i'm coming tonight. 3 weeks c.w. . this is g.w. news live from berlin tonight taking the case for impeachment to the people who come to order. the morning everyone so u.s. house of representatives opens historic public impeachment hearings against president donald trump in the biggest challenge yet to his presidency democrats want to prove that he abused his power also coming up palestinian militants

maintain their rocket barrage on israel in retaliation for the killing of one of their leaders in gaza israel has now killed 23 palestinians in the territory and a state of emergency venison suffers its worst floods in half a century the 2nd highest tide ever recorded and the mayor is blaming climate change was made in germany electric car maker tesla will build its new european gigafactory near berlin c.e.o. elon musk says he's plugging into germany's reputation for excellence in engineering. i'm bring our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome we begin in the u.s. with high drama and history. being made on capitol hill lawmakers have begun the

1st public hearings in the impeachment inquiry against president donald trump democrats are trying to prove that trump abused his office by threatening to withhold millions of dollars in aid to ukraine unless that government investigated the family of his leading political rival joe biden today lawmakers are hearing testimony from 2 top diplomats trump has called the process a witch hunt democratic house intelligence committee chairman adam schiff highlighted what is at stake when he opened today's impeachment hearing if we find at the present united states abuses power and invited foreign interference in our elections or if he sought to condition coerce extort or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid israel lection campaign and did so by withholding official acts lighthouse meeting or hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military aid must we simply get over it is this what americans should now

expect from their president if this is not impeachable conduct what is what we've got complete coverage of today's impeachment hearings w.'s oliver salad he's on the story for us tonight in washington and here in the studio i'm joined by boris foreman he is a political scientist a us politics analyst from bard college here in berlin gentleman welcome let me start with you oliver what new information has come out of today's hearing. well brant the hearing today is not so much about new information because both of the diplomats that have testified here on capitol hill did do so before behind closed doors but what's different obviously now is that from today on all the hearings will be broadcast live on t.v. and made public so it's all about what can be a brought out to the american voters obviously the democrats are trying to

capitalize on that they need to get their message out that president trumps phone call with the ukrainian president volodymyr zelinsky was impeachable that he essentially pressured zelinsky to investigate joe biden his most likely political rival in the elections of 202020 coming up now and bill taylor today confirmed to me a meeting a potential meeting between trump and alinsky as well as military aides hundreds of millions of dollars were in fact conditioned to such investigations that would be a quid pro quo and that in fact would be a betrayal of president tom's oath of office that's at least the line here that the democrats and chairman adam schiff are following here the big question of course will be do the voters see that as well the voters in the entire world watching these hearings which began today and people were expecting to see somewhat of

a partisan fight if you will going on and you were inside the chamber there where the hearing was taking place i mean what was the atmosphere like today. well the atmosphere was quite a sober one but of course the republicans are under enormous pressure and you could feel that here today in the hearings and the run up there was a memo circulated addressed to republican house members where they blind out the strategy of their defense and that was basically to say that the president did do nothing wrong and then to fight back and you could really tell that today in this hearing the republicans also were talking about an attempted coup such as the same wording that the president is using to defend himself at the same time i have to stress that there were 2 diplomats here testifying that they were chosen by president truong that they were working for the u.s. government and they certainly have a high level of credibility and that is exactly what the democrats are trying to

capitalize on today here on capitol hill words you know i said at the beginning of the program that history is being made today i mean this is the 3rd time that we've had impeachment hearings public hearings that they've been televised it's the 1st time that witnesses have been shown publicly to basically to tell the story of alleged abuse of power are we looking at a tipping point right now in the trump presidency well i think maybe one thing we should also emphasize is that yes we have seen impeachment hearings before. and yes they were aired on television but television meant a very different thing at the time and we have social media we have all forms of media forms of michel when nixon was going to be impeached or when the beach maturing started there was one public sphere there was 3 teachers there were trying to be channels of the time so there was at least a consensus on what truth is and this seems to be different this time around the public sphere splintered we have

a deeply polarized vision of the political system and even though this is being shown on television the interpretations will differ vastly if you ask a republican or democrat. and we also have a u.s. president who is using social media to let the public know what he's thinking you know several times a day we never had that richard nixon bill clinton did not have that luxury did that it's a technology that lets him short circuit certain mechanisms of democracy and you might say well this is perhaps more democratic because he can speak directly to the people but he also doesn't when it comes to democratic institutions checks and balances the independence of the judiciary so there's a there's a short circuiting of all sorts of different types of institutions that are meant to check power and i think this is what the democrats have seen as a major threat and this is the reason why they launched the impeachment. well sure it's and one reason also why everything is supposed to be public from here on al it's how are you expecting the republicans to defend the president moving

forward is it going to be an attack on the process or and it's act on the allegations i think both i think all over also give us a couple of clues already the process itself is being criticized there's i think a strong argument that republicans or the republicans believe to be strong that he did nothing wrong that this is just normal real politic and this is how politics are being made it's ugly but this is the way that there's a sort of saying if may have been inappropriate what he did but it's not impeachable right this is so this is the line of defense plus there's another aspect which is to say the democrats are paradoxically undermining democracy because they want to undo the election of 2016 which is also a bit of a strange argument given that trump is already in office or has been in office for 3 years but a similar argument is being made about 2020 that democrats want to circumvent an

election etc however moving forward bring us up to speed on what else we can expect this week. well the impeachment hearings are going to continue on friday brant and then we are going to hear maria you'll vanya which and she was the former ambassador to the ukraine so the preta says are all for the bill taylor who was testifying today she was removed in spring and she's essentially saying that rudy giuliani president trump's private lawyer campaigned against her that he wanted to get rid of her because he believed that she would stand in the way of potential investigations against president trump's political rival and bill taylor today also spoke about the role she had in there talking about highly irregular channel of policy making on the ukraine so he also had a very critical take on the role of judy rudy giuliani president trump's private lawyer here he wus corresponded with in washington and bors formant political

scientist for a college here in the studio with the gentlemen to you both thank you. or 23 palestinians have been killed in 2 days of israeli airstrikes on the gaza strip israel is targeting militants in the palestinian territory in response to dozens of rocket attacks on israel this ways flare up in violence follows the killing of a senior member of the palestinian militant group islamic jihad on tuesday by israeli forces. past the sirens. and then. this is a current operating procedure at the by sea life hospital located several kilometers from gaza. but not even an eye on dome defense system can ease anatoly is fia's his newborn is somewhere in the hospital. 2 days ago i became a father but now the rockets called me here in the hospital we don't get used to

this. the rockets have been relentless gaza militants have been firing them into israel since tuesday when behind after a senior commander from the palestinian militant group islamic jihad was killed by israeli forces israeli warplanes have responded with a series of strikes. and with nowhere to run for cover gaza residents are lashing out but warning the jews are lying this is my home it had 3 floors in it was destroyed during the night it's not a military site it's the home of 8 people. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu has want further escalation if strikes from gaza continue egypt is reportedly working as a mediator to deescalate tensions between the 2 sides in the meantime basil a hospital is continuing its operations underground for people here this is an all too familiar scenario sirens heraldic in that.