petition directed by women. the day before a crucial e.u. vote on a russian gas pipeline to germany and suddenly the massive north stream to project is under doubt despite the fact the work is already underway i'll give you the latest. also the latest blow to a digital giant in europe germany's antitrust office telling facebook that its data collection across the internet and on its mobile applications is anti-competitive. and air bus in trouble carriers want to cancel a large eight three eighty order raising more questions over the future of the world's biggest jetliner. i'm stephen beard's in berlin thanks for joining us it's been years in the making a second north stream pipeline to deliver russian gas directly to the german coast

though a controversial project not least given its geo political implications north stream two has survived with just enough support across europe now on the eve of a critical vote that could be changing here's a look at the project. construction of the north stream to pipeline is a ready well underway but the face of the project lies in the balance e.u. members have not yet agreed on how to proceed and germany and france in particular appear to be at odds over regulation of the pipeline but transport gosford russia to germany via the baltic sea the project in its current form is operated by russian state energy company probably several german energy firms and one french company have also invested in this. at the heart of division within the e.u. is a plan to extend the blocks rules to foreign operations pipelines e.u. regulations require a separation of sales and pipeline operation activities should those rules be

extended to gas problem it would mean that the project in its current form at least could not proceed. four hundred forty five million dollars that's the price tag for a single. us the super jumbo was supposed to revolution revolution allies long haul flights but now it's turning into a terribly expensive shelf the australian airline quantas just for withdrew its order for eight of the jets and that puts a four billion dollar hole in their buses bank account is the time to scrap the a three eighty. it's the largest passenger plane in the world the a three eighty used the pride and joy of the european aircraft group airbus but as orders for the a three eighty kept plummeting the group was forced to reduce annual production from thirty to just eight aircraft this year and those eight have yet to be delivered. quantas dropping the planes represents a four billion u.s. dollars loss for the european aircraft manufacturer and it's raised doubts about

the future of the three d. itself the australian airline ordered the jets in two thousand and six but since then they've switched to lighter more fuel efficient passenger jets a worldwide trend the a three eighty is too heavy and uses too much jet fuel which wouldn't be as much of a problem if fuel prices had gone down but instead they've almost doubled since twenty sixteen. so it's not surprising that another major air bus customer is taking off to the dubai airline emirates allegedly wants to cancel its existing orders for fifty three units at least in part that could mean the end of the world's largest passenger aircraft. so the a three eighty certainly hasn't been airbus is a cash cow with a price tag of nearly half a billion dollars it's been a steadily steady contributor to the company's revenue and overall air bus has managed to put two hundred thirty four of the super jumbos in the air not bad at all but the golden times of roughly eighty orders per year those are all but over

the three years of ups and downs the books are almost empty even worse orders are being cancelled with quantas airways scrapping their eight super jumbos and emirates reconsidering its own orders a three eighty could soon be gone for good. now on to germany germany's federal cartel office has ruled that facebook's ability to to rake in personal information outside of its namesake platform that is across the internet and its various other apps represented and competitive behavior and that's one more blow for the tech giant. the focus was on the day shift facebook collects from third party websites examples include the like and share buttons under news articles similar functions are enabled on it instagram and what's up platforms according to the ruling these data streams give facebook an overwhelming advantage in the digital advertising market is this officials argue requires users

consent. is being used. for financing the whole conclusion is that facebook. on its platform. of facebook facebook can also continue to gather data on its other services. or instagram third party sites. they may in the future. only with the user's explicit consent of the. indies or. very. like in most countries facebook is the leading social media network in germany it has more than thirty million users it also owns the second most popular social network instagram which has some seventeen million users that leaves the competition far behind. facebook said officials underestimated the

level of competition it faced within the country it's vowed to appeal. it has a month to do so and fairly must offer remedies to the cartel office ranking member finds the decision is fallacious by european officials to challenge the market dominance of american technical terms and reorientation practices to favor consumers nothing or the e.u. inactive regulation to allow users to view and withdraw their data on line and member states are still to facing a special task for digital firms. let's go down to yens court our financial correspondent new york yes we want to ask you about facebook but there's some big news in the u.s. china trade dispute president trump saying that he will not meet president xi jinping of china as expected before this march thirty first trade deadline how are markets taking that well markets are reacted to very negatively at the low of the

day blue chips and the three hundred ninety points in value by the end of the day we could recover some of the losses and the market was down two hundred twenty points so the big question now certainly is what does that mean they're not meeting does it mean that it's more likely that there was the deadline approaching march first tariffs will be increased from ten to twenty five percent there were also remarks from some of the economic advisors to the president from larry kudlow who mentioned in an interview that there is still a huge distance between china and the u.s. when it comes to the trade talks or that certainly was one of the main reasons why a wall street traded lower young thirty and something else that was moving markets today twitter releasing its fourth quarter and its annual revenues and some good numbers there but the markets didn't really like it. yet at first glance everything

looked picture perfect record revenue in the fourth quarter for the full year the first full year that was profitable for twitter online and coming in rather strongly and the stock was down by about ten percent well first of all twitter did lower their revenue forecast for the first quarter so they just started they're also talking about higher expenses by at least twenty percent for training nineteen and then also when you look at the number off a monthly active users those figures dropped for the third consecutive quarter and now twitter decided in the future to not actually publish those monthly numbers anymore but rather they will publish a daily numbers daily active users but there's no real comparison to those figures yet so that means less transparency and that was another reason why there was this negative reaction on wall street in quarter there for us in new york thank you hans

. and now another american tech giant google warning easy legislators not to stifle europe's online creativity the european parliament is due to publish its new copyright directive which is likely to have major implications for online platforms google which owns you tube says the draft legislation is not carefully balanced and would harm the video sharing sites creator community the bank of england has slashed its forecast for u.k. growth this year fleming brags that its downgraded growth projections from one point seven percent to one point two percent predicting the worst performance since the recent financial crisis the banks governor mark carney the downward adjustment on the global economic slowdown and what he called the fog of brags that the u.k. growth slowed at the end of twenty eighteen and has weakened further this year. something similar from the german economy is it losing steam the german chambers of

industry and commerce has sliced its twenty one thousand growth forecast for the nation in half to a point nine percent of the latest indicator of a slowdown as a consequence the e.u. has slashed its eurozone growth forecast for twenty nineteen block now expects eurozone growth of one point three percent this year a big cut from the one point nine percent predicted in november germany is the use largest economy. the first ever major offshore oil and gas discovery has been made off the coast of south africa french oil giant total estimates the field could produce at a billion barrels that's enough to supply south africa's refineries for four years as likely to lead to a rush by oil oil explorers to find further deposits off the country's coast. and that's it for me in the business team here in berlin as always you can find out

more about these and other stories at com slash business i'm stephen beardsley relend thanks for following us.

get ready for something new on d w d w news often bringing you stories across the region stories that shape our work long enough for the new news africa. crimes against humanity. civilians become with no success. their recorders and use travel around the globe just social media. but what is propaganda. what is from digital investigators comb through the flood of images they combine sources to try to reconstruct what happened and to substantiate

claims of crime street thanks to this video recording of the soldier who shot the young man is on trial now. forensics between bits and parts. of. a finger. is a big chance because justice is about the truth. truth detectives starts feb fifteenth on t w. this is the news africa coming up in the next fifteen minutes dodgy deals we'll hear from the smell of gas the fisherman who say they're being bullied by chinese forces tell you why a billion dollar fishing deal with china has drawn a lot of critics. and some of the world's most dangerous cities all in africa will means an ex-pat star who is trying to make his crime ridden neighborhood in kenya

safe but. then we'll see how some pioneering wind pro is in the democratic republic of congo making the most of the first all sure.