and you've been watching our special coverage of the u.s. elections thanks so much for joining us and sarah taken in by land fees and. why are people forced to hide in trucks. there are many reasons and. there are many answers. and there are many stories.

make up your own minds are. made for minds. germany is celebrating its 30th anniversary of reunification in 1900 west germany and east germany reunited to become one nation what was it like joining us in a shift today to take a virtual journey through time. this is what the building walls look like and unbreachable stone obstacle and a close god dividing the city for most citizens of the g.d. are leaving the country for west germany was not possible you had to go to extremes

. lengths to flee like digging underground tunnels using virtual reality it's now possible to experience what it was like when people try to escape and on from khosla got to experience what it was like for his grandfather who dug a tunnel underneath the berlin wall. this man in this picture is els measure from cause that he's my grandfather and in this picture you see him building a tunnel under the burden wall losing of your car goes on to live on coast and social historian emma the beery time traveling back to the year 964 for the you choose show virtually history. i can see in his eyes that he has a plan and. is just a few years now but younger is this weird it's like pretty much travelin in time in the 1964 close michael vaughan koestler and some friends dug a tunnel from west berlin to eastbourne and they wanted to help people to the

g.d.r. it took them 6 months of digging and secrets to complete until you can experience the tunnel in virtual space 12 meters deep 145 meters long the young tunnel builder from back then is now a pensioner when close michael vaughan coarsely sees the virtual video of the berlin wall and tunnel it brings back memories from like 164. this. way and exhausting. especially on the needs are always covered in scratches and then to move or. sometimes we had to lie down flat today in constant fear of the tunnel clock there is often called through the spite of the risks the plan works out 57 men women and children were able to flee using the term which earned a place in the history books. and the famous story was the modern family is

a true house that stood directly at the parent this could also be relived on you tube as a virtual history. of. time i had offers virtual posters exploring east berlin when it was still part of the g.d.r. the bus passes by buildings that no longer exists today which is interesting to locals. travelling through checkpoint charlie the border crossing point between east and west is particularly interesting. i think the most frequently asked question is actually where is the wall. and it's of course an enormous responsibility to present and to make this experience relive a ball. but it's also a chance to encourage people to think about what things are like them and what lessons we can learn from them but it's an impressive images today it really does

look very different than our stake maya is a scholar of cultural studies at the university in berlin and king's college in london she looks at the ways in which we are can make history more vivid we ask how effective technologies like virtual reality truly are in bringing history back to life and i think these formats work really well and considering how they are becoming more common for personal use it makes sense to use them for educational purposes but it's important to have people there for support and supervision. that's at a disadvantage is that virtual reality is designed to completely envelop and recreate an intensely emotional situation and. this can quickly lead to taking on a position that can be quite problematic especially in historical political education is a very emotional experience perhaps it's too emotional of an experience to be used to teach history objectively. luckily there's another way to time travel games in

the adventure game the berlin wall players have flee the g.d.r. the developers of the game hope that it can help educate young people about what life is like to tell a tarion state now which exactly was this wall that's probably the most frequently asked tourist question the o s f a r can help with. suddenly the uk complete with border patrols tanks and watch towers. using augmented reality technology the knowledge displays that virtually on your smartphone or tablet. you can even jump through the decades and see how the border running through was transformed from a barbed wire fence into a concrete wall. the most fascinating moment for me is when you put your phone aside and you still have this lingering impression that the objects are still there

and that is connecting history to reality in a way that's impossible to do with a book or a movie. the berlin wall was located just a 10 minute walk from our studio here obviously test the b.s. already and it's pretty interesting but i'm not fully convinced yet even though it provides spatial imagination of the was boarded during a different historical period i'm sticking with photographs of course there's more to the g.d.r. than the wall citizens don't like having their lives reduced to that if you would like to take a more personal look at everyday life in the g.d.r. the project open memory box might be for you a german argentinian filmmaker and a canadian political scientist got together to archive and digitalize home movies recorded from 947 to 990 and now publicly available it's their contribution to a more comprehensive understanding of life and the g.d.r. . life in the g.d.r.

8 millimeter film personal memories spanning 4 decades 7 years ago in lawrenceburg falls and alberto herskovitz made an appeal in the newspaper for 8 millimeter film was shot during the g.d.r. they never thought that they would be able to collect more than $2200.00 from rolls . 415 hours of film has now been digitalized an archive been published on the open memory box website you can filter your search quest date or let yourself drift through the. selection terms and treat a hobby or yellow to see 2 2nd film snippets repeatedly really combined randomly. and these 2 seconds are listen many stories and undersell that's something that digital technology allows. if you look at the clips one after the other it changes and it looks a little bit different but it has a different effect just under the beautiful.

justice and. these are videos that people innocently shot for themselves or their family. does history. and that's the big difference compared to our behavior today of course. we also film our surroundings our children all the food we and the places we travel to. but the difference is that we're also always aware that we might post or share these videos. whereas this material on the other hand was never intended to be shared widely. but falls and herskovitz visited the people who had their films or appeared in the videos. they were then asked to comment on. one sometimes at night i would dream of going to west bend to see what it was. open memory box a more personal and unique glimpse of life. in the g.d.r.

and what's offered in the history books what a great project but for some memories of live in the g.d.r. less pleasant the ministry of state security or stasi spied on its own citizens when it became apparent that the g.d.r. was and they they tore up the star the records but not completely 600000000 scraps of paper were left. now artificial intelligence can help to reassemble. the computer is doing this puzzle using the scanned fragments of. 600000000 little pieces are stored in the archives and then you fraction of them have been digitalized it would take centuries for humans to complete this puzzle and that's why the puzzle was invented. and. size of the fragments is a very special challenge there was for example and. which was torn into

a 143 pieces and the. challenge really. is the creator of the. machine vision at the institute for him to nearing design since the eighty's it's a technology that enables computers to recognize and identify objects even without a template. vision is necessary because there are many visual processes where human beings are unable to. mention. medical actually images for example. machines are more effective than humans in processing large amounts of pieces and complex shapes like the tool that documents. first the software analyzes the. piece memorizing content paper type these. priests or thing then. self learning algorithm reassembles those places that have

been identified as belonging to gether. pilots resemble the 23 bags filled with paper scraps was exposed to the 1st they had to be digital that soaring 700000 little pieces which are all grew them was able to reassemble. a problem even though the software was working the scan it turned out to lack the necessary precision. with new. automatic scanning as they would enable grace if a surgeon but they couldn't get the necessary funding. even though they no longer scanning stuff the technology is being used around the world today a program very similar to the president is being used to put fragments back together that we destroyed like these from the 1900. jewish community center. or these books and documents from the cologne city which collapsed in 2000.

meanwhile there are still thousands of bags full of shredded secrets in the stasi documents archives waiting for a machine to put them back together and. finding the right puzzle piece from 600000000 little pieces it's impressive what i can do to me projects like v.r. time right make history more tangible i also remember more details do you think which project impressed you the most and what time period would you like to travel back to let us know on facebook or d w dot com and don't forget to have a look at our you tube channel where there's a lot more on via that's it for today and.

enter the conflict zone with tim sebastian. brazil is in the news these days for the wrong reasons i mean so that's the 1st highest figure in the world for coated nineteen's infections my guess is me from brazil e f is the country's vice pres of those comments so. how did the government fold get so bad to the. conflict zone. and 30 minutes on. one continent. 700000000 people. with their own personal stories. explore every day life. what europeans fear and what they hope for. some good spot in the world. 90 minutes on d w. d

w news to live up from very led u.s. vice presidential candidates clashed over coronavirus kamel harris and mike pence exchange accusations for the administration and like a pandemic as well as a range of other issues trying to sound close to debate analysis. i'm claire richards and welcome to the show in the united. states the 2 candidates

vying for the vice presidency have sparred over the coronavirus and other contentious issues republican vice president mike pence and his democratic challenger harris clashed over the trump administration's response to the pandemic of terrorists slamming the coronavirus task force in the white house other points of contention were the position of the supreme court justice seat and the topic of abortion as well as the ongoing unrest throughout the united states. and we do have team analysis here tonight with carolyn in washington d.c. and stacey bivins of from our us election team here to tell us more they want to start with you carolina because so much of the lead up to this debate tonight was dominated by the question of president donald trump's health after he spent 3 days in hospital with the couvade 19 diagnosis do you think vice president pence was able to shift the topic away from that tonight. maybe me

maybe away from donald trump and. infection with kobe at 19 but not from depend dammit claire did dominate the debate because it affects all issues that were tech tackled by the mother a home for example and employ a man that is raising because of the pandemic the economic crashed also because of the pandemic 221-0000 that's because of the pandemic as well and the groups that are especially affected is the black population hispanics the minorities so the pandemic really affects most of the issues that were at tackled by by the moderator so there was no way out there was no way of not talking about the pandemic we have also to remember that donald trump a tried to move the focus off his campaign from the kind i make to law and order to

a security issue but then he was says a positive for cocaine at 19 well that's right and the moderators 1st question in fact was on of the coronavirus and then said that even if his administration had done everything right there still would be deaths stacey do you think that that was convincing to voters watching tonight we have north of 211000 people dead more than 7000000 people in the united states sick with this virus including the president his inner circle of the numbers keep growing of people who are infected by this disease so no i think that you would really have to suspend reality your understanding of what's been happening for the past few days and several for almost 8 months so no i don't think that that post was convincing at all let's take a listen to what the candidates actually said in tonight's vice presidential debate . american people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in history of our country and here are the facts.

210000 dead people in our country in just the last several months over 7000000 people who have contracted this disease one in 5 businesses closed we're looking at front line workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers from the very 1st day president donald trump has put the health of america 1st before there were more than 5 cruises in the united states all people who had returned from china president donald trump do what no other american president had ever done that was he suspended all travel from china the 2nd largest economy in the world well course there was exceptional interest in this vice presidential debate in a way that you might not normally see for this kind of event precisely because of trump's coronavirus a diagnosis and in many ways people were looking to see whether either candidate could sell their fitness to potentially take over the top job in the event that

something happens to the president and i turn to you carolina and fox and ask whether you think it was convincing how they made their cases that they could potentially be leaders of the united states. well i think in this sense both very well they did not harm comparing it to the last presidential debates where we saw lots of interruptions and. probably a presidential for such a debate they also reinforce the top of the ticket and that is a positive image for both of them the goal though was to achieve the undecided voters who make up just 3 percent of likely voters and that they probably did. they did not heed that because. there is a country i mean we have a panorama of warriors who are completely bided imo self them have already made

their decision they didn't really move them from one side or the other right stacy what do you think did either of them really sell themselves as leadership material i think that they both hit the marks that they wanted to hit i think that kemal a harris was able to focus the attention on. what she's called a lack of leadership when it comes to the coronavirus and i think that. vice president mike pence was able to talk to his supporters a lot of them are one issue voters are cultural voters and they focus heavily on abortion as curliness said but this debate was more informative than the presidential debate so these they seem like adults and not children out at recess or running around you know high on sugar i think that this was more informative i really have to as a black american said i to tip my hat to senator camilla harris and this is none endorsement anyway but i just understand what it's like to be

a black woman in the united states on a stage like this and knowing that you have to present your argument in a certain way and not have your race or your strength used against you not come off as the angry black woman and i think for that she did an excellent job. there were times when both candidates went over their allotted time and they were arranged in and by the moderator susan page of usa today but as you say it really was a more focused on policies than we saw in the 1st presidential debate and as you mentioned one thing that kept coming up was abortion let's see if we can take a listen and pull up some clips to see what each candidate had to say on the topic of abortion let the american people fill that seat in the white house and then we'll fill that seat on the united states supreme court and to your point susan on the issues before us couldn't be more serious there is the issue of choice and i will always fight for a woman's right to make a decision about her own body it should be her decision and not that of donald

trump and and the vice president michael i'm pro-life i don't apologize for. this is another one of those cases where the search for dramatic contrast joe biden kamel her support turk's per funding of abortion all the way up to the moment of birth late term abortion we want to increase funding to planned parenthood of america and for our part our our would never presume a judge in coney burr would rule on the supreme court of the united states but. will continue to stand strong for the right to life. that will say see i want to ask you why do you think that abortion which is usually a flashpoint in american politics generally i think it's safe to say why does it come up so much in this campaign and i think that with this administration people who are how they they say pro-life feel that there is a chance to overturn roe v wade with this supreme court nominee it's disingenuous

for the vice president to say that he doesn't know how and conan barrett revote we all know how she would vote when it comes to abortion or we have a pretty strong indication and i think that because there there seems to be this momentum with a swing of the balance of the supreme court i mean if she's a point it will go $6.00 to $3.00 and so the while the. row v wade would still be the law of the land it would be made hollow and pretty irrelevant it would be that much harder for a woman to seek an abortion if she felt she needed one well this may not be the last that we hear about this issue this was the one and only vice presidential debate but caroline i want to turn to you now because there could be 2 more presidential debates how's the calendar looking for the remaining weeks coming up to the election. well the next day should be october 15th that means in 5 days in miami the polls have shown that joe biden the

has right now that vantage of 6 percent in florida and the next debate afterwards would be here in october 22nd in nashville. it is said on tuesday though that there should not be any bates if president trump sil has caught it and he added that this decision will be guided by the dog tours but mr trump he tweeted he will attend even as he remains infectious so we will have to wait and see it was the center for disease control and prevention zz says and if the commission the presidential debates really gives a green light to the debate in florida in 5 days and i want to talk now about one of the other topics that came up during this debate which was of course the question of our times climate change right the moderator said that as hurricanes are bearing down on the united states as wildfires are increasingly intense and

happening out of season what the candidate's position is on the environment let's see if we can bring up those clips to have a quick lesson president trump and i believe that the progress that we have made in a cleaner environment has been happening for some sleep because we have a strong free market economy you know what's remarkable is the united states has reduced c o 2 more than the countries that are still in the paris climate accord but we've done it through this we have seen a pattern with this administration which is they don't believe in science and joe's plan is about saying we're going to deal with it but we're also going to create jobs donald trump when asked about the wildfires in california and the question was you know the science is telling us this you know adama from science doesn't know. so let's talk about who is prepared to lead our country over the course of the next 4 years on what is an extra central threat to us as human beings joe is about

saying we're going to invest that in renewable energy we're going to be about the creation of millions of jobs we will achieve. 0 emissions by 2050 carbon neutral by 2035 joe has a plan. you remember stacey that conversation with donald trump and his comments on the climate change during the california wildfires what do you make of the 2 candidates answers to this question it seems to me that there is one side that's wholly dedicated to science and following what the science says and there's another side that is looking more towards the business end of things the vice president was talking about progress with a cleaner environment but they at the top administration has rolled back a lot of these green initiatives that were put in place by the obama administration so how can you be dedicated to the environment while also making it easier to pollute the environment that's an issue and with the green new deal. it seems like

they were that the biden and biden and harris believe that it could net more jobs right the question of a commie also came up in fact this debate jumped from topic to topic we had a comment about the jobs crisis that's facing the united states climate change as we said the role of china briefly touched on foreign policy but i think fair to say that they didn't dive too deeply and take the bait on that one. in broad strokes i want to ask you a caroline what you think voters are most likely to take away from this night and why are you likely to take away from this night as our washington correspondent. well i would say the contrast couldn't be bigger clear because you had on the one hand a man versus a woman a person who was full of empathy and i mean come on harry is and mike pence who was trying to defend his position but not really showing emotions or empathy at the

same time mike pence was. trying to put the democrats and joe biden as a threat to the american people and to play with the fear and i think most of the people have noticed that but again the undecided one only 3 percent of the age of all voters they will probably not to make a choice today we still have 2 debates. all right we have a dual use a very own stacey givens in the studio and carolyn a choice for us in washington d.c. thank you both. this is d.w. news a live from berlin that you've been watching our special coverage of the vice presidential debate in the united states u.s. the vice president mike pence and a democratic challenger come on harris have taken part in the 1st and only vice presidential debate of the u.s. election it clashed over the trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic with paris slamming the coronavirus task force in the white house other

points of contention with the position of the supreme court justice seats and abortion as well as the continuing unrest in the country. that's a news update at this hour and richardson in berlin thanks so much for joining us. combating 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. . i was issued when i arrived here i slept with 6 people in a room for the night seminar it was hardest.