this is deja vu news live from berlin and governments around the world are ramping up their response to the threats of the coronavirus we believe the risk of a global pandemic is very much a punch and as a result as a government we need to take the steps necessary to prepare for such pain different . meanwhile experts warn of another scourge spreading as fast as the corona virus

itself misinformation the world health organization is searching social media trying to counter what it calls an insult to me. and there's an uneasy calm in the indian capital delhi after 3 days of sectarian violence leaves $32.00 dead but look at last. i'm serious i was gonna thank you for joining us governments are ramping up their moves to contain the corona virus as it spreads globally japan as among those governments prime minister shinzo abi has called for all public schools to close from next monday until the end of spring break in april this as new infections of the virus outside china outnumber those in china let's take a look at a map that shows the severity of the situation in the affected nations now the deeper blue of the country here the larger the number of reported. races then as

you can see china still has the highest number of cases more than 78000 altogether 50 countries or territories have confirmed cases of the virus the total stands at more than 82000 now south korea has again seen its biggest one day jump in of infections and saudi arabia has stopped travel to religious pilgrimage sites student series over the virus in europe italy's outbreak has worsened while romania denmark and estonia are the latest countries to confirm cases and australia is taking emergency measures to stop the disease from spreading numerous international flights have been cut back or cancelled here's a closer look at how countries around the world are fighting to ward off a pandemic. street as infection set in italy several new cases across europe more deaths reported in south korea and many global events from sporting matches to conferences canceled. around the world

preparations are ramping up as fears of the virus turning into a pandemic grow. australia has kicked off emergency measures wall the challenge is yet to declare. the night of the coronavirus and its move towards a pandemic as. we believe that the risk of a global pandemic is very much upon us and as a result as a government we need to take the steps necessary to prepare for such a pandemic. as the number of cases in the middle east rise travel to holy sites in saudi arabia has been halted months in advance of the annual hajj pilgrimage. even north korea yet to report a single case is taking preventative measures closing its borders and postponing the new school term. the virus is at the center in moulin in china remains the

worst hit most of the reported deaths and cases are in the city and the surrounding who bay province but this china's infection rate slow the virus is now spreading faster elsewhere more and more countries are reporting cases and upping the efforts to contain outbreaks we can speak now to lynn meyer he's a spokesman for the world health organization and he joins us from geneva kristen good to have you here on d w this outbreak has now is now global it is affected nearly every continent 82000 cases where does your organization the w h o put its focus in tackling this outbreak. and focuses the one is of course in china the source of the outbreak as we know. here as the report also said we have actually good news that means we have declining

cases and we have less the 2nd time in a row now less cases inside china than outside china. the flip side of that coin is exactly the other side that we have now more cases outside of china and we have inside china which is our 2nd priority look at it and we have been calling the world health organization has been calling upon the countries of the world since weeks to vamp up their response and to prepare for exactly that scenario and preparing means a lot preparing means getting your health system ready getting your health care workers ready and protect them because these are the 1st would normally have to feed killed any sick patient or any pick patient with symptoms so we we need the countries of the world need to protect their health care workers that's step one the 2nd is preparing for protecting the vulnerable population that's the patients with underlying conditions all the elderly the weak and of course it needs a lot of information and helping those countries who are not as strong in responding to this outbreak christine i want to ask you about the flip side because

this is extremely worrying i mean why are we seeing this spread infections to places where there doesn't appear to be a direct link to the epicenter in china. it's a good point which we still have to understand more so most and the vast majority of all infections come from symptomatic people and from those. who we can trace back the link but it seems always still have to understand more about possibly asymptomatic people have been transporting the virus. and then have been showing up in countries or infecting others without a direct link yet back to the origins of these tests and these looking into history of travelers of infection history is ongoing because we need to understand that how these infections are possible. if there is a link or if there's no link and if there's no link where these infections come from ok we are seeing people the people transmission of course we're seeing deaths

from these cases should this be declared a pandemic i mean what would that provider organization. the world health organization has already rang the highest alert that is possible in our system that is to creation of a public health emergency of international and this is a mechanism which was declared already a month ago. and then make would mean that the outbreak has reached levels where it's in multiple countries outside of the origin not containable or widespread community transmission so we believe we haven't seen this and we have seen many countries in it better virus status for sure but most of these countries still have a good grip on these individual outbreaks they contain the people they contain. they treat the patients think they trace their contacts and trace all the people who have possibly been infected on the way they quiet time people or instruct them to self monitor for a while so as long as this is under control this is good news but there's

a very high potential as the colleague also just mentioned of this reaching pandemic levels and once it reached it was certainly talking in those terms. but let's not make this mistake here the effort of response is not limited or related to whether we call it a pandemic or not or whether the world comes as a pandemic or not the efforts a country can do the efforts the individual can do the efforts every health system can do are there yet and will be all right we'll have to leave it there chris and then my a spokesman for the world health organization thank you for joining us thank you now here in germany the government has set up an emergency task force to deal with the health minister says it's the beginning of an epidemic the country has seen 10 new cases since tuesday a couples being treated at a hospital indecl garson schools and kindergartens in their town have been closed while officials try to trace the train of inspection health minister yes don has urged regional authorities to review their emergency planning. if. we were at the

beginning of a coronavirus epidemic in germany the cases in north rhine-westphalia and bought in virgin birth are a further sign of this change of infection are partly and this is a new aspect not traceable it's there are multiple persons who have had contact with the infected patients. and that's a qualitative difference to the 16 infectious cases we've already had in germany where in each case the chain of infection could be traced back to the art break in china. while the w.h.o. is calling on social media giants to help stem misinformation about the coronavirus health officials are calling it an insult demick fake news about the corona virus is making it difficult for people to keep themselves properly informed. as the corona virus spreads around the world there's another outbreak going viral.

misinformation online from scammers angling for a quick buck to shadowy actors so when chaos manipulators lie in wait. here a website with wild exaggerations of the number of dead and infected false hype from a notorious american white supremacist and another conspiracy theory in the right wing washington times linking the coronavirus to china's bio warfare program a rumor rejected by public health scientists. online peddlers are looking to profit from public panic selling products with unproven claims is influenza that is now circling the globe so you're saying that silver solution would be effective well let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the corona virus but it's been tested on other strains of the corona virus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours another site advises people to ward off the corona virus by

drinking chlorine dioxide a form of industrial bleach the u.s. food and drug administration says is dangerous. public health experts warn such false claims can cause the virus to spread further and faster distracting people from proven prevention techniques. the world health organization is fighting back putting pressure on social media giants to place reliable sources about the coronavirus higher in search results. and the w.h.o. has launched its own public information task force. there are several measures you care about to protect yourself and others from getting the new coronavirus the appropriate use of math their top counter measure to dissent from ation is actually simply putting the truth out there with soap and water for more

on the story peter. social media team is with us he's been looking into the story for us hi peter this is extremely worrying and dangerous i mean why would people want to willfully spread misinformation well there are number reasons obviously we saw some of the report ones like stone cold greed so basically trying to make a quick buck off of you know other people's fears. more worryingly i think is that they're using the misinformation to really a political weapon so it's to destabilize governments it's to sow distrust in authorities at a time when a lot of people are really counting on officials to tell them how to how to go about this situation how to handle deal with the crisis. in the u.s. for instance we've seen the religious right really mobilized to you know race doubts and call into question the effectiveness of science we've seen right wing populist jump on this to really stoke anti immigrant sentiments

spoke to a number of people from several asian countries who've described you know racist attacks physically and verbally and just last week u.s. intelligence warned that. basically an army of trolls linked to russia has created thousands of fake accounts that are spreading. these wild allegations like this cia created the virus in order to you know wage war in the chinese economy all of these things you know effectively call into question or based out of out whether or not we can trust our governments a lot of reasons for misinformation none of them are good ok with that see event misinformation out there what can people do to find out what information is reliable right i mean the good news is that we're just being especially health ministries really stepping up they've done a pretty good job at providing providing easy to understand guidelines so

definitely check out your local or your health ministries home page a lot of them have also taken social media to accurately fight back against misinformation debunking myths but also you should commonsense if you see some of the numbers that we saw in that report right there hundreds of thousands of deaths well checked other outlets check other major news sources are they reporting similar figures if not well it's probably not true ok and we seem to w.h.o. answers on that report to set up this public information task force do you think that's going to be effective well i think it's actually a step in the right direction but i think the problem is also much bigger then the w.h.o. one is a problem that they can't really contain and that is the fact that it remains too easy to abuse the social media platform to weaponize information they still facebook and twitter still rely to a to great extent on their users really policing and flacking misinformation as

long as that policy continues this threat is going to persist and it's definitely not helping in situations like this the ranking of these dollars thank you so much for joining us here in studio. well you can certainly find reliable information abroad about the spread of the corona virus on our website w dot com let's take a look now at some of the other stories making news around the world syrian rebels say they have recaptured a strategic town in north western province that comes as the syrian army is pushing to gain control over the last large rebel held region a syrian human rights group says government troops have seize full control of southern england and the adjoining hama province in the last 3 days. in the u.s. 5 people have been killed in a shooting at a brewery in milwaukee according to police reports the gunman took his own life has been identified as a 51 year old employee of the brewery. heavy rains have triggered severe flooding

in western and northern colombia officials say at least 8 people are dead and 12 missing after mudslides left a trail of devastation major roads are blocked hampering rescue efforts. and tunisia's new government is one of voter confidence in parliament the backing for prime minister and cabinet and is more than 4 months of political wrangling since the election the coalition includes parties from across the political spectrum but they continue to disagree on major policy issues. now the death toll from religious riots in the indian capital delhi has risen to $32.00 police say sporadic violence has continued in the aftermath of the on grass that left northwestern parts of the city badly scarred the clashes broke out early this week between thousands protesting for and against the new citizenship law right police and paramilitaries have been deployed in the affected area. let's bring in as well from delhi for more on the story behind him isha what is the situation like in delhi today.

well it's already the situation continues to be tens there aren't the shocking visuals of running dry it's that he was seeing coming out of the location on monday and tuesday so it has been carmel yesterday the police took out a massive flag marches through the easier to reassure people that there is police presence but once again in the evening we heard reports of targeted violence against muslims the death toll has risen over the last day and reports say that it could be much higher going forward there is a lot of feel in muslims not only living in the neighborhood but in other parts of delhi as well as that are rumors flying around of more trying to attack with slim neighborhoods but it's also heartening to see that there are other neighborhoods where hindus and muslims are taking out peace marches together to say that they will stand against such violence and that also see experiences and and and and shelter being offered to muslims who are trying to flee from their neighborhoods

which is also happening so this situation will have to continue being one of the riots and not quite over yet what caused these riots i mean what led to this outbreak of violence we've seen politicians are accused of sparking the rights with inflammatory speeches is that true. well definitely so many of the 1st attacks have not been documented so we're not exactly clear what was the 1st thing that provoked the riots but one piece of information that has been coming out is that there was a blue chip people edition of the g.o.p. need who had come out in front of police threatened to protest against the citizenship law saying that if the police doesn't clear them he will take matters into his own hands now a deadly hot at the delhi high court has called for the police to take action against other political hate speech me good me because this is not new and hate speech has been spiking from the winning b.g.p. and this has also caused in the cause of concern because this is now it looks like

nothing to do instances of violence but of course once again. and the opposition is calling for the home minister to step down there's a lot of criticism of the reach of feet but the party itself has not taken action against these leaders even though the delhi high court has called for such action to be taken. to these new mission jacks were reporting from delhi to michigan to talk to you. it is world of polar bear day a day aimed at reminding people about global warming images of the bears roaming an ever shrinking habitat have become symbolic of the threats posed by climate change conservationists hope world polar bear day they will encourage people to do more to help cut carbon emissions and save those majestic animals. they can smell you from a kilometer away run most humans and crush a seal skull with their jaws no doubt about it polar bears like these are seriously scary they're also the best known victims of climate change as one that is

naturally sort of living in the arctic rely on pack ice with a survival of the seals by waiting for them to come up through holes in the ice. if the ice melts and decreases and saw use that becomes a very real threat of a problem. for the i spend. satellite images of the arctic show red areas where the ice is fading and that makes it more difficult for polar bears to hunt seals their main source of food the bears also depend on snow and ice to build dens where females give birth to their young and where they stay for 3 to 4 months after they're born. as of us a few surprises many people is that although polar bears can get really big and all the largest land based presence on the planet when the born they're about the size of a guinea pig. they're almost naked blind and deaf and without the support of the mothers

they can't survive. but just a few months later they develop into a really handsome but i have encountered and they could be unstuck here. only 26000 polar bears are left in the wild scientists say they warn that 2 thirds of them might disappear within this century if the earth continues to get warmer. if governments don't take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions these magnificent animals could even become extinct. now your secrets might not be a secret as you think if you use whatsapp a d.-w. news investigation has discovered that private group chats on whatsapp are sometimes private in name only d.w. found that links inviting people to join private whatsapp groups can be a door for anyone to come in if the links were shared publicly on line the whatsapp group swearing easily accessible through specific google searches the links to these groups have now been removed by google but they remain visible in several

public internet archives. and jordan weldon broke this story he joins us to tell us more hi jordan i mean this works exactly does this work i mean how can a link that invites me to join a private whatsapp group provide a way for anyone else in if they're using google will see. anything that shows online anywhere can be indexed by google so i both google and what's often facebook have been very clear about this if a link has been shared anywhere google can see it so i would have a private chat groups what kind of groups are these so this all the kind of things you would expect this family and friends groups we found some things which was study groups of school groups doctors students but there's also been some things that are a little bit more sinister so we found some revenge porn there's a lot of things that are indicating a lot of like illegal pornography on some violent content as well this is clearly a breach of privacy jordan but explain to us what that what the real danger is here

i mean how can this information be used. i mean there's 2 points here one of them is that some government groups were found and obviously that could be potentially dangerous information leaks not like the other is we found one group which was in a lot of american country where homophobic killings are quite high and once you enter these groups you can see all of the phone numbers which is naturally quite dangerous yeah that is dangerous jordan and a serious lapse i mean how have whatsapp and google responded to this. so google is essentially just said this is normal behavior so anything that is posted online will be visible what's up of kind of reiterated that but they flipped back a bit 1st they said this was an intentional project decision basically to make it easier to join groups then they've gone and removed all of these searches now so you can't find them so it's kind of unclear and i won't comment further on that what about the fact that what's app is owned by facebook is their c.e.o. mark zuckerberg is is now asking governments to regulate as industry i mean would

regulations prevent this type of thing from happening well this is something that i would kind of expect from because if they get the government to regulate the industry then it kind of takes the responsibility from them to just half like a moral and ethical decision making process to just protect people so it's a case of maybe there should be government regulation but maybe also companies should just take care of people's privacy and data all right really interesting stuff jordan weldon thank you for sharing your reporting with us thank you. sports now and in wednesday's champions league games manchester city shocked rael madrid it to one in the 1st leg of their last 16 match up disco gave way out the lead after a mix up in city defense but the english club did head back to his hands and they completed their comeback siva minutes later man of the match kevin brown scored from the penalty spot adding to wales problems syria ramos was shown a red card and he will now miss the 2nd leg in manchester.

so man city will have the advantage going into that 2nd leg but their coach pep guardiola says real madrid are more than capable of turning things around they were happy about the schools will be the 2nd leg real the start to be worried no worry about ok this field is not over is there's one team in the world like can overcome . everything is this club pretty experienced for the story for everything but for our people hopefully we can do good performance and go through. 5 time grand slam champion maria sharapova is retiring from tennis at the age of 32 the teenage prodigy won her 1st grand slam at wimbledon in 2004 when she was 17 and completed a career slam all 4 major titles by winning the french open and 21 of the russian who moved to florida as a child was banned for 15 months after failing to doping test in 2016 persistent shoulder injuries meant she played only 2 matches in 2020 and she lost them both.

now it may be unstoppable on the big screen but it's no match for the police in moscow where a homemade batmobile has been brought to a grinding halt the on registered replica has been impounded after a man was caught driving it on a main road it's been described as being armored and equipped with a night vision camera a laser aiming device and a model gun that imitates real gunfire but alas the batmobile does not conform to road safety standards and the driver is likely to have to pay a big sigh. let's get a reminder of our top story here on t.w. now governments around the world are implementing tougher measures to contain their own outbreaks of the corona virus this says south korea records more new cases on one date in china where the virus originated.

coming up next our show focus on europe reports on a city in the morning after the terror attack on han now in western germany last week thank you for watching t.w. and don't forget to go to our web site at www dot com for all the latest news and information there around the clock good to have you with us.

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 go and cows to graze firebreaks their owners think their livestock is how to solve a huge problem so how helpful are these 4 legged firefighters on the ropes.

next d.w. . enter the conflict zone with tim sebastian 16 months of gone by since the saudi journalist jamal khashoggi was killed by agents of his own state more years because argo algebra the saudi minister of state for foreign affairs why are there still so many are most of questions about the murder and more of the massive crackdown on human rights activists inside saudi arabia conflict over the legal over. in 60 minutes from. on t.w. to. 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 along with. kim jong un has

introduced and insidious reward system to coerce allegiance to the regime. those who don't make it into the fun metropolis are often in tom green. have fun in pyongyang starts feb 28th on w. hello and welcome to focus on europe i'm laura babylonia glad you could join us today racism is poison 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.