the world on fire starts aug 12th on d w i would have to invite it back. and dance with the b. . this is t w news coming to you live from berlin the economic costs of the pandemic us g.d.p. shrank by almost 33 percent in the 2nd quarter viruses also ravaging europe's biggest economy with germany's g.d.p. dropping by 10 percent the biggest decline in half a century also coming up this present doubles down in his criticism of mail in

ballots saying they'll make their members election the most fraudulent in history even close the idea of delaying the vote and hong kong faces not just a 2nd but the 3rd wave of coded infections public anger is on the rise of renewed restrictions and the possible to play of the coming elections. blow up terry martin thanks for joining us the credit pandemic has put the brakes on 2 of the world's economic engines in the u.s. the latest figures show the economy contracted by a stunning surtees 3 percent in the 2nd quarter that's the worst drop on record germany also marked or a record 2nd quarter slide wiping out nearly 10 years of economic growth numbers from both countries suggests that any tentative recovery will be slow. when ruiz is

one of around 18000000 unemployed americans. the 56 year old accountant lost his job at a forklift manufacturer after he contract it covert 19. with no job to go back to he's finding it harder to find work than he had expected which. 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. is. however germany has seen less unemployment. thanks in part to government

backed short term work schemes it satisfied digit be 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 for 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. u.s. president gul trump has drawn a process party criticism after suggesting a possible delay in the 2020 election trump who currently trails democrat joe biden in opinion polls has no authority to change the date which is set by law later

backtracked but continues to push claims that any increase in mail in voting due to the coronavirus and demick would result in fraught. even for president trump it was a rapid u. turn after floating the idea of delaying november's election only hours later he was walking it back i don't want to delay i want to have the election but i also don't want to have to wait for 3 months and then find out that the ballots are all missing and the election doesn't mean anything. earlier on thursday trump tweeted that universal miley in voting would make the 2020 elections the most inaccurate and fraudulent in history he called for the election to be postponed until people can vote securely and safely the suggestion was soundly rejected on both sides of politics democratic speaker of the house nancy pelosi quoted the constitution which gives congress the sole power to set election dates. even leading republicans

distance themselves. never in the history of the federal elections have we ever not held an election and we should go forward with our election we should we should have absentee voting but this masts just yelling out ballots without having any checks and balances without people requesting really brings concern in there but no way should we ever not hold elections on the day that we have. as the coronavirus surges in the us donald trump is doubling down on his attacks on 1000000 voting despite a lack of evidence to support his claims critics say he merely wants to distract from the pandemic and the economic crisis hurting his bid to stay in the white house. let's bring in irwin called here hear he's currently with bard college in berlin and he analyzes political affairs for us good to see you and republicans have supported trump on many things but delaying the election is that a bridge too far. that would be such an outrageous attempt to go

around the letter of the constitution that there are easier ways to suppress voters . and sort of trusting the local parties to close down polling stations are the sorts of things that are being done and attempted so that i think it was simply it was too obvious and also a clumsy it was just a clumsy sort of remark by trump quite often he speaks before he or his staff thinks and that's why you have to bring these things back as soon as possible to do even less damage during such remarks causes or when trump has repeatedly suggested that mail in ballots are vulnerable to fraud and threaten the legitimacy of the upcoming election what do you make of that argument. it's not a good faith argument that. there's been years decades of

experience with absentee voting clearly we are in unusual times and increase in the scale. probably an order of magnitude is something serious but you know simple things such as making polling places safer opening up more voting places having voting 'd boxes where people can just drive by and drop their ballots in all sorts of innovations are possible but aren't being discussed so the fact that all the other things to make voting a safe activity an easy activity for voters we're not seeing that so the fact we're not seeing that is just this is smoke and mirrors of the larger voter suppression attempt critics say that president trump is deliberately trying to undermine confidence in the american political system how robust is that system given the problems facing the country right now. i wish i could be.

more optimistic you know the constitution is a remarkable document but you know many things have happened in the meantime such things as political parties they're not explicitly mentioned in the constitution and what we are seeing with you know one party capturing both the executive and one of the houses of congress can. engineer things that the writers of the constitution did not think of that the power of impeachment. proves to be much harder. then the founding fathers thought it would be so just that is one simple example the gerrymandering the idea that politicians can choose their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians the role of money in voice in public voice in the new media

all of these things are differences and the challenges are enormous and right now there is plenty of reason to be concerned and you know the voter turnout that will be the sign whether or not the system will in fact be robust enough to withstand the shock of pandemic economic crisis and a major failure. in government or in thank you for your insights that was for an collyer a bar called h. out of some of the other stories making headlines around the world today france is the latest country to announce its economy has taken a record hit during the current a virus pandemic official figures show french d.d.p. slumped by 13.8 percent during the 2nd quarter like many parts of western europe much of france's economy went into lockdown to prevent the spread of coverage 19.

johnson and johnson say its test started testing a potential code in $1000.00 vaccine on humans this follows successful trials on monkeys the u.s. government is backing the company's effort with almost half a $1000000000.00 in front. and tens of thousands of people turned out in the event of russian capital mince to support opposition leader on a ticket over just over a week before presidential elections the 37 year old is challenging the decades long rule about xander lucas shank oh he accuses the opposition of trying to topple him with foreign assistance. or spurs in indonesia the world's most populous muslim country held morning prayers to kick off the. celebration due to the coronavirus pandemic special precautions were taken in the country's religious ministry and advised attendees to wear masks and at here's a social distancing all 6 were also asked to shorten prayer ceremonies.

media reports say hong kong leader kerry is set to announce a postponement of upcoming legislative council elections by a year potential delay comes as hong kong faces not just as record its 2nd but a serb wave of covert 19th actions as the case count rises so does public anger over the government's handling of the crisis calling reports from hong kong. groups of 2 this is how you're allowed to hang out with friends in public in hong kong empty tables and chairs are seen at restaurants under the latest ban on dining in only takeaway orders are allowed. i agree that we should contribute to fight the virus but it turns out we're the ones to suffer 1st i feel like the government is passing the buck to us. there has been no lockdown in hong kong the government is trying to keep the

financial hub running by not forcing people to work from home as a result it could be no easy task to comply with social distancing rules especially for blue collar workers. some have no choice but to finish their meals and rain or shine the backlash has pressured the government to reverse part of the ban in only 2 days now eateries can serve customers during the daytime but only at 50 percent capacity. here in hong kong where a mosque has been the common practice giving off the outbreak but now they are party like a a compulsory and go in and out. even if want to fix society in a hot and humid summer there is no exception. but critics say these stringent measures are not enough to tackle the root cause. i'm afraid there will be more new waves of infection in the future if we don't shut our border. we can do better with exams that we don't need people to have exemptions we need everybody to expose the

truth to be foreign to. it's the most critical wave of infection ever health experts attribute the outbreak to quarantine exemptions which allowed dozens of essential personnel including c. and aircrew to cross the border freely now such exemptions will be tightened but not cancelled. although the number is still far lower than many major cities across the world the people of hong kong are concerned that it will have a wide ranging impact not only on public health and the economy but also on politics as the upcoming election could be postponed for the 1st time in history. he spent his entire life fighting for civil rights in the united states on thursday representative john lewis was mourned and celebrated at his funeral in the presence of no fewer than 3 former presidents the former icon of the civil rights movement

died earlier this month aged 80 here's some of the impressions from the ceremony in the 70s or baptist church in atlanta and. john lewis believed in the lord. he believed in humanity and he believed in america. he got into a lot of good trouble along the way but let's not forget he also developed an absolutely uncanny ability. to heal troubled waters i've come here today because so many americans or great debt to john lewis and his forceful vision. of freedom. come. to mind a top story we're following for you here today on d w news the biggest figures show that the credit virus pandemic is decimating global

economic growth united states economy slumped by almost 10 percent that's an annual rate of one 3rd the german economy also shrank by temps. this is t.v. news live from berlin we've got more news for you coming up the top of the next hour i'm terry march and you can find us. on instagram and i want twitter. thanks for. coming bettering the corona pandemic. where does research stand. what are scientists learning. background information and. our corona. from the covert 19 special next on d w. movie

. is going to soon as it seems. to understand the world better we need to take a closer. to the world today. there's been a lot of rage be it about toilet paper or masks the coronavirus pandemic sometimes results in aggressive behavior. and that has even led to deaths french bus driver philip monkey or was killed by a group of teenagers after asking them to wear masks to get on his bus.

uncontrollable anger seems to be on the rise in lockdown social distancing mask wearing uncertainty about jobs and the future could all of that because in a pandemic of stress and frustration. welcome to you covered not in special here on the news i'm going to get jones very relaxed in berlin good to have you with us i don't know if you've observed this kind of aggression in your daily life too but the longer the pandemic lasts the more people seem to be losing their cool life suddenly noticed more road rage when riding my bike through the lens is it just me or is there more of it my colleague james jackson went to find out. fights in the supermarket and harassment on public transport. i've seen more and more videos on social media of fights happening in public and i've even seen some confrontations on the streets so i spoke to a conflict expert to find out why is this happening conflict all the conflicts that normally occur in everyday life are covered with an extra layer of stress this is

the it's not me ability. to lynn's police union told us that social media doesn't tell the whole story while charges for verbal abuse have gone up 10 percent compared to last year charges 1st salts and bodily harm are actually slightly down some people sense a rise in aggression but others don't. we meet him because in a month or a cashier you seem this new tension. but there were also people who came in and said no i'm not wearing a mask there was one time when you said ok then you can go shopping and the person got really aggressive. and said this is the one. she would have loved to work from home for a week or 2 as well to take a breather. yeah. one day i was sitting at the cash register and there was a moment when i had several customers nagging me yelling at me and then a colleague came over and asked me if everything was ok and then i really just fell

apart a little bit. to this is. this is. the stress caused by the current a pandemic is affecting 50 percent of people in germany a survey found this stress reveals the rifts in our society that's one monday experience she wanted to stay anonymous because of the lockdown people always like you have to stay home and they just met and they're trying to blame once someone did trying to find a reason why this happened and it was because of china because of chinese people doing this because come from china that's why we're all in this together because of them because other asian in their eyes also look like chinese and also included that the arch chinese people so now it's all just asian all together and yeah we got blamed for that. one so far monday tries to hide that she's asian on the street the aggression caused by current often hits the most vulnerable. places. let's hope

that with the loosening restrictions people will be more patient with each other. and for more i'm joined by douglas fields he is a neuroscientist and he's also the author of a book called why we snap so let me start by asking you when was the last time you snapped. well i don't know about the last time but i was excited in writing this book provoked to write this book because i snapped when i was robbed and i fought to get my wallet back which is not what you should do in my house and i realized that that was a very dangerous response i wanted to understand if something in your environment can cause you to gauge in an aggressive response or risk your life i want to understand how that worked so that's what led to my interest in the subject what i mean from europe savation because i mean today obviously we say that people are more aggressive now than they were before the pandemic but is this actually true or

is this just opposition well there's no question that the pent pandemic is causing an increase in rigor and in aggression and it seems that almost anything can cause an aggressive response but that's not true aggression is dangerous and it risks your life and limb so it's highly controlled by brain circuitry very specific circus the thing to understand is that aggression is controlled by the brain's threat detection mechanism and it operates quickly without conscious deliberation and this pandemic situation is pressing on the circuitry and in fact there are only 9 triggers for aggression and these are controlled by different circuits in the brain this is the new insight that we're getting from neural science into this. the subject of aggression the coded pandemic presses on several of these specific circuits that cause a person to have an aggressive response right and this is also what you write in

your book about how do you describe those 9 specific trick is could you just briefly name that was which trick it's obvious. yes there are scientific names for them i created a name on it called life mort's because it makes it easier to understand rather than the scientific terminology the most obvious one is the s in life mort's for stopped that's also restraint aggression on an animal or a person who is restrained or trapped will have an aggressive response to break free of that aggression we see this in the road you know when you are held up in traffic you get angry and you're ready to fight that you know you don't become bored or tired or something else that's because being held up. trips this aggressive response to break free of the restraint obviously being sequestered during the pandemic prevented from going about our daily activities this pressing on this s. trigger and provoking an aggressive response but but it doesn't they're doing it in the same it doesn't do it in the same way to everybody i mean not everybody is

losing their rags it's just a few people so what's the difference. well we all have the same circus and we respond to the same triggers there are individual differences these are biological genetic they're also determined by a person's previous life history and experience so yes different people have different responses to the same triggers if i could mention 2 other triggers that i think are very good some insight into one that's less obvious is the trigger which is order in society social animals use aggression to maintain order in society human beings are strictly social are survivals dependent upon being part of a society and we use aggression to maintain social order all of our laws are mechanisms of controlling behavior with aggression imprisonment capital punishment taking away resources and fines and except drug i mean we we get angry in the

summer runs a stop sign because they're breaking the rules in the cove a situation people are feeling that their rules of society their freedom to travel associate conduct their businesses are being violated and that presses on the same triggers that cause riots right and another down the scales if i just what i just mentioned these are obviously sega's that we will have to live with until there's a vaccine or. 19 hopefully people find a way to deal with it better than breaking things and getting aggressive really interesting ductless failed thank you so much for your time please try not to snack too much. all right thank you very much. now then time for more of your questions now and that means i went to a science correspondent to derek williams. why has germany being so successful in fighting covert 9 to.

germany's case fatality rate and its over 200000 confirmed coded 1000 infections is quite low and and it has one of the highest recovery rates in the world most experts say that that's because the country got a lot of things right here in the early stages of the pandemic there was some luck involved i'd say the virus didn't strike germany massively and practically without warning like at the for example italy so so the country had a few crucial weeks to prepare and and that used them the political response to the looming pandemic was very swift compared to other countries one of the 1st tests for the coronavirus was developed here in berlin and it began to be used widely in the country very early on it didn't hurt to have a highly respected leader making decisions that people listen to among other things

those decisions helped to protect the country's elderly which which many think is the big reason behind germany's low mortality numbers and the strong economy and the german lack of debt has allowed a more cautious measured reopening of society and the economy so so although there's been a surge in new cases in the last couple of weeks that some experts think might signal the start of a 2nd wave i think that in general most germans would view the national response at least up until now as a success. why in general have we seen a low a prevalence over the fire. seen africa. africa has seen over 850000 confirmed cases of coke at 19 so far not that's a lot but it's still just a small percentage of the more than 16 and

a half 1000000 cases confirmed worldwide is that all down to the under reporting or is there something else going on i'm not an expert on epidemiology and certainly not for africa but reading into this i discovered a hypothesis on why the prevalence is still fairly low in africa that to me seemed plausible it said that the countries with the highest international exposure called gateway countries have been the ones to be hit 1st and hardest countries like south africa and egypt well over half of the of the continent's reported cases so far have been from those 2 countries alone countries with fewer links abroad remained largely free of covert 19 in the initial months of the outbreak the experts think but now that the virus has spread to every country in africa many of them expect internal domestic transmission to begin playing a much bigger role and there are worries that as it picks up speed misinformation

and generally inadequate health care infrastructure could turn the continent into the next global hotspot. and that's this edition of covidien 1000 special here on news for me at the c.n.n. berlin as always thanks for watching and today more than ever to stay cool. period to. bring years. they of course their government sink into the small corruptions of the ball and barks grant themselves privileges while law enforcement officers press the citizens and. now there are daily demonstrations and

the financial hole new government comes some kids on europa. next d.w. . be told for is for me. just for. the children is for. beethoven it is for. beethoven is for. beethoven is for cream on the beethoven 2020 the 50th anniversary here on d. w. . we know this is a scary time for the coronavirus is changing the world changing our lives so please take care of yourself keep your distance wash your hands if you can stay

at how we do w. me for here for you we are working so hard with sleep to keep you informed on all of our platforms we are all in this city and run together and will make it to. stay safe everybody stays in the series so stay safe please stay safe. hello and a warm welcome to focus on europe i'm liable it's nice to be back. it's the most corrupt country in the e.u. for years bugg area has been rated last by transparency international for

corruption and press freedom in the european union and many blame one man in particular prime minister boyko borisov gary.