isn't it time for good news when africa people and projects that are changing one farm into for the better it's up to us to make a difference let's show. the good with. the environment magazine. on d. w. . greetings from the german capital on a warm welcome to our latest edition and on today's so we're seeking out the far flung and forgotten corners of the continent with these top stories. ghost town explorer an italian photographer and his love of last place. snow sir firms new and trending way to hit the slopes in finland. and

mountain dwellers an austrian couple's lovingly restored alpine chalet. oberlin bicycle week kicks off this week in the capital to mark the arrival of spring and as the days get friendlier several hundred thousand cyclists will be hitting the roads but for professional cyclists there's no such thing as a real off season as they of course have to stay in shape year round like a german mountain biker steffi mult who has muscled her way into a decidedly male dominated field with guts and grace. a leisurely bike ride through the park is not for the likes of stephanie mocked the german mountain biker for first trails that are rated high in terms of technical difficulty and come with a guaranteed adrenaline kick the thirty two year old is one of germany's most successful female mountain bikers this extreme sport is mainly

a male domain and there are many women who can make a living from it mountain biking is nerve racking stuff. and games in a book there's nothing i woman as a disadvantage because we reflect on things more and are a bit more careful with our bodies. if you do things with courage and energy and they tend to work out better as a man i like to do what i call it if she jumps which is completely counterproductive when i approach things a bit cautiously but you can't do that with extreme things he would have to get them full whack. and steffi marty is certainly going full throttle at this point track in munich's gazing district she started out riding b.m.x. bikes twenty years ago the mountain bike came later. five to six days a week of training is the price she pays to be a professional in her dream sport. i watch what

fascinates me about cycling is being able to exercise and be outdoors on a mountain bike you can get anywhere with a racing bike you can cover a long distance inside with a mountain bike you can go up steep inclines with a b.m.x. bike you can get really fast cycling has so many facets so. the five time german woman's champion has also received international prizes she won bronze in the women's four cross world championships in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen her cycling career has taken her to some of the most spectacular destinations in the world such as the hawaiian island of oahu. the great wall of china. and to utah where she soared over the grafton road part of one of the most risky mountain bike trails in the u.s. . knows how to ensure that she looks good too. as

nick was a bit as always debate about whether women play a role in the sport of mountain biking unfortunately i think that's the case let me have a hand out it's also a lot of well it's not just about looking good and getting on the bike now and again you have to train her and work a lot on yourself. and mountain bike magazines stephanie regularly reports on her adventures for example for the magazine free ride she has written an article about her bike tour through canada. working with the media is an important part of her job. editor in chief dimitri lainer has been working with stephanie mark for ten years now. stephanie looks good she looks good on a bike. you wouldn't believe how much that very. reason some pro cyclists who sit strangely on their bikes stephanie is constantly working on her

posture so that she sits on her bike in the way that every amateur biker would like to take a bag. she also travels a lot internationally and really exudes a good vibe she's positive full of life just what you want your magazine. by instagram stuff you mark regularly post photos and short film clips she wants to encourage more people to take up the sport and also likes to communicate directly with her fans. and not at the social media is really important for my work stream sportsmen and women generally you can show what you can do many people might miss things otherwise if you travel some. arran ride a really exciting trail we're giving courses on technique somewhere and you say it's a really good course here are those things onto my magazine that people can follow them on social media social media can this you know that for for an. m.p. mark is hoping that more women will follow in her bike tracks and make the jump

into the court session only. and one more time we'd like to know what your favorite type of bicycle is there's still time to send us a picture of you and your two wheeler of choice and don't forget that there's a cool cycling bag up for grabs so thanks in advance for playing along best of luck to all of you well i certainly can't remember a time without his productions making waves on stage and we sang his songs from musicals like cats or jesus christ superstar until our throats were sore now the master of musicals is hitting a milestone birthday. musical maestro andrew lloyd webber turns seventy on thursday the british composer has written scores for some of the most successful musicals ever staged cats and phantom of the opera had been performed around the world and many of the songs became chart hits. more whatever began composing music at age six his most recent

musical adaptation school of rock debuted in twenty fifteen. his memoirs entitled unmasked came out earlier this month. an exhibition featuring sculptures by as you and me home opened on shoes day in central buttin in the spanish that c.f. sundown born in eighty ninety three the spanish artist became welsh famous for his colorful paintings. in such me home was just as passionate about sculpture in particular he like to create sculptures from objects he found while taking walks they should one manhole show runs until september second. the first polar bear to be born in the u.k. you know quarter of a century has ventured outdoors for the first time. the cub was

born at scotland's highland wildlife park just before christmas and mother victoria has cared for dinner dan ever since the polar bears are to be named because it's gender hasn't been established we should find out if it's male or female when health checks are made next month. for all of its incredible civilization italy has more than fifteen hundred completely abandoned villages ghost towns that are the result of urban drain but also natural catastrophes like earthquakes or landslides all the land based fatah. for bruno's on's of ted has frequented these forgotten places for years documenting their decay from the italian alps to the sealion hills and he took us along to a village in the app a nine mountains where villagers were forced to flee adhoc back in one thousand nine hundred sixty. by your love and abandon mountain village in

the northern apennine. nature is fast encroaching on the ten houses and taking them back sixty years ago there were still more than one hundred people living here. a perfect location for milan based photographer blue notes on saute i. welcome to ghost village reads the sign at the entrance of town center tierra takes pictures of a forgotten italy. he's been searching for such mysterious places since twenty thirteen. a lot better. with the heart from the beauty and fascination of these deserted villages i want to tell something about the depopulation nobody tell you in regions that began at the beginning of the last century but i think when i was in the second world war also as a result of industrialization many villages especially in the mountains were

gradually abandoned. by you all of a kyo was threatened by a landslide and was therefore completely evacuated in one nine hundred sixty. the search for locations can be quite risky for. because he's also interested in what is still inside the crumbling houses remnants from the past. sometimes former residents like ninety year old rena or sicko may come here to look at their old houses and to reminisce. we can allow kitchen and we set try to over the. years the entrance to the kitchen. and stone up in a typically large tell your family lived here ten people slept in these rooms. she

hardly recognizes them today. know what i am. i wish i hadn't seen it again. i get all choked up. the way to. talk about a little by little all such villages will end up like this. has photographed over thirty ghost villages for his project there is no shortage with an estimated one thousand five hundred more abandoned places in italy. in southern italy rural exodus has depopulated entire regions. abandoned villages with picturesque names like amanda. brunker. fascinate the mill and these photographers . recently metro's it piece by new although the last inhabitant of the village where she knew near naples. appeared suddenly very

for old glory to try a huge prayer and the perfect image fed the bit on a fault. the photos had been published in among other publications the italian edition of national geographic magazine. they depict in italy that is irretrievably lost. by the. time it stopped. shortly before life was being lived to the fullest and then suddenly no one was left it's almost like a modern. day. the inhabitants are. moved to a new village on the other side of the valley in one thousand nine hundred sixty the feared landslide never happened. yet no one returned to the old village green or sea says she never even considered the idea of moving back here.

soaring convenient to live. proxy remain out. i want to. show. the number of italian ghost villages is likely to increase earthquakes are one factor. a popular hiking trail leads through a viola of a keel there is some hope that enthusiasm for this way of life will consider moving here to restore at least some houses in this ghost village. i guess shep's is one of europe's most sought after concert pianists the thirty two year old russian was born in moscow and now makes her home in cologne where she regularly takes to the stage with mostly classical works but she's also a great fan of contemporary music and contrast which led her to paving workable home a home edge to a german techno bent. one

song two very different performers olga ships and scooter front man h.p. baxter. on her latest cd the classical star performer reinterprets the songs of the german techno band. i feel as if i've always known scooter scooter songs were always playing at parties or on the car radio. techno goes classical h.p. baxter and ships worked on the songs together creating cover versions that are very different from the originals but scooters hit. all my needs and i was able to introduce my own ideas as well and it was really

nice to be there well music was created. by play was written a long time before i was even born. this encounter between two alien worlds creates surprising results scooter's frogman is certainly impressed. is this play without sheet music is that normal. it's amazing how do you remember it all. the two of them have pulled off why didn't use a coffee the combination of one hundred percent scooter and one hundred percent of piano virtual so. now we're headed to finish lapland where winter still has a firm grip and the last few years have borne witness to the reemergence of powder surfing an activity that's more or less a combination of snowboarding and surfing and we went to see the two guys who are making an art form.

picturesque winter landscape in finland some one hundred forty kilometers north of the arctic circle. though it's only three hundred seventy metres high climbing mt so tell you it is quite arduous. and maxime are happy to make the effort they want to surf down the slope. unlike a normal snowboard their boards have no bindings or fasteners. condor surfing is the new thing. ten percent of the five zero one percent going down is actually probably. twenty times good high like an adrenaline rush really i just. it's i mean it's hard work sometimes working through deep snow for kilometers but but even i mean even that is rewarding in itself but when you get

a ride at the end of it it's the cherry on the cake. you know surfboards can't really be bought anywhere in finland so there was only one logical thing for the fins to do in themselves. a designer and a cabinet maker establish their own company in romany they bought wooden tools and that started. a pink freeing your feet from the boat that you're not attached to a certain position just opens up more of a versatile of way of writing. or do you perform like a surfboard perform on water so would perform on snow similar way. it's important for the two fins that the whole operation ecological is possible

only natural materials such as birchwood no synthetic risen no fiberglass new board should be uncompromisingly environmentally friendly. we intentionally went for quite a minimal from the beginning just because. i mean snow surfing we live in lapland and we spend a little time ninety nine percent of the time we hike. maybe one percent or more who is is actual surfing you know spending so much time in overstay you get a. sense of what things are like he didn't make much sense to us to slap bright graphics on them we might experiment with some color and graphics soon but. to begin with we just thought it would be nice to have some simple this would be because. of them but because the owner with

a few friends they're out surfing as often as possible all winter long. my luck if you know somebody tell you to go because the. more and more winter sports enthusiasts are asking for snow surfboards they've sold two hundred already at around four hundred euros each. this type of winter sport requires three basics good physical condition lots of time and a thing for extremely cold weather. in the forests of lapland small huts along the way offer hikers a little wrist to warm up with a hot drink after a long day. you know you've got a speed obviously when the season is on you have to make the most of it. because you know this is not going to be any. sort of thing for the rest of the year so you got to catch the snow when it's it's around. surfing at minus twenty degrees

celsius on snowboards without finding a wild landscape without prepared ski runs and without ski lifts that's how young lady. from lapland like it. a typical alpine hot summer a romantic site in the mountains of switzerland and austria for instance but there's also a lot to learn from simple mountain farm architecture as the buildings are often exemplary when it comes to space and energy efficiency will alst tala is an austrian cabinet maker who is well known for his work with old wood and he believes that heritage materials need to be preserved and he turned an old alpine hot into among refuge with the difference. to get up to the alpine chalet in winter snow can be more than a metre deep from months here on mt to catch back at one thousand six hundred fifty

meters above sea level in the austrian state of currency. common to ns tunnel and heritage the four hundred year old chalet from his ancestors and restored it painstakingly by hand according to age old tradition. after the same of used to be a cabin where herdsman could cook and sleep simply as protection from wind rain and weather. the ground floor consists of a single large room dominated by the dining table and the small kitchen in the corner plus a huge fireplace which is the heart of the chalet and keeps the entire house warm. this house and what it was eating was essential because where there is no warmth there is no life and the stalls in the shallows were always located very central

and the kitchen in the living area to make sure very little warmth was lost that's why the windows were very small back then this week if we were going to kind of things like more. alpine mountain dwellers can teach us how to organize life in the tightest of spaces. every free surface is used for storage. as a wharton lattice above the stove for hanging out washing and the dining table with its splayed legs off is room for everyone. in the frame was built with slanted legs so people would have room for their legs when they sat or if you want the saw go the drawers very special the most drawers were made of swiss pine because the essential oils in there would repel the berman. or is going through.

the many loving details are another reason and it's time that his wife or he can feel so comfortable in this alpine chalet. the walls have decorative patterns carved into the plaster. will break a tile or has hung dried hurts everywhere. this is love in this work this is lavender it has a calming effect if the center is too intense for some people they can remove it but i find it very soothing for me. and. when it ends tyler took over the chalet it was very rundown except for the seventeenth century wooden beams little in the interior was still intact. but on the hook in border manner i started to restore everything. as i tried to preserve the old features and supplement them with new ones. through against. he's produced

a found fame with stones he found in the mountain pass chance. converted the old stable facing the chalet into a sauna. in the chalets up a story there are three simple bedrooms. but in the winter it's better only to sleep in the one that's right about the stock roof on the ground floor. or the bedroom for the parents with their small children most always above the kitchen. because heat rises there and that way they and their children can keep warm. or. feels best on the balcony. here he has a glorious view of the catch banks winter landscape.

fresh air water and trees are really important to me boy me provide grounding for me i'm going home here that's life for me i calm down and i'm at peace this is. the alpine chalet on the catch back up a place where you can live comfortably even in the severest of one times from civilization in complete harmony with nature. a place with space to dream and on that note it's time for me to sign off so until next time i'll ask you to just. mix time on your own max i said. they are kind of known as the cigar is the latest . became a favorite fashionistas after model sported them

a quarter of karl lagerfeld christian running the show. her original design for dock workers cigarettes are still made by hand and amber today coolers next time i'm here at max. blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. blah. blah blah blah blah. blah blah. blah. blah. blah blah. blah. blah blah.

blah. blah blah blah blah blah. blah. blah. blah. blah. from allowing wanted to build a wind turbine to provide his village with electricity this media chooses the break and exciting journey no more to get. you know story william and the mill zone. has you got news coming from bonnie but all right sure. correspondent news in central istanbul i'm joined by the show a couple of years political correspondent on those stories in just

a minute but first this news just in about the perspective closer to. the d. w. media center see it find it here it discovered. video and audio podcast on language courses in the g.w. media center at video centered on the dylan dot com. when i was young i dreamed about changing the world. but i was a woman in egypt things turned out differently. forced marriage genital mutilation humiliation me no one else a gal we rebelled i used the written word to stand up for women's rights. as i travel to the places where i lived as

a child i'm filled with anger at the past. you know one of the inside out with the free voice of egypt starting april eighth on g.w. . hijacking the news. where i go wrong on the news being hijacked journalism itself has become a scripted reality show it's not just good versus evil us versus them black and white. in countries like russia china church people are told it is that's not and if you're a journalist there and you try to get beyond it you are facing scare tactics intimidation and i wonder is that where we're headed as well. my responsibility as a journalist is to get beyond the smoke and mirrors it's not. just about being clear and balance or being neutral it's about being true. one is for

god and i work you know. facebook boss mark zuckerberg has broken his silence over the data scandal involving his company and data mining firm cambridge analytics in a post on his facebook page zuckerberg admitted to making mistakes and promised to take steps to make it harder for third parties to harvest user data.