around the world people are living longer today than ever before graying aging societies with more time than ever to ponder death well today in a landmark ruling germany's highest court overturned a ban on assisted suicide saying that the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution extend to what could be the final decision that a person makes the decision to die i'm burnt off in berlin this is the day. you know that everybody should be able to decide for themselves about their own life has been the most one thing that people should always give life a chance to among all the times terrible misery something good can happen to the arsonists only but the peace the absolutely necessary to at least allow the possibility of suicide 6 speak of political contributors nice hope for the future of the society will discuss this. and i hope there will be enough profit from

society that people won't necessarily want to end their lives this is. also coming up at the berlin film festival will screen 2 movies transporting us across the borders of time space and a place in society. from the villain on the red carpet we've got a modern day adaptation of the german literary classic berlin alexandre but what really brought the crowds out tonight was to see sam hyatt and javier bardem here for the world premiere of sally potter's new film the road not taken that's coming up on the day. our viewers watching on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome we begin the day with the right to determine the answer to one of the most fundamental questions of life when and how do we die. day germany's highest court handed down a ruling that reverses

a ban on assisted suicide the court's decision was based on the german basic wall but the issues before the court they have jurisdiction in every country every home every life who determines when your life or my life should end theologians have spent more than a millennium scientists centuries pondering an answer or today here in germany delivering an answer was the job of judges their conclusion clearing the way for assisted suicide brings germany in line with its european neighbors but it was not the ruling that everyone expected the decision by the german constitutional court took many by surprise. the ruling means assisted suicide by sunni legally take place in germany. i don't mind because when the kind of rights of the individual allow the right to

a self to death. that rights includes the freedom to take one's own life. also to seek help from a 3rd party as long as it's all fit. into that. one of the people who brought the case to court was how. he has a terminal illness and once the right to end his life when it's no longer worth living. i don't want it to reach that stage the difficulty breathing. perhaps i won't be able to communicate with my quality of life will have reached its limits. and i won't want to go on you know the but not everyone welcomed the court's ruling at a catholic charity hospice in berlin many see things differently. small businesses are simply concerned that there will now suddenly just be a really lousy way that's quicker and also cheaper that's not something i want in our society which has many forms and i want to be certain that everything possible

is done so that people can live with dignity until the last moment so. there are various opinions on the high court's ruling also out on the street yavin as that is a good point if everything is done according to the rulers and all the paperwork is there and the family agrees and i think it's a good thing that he does court. think that people should always give life a chance among all the time is a terrible misery something good can happen i find it hard to then get a doctor involved it's student it's more that. if it's about someone who is terminally ill and has decided they don't want to live anymore then they should also have the possibility that someone can help them. with. the court's decision now puts pressure on the government lawmakers will soon have to establish regulations for medication and procedures. ever more on this landmark decision i'm

joined here at the big table by our very own ethics correspondent martin get martin it's good to see you as you too we've been talking about this all day and we all know someone an elderly person someone who was ill who possibly could face this situation needing assisted suicide there is concern that by having this freedom that commercialization effect could take place do you see that as a threat here in germany i certainly think it is a threat overall so the fact is that in so far as something becomes profitable then the possibility of essential extending the business opportunities there and in this case would be talking about death so that means that actually in order to produce profit you would need to kill essentially more people however the point to be made is that in so far the rules are stringent enough and then there is enough vigilance in the forest mint of those rules we essentially as a society and certainly this is seems to be the position of the chords this is a risk that we're willing to take so we actually look at this we assess the

possibility of things happening and then we the plough the rules in order to see if we can actually curb unmodulated the risk would you say that there is still enough . of a taboo attached to assisted suicide that it will ensure that each case will be handled responsibly i mean will it make us behave i think that we have very good precedents right i mean both switzerland and holland i mean then the netherlands have actually a very well regulated i mean one must assume that there are some excesses even those systems but actually it's a very tightly regulated system so that is a model that is sort of on the table and i'm sure it's the one that germany is looking at at the very same time it's also true that people do not like to talk about death they actually have an understandable resistance to the very idea of their own death and what if the things i think that we encounter is that. when we're dealing with issues of assisted suicide we have

a society that by and large is not willing to talk about death with people that are in a situation in which they feel the absolute sort of immediate need to discuss their own death you know what i mean this is i really here isn't there i mean our societies are getting older getting grayer and yet our pop culture still celebrates youth. and it doesn't give any attention sometimes to the last part of life what about what about this court decision today we know that 70 percent or so of germans say that they are for assisted suicide having that right was this decision today the legal community catching up with public certainly very much so very much so i mean i think that it's very clear from pretty much every poll pretty much across europe. general society said and him and is with assisted suicide and i think that we should be very careful here i mean the point is not that people should be allowed to kill themselves the point is that people should have the choice should the situation arise to actually take that step none the less

obviously the general and the competing element is that what we're trying to do us a site in the what the scientific community trying to do is for a close that i mean when we had to that point that's a choice that we hope we don't have to make i think that the point that the courts recognize is that it might be necessary to make that choice and the state of science is such that that choice in many cases must be made and we have to give people that out too and by more and more people do with the demographics and the way that they are let's talk a little bit about where this court case came from the meat comes from a position where just 5 years ago a law was passed that said assisted suicide was banned and again it was attached to this fear of commercialization. society and the legal system and we've seen a 180 in just the span of 5 years that would be very quick i don't think we have seen him. massive shift in the sense that there was enough permissibility before

2015 and then when the 2015 came around it is understood that there was still a certain amount of leeway i mean we very often do not know what happened in the final hours we have between a physician and the patient and the german system in many cases was let's say elegant enough not to go digging into those places where there were situations of great need and this was seen as a century they leave enough great suffering nonetheless it is clear that that's not amount to the legal framework that is necessary for a doctor to be able to intervene in a way that is clean and clear and i think that what this ruling does is precisely give that chance it's not only really about like the right to die but it's also producing the legal injurious prudential security for health professionals to be able to be you know of assistance and actually help the lung before we run out of time what was your take on what the court said today the court basically said that the freedoms that are guaranteed by the constitution extend to what could be the

final decision a person makes in that decision is having the freedom to his or her life i mean my philosophical same a philosophical position is that if we have recently and the recent star given and we have a law or we have a political system that gives essentially a premium to the idea of free will and rational free will then we have to accept that that's actually a rational choice whether we like it or not that's a completely different question but that's a rational choice. thanks correspondent martin is always good to get your insights thank you thank you very much. still ahead on the day of sports star accepting her own mortality of tennis great maria sharapova is retiring at the age of 32 ending a career of dominating the court and courting controversy they only thing i can control is what i do out there and what i have those are my words i've always you know i've always preferred to walk the walk and i have and i've done that by

winning 5 grand slams and being number one in the world. for your secrets may not be as secret as you think if you use what's app a d w news investigation has discovered that private group chants on once are often private in name only now here's what's happened d.w. found that links inviting others to join a private whatsapp group may also be a door for anyone in the public to come in what set groups were easily accessible through specific google searches the links to the groups have now been removed by google but they remain visible we understand in several public internet archives. for more on this we want to bring in the man who broke the story my colleague jordan willed in jordan it's good to see you so good work here i want you to help me connect these dots how does a link inviting me to join

a private what's app group become an entryway into that group via google so essentially and the employer some point here is that any link that shadow anywhere on the internet can be indexed on google what's up i've been very clear about this as well that is an intentional product decision sensi to make easy a few chickens groups feel friends and family if i showed any weapon actually google done can see it's so in other words this is i guess this is a backdoor that was built in knowingly. to a certain extent yes but not in such a nefarious kind of way it was that basically just to make it easier for people to access all their friends mostly and what kinds of groups are we talking about here so we found all sorts of things we found things that friends and family groups we found some school study groups we've also found businesses but there are a few more things that are a little bit more concerning for example there's been groups of sex workers that's been groups sharing illegal porn on top of that we found

a group which was listed as essential a support group for. people in latin american country see when you join these groups what's consenting about this is it lists all of the phone numbers of people and in many latin american countries that merges razzi very high that's quite scary and some of threatening we know that whatsapp is owned by facebook and i'm wondering how have whatsapp and google how they responded to this because the dangers you talk about you know they're real these are people's lives who may be endangered yes so well google's responded essentially saying that this is intended behavior look at the link is public then it will be stored on google what's up however i have had sort of a flip flop way of describing at 1st they said it was an intentional product design so making it easy they've done go back on that and they for moved the line of code which allows google to index things by adding something else to the stop sets so they've now removed all of these links and i won't comment any further on why

that's happened and you know it's interesting you joined the c.e.o. of facebook mark zuckerberg he has been traveling around the world recently asking governments you know to please regulate his industry that's what he wants now would regulations when they prevent these privacy cracks like the ones that you have discovered do you think it would make a difference. regulations can help but there's also a certain level of responsibility and there's always going to be a blame between policy and regulation as the c.e.o.'s of companies like this idea who's responsible for privacy ultimately if we using a service then the creators of the law should be aware of law needs to be more. of a privacy and fun question jordan do you use whatsapp i do with every time i've opened it now i'm feeling just a little less yeah that's your work there young man all right jordan will do it as always or we appreciate your reporting thank you thank you.

oh the 70th brylin international film festival is a screening of the british film the roads not take it is by the director sally potter now the film which is showing in competition explores a daughter's love for her ailing father. selma high act and elf and the dollars of the red carpet at the premiere of the roads not taken the cost of sally port his new film was happy to be at the ballad nala. futures which was a great opportunity to show their work but also within the 70th of ever surreal berlin film festival which is a big thing it's a big deal with the. public in the film daughter molly is constantly troubled her father leo suffers from mental illness and hallucinations. sally potter's film makes leo's mental world visible taking the view inside and sealed off self the memories passed by feelings from long gone times come back to life.

when one wants to feel a kind of illness or perhaps other kinds of mental illness are not always a disability sometimes hidden inside what seems something very tragic might be the capacity for a kind of time travel space travel memory travel or all kinds of interesting states of mind i was worried to get into a place where they cannot control myself that's the whole thing but i don't know what's going to help sally was so generous and brave in a lonely nights and i love we need to go where i needed to go to hear your attorney said the film also deals with the difficulties families have dealing with a mentally ill loved one point is that elle fanning plays molly with sensitivity showing how her father's state keeps pushing her to her limits. my character is also really about making choices in her life so for

me i was kind of always in the middle of something. the roads not taken is a moving father daughter tale featuring extraordinary. but it's not just a story of loving someone afflicted with severe illness it's just that what we call normal life is just one possibility among many. all right let's take this now to my colleagues i mean yes if. you're on the red carpet at the berlin film festival good evening to you 2 gentlemen so the roads not taken after watching it was that the road that you're glad you took. that's a very good question you know this was a big night here on the red carpet javier bardem is an oscar winning actor and i think this film allowed him to show off his acting prowess you know to get into the role of a man who is completely absent. suffering from early onset dementia but i think one

of the problems with the film is that it wanted to make every scene an oscar winning scene and i know you know some yeah i would i would say that the seeds were oscar winning seeds are i mean huge fan of them but this is an interesting story but as with a lot of silly potter films it didn't really pull it off i mean in the end you got an hour and a half of javier bardem wandering around mumbling and fanning looking sad and it doesn't really it doesn't really work i mean. this is a film about alternative realities and past not taken the path they should've probably taken is take care of our times character 1st 50 minutes then into a street hit by a car that would have been a much better film i've been on think there's a single road that this film can take that will lead to a golden bear all right well that sounds like a traffic violation there. let's go on to the next film that is in the running for the golden bear a classic 1920 s.

novel remade a centuries century later i'm talking about berlin alexanderplatz so compare today to the 1920 s. what parallels were they draw in this film. yeah i. was able to interview the director and i asked him specifically that question and he said that when he was reading the novel he saw great parallels because of the the great income disparity that was exist in the 90 twenties and the growing in time disparity now in berlin in the 2020 and so when he decided to adapt this this book instead of taking the for the main character france fever cough of course in the original is a german he decides if you want to represent the sort of lower rung of society that he should take a completely different figure and so he took 8 eat meet them in the african refugee to germany sort of to better illustrate the sort of an underclass that exists now in realty day i thought it really really worked i thought that that twist really a made the the story up to date and gave it

a real current relevance that makes this story the novel really come alive i mean when i think yeah i think that the novel really broke ground i don't know if the film was able to do that but still an epic tale of biblical proportions and i think it's definitely worth seeing unbelievable visually stunning definitely and we know we don't have much further until saturday when the awards are going to be announced you know of all the films that you have seen which ones do you think are the strongest contenders. yet we're talking about this just before the show and i think it's a good chance an american film could win the 1st time in 20 years maybe never rarely sometimes always american film but a girl trying to get an abortion i think that's probably is the best chance of very bare big critical reviews for me it was 1st cow another american film personal favor and i think it's a strong contender all right gentlemen thank you very much i mean that's if it's got rocks on the red carpet at the berlin film festival thank you.

for 5 time grand slam champion maria sharapova is retiring from tennis at the tender age of 32 a teenage prodigy she won her 1st grand slam at wimbledon in 2004 at the age of 17 and completed a career slam all 4 majors. by winning different open in 2012 the russian who moved to florida as a child was banned from the sport for 15 months after failing a doping test back in 2016 persistent shoulder injuries meant that she played only 2 matches in 2020 and she lost both of. our to talk about because career of maria sharapova i'm going to hear the big table by my colleague anthony howard from b. w. sports all right 32 years old i mean for me a new that is you know she's still young but we have to remember she's been playing a long time and she says that her body's is just not what it used to be right so you think as long as have professional career but she also kind along why we're

living in the shadow of chernobyl before she was born to move out of harm's way to sochi she was discovered at the tennis camp at the edge of 6 by this point she's playing every day so we think about it all the bodies so there's been no chernobyl there would be no that's right because she's discovered she goes to the bella tele terry rather tennis camp in florida way andre agassi came out of signed as a signed to a deal at the ides of 11 indian wells at 16 she makes it the blue wins wimbledon 17 so you think full time a nice but really on the tennis convey a bill as a serious occupation with a father is trying to her mother is home school so that wastes no time on their using other than tennis amazing 28 years on that production line so the body is broken down and that's why you had the chance to meet and interview her when she was what at the peak of her career or inter power came to melbourne before the strike you know open as world number one and also the world's number one in a for fame on and off the court she would do that for the next 11 knees classic

sponsorship opportunity that you get the chance to speak to her with the brand name of a his shoulder you must ask one question about the brand and you've got 7 minutes walk in the media present says his she is nourish of her. yes anthony have place to make nothing good absolutely nothing but just a pair of his allies looking back at me and watching me i look at the media person to say what's happening here any sort of help and she's like now you've got 6 and a half this is it this is really happening about a turnaround of the camera and say hey let's we've need to get moving here really quickly and turn around we're rolling a camera and i'm greeted by the human billboard that is switched on when it was which strong and i don't say this to belittle her like a machine though in a way that it totally like a machine there are 2 things she was interested in winning tennis matches bryant and winning indorsements if you weren't helping with either of those 2 things you just wasting your time but you know of course she's also going to be known for the doping. scandal is that going to overshadow her legacy and how her career will be

remembered it will to some degree because the career has come to an end so soon after that kind of question the hot medication was put on the banned list and she had to put a hand up for 4 weeks later and tested positive to that drug it's going to be in the minds of some but really as to her potential and how hard she would she won a major on all of the surfaces she won wimbledon the u.s. and then these threatened she was never going to win the french she said that she. was like a cow skating on us but then she won 2 of them she was able to overcome it yes the drugs thing is their income be taken away but no going to take away the top to do we know what she's going to do now means she's still on 32 she's been in turning in the knock marketing headquarters she's building her own brand new sugar sugar pogo spending more time on that life and whatever she turns a hand to it tends to succeed so we're going to his some sugar popov that works all

right anthony howard we appreciate it sugar prover that's going to be the everyone's here for the rest of the night thank you all right the day is always done with the conversation it continues online to find us on twitter either d.w. news you can follow me a brit got. he me of the get use the hash tag the day and remember whatever happens between now and then tomorrow is another day we'll see then everybody.

civil heroes are unlikely. firefighting here it is a bit unusual. forest fires have been increasing in the past years in portugal and so locals are turning to and goats and cows to graze firebreaks their owners think their livestock could help solve a huge problem so how helpful are these 4 legged firefighters and some good.

news to d w. and isn't our society you can only be too thin or too fat you can never fit in. social media is taking a heavy toll on users bob. if social media had a soul it would be fairly blocked alarming insights into how day to day lives are dominated by impossible beauty ideal never enough the cold the body in social media . on d w. have fun in pyongyang. the capital city of north korea is reinventing itself. but only a few can enjoy the benefits of those the regime allowing. kim jong un has

introduced an insidious reward system to coerce allegiance to the regime. those who don't make it into the fun metropolis are often poor and tom green. have fun in pyongyang starts feb 28th on w. o. hello and welcome to focus on europe i'm lara below glad you could join us today racism is poisoned those were the words of germany's chancellor angela merkel after a gunman shot 10 people dead in the city of hama now questions are now being asked if officials are now.