on news. brylin twenty you seen. what lies in store for the new german government. and for chancellor angela merkel. today on d.w. news. this is v.w. news live from berlin the death toll rises in iran as the most violent unrest in years continues at least twenty people have been killed as protests raged for nearly a week around the country police have reportedly detained hundreds of demonstrators

also coming up to south korea proposes high level talks with the north it comes a day after north korean leader kim jong un extended a rare olive branch to the south and new threats to the united states. and it could be a make or break year for german chancellor angela merkel we will look at what is in store for her and twenty eighteen and she's trying to form a new government. i'm sorry kelly welcome to the program thanks for joining us clashes overnight in iran have left at least nine people dead the anti-government protests have been raging for nearly a week in tehran and around the country in total several hundred people have been arrested and at least twenty have been killed according to state media the demonstrations they initially broke out against the weak economy and

a rise in food prices but they have also been drawing opponents of the country's a religious establishment. this footage has been provided by demonstrators people have been on the streets in various parts of iran's since thursday protesting conditions in the country and this is footage provided by iranian state t.v. which claims that protesters are violent and that some have damaged a.t.m.'s buildings and other property and also claim that some protesters tried to take over police stations and military bases on monday iranian state t.v. showed president hassan rouhani meeting with members of parliament to discuss the situation rowhani claim that protests are happening because iran's enemies are angry due to the country's accomplishments and are therefore provoking protestors state t.v. provided interviews with iranians who don't agree with the demonstrations because while one in these protests should have a message of unity they should be held peacefully not to finally that's violates

our well being and safety don't reach it initially there are so many people who intend to exploit the situation and take advantage of the violence they're destroying our society. a pro-government rally took place in the northern city of rushed where protesters voiced their support for the government they've asked for a peaceful solution to the country's problems. so far though anti-government protests continue the fear now is that the government might crack down hard on the protesters. and let's talk a little bit more about that crackdown we are joined by a.f.p. correspondent eric randolph who is joining us with the latest from tehran and eric as we've heard iranian state television reporting nine more people killed overnight more than one hundred protesters arrested what are we to make of the authorities response to the unrest and how big of a threat are these protests to the regime. well this is the biggest test the regime

has faced since there were mass demonstrations back in two thousand and nine the difference this time it is that they could be considerably more violent though it is very difficult to confirm the reports we're hearing for problems it is due to restrictions on travel to know the six protesters the killed last night worked on store the station. several other people were killed in various small towns and cities. all over the country in recent days the stories he's the star of the crackdown was just been told the four hundred fifty people who've been arrested in tehran the last three days were protests actually that rose to the small and we don't know how many are being arrested in other parts of the country and we understand that among these protesters there are host of grievances but that the general feeling among many of them is that economic growth in the wake of the iran nuclear deal has simply not trickled down to the average iranian they're

facing unemployment which is high inflation creeping higher as well prices of eggs poultry really skyrocketing and recent weeks what do the protesters want from the government to concretely speaking. at this stage it's very clear that it's a very amorphous spry and seemingly out of nowhere small intimate protest for a long time both and all. this seems to be just another economic protest that started it is not clear what was true cause this is spread all over the country and become so unto its own against the regime itself i think a lot of people do too frustrated with the government with the lack of progress on the economy and they feel that given all sides of the political spectrum a chance to improve things and that they aren't seeing those benefits as a result they seem to be quite generally against the regime but it lacks focus of

the moment protests. and speaking of lacking the focus i wanted to ask you because you live there in tehran how widespread would you say the discontent is i mean how deep is this in iranian society at the moment is bear a deep support for the protests generally speaking. talking to ronnie's yesterday. and a lot of people are very uncomfortable with the violence that they've seen group the way some of these protests being conducted but there is a deep well of sympathy and understanding for all the grievances the economic problems of driving everybody knows young person who is highly educated on top or who struggle with the costs with high rates of inflation and with a general sense that the government is not responding to them honest it's not responsive in general. so i think. people are people who

recognize that there are deep seated problems with the economy and simply want action they want action and they have been protesting for the past six days in order to get it eric randolph at the very latest from tehran thank you so much for your reporting. let's get a quick check now of some other stories that have been making news around the world israel has toughened conditions for ceding any part of jerusalem to palestinians in a possible future peace deal lawmakers passed an amendment that requires a special two thirds majority in the knesset palestinians want each store absalom as the capital of an independent state. police in germany are investigating a member of parliament for incitement to hatred after she posted anti muslim remarks on social media is just one story of the far right a.f.d. party accused cologne police of appeasing quote barbaric gang raping muslim hordes

of men after they tweeted a new year message in arabic. a new hollywood campaign against sexual harassment has been launched and it is already raised thirteen of its targeted fifteen million dollars the time's up initiative has the backing of hundreds of actresses writers and directors the fund will be primarily used to support victims of sexual misconduct working in low income industries south korea has offered to hold talks with north korea on whether the north can send athletes to the winter olympics of south korea's president moon j in says that his country is ready to negotiate in letting north korea join next month's pyung chang olympics hosted by the south but he stressed that north korea's nuclear issues will be a major point in any talks north korean leader kim jong un had raised the idea of joining the olympics in his new year speech in the same speech he also issued fresh threats of attacking the united states. let's get more now straight

from seoul our correspondent josh smith is standing by with the very latest so josh could this olympic diplomacy signal a breakthrough and the hope of reduced tensions what are people just generally speaking making of it. well that's certainly the hope of many officials and everyday people here in south korea and elsewhere especially after a past year of the increasing tensions over the norse nucular and missile program what remains to be seen however is whether they can turn something like the in the big games into a larger breakthrough as the officials here have said that any talks would need to address the north's nuclear issue while kim in his speech on new year's day said that the world needs to accept the reality of north korea as

a nuclear state. it is now just over a month until the limper winter olympics how likely is it that we will see the north send a team. well both sides seem to be making attempts at that with kim. publicly raising the possibility and the south today announcing that they are open to talks as soon as january ninth to discuss the nuts and bolts of any north korean for specialty in the games however so far as of today the south said that they had not yet had a response from the north about those talks so any kind of movement in that direction would need to happen fairly quickly for both screen athletes as well as possibly officials to to participate in the games and those efforts on the part of the south i mean they are already drawing some negative reaction this idea of the

north korea regime participating in the games i just want to turn now to what republican senator lindsey graham tweeted a short time ago i'd like to read it out because he said that allowing kim jong un's north korea to participate in the winter olympics would give legitimacy to the most illegitimate regime on the planet i am confident that south korea will reject this absurd overture and fully believe that if north korea goes to the winter olympics we do not of course josh this is highlighted as the debate on how to handle the north korean regime how much influence would you say that the hawks in washington are likely to have over this south korean engagement of north korea. well in some ways the messaging out of washington is as mixed as the messaging out of north korea with some elements calling for talks and others saying that talks are useless. as you see in that graham tweet however you know this

these latest remarks by camera have been met with a lot of skepticism including by some very influential people who basically see it as a way by the north korean government to try to buy time potentially try to. drive a wage between south korea other allies and really kind of weaken these international efforts that have in recent months really increased pressure international sanctions and other efforts at isolating the government there and so a lot of people have taken a very skeptical view of kins recent remarks jost met with the latest from seoul thank you thank you well the new year and a new rally christof kober has played as fresh year fresh records sarah shares and hong kong rose to the highest level over a decade on tuesday and markets in shanghai also posted gains in the first trading session of twenty eight thousand the prospect of

a major tax overhaul in the united states put investors there in a bullish mood throughout much of last year and rallied global trading by weakening u.s. dollar and solid manufacturing figures out of china are considered early positive signs for global consumption in the year ahead now for more let's go to germany's finance or capital frankfurt where my colleague on the device is keeping an eye on things anetta a lot of optimism among investors in asia yet the sentiment in europe is much more subdued why's that. yes that's completely right we see european bourses clearly in the rat across the board although the german but also the french markets being considerably lower and there are many reasons for that a poor data from the cossacks sending those car shares slower but also the euro is quite high these days it's a fast one twenty towards the us dollar and that is also weighing on sentiment

because many of those big german corporates but also the french corporates are depending on their exports and of course if the euro is much more expensive though also their goods will be known until let's look at the year ahead year what are the topics that are on investors' minds in twenty eight years while we have a mix shelf topics but let's start off with the geopolitical issues there are major concerns that the korean peninsula might actually be hit by some sort of war scenario and that is a very on top of the agenda of investors when it comes to geopolitical risk because nobody really knows what's going to happen there there will be talks in the next days to actually come down the situation but for now the risk is to very high that there might be some escalation but also the political risk again back on the agenda

if you have italian elections once again in europe again a test where the populist party might make it on top of a government there and also in danger of the eurozone project in a way we have elections in russia and then also in other countries and. top of investors with concentrate also on a plethora of i.p.o.'s coming to the markets and the device both in frankfurt thank you so much. well starting january first social media companies in germany will have a mere twenty four hours to take down illegal material if they fail to remove hate speech or fake news they could face a fine up to fifty million euros a post critics fear that the likes of facebook and twitter could overcompensate and delete controversial but legal posts to avoid the hefty fines facebook has hired

hundreds of new people here in germany to comply with the law. now as india seeks to keep growing its economy in the new year a look at prime minister narendra modi's reforms reveal a bit of a let down modernizing the economy the education system and fighting corruption those were the noble goals that helped put mr modi into office back in twenty fourteen and indeed this year the economy will be a third bigger than when he got elected some might say despite rather than because of the prime minister's policy. grew up in the crowd in public the stricken streets of the moon by slum of doherty. here he learned the trade of taylor within a few years he started his own small selling workshop. business went well and soon he was able to recruit extra help most of the migrants from rural communities. but

economic reforms a crackdown on cash and a new sales tax have made life difficult for small businesses like his. name the problem is cash flow if i don't get any money from my main customer how much supposed to pay wages and costs are rising last year young cost ten rupees now it's twelve my customer doesn't have the money to pay me with that expects my prices to stay the same in any. india's tax system is complicated. even small businesses need a computer or a tax advisor which costs time and money. that additional burden has meant the man had to lay off four of his ten workers. last july the government introduced a new nationwide goods and services tax or g.s.t. aiming to simplify trade and prevent double taxation experts of course at the biggest tax reform since independence it's the second reform introduced by the modi

government to have hurt the economy. never last year the government announced that over eighty percent of cash in circulation would suddenly cease to be legal tender was a bid to curb the black economy the move officially term de monetisation crippled the overwhelmingly cash based economy you wanted action in g.s.t. are the shocks in the indian economy in the last one year the economy is facing a real crisis and this crisis is embedded in from the unorganized and its impact on the impact of the g.s.t. and of the demarcation on the organizing and that impact has been felt by people in darby. aseem tells us that seven hundred small businesses here have shut down already he himself had to take out a loan to keep his business afloat he sees the reforms as a failure. the government promised that prices would go down and people would profit soon and that didn't happen now guess what cooking is twice as expensive as . costs are increasing it will not wages it's

a difficult time for. the government insists things will improve. where the voters share that confidence will become clear in the next parliament reelection in twenty nineteen. it's back to sara now and all this week we'll be giving you a preview of what to expect from top global players and twenty eighteen and of course the first stop has to be crossed off germany of course today in fact we are focusing number one on the agenda chancellor angela merkel who is trying to form a new government here it is now been more than one hundred days since germans went to the polls in september as election and later this week merkel's conservatives are set to start exploratory talks with the center left social democrats but even if these talks are successful it could take months before a government is in place. each day a new record is broken here in berlin never before has it taken so long falling in

election to build a new government. and in the middle of it all chancellor. or at the moment interim chancellor. if decisions are being made in parliament she has to search for allies so far she has not been able to find a fixed coalition partner it looks like no one wants to form a coalition with the chancellor on the other hand doesn't think a minority government is the right thing for germany in other words she has to woo the social democrats and build another grand coalition but that's still a lot of work to do. this is becoming a problem on the international political stage why french president mccall has kiyo go it's actually best to wait it out that's not good for her and not good for europe europe cannot work without a strong germany and a strong german french alliance that is why berlin carries

a huge responsibility to build a stable government. twenty eighteen will be an important year for the e.u. reforms must be made and burden is expected to make suggestions soon. it's hardly any doubt. will remain here in the chancellor rhee and govern germany the question is just when will she be elected at the moment to act internationally like her neighbor here in the swiss embassy people are used to remaining neutral but from the german chancellor the world expects something else. a weak chancellor at the head of europe's biggest economy at least america is able to steer the course of her own party. in a false term she wants to lead another grand coalition as cup there was unanimity from everyone that we now have to go into exploratory talks with the s.p.d.

with the goal of building a stable government. within her conservative party people are saying that she will last another four years at the most no one discusses this openly but many in the c.d.u. are thinking about the time after matches potential success as now i have to position themselves at the same time to plan how she can hand over power little by little without losing it too fast. so what's the next step in germany there are a lot of on on such questions. what was the first question. oh and have a great start in the new year whether it turns out to be good or bad twenty eighteen will certainly not be boring. and her want twenty eight thousand has in store for germany let's bring all of our a professor of political science at the university in germany thanks so much for

joining us oliver and i want to begin with a pretty bleak statistic in fact for the chancellor apparently forty seven percent of germans want her to step down in your view can she rectify that because i mean it's neither an endorsement of her leadership nor for every piece of the old coalition. that is certainly correct absolutely so i mean that is the reason these last polls are just another indication for the difficult situation until america is in right now there's no doubt about it and this is the reason why a lot of people think that mark america's erast come to an end but i think there are some points to remember first of all she's more popular than her own party still and this is also what the polls show second she has no real contender within her own party and thirdly i mean everyone has basically lost either in the election or after the election during the john mica talks so the established parties have

suffered immensely and she is among the losers that you can see everywhere in german politics right now so what does that mean and what can she do yeah yeah and talking about you know going forward what can she do because we have these talks that are coming up next week they will kick off to try and produce a new government potentially a new you know a new old grand coalition i guess you could say how hopeful are you back could be a feasible solution for germany's future. first of all she has to be successful to go to school if she does so she can rectify her position. she i mean let's not forget it so it is a collision between loses and weekend party leaders they had to do to be successful no one can really afford to go into a new election so i think they have mined by the fia of new elections so there must be success successful in some ways to see my expectation is that they are

successful in building a coalition a stable one and marco will now then have to opportunity to return so to say to the national and also to the european arena as a strong european leader and play also strong a cop so to say being a strong leader india in the wake of the challenges that you faces she can maybe overcome the problems that's for instance in the poll it's the poor standing snowboards that that we face right now how strong is the hand of the social democrats going into these talks i mean could we see for example a wind of change toward the left where they lean in the country. i think we we need to acknowledge the fact that. social democrats all over europe are in a very bad shape right now in continuity and in continental europe just take france and the netherlands as a recent example it's they are very poor shape and we don't see any change in the

wind of change in germany i don't think so i mean if you took at the if you took this up national level then you see high huge problems of social democrats for instance in east germany. as one rare exceptions of lower six onya but apart from that social democrats are facing a real hard time right now and i mean the establishment off the agenda for germany off the new political party is just another sign that there's not a wind of change to a more progressive of politics social democrats know that and that is one of the reasons that they have to build this coalition together with merkel i think and they have to face together with america by the way the very real difficult challenge that is to sort of say reinvent themselves in government not in a position that has doubles the reason why they desperately wanted in opposition this is this these expletive talks have collapsed now they are. to go into the coalition and they have to invent themselves in the coalition in the government.

professor of political science at the university of vienna thank you so much for joining us. and finally we're going to head to china where the frozen a river was transformed into a race course on new year's day have a look because around two thousand runners they kick started twenty eighteen with an ice marathon the train was nothing for the faint hearted participants ran on the ice in bone chilling minus fifteen degree centigrade temperatures both professionals and amateurs took part in the event but before you get any ideas just make sure that you check the ice is fitness before trying anything similar at home . quick reminder now the top stories that we have been following for you here state media in iran report about the death toll from ongoing anti-government protests has risen to at least twenty including a police officer hundreds of protesters have reportedly been arrested. you're up to

date on t.w. news i'm sarah kelly in berlin thanks for watching i'll see you against. the. euro max presents the joys of winter but. if you spend all your time on the slopes then you must not have heard about our hot

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