This is WORLD BUSINESS report from the B.B.C. World Service I'm Alex Ritson fears a growing those high levels of alcohol tax in Russia may have contributed to a mass poisoning that killed more than 60 people blow through because. I felt severe headache in the morning when I wake up at dawn I realized I was losing my vision when I was looking at the light it felt like I was blinded by car headlights want to fly a drone in the U.K. New rules mean you will soon have to pass a test someone is going to fly into something or a person or a car or a building that should be controlled what they control firearms and fears are growing that the political stalemate in the Gambia could cause an economic meltdown this lady sat business the ice not in in here where we took our children or something like that you can send us your views well Doc business at B.B.C. Dot ca Datuk a or at B.B.C. World biz on Twitter President Putin has promised to look at the taxes on alcohol after more than 60 people died in Siberia through drinking cheap bath oil it's estimated that up to 12000000 Russians are regularly consuming either illegally made alcohol or alcoholic household products that are in theory anyway made for other purposes those who died in a coup a tweaked a bath oil called Hawthorn whose label advertised an ethanol content of 93 percent but which actually contained methylated spirits this man and woman was speaking from the intensive care unit of the local hospital. With your I went to the shop and thoughts I'm ashamed to say what it was 250 grams of by a rational bath or well and I drank it with my husband and his mother she's unfortunately died as a result of this situation I called an ambulance for my husband but ended up here myself I don't know what's happened to my husband. Where I can find him trying. To roll through but. I felt severe headache in the morning when I wake up at dawn I realized I was losing my vision when I was looking at the light it felt like I was blinded by car headlights. Balder over so B.B.C. Reporter based in Moscow I asked him to explain reports that the tax system is driving Russians to buy alternative alcohol products. Well the situation is probably more complicated but you're right the talks for vodka and the minimal illegal price for a bottle of vodka were rising in Russia for the past I think 6 years or so and there's a whole libertarian conservative debate about this. The cheapest bottle of vodka now in Russia cost $190.00 rubles that's about $3.00 and in this price 65 percent of it is tax of course the tax is flat if you move to better brands it's become a relatively low but it's still very expensive to those who count every copeck to put this in comparison the the some good stuff which poison people in Eastern Siberia cost 6 times less and it had twice as much alcohol why do people do this are people that pull that this is their only option life in Russia is hard it was never very good but I think everyone agrees that it got worse during these 2 past years and the population is steeped in tradition of self medicating it knows what to do in times of hardship and with the minimal price of a half liter bottle of vodka now at $190.00 rubles that's about $3.00 the stuff they were drinking in Eastern Siberia in their course cost $6.00 times less so the food for the poorest the most desperate the solution is evident and yet it was poison it was poison this was actually pretending to be a legitimate product this was something called a bath concentrate I don't think anyone would be pretending that a cost of half a dollar and in a very crude bottle this was designed for any beauty obsessed Russians I think people who are making this know exactly what market they work for but the bottle was saying that this was based on ethanol when instead in reality it contained poisonous methyl spirits so as one analyst put it Russia is now stoop solo but they're now making counterfeits are it alcohol just. Let me get this right you're suggesting that the manufacturer knew when they were making this product that people would go out and buy it to drink it it wasn't for people to use for putting in their part of the tool it was they knew that this was going to be a product that essentially alcoholics would target I think at this price in this packaging it looks very very certain that this would not be sold for people to enjoy in cosmetics there is this Nish which is on one side is legal because that's how beauty products are supposed to be made with ethanol spirits on the other case made so cheaply that they are certainly not designed for general population interested in health care so like President Putin has promised a crackdown what's this going to mean well he directed his government to see what can be done to taxation to eliminate stories like this and logic tells us that the tax would have to be cut for legal what good to cheapen and so people would turn away from the sort of gates as far as surrogates productions go Well another thing which Russians do almost as good as drinking vodka is creating regulations and that's what Mr Putin now said that regulations will have to be tightened on production and sale of surrogates who can make them and who can sell them now the 3rd thing Russians do almost as well as the 1st do is to circumvent the restrictions and do things under the table and policing this would be one big headache and profiting on turning a blind eye to those regulations this will just become another source of making good money the B.B.C.'s leg bowled over half the markets and America's main share index the Dow Jones closed down a 5th of one percent at $19.00 and $9.00 for one I asked Doug McIntyre of 247 Wall Street if it was ever likely to hit the psychologically important 20000 mark while the situation is probably more complicated but you are. I think right now that depends more on international events than it does on the economy or sentiment about stocks divorced from what happens outside the United States people are starting to get spooked and for good reason by the amount of up you're having now in Germany Turkey Switzerland if there are another one or 2 of these incidents out of anxiety about global political stability is going to start to go up sharply why you see this investors in the United States connect political events in Germany old news events in Germany with the stock price of companies that are making consumer goods a little whatever it might be well give you an example Angela Merkel is considered the pillar of European stability this latest tragedy in Berlin likely undermines their chances of getting a lot to do. Her position as queen of Europe is very important to most American business men who do like. Really Europe's economy is Germany is 5th largest economy in the world so this is sort of a domino theory which means it could fall busy apart any time but that's the kind of thing that worries a condom and business people in the United States you have these events and then they lead to changes. To back to us says to the sell side I noticed drug companies were among the big full of today companies like mimic what was going on part of the drug company problem is the eventual fate of Obamacare in Merck specific case they had several trials that have gone well Big Pharma at this point is I think on a secular downtrend because. Generics are eating up a lot of their market place now and a whole bunch of major drugs that Merck has are coming basically off that had last question I dare to set the price of natural gas up 9 percent on the day on expectations that it's going to be a really cold winter despite the worries about global warming you know that now I have a polar vortex which I guess is caused by. And the forecast is that in the northern tier of states that are coming to the Arctic Canada is going to cause jump to Tuesday be $220.00 degrees ready below what they would be in the normal year Doug McIntyre of 247 Wall Street at the end of the trading day in London the $100.00 share index little moved at $7041.00 in the currency markets the euro at one dollar 4.2 yo a sense the pound trading at $1.23 President Obama has evoked a federal law to permanently banned new oil and gas drilling in U.S. Are taken for granted waters the joint initiative with Canada is likely to be his last big environmental protection measure before he leaves office next month invoking the law means Mr Obama's success at Donald Trump will face a legal battle if he wants to overturn the ban Jacqueline Savitz of the merits time conservation advocacy group Oceana says this is an important moment there's a lot of pressure to tour all the areas that produce oil and gas it's also very important for marine wildlife including endangered our planet quite well and others be a very important economic driver for tourism and fishery industries up and down the coast and that's why our grass roots work was able to turn out so much opposition from the business community saying look why do you want to trade a hoped for economy for one that already exists and thriving Dr Keith Myers is an oil industry consultant with Richmond Energy Partners and is a former executive with B.P. I asked him if oil companies actually wanted to drill in these remote and inhospitable areas some of the industry want to do it is not a general thing I mean opinions differ on how important the Arctic is there is plenty of potential for hydrocarbons to be find there the industry is running out of perspective from 2 year areas to explore so it's attractive in that sense but you find quite a few geologists that don't think the industry. Should doesn't Sarah Lee be exploring there as it's too difficult and too expensive whatever the environmental concerns this is one of the most hostile areas of planet Earth presumably it's enormously expensive it depends where you are in the Arctic there are parts of the Arctic notably the Norwegian Barents Sea for example where most of the drilling actually takes place which is ice free because of the Gulf Stream and the operating challenges there really aren't were in the west of Shetlands But on the U.S. Side of the Atlantic there's more ice on that side I mean shell spent about $2.00 to $3000000000.00 including the cost of acquiring leases in exploring the trip to see Karen spent $1300000000.00 to drill 8 unsuccessful wells in Greenland in $21011.00 the next on Rosneft recently spent we think about $500000000.00 drilling a well in the car see what happens the biggest discovery of 2014 Shell has walked away but will other companies want to move in here where depends where you're talking obviously this president's made zation on the U.S. Side and also in Canada yes but Russia Russia is drilling in the Arctic there are still large areas which aren't controlled by the United States well exactly I think the Russians will continue to explore and in the last least in Norway $24.00 companies applied for licenses just this year to drill in the Arctic barons see there's plenty of interest in exploring in the end where the companies want to drill in the Arctic are not does it just essentially come down to the cost of doing it the issue with the Arctic is that it is very expensive so it's at the very high end of development costs to give you some idea there is a field goal your home Casper which is operated by the Norwegian state oil company stocks oil it did have a break even price of a right and $80.00 a barrel after the oil price crash cost of come down and they reengineer did we think it could break even at around $40.00 to $50.00 a barrel at today's or price is a good. Discovery like that is marginally economic So it does come down to economics really there are going to be people all over the world who regard drilling in the Arctic is as almost a seen something that's very wrong to do to oil companies care about that oil companies are businesses and they operate within the rules that society creates the present the United States has said that we don't want to have any drilling in the Arctic then there won't be any drilling in the Arctic ultimately is a political decision. But would American companies consider drilling in other parts of the Arctic which aren't affected by President Obama's ban the well in the car A C. Was drilled by X. On almost the most northerly Well that's been drilled in the offshore and back to listen was the C.E.O. Of Exxon to be the next secretary of state so what you're saying is they will simply stick to the letter of the law moral dilemmas don't enter into it businesses are businesses and they should always operate within the war that there was a society sets down to regulate behavior and if society says that drilling in the Arctic is unethical and wrong then to create a law to ban it there Norwegian government clearly don't believe it to be at the wrong that's the country where most offshore drilling in the Arctic happens and if American companies want to get in on the act then they can go explore Norway and the Norwegian government or work on them with open arms Dr Keith Myers from Richmond Energy Partners drones have developed so quickly that the law has arguably struggled to keep up with the technology for as little as the price of a good pair of shoes you can now buy a Mini flying machine that you can use to have or about pretty much anything and that's led to fears of everything from small accidents on crowded city streets through to collisions with AK raft now the British government says it's going to introduce new regulations including tests for operators and fines for people who put others at risk and Mohammed to report its enthusiastic is involved in open source train projects told the B.B.C. He's skeptical of the benefits of such legislation it's always the fact that technology is out of legislation things are always looked at from the result of things in the case of people like us we just build our own Now what what would be the requirement for flying something like that and this is the space where most of the innovation happens there are different ways to prevent drones from flying into space it just can be just the regulated free piece we just like ask. If however the shoppers outside a store selling drones in London supported more regulation Yeah I think that's a great idea if somebody is going to fly it into something or person or a building that should be controlled by control firearms a lot of my friends do music videos and stuff like that they use them quite a lot but I don't think it would put them off I think you would only put off people who are possibly doing bad stuff I do understand why they are asking for these is being already 60 accidents we drums is normal they put a 2nd coming along to regulate their drums I've seen them flying around the park before they were banned in the poll can you know they're just out of control sooner the better. So there's this Health and Safety gone mad or a sensible response to control a powerful emerging technology Dr America that is director of the aerial robotics lab at Imperial College London I think the tests are important but also it's important to have an education framework that actually has a public image that is positive about it acknowledges and then encourages positive uses so that implicit in that is there are serious risks if you don't have to test I think there are risks of operation if it's close to airports close to people redrawn so they're inherently unsafe I think current technologies on drones are half their risks and I think we need to acknowledge that but you also have to keep prolific and seated other things are much more risky but there will be other people who listen to this and say Actually these are quite big heavy bits of machinery flying around over highly populated areas of course there's a risk these of these are actually very dangerous. There is always a risk by that we are very happy to accept larger craftsmen there cross flying over central London which poses a huge even potentially bigger risk of manned aircraft have enormous safety systems behind them restraints have almost nothing behind them here but they're also slower lighter and there are people inside so I think we need to do the risk analysis very carefully what happens at the moment is a certain fear based. Perception there is a certain fear in the society about this space because there are risks are not clearly known at the same time we have to be careful not to restrict the innovation this place because drones apply to the energy sector and construction sector for example can reduce hugely the risk to lives of current workers that they're currently sent in very dangerous situations or drawing can really reduce the risk presumably there are also implications for terrorists Yeah and the think for if you think of malicious misuse or draw on their knowledge and then test or a cent framework that forces you to register a drone might not be as effective So somebody wants to misuse it I think it's impossible even in spite of those regulations is the U.K. The only country to have done this is going to catch on I don't think that it is a much about the restriction of ownership it's more about the regulation of operations and I think this trend is happening in different countries the ones to have the administration burden very long will be the ones that wind robotics race that is currently happening and when you say robotics race how important is this I think it is of major importance and the market for this is several 10th of billions of dollars in just aerial robotics then I think drones are here to stay and they will enable a lot of different applications that would benefit society huge and reduce the risk on human operations because the other way to look at that is they will be taking jobs away from people who make deliveries or do checks or whatever it might be there that's an argument that was also said when the car 1st came into the picture or look at this or any kind of industries ation or any kind of tool think at the end of the day to create more jobs it was a supporter more healthy approach to jobs and that this support the workers in there are dangerous tasks and I think that would be in the foreground Dr Mikko Kovacs from Imperial College London the uncertainty following this month's presidential election in the West African state of the Gambia has left an economic crisis brewing incumbent president. Jamey initially conceded victory to his main challenger Adama then changed his mind the tourism industry is a mainstay of the economy and reports suggest it's in serious trouble the B.B.C.'s humor Fana was the only foreign journalist in the country sent us this report up the sun sand and see these are the magnets that draw mostly European tourists of this small West African country otherwise called the Somali coast. But beneath the veneer in lies the harsh reality of an economy bucking under the pressure of political uncertainty was Solutions accompanied by announcements of the election results very few had received was the incumbents president's pledge a man joke to them only a concession it's a Buddhist means that forced businesses to tactical and use a card is a seat of the country's chimeras come to suit some serious concern expressed by most businesses about uncertainty what we received is the feedback that from the small sample that we conducted 99 percent of the businesses indicated that understand of is affecting their business Sarrazin which thrives on peace and stability is itself on stable a joint press that's meant by the key players in the industry ones of challenging times kept on jai is the executive secretary of the tourism association that reconciliations and dies a decline and I strongly believe come to where we could have a very smooth transition so many people are dependent on this in the micro and it's more enterprises a little of t