad rather yeah i hear that being part of this conversation continues online. Take avidly. Right. Once held in one of australias toughest Detention Centers now a world renowned surgeon one of when his followers dr moon derose as returns to his hometown baghdad to give deputies the hope of walking again at this time on our visit. To. The responding Six Continents across the globe. Aljazeera is correspondents live and bringing the stories they tell of this was. You know one of the letters. Were at the mercy of the russian camp for Palestinian Refugees over syria food in world news why would they not get the it up. They must go to. One is. On the nineteenth of december twenty sixth Mahmoud Hussein was detained by the egyptian authorities he remains behind bars without a trial aljazeera world investigates his case and media repression in egypt. Journalism is not a crime this time on aljazeera. Facing the realities growing up when did you realize that you were living in a special place a socalled secret city getting to the heart of the matter why is activists to live in jail just because she expressed herself hear their story on talk to aljazeera at this time. Oh look book. Look book and mo dates in the syrian rebel held districts of east and go to wait Government Forces are pounding the area with air strikes killing more than two hundred people