this is g w news live from berlin tonight the economic costs of the pandemic an unprecedented blow to u.s. g.d.p. shrinking it by almost 10 percent in the 2nd quarter the virus also ravaging europe's biggest economy german g.d.p. dropping by a record 10 percent the biggest decline in half a century also coming up tonight donald trump floats the idea of delaying the limbers presidential election he claims mail in voting will result result in the most fraudulent election in u.s. history and the perils of social media in egypt these young women doing just what

people do want to talk have been imprisoned for up to 3 years for violating family values and. because nasa launches its newest rover perseverance on day 7 month journey destination mars its mission to look for signs of ancient lives on the surface of the red planet. to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome we begin tonight with the latest victim of the coronavirus pandemic the u.s. economy in the 2nd quarter of this year output dropped by almost 10 percent now that translates into an annual rate of 33 percent that's the biggest flaw. since

record keeping began for the us in 1947 it covers the months of april to june when large parts of the u.s. economy were brought to a standstill due to pandemic lockdowns unemployment tonight also remains worrisome weekly jobless claims have risen slightly suggesting that any tentative recovery will be slow. one ruiz is one of around 18000000 unemployed americans. the 56 year old accountant lost his job at a forklift manufacturer after he contract a covert 19. with no job to go back to he's finding it harder to find work than he had expected which are going to cost up in that many people are losing their jobs because the companies they work for closed their doors in fact my company closed they said they were not selling and shuttered their warehouses. factories are closing small businesses to americans are tightening their belts and that's cause

the country's gross domestic product to drop by a staggering 33 percent last quarter. but it's also worth mentioning that if the u.s. counted g.d.p. like europe does that it would have only fallen by 10 percent making germany's g.d.p. drop during the 2nd quarter slightly worse than the u.s. it is. however germany has seen less unemployment. thanks in part to government backed short term work schemes it sophos by the digital numbers for germany in q 2 are worse than expected but let's be honest we weren't expecting good news in terms of growth the important thing is to put the 2nd quarter behind us and look to the future so everything depends on the course of the corona pandemic. in germany infection rates are on the uptick. around 700 new infections were reported on wednesday. in the u.s. the number is north of 60000. worrying numbers one reads and he doesn't expect the economy to get back on track soon his wife and son work part time but they

barely make enough to pay the family's bills. you know these are not good numbers to talk about the numbers i'm joined tonight by olof group is an economic strategy that's at the university of california in berkeley it's good to see you again professor gross let's let's talk about this 10 percent drop in g.d.p. what does that mean actually always a pleasure to be with you greg thank you for having me this is needless to say the worst and fastest decline since the great depression there's a starting out to be really bad we're looking at an unemployment rate anywhere between 13 and 17 percent depending on are you counting and the reason for why that is bad is that the united states is dropping off as a global economic engine and was most of europe still only in a 2nd wave of the virus asia especially china will have to pick up the slack and whether they will have the capacity to do so and quickly at that is highly doubtful

given that they're still struggling with their own recovery and their own 2nd waves of infections germany is the big hope in europe it has managed debt much to the united states but of course whether its economy itself can be strong enough to pull your all of europe the united states and parts of asia out of the slump remains to be seen but let me ask you about germany for a moment because germany relies on exports and if the global economy is not doing well then that makes it almost impossible for the german economy to improve and seeing that right. that's exactly right brant and i think the great hope here again is china and china has managed to the tail end of its 1st wave of viruses fairly well and is starting to recover but of course you know china also still is not quite out of the slump so a lots and lots of uncertainty we're also seeing other export markets such as latin america and africa now obviously being hit by the virus so it's

a fairly slim rail fairly narrow rail that the german economy is riding on given it's an export focus there was hope for there has been talk about a very shaped recovery but the way things are looking now i mean hearing maybe a w. shaped or maybe a u. shape i mean how do you see the recovery you know i think anybody who is talking about of the shaped recovery has a rosy glasses in front of his eyes or her eyes this is clearly a prolonged the long gated w. war bathtub shaped recovery based on our core nomics scenarios research we're seeing scenarios where it's this is going to take 3 years at best to recover for most industries and for some economies it'll take 5 to 7 years to recover and we'll see you know spikes of recession of contraction interspersed with with periods of recovery well 3 to 5 years that's a long time to be stuck in the bath tub economist joining us tonight as always

a life it's good to talk with you thank you my pleasure thank you. and moments after the u.s. release those terrible g.d.p. numbers u.s. president don't want trump suggested delaying the 2020 alexion until he says it becomes safer to vote unhindered by the coronavirus pandemic the president took to twitter to say that quote universal mail in voting would make the election the most inaccurate and fraudulent in history he then asked delay the election until people can properly securely and safely vote question mark question mark question mark trump is currently lagging in opinion polls it's important to note here that only the u.s. congress can change the election date which is set by of all for november 3rd more now let's go to washington our correspondent all over salat good afternoon to

you oliver it's not surprising that democrats do not white donald trump's idea here what about the republicans they're not too thrilled with it either are they. as vibrant even republican lawmakers oppose that idea many came out on twitter today saying that only congress can postpone the elections and that's actually a phenomenon we've been following throughout the last week that more and more republicans are turning their back on president trump just yesterday with the troop withdrawal from from germany high ranking republicans are opposing that just a few moments ago house minority leader of the republicans kevin mccarthy said that the republican party is not backing that idea and it would be simply a violation of the constitution of the united states and we know that this is not the 1st time that donald trump has claimed that mill in voting could result in massive fraud that has the ever been able to substantiate that claim. he has not i mean the only argument he's putting forward is that voting by mail is

in secure but there's no hard evidence really to prove that the question of course is now why is he doing that and want to sumption is that the democrats take take the threat that is posed by the pandemic more seriously out there for more open to vote by mail and that would result therefore of course in a higher turnout of the democrats which is not in president tom's favor and critics are saying that he is trying to postpone the election to a better moment when the economy might have improved in a vaccine could be developed hoping that the polls would be it would improve then in his favor yeah i mean it is unprecedented for a sitting u.s. president to suggest this we've got a president who's making a claim without evidence he's making a claim but doesn't have political backing from his own party what does all of this tell us about trump's political standing right now. it's complicated as of now it looks rather unlikely to be honest that he would be reelected the republicans are turning against him biden is leading by 2 digits of course it's

still a little while until the election takes place and a lot can happen but the economic data is grim you've just talked about it the g.d.p. is down by 33 percent 150000 casualties reached as a result of the coronavirus pandemic the rate of new affection is reaching record highs so the perspective is really grim and if that doesn't change it doesn't look really good for a president trying to reelection all right a correspondent oversell the story for us in washington all over thank you. well here's some of the other stories now that are making headlines around the world the u.s. administration has agreed to gradually withdraw all homeland security agents from the city of portland oregon after weeks of clashes with protesters local authorities have criticized the agents presence saying it made matters worse washington said the officers were needed to protect federal court buildings former republican presidential candidate herman cain has died after contracting cove at 19

he rose to prominence in the food industry before switching to politics a co-chair of black voices for trump cain was hospitalized less than 2 weeks after attending the president's toso oklahoma campaign rally in june when he was 74 years old. tens of thousands of people again taking to the streets in cities across both garia they're demanding the resignation of the government and the chief prosecutor accusing them of suppressing free speech having ties with the mafia and refusing to fight corruption the anti-government rallies are are bulgaria's biggest in 7 years . a court in egypt has handed several young women prison sentences after they posted videos to the social media app tick-tock prosecutors allege that they had quote violated family values the accused included 2 prominent young influencers high name has some and. human rights groups see the jailings as part of

a larger crackdown on online content especially posted by a young women. these videos may look harmless to most to talk users but in egypt they landed these women in prison. a court ruled that 5 women had violated public morals after posting videos like this on the video sharing app to talk to young women our social media. influencers and together have several 1000000 followers prosecutors relied on a 2 year old law that gave the government wider powers to censor content online and the legal framework is based on the cyber crime which was passed in 2018 specially to articles that are related to my old 800 egyptian time he that which is an extremely broad article that his radio print intimidation and getting very

problematic since punitive articles in the laws should be extremely specific great and this case it's very open to interpretation and open to be used in targeting women any time fellow egyptians came to their defense online calling their punishment an injustice a group dubbing itself tick-tock women started a petition on change dot org calling on authorities to stop the crackdown on female tick-tock users amnesty international has said that freedom of expression has suffered more under president abdel fattah el-sisi than at any other time in the past 30 years. nasa is newly launched a mission to mars to search for signs of life suffered some technical difficulties shortly after takeoff an atlas 5 rocket armed with cameras drills in lasers blasted off from cape canaveral florida earlier on thursday and shortly after that liftoff the spacecraft entered safe mode and shut off all non-essential systems after

a temperature reading triggered an alarm nasa says temperatures are back in normal ranges and the ship will continue its mission to study mars the surface like never before. the roses descent will test out a new navigation system it's an autopilot designed to work at the best target location and steer towards it. it's supposed to make touchdown safer and more precise. the rover is aiming for this riverbed in the year 0 crater. perseverance when investigated surroundings with cameras and measuring devices this research is hoped the data will give the new insights into the geology and climatic history of mas but perseverance has another job too to search for signs of life. we probably won't find old d.n.a.

or anything like baton miles. but we might find rocks that were formed by a biological process is that's what we're expecting or at least we're hoping. viewers. must camp said has been specially developed to search for these traces of life. it has 2 cameras which can deliver detail to color photographs in 3 d. the camera system also has an advanced zoom to help research to see tiny patterns and structures in the rock the all. there is our team leader is a professor in arizona and he always puts it like this imagine you're sitting in the stands of a football stadium at the goal and you can see a fly buzzing around between the goal posts at the other end. of. the mission is also sending a small helicopter to mars. its job is to carry out autonomous test flights where

it controls the whole process by itself. it's propellers have to spin 8 times as fast as on earth because the atmosphere of mars is so thin. since the 1st flight attempts it's taken engineers 5 years to get to this point. the mission's most important goal is to collect rock samples examine them and pack them ready for transport to do this perseverance is fitted with the most complex robotic system nasa has ever defend ups. because surveillance will deposit the samples on the surface of mas in 10 years another rover will collect them and bring them to a launch pad iraq it will then carry them to a satellite in orbit which will finally bring the precious. perseverant we have to do let's bring in sanjay gupta he's an earth sciences with imperial college london part of the mars mission site it is good to have you on the

show tonight this is what the 4th u.s. rover mission to mars what is different this time. firstly this is an amazing river thames the instrumentation it's got really new sets of instruments to really look at the landscape in crates and analyze the chemistry but the key difference and the key difference to the previous rabbit curiosity is that this rover is going to drill holes into the martian surface into the martian rocks collect coal this place them in titanium chew and leave them on the surface of mars for a future mission to collect them and bring them back to earth unless scientists most geologists would like to analyze the samples moss rocks in trees we can do a lot on mars with rogue us but we can't do that really technical stuff that we can do enough of our trees yet i understand the earliest will get those mars samples would be the year 2031 so we've got

a decade or 2 away i want to talk about what your team is doing and you'll be evaluating prison mere inches camera photos what is so interesting in the crater where the rover is supposed to land so it's been picked very very specially suggester crater is a crater that from orbital emission satellite images appears to be in an ancient lake and we can see a river valley feeding into the crates and the mouth of that river valley v.c.s. what looks like a delta but built into this lake so this is evidence that there was water perhaps a long term very early and mosses history about 3900000000 years ago now deltas and lakes of the environments for life to microbial life to form and flourish and be preserved at not sticky we want to go to a place that we understand the geology off that is a high likelihood of the core samples potentially containing evidence of life the signs of ice since your optimism how optimistic are you that you're going to find

signs that there used to be life on mars. we have to say i don't know we can't tell mars may never have had life but for me as a scientist seem surprising that you know we have life on earth it seems uprising but life didn't arise on moss so we have such on a 2nd goal obviously like this one question but we have very little understanding of mars this year logical history and so the song pulls are going to tell us and just as creatures been specifically chosen because of the fight why diversity of rocks so that be able to tease out what's important details about mozzies early history it's going to crucial to understanding planet evolution and what's really important about that is that rocks of that age aren't well preserved because plate tectonics plate tectonics destroys rocks and forms but a mosque that pristine because most doesn't have a plate tectonics cycle so i think by analyzing these rocks back on our trees we

actually learn about the early stages of 90 miles but. we will hope to talk with you when those 1st analyses begin and also when those rocks from mars come back to earth sanjay gupta with imperial college london sunday we appreciate your time tonight thank you thank you goodbye you're watching t w news still to come former u.s. president barack obama speaks at the funeral of congressman and civil rights activist john lewis he calls him a founding father of a fuller fairer better america we'll have that report in just a moment. here's some of the other stories now that are making headlines at this hour a special prosecutor in switzerland has opened a criminal case against the president giani in frontin of the charges related to secret meetings that he held with the swiss attorney general meese a.o. lauber biking 20162070 inventin no was reelected president of football's

international governing body just last year. hong kong authorities have disqualified a dozen pro-democracy candidates from running in upcoming elections the government said they had failed to uphold the city's constitution among those barred is prominent activist joshua wong he said the decision showed a total disregard for the will of the people of hong kong mexico's supreme court has rejected a kaizen which sold to decriminalize abortion in local areas the judgment means anti abortion laws in the state of veracruz will remain in place religious groups celebrated the decision in front of the court it. will go into a sold out concert and used to be very normal but it is now fraught with risk because of the coronavirus digital concerts help to fill in the gap but the yearning for live performances it has not gone away so

a group here in germany has come up with a way to connect music lovers in person no facemask required a silent gaze this is how a one on one concert begins in this german monastery. it's a moving experience for the audience. and then does mention they want to look into this person's eyes for so long. and then to listen to the music but it can't be compared to an orchestra or to a concert where the musician looks so small this can be instantly suddenly you're in a space where you say i am playing a small concert for you and then you try to give it your all what if as a month a minute i just took him. putting your all in all over. the monastery

concerts were created by a flutist and her colleagues last year. then the pandemic hit. because it sort of has the possibilities for performing suddenly changed it was obvious to us even then that we wanted to continue with our concept and not only here in the middle of nowhere but out in the world through things no it was a longer one and the idea was welcomed with open arms. and i'm often on. some 4000 concerts have been held so far. to strangers so distant yet so close. 6

this fast coming up i don't know if the musician noticed but i was moved to tears in some parts to take their place to all it's beautiful to be so close and to have the eye contact at the beginning of. the concerts have raised 100000 euros in donations for freelance musicians in germany. there are even bible readings for a party of one intimacy in a time of social distancing. 3 former u.s. presidents spoke today in atlanta georgia at the funeral of congressman and civil rights activist john lewis barack obama received a standing ovation when he condemned republican the thames and preventing people from voting lewis who marched at the side of dr martin luther king jr died 2 weeks ago at the age of 80.

6 6 6 6. if i could help somebody as i pass along the way then my living shall not be in. words which could not match john lewis writes why and better at his funeral on the same atlanta 3 former presidents pay tribute to the i can of the civil rights movement one of them barack obama. whether it's years from our debt or even if it takes another 2 searchers john laws will be a founding father of that color her. daughter america. just like obama many speakers underline john lewis courage which shaped the history of the us lewis who was born in alabama in 1940 was a leader of the march on washington which helped and racial segregation in the

country he was jailed many times and attacked by state troopers lewis was a champion of peaceful civil disobedience which he called good trouble. he got into a lot of good trouble along the way but let's not forget he also developed an absolute canny a bubble be to heal trouble. later in life john lewis turned from protest to politics he ran for congress in 1907 and state for 35 years until his death on july 17th representative lewis will be laid to rest at the south you cemetery in atlanta where dr martin luther king jr is also buried. and here's a reminder of the top stories that we're following for you at this hour the latest figures show that the coronavirus pandemic is decimating global economic growth the united states economy slumped by almost 10 percent that's an annual rate of one 3rd

the german economy also shrank by 10 percent in the 2nd quarter this is g.w. news live from berlin after a short break i'll be back to take you through the day tonight the economic cost of the panda will be right that.

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again conflagration the world on fire starts aug 12th on g.w. we have 200 fighting back in and dancing with the baby. the coronavirus pandemic has claimed more lives in the united states than anywhere on the planet today we learned that the virus has also crippled the world's largest economy like never before u.s. g.d.p. dropped a record 9.5 percent in the 2nd quarter now just moments after those numbers were made public we saw another 1st for the 1st time he was president donald trump suggesting the new.