during a visit to lebanon's devastated capital but he insisted there must also be change from the country's political leaders echoing the demands of a resistance who cures their government of corruption. this is g.w. news from berlin stephen beard is up next with business stick around we'll be right back. a new era has become. a fire going feel the heat. 15 feet. just. places. in the face of. flames that consumed forests and entire residential areas. rising temperatures water shortages

lens clearance there's an abundance of flammable material once again i did some stuff. and some moves going up in some. little consideration the world on fire starts aug 12th on g.w. . the lebanese economy is in freefall now the country's largest port is out of commission and the entire city quarter needs rebuilding the economic consequences of monday rather tuesday's explosion in beirut. grounded and pounded financially with tons of hours to cut costs and employees as it posted big 2nd quarter loss. welcome to the show i'm stephen beardsley ember lead it's good to have you with us tom. we're already tough in lebanon on food prices rising power

outages becoming more frequent and coronavirus case numbers climbing now the need to rebuild the country's largest port following an explosion on tuesday threatens to expose just how threadbare the country's economy really is. a city in ruins. its gateway to the global economy destroyed. lebanon is scrambling to pick up the pieces of this week's explosion. but long before the blast levanon secada me was in a death spiral. rampant inflation and an increasingly worthless currency plunging many lebanese into poverty hunger and despair. all now are sure to get worse. more than 250000 people have lost their homes in beirut. and countless businesses have been destroyed. and we compensate. we lost our houses

all shops in the house of my grandfather's and we lost my uncle's wife and we took out from under the rubble is there anything bigger than this except. the explosion level of beirut support the country's main artery for imports like food and fuel the bulk of the country's grain and flour was stored in a silo there. the united nations warns the blast could leave lebanon with a severe shortage of both of those staples. international leaders have pledged just in the lebanese government aid but there are strings attached. if you like to see the priority is a done it with unconditional support for the population in the months and years now if you want to france has been demanding indispensable reforms in certain sectors and energy government procurement in the fight against corruption if these reforms are not carried out lebanon will continue to sink if it will even continue

occupancy. efforts will now turn to rebuilding beirut. but rebuilding the economy may be a longer and more difficult task. i'm joined now by christoph claim on he's project director for lebanon and syria with the freedom now been funded and he joins me from beirut you were close to the port when the explosion occurred could you briefly tell me what your experience was yes i was at my apartment just coming back from work my apartment is approximately 8 kind of meters away. explosion. i 1st heard the 1st small explosion that felt a little bit like an earthquake and then a couple of minutes later this this big explosion that we always saw in television that looks like an atomic bomb explosion and i felt this wave coming at me and i just was hiding behind. my whole. space to direct you could see glass

everywhere all the doors were flying around in your apartment i was very lucky fortunately that nothing happens when you. know because of the economy in lebanon has deteriorated rapidly over the past 6 months just how bad is it for normal lebanese. for a lot of people it has really become the. show around 50 percent of the lebanese now live below the public line and that is a dramatic indicator you have unemployment rates of around 40 percent. currency lost around 80 percent since the beginning of the year for a lot of you know people this this is just an incredible option if you look at for instance the price. of rice it used to be 5000 lebanese pounds now it's the wrong 15000 lebanese homes but salaries have stayed sane or have even gone down and

a lot of people lost their jobs so it shows you that it becomes almost you know very difficult to actually buy food stuff speaking of food stuff now the country's largest port which is the main artery for a lot of that food stuff it's in ruins what does that mean for the economy that is of course. problem is. first and foremost a problem also for food security in this country. is the 2nd port up in the north in tripoli it's a much smaller hole and it's very close to the syrian border also a security concern told in that sense the destruction of that by report is really. not only to import essential. goods but specifically food and how they essentially . all right christoph klayman with the foundation thank you very much thank you. there were wall street now where the 2nd quarter was

a bloodbath for many companies but investors expected worse and that's helped push markets back up to record territory with more than 400 of the s. and p. 500 listen companies having reported earnings were 22 percent above analysts expectations for that period covers the lock down heavy months of april may and june detector the nasdaq index has already reached a new record all the s. and p. 500 is nearing its previous record set in february. and let's look into this with our financial correspondent in new york korda. yens investors seem happy but the reality is that a lot of these companies really got hit hard in the 2nd quarter is wall street's on a different page than main street. i mean clearly the stock market is decoupled from reality and then also if you look at the stock performance it's a bit tricky because just 5 big tech companies stand for about 20 percent of the

valuation of the s. and p. 500 so it's those 5 stocks doing good that makes the s. and p. 500 in general look much better than it really is that if you have it companies in the leisure industry if you look at the airlines the big oil companies and so on and so forth some big consumer names they clearly did pretty bad in the pastas 3 months that does not really get reflected in the stock market and there are 2 terms here on wall street fold more and you know fear of missing out is the one and then there is no alternative to stocks was all the cheap money from the federal reserve so that also played a role by the stock markets is extremely strong and as you mentioned almost an all time highs with the s. and p. 500. briefly is there anything that could stop this drive right now. yes sure a lot of things can go wrong i mean 1st of all we shouldn't forget that we paid his heavy heavy debt to somehow keep the economy growing and then we will see what

happens to all this governmental 8 fall and then talking about fall what will happen to the coronavirus and also what happens let's say for example to restaurants if the weather turns worse so there are clearly a lot of things that can go sour with the stock market and was the economy all right there for us in new york thank you. and now to some of the other business stories making global headlines u.s. president donald trump says he's reintroducing a 10 percent tariff on canadian steel claims canada broke its promise not to flood the u.s. with exports he made the announcement at a campaign rally in ohio it's unclear when the tariffs will be implemented. guber has reported a $1800000000.00 loss in the past quarter to the coronavirus that's almost a 30 percent drop on last year its ride sharing business took the biggest hit but the pandemic drove up revenue in its food delivery company eats. microsoft

is interested in buying the entire global business of tech talk from its chinese parent company that according to the financial times 3 microsoft plans had previously previously left out the european and indian operations of the social video app and the collapse of the air the collapse of air travel during the krona virus crisis in the 2nd quarter was unsurprisingly perhaps a big blow to move tons of with more than a 1000000000 euros in losses now chairman carson spore is talking about cutting costs and cutting jobs most of lufthansa's planes are still grounded parked and currently unused runways the german airline has been part nationalized with the new deal granting 9000000000 euros in state aid but experts remain skeptical about its future. the. it's highly unlikely that. air travel in general will be able to return to crete coronavirus levels in any case it will be several

years before it does and look times it will take a pretty heavy knock. indeed in the 2nd quarter of this year the airline suffered operational losses to the tune of 1700000000 euros c.e.o. carsten s'pore seen here in better days his recovery will take until at least 2024 by which time look tons aims to become a smaller and more efficient enterprise management says that job cuts are unavoidable that's the case that other european airlines to look tons is planning 22000 job cuts affecting 17 percent of its staff ryan air wants to slash 16 percent of its jobs while at british airways more than a quarter of jobs are endangered and it air france 16 percent of employees also face painful cuts it will be a long road to recovery will see tens of thousands of jobs being act in the meantime and it is the worst year in education it's 3 and it is going to leave it mark one way or the other it looks set to be

a bumpy ride unions are already gearing up for a fight and with the pandemic still in full swing carefree air travel as it once was will be pious the sky for a long time to come. well it's not all bad news video game maker nintendo says it's leveled up raking in a 1000000000 euros in the past quarter that's 6 times the profit of the same period last year behind the rise of the popular switch console and the hit game animal crossing the gains come as global lock downs kept more people indoors. thanks for joining us.

cut. into the conflict zone to sebastian. phone call never means the news for long these days now it's a draft of a new security law to be imposed by beijing for voting controversy and protests joining me this week from long gone is regina a member of the city's legislative council and chair of the fro beijing knew people's policy fellow comes close to. 60 miles from v.w.

. i'm secure that volume or not hard and in the end is a me you are not allowed to stay here anymore we will send you back. are you familiar with this. when the smugglers went by and said. what's your story. 'd on what numbers and women especially in victims of violence. take part and send us your story we are trying in all ways to understand this new culture. you are not a villain to another guest you want to become a citizen. in for migrants your platform for reliable information. houser virus spread. and rem will. continue through the topics covered and

a weekly radio show is called spectrum if you would like to tell me information on the coronavirus or any other science topics you should really check out our podcast so you can get it wherever you go your part costs you can also find us at. home slash science. this is dina beanies africa on the show today cash chat zimbabweans live smash us that trains it on social media this week as celebrities and politicians join the campaign against human rights abuses in the country that campaign comes up to the breasts of civilians journalists high profile political activists and opposition figures in zimbabwe i'll be speaking to one of them. and we'll meet the artist in gonna who's dedicated least recent work to the people on the frontlines of the public 1000 and.