the weekly radio show is called spectrum if you would like any information on the crawl of virus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast so you can get your podcast you can also find us at dot com slash science. this is news and these are our top stories pope francis has said homosexuals have a right to a family and should be protected by civil union laws it's a mock shift for the roman catholic church the pontiff made the comments in a new documentary about his approach to. spain has become the 1st western european country to reach more than 1000000 confirmed corona virus cases the country recorded nearly 17000 additional infections over the past 24

hours it's the 6th nation in the world to pass 1000000 cases spain has been tightening restrictions to help stem a surge in new infections. i don't memorial service in paris french president in my home across has paid tribute to son or party the history teacher beheaded by an islamist last friday that he was killed after showing cartoons of the prophet mohammad to his students in a debate on freedom of expression across called the teacher a quiet hero slain by cowards. this is news from berlin follow us on twitter and instagram news or visit our website d.w. dot com. or. today germany's health minister the government's guardian of public health announced that he has tested positive for the corona

virus another reminder of just how contagious this virus is here in europe the number of new infections is skyrocketing again spain has more than a 1000000 cases ireland is imposing a 2nd lockdown parts of the u.k. and germany are shutting down to winter is coming the corona chill has already arrived i'm burnt off in berlin this is the day. there is a huge boom in cold cases all across europe. the average age is lower this time as we're already swamped all our beds are occupied. the situation threatens to spiral out of control here in germany as well. the fires seems to be spreading more and more in spam only settings. we need

a new lock down and we need it now. it doesn't make any sense to wait till the summer that failure to get this right will me a cycle of damaging us with all of the hardship and suffering passing tales. also coming up should the catholic church support same sex civil unions pope francis says yes it is a seismic shift at the pontiff has been signaling for years to notice when a gay if someone is gay and he searches for the lot and house goodwill who might a judge. to our viewers watching on p.b.s. in the united states and to all of you around the world welcome we begin the day with the lockdowns going up again here in europe countries have begun calling the panda. emergency break from spain to ireland to germany each day comes with more

and more new cases of the coronavirus levels are as high as they were in march and april thankfully the number of deaths is not more testing tracing and more knowledge about how the virus works it all means fewer people are dying from covert 19 it does not however diminish the ability of the virus to spread and infect we saw that today here in berlin german health minister yen spawn revealed that he has tested positive for the corona virus and immediately went into self isolation he has reportedly developed flu like symptoms now the news came just hours after spawn attended a cabinet meeting with german chancellor angela merkel. we want to go straight now to our political correspondents she is following this story for us tonight him it's good to see you the health minister tested positive just after attending a cabinet meeting that included the german chancellor angela merkel is there

concern now that the entire cabinet could be infected. well brenda we can't imagine that all those who have been in close contact with the house minutes might get testy quite soon however we also got this statement today from the chancellor is press office highlighting the fact that the federal cabinet meets in compliance with hygiene in the sense a rooms and that ensures that there's no need for participants to be quarantined if a person who later tests positive for koren of virus is president of the meeting that we don't know yet if the chess either has been tested about daddy ideas he or she immediately went into quite insane when her doctor had tested positive shortly after having given her vaccine shot now in terms of continued here within the house ministry for now. will probably it continue working from isolation he also tweeted that he only suffered from my cold like symptoms as you mentioned but of course he

won't be meeting ways any one of course to has minister has been a leading figure behind i got america behind it chancellor for the government's response to the pandemic so this is of course a setback but there's also no reason to believe that this will disturb the country's governance and handling of the pandemic. on the story for us tonight here in berlin and thank you for staying here in germany but they were in state government has expanded restrictions in an area that has become a viral hotspot bars and restaurants are not allowed to hold more than 50 people and closing time is now 9 pm in western germany the situation is just as serious in the state of north wind was failure millions of residents are now required to wear face masks in public wearing a mask is mandatory in central galson cation in the rural region of western germany the city was recently declared a high risk zone expanding the mask mandate was an important 1st step for the

health department. the army sergeant makes sense as we have a situation where there is high population density and the commercial district when a lot of people are out shopping at certain times there are times of the week where these shops are relatively empty but the mask mandate is still in force you must be almost the entire rural area with roughly $5100000.00 residents is now considered to be a coronavirus hotspot the mask mandate in effect in many parts of the densely populated region aims to avoid lock downs and to protect high risk patients there is much concern and care homes throughout germany. who thought for must make preparations concepts for visitors and taking the important step of making rapid tests available for visitors to the facilities so that everyone involved feel secure and that no one who is already infected with the virus is entering here about mid to late the measures aimed to prevent the isolation of nursing home residents but various also

cracking down to limit the spread of coronavirus by imposing curfews such as in fact it's gotten. a day after the u.s. department of justice launched an antitrust lawsuit against google the search engine giant is saying that it is ready for legal battles that will take years google has denied the trump administration's claim that it is abusing its market dominance to snuff out competition in the u.s. case could eventually lead to the breakup of google which makes the multibillion euro fines imposed against it by the european union seem pale in comparison and google's legal problems they are not only transatlantic all straw years competition watchdog is also considering an antitrust lawsuit this is how australia's consumer commission chairman reacted to reports that google is paying apple billions of dollars to remain the default search engine on the web browser so far.

and you know ahead this morning on the news google saying. well it doesn't matter either way it just such a popular face would be there anyway well if that's the case why are you paying $1000000000.00 a year to apple and this is serious money for some people not in 1000000000 so. what we're going to do now to answer your question is we're going to look at it and say whether there's any value in what we might do about you know this is i this is the biggest data trust case in the will of one of the biggest a trust crisis and we're in the last in the twenty's. a lot of the day i was taken on a move really closely. well my next guest tonight agrees that google is taking up all of these search engine oxygen leaving none for competitors such as his company weinberg is the founder of the search engine duck duck go now if you haven't heard of to go that may have to do with the fact that google hosts more than

a trillion searches each year doug. has about 3000000000 correct me if i'm wrong there one for joins me tonight from pennsylvania it's good to have you on the show mr weinberg so let's talk about duck duck go 'd and google you've been described as a david versus goliath partner if you will is this antitrust lawsuit is it going to do what you need most and that is to make the market say or . thanks for having me i mean so don't go as a privacy company we really offer a private alternative to google so if you would like to air you know. your search has been tracked or an option for that all we would like is consumers who would like a private option to be able to choose one easily and he she right now is they're not really able to easily choose especially on

a 100 crowns because who really locks that down and makes a very complicated pretty user is to choose an alternative. is is that mr weinberg is that the crux of the argument here i mean give me an example of how google's signs of dominance how does it hurt your business on a daily basis is it with the enjoy as you were saying. yeah i mean that but through other parts of it android is one of many examples but for example on android we put out a post last week showing that it takes 15 plus taps to make deck to go the default on major search entry points on a device like the home screen which and the default browser and that doesn't even include all the search entry points some of them are actually impossible to change and so in that landscape it's very difficult for a consumer to be able to use an alternative to google and that's really the issue a case here is that google has

a search monopoly but they also have monopolies in browsers and operating systems and they're using the operating system and browser monopoly is to a naturally a prop up the search. your business model as you were saying is very different from google's it mean you do not profile your users. do you feel somewhat vindicated by news that the department of justice has started this antitrust lawsuit yet we're worried fairly please that this is a great staff they said in no uncertain terms that google is using continues years you know anti-competitive tactics to maintain their monopoly but the real issue at heart is privacy as you know that's the harm at the center of this is google's anti-competitive practices yes they hurt companies like us but the negative impact of the behavioral targeting and all the endless data collection has on society a democracy is much worse and so we're just advocating in general that consumers

have an easy opportunity to opt out and get privacy you know for the consumers that want and there is a lot they want to know i mean i'm wondering do you sometimes wish in another life that maybe your company would be here in europe where consumers place a higher value on that data privacy and data protection. so we're old wired actually and more than half of our user base is not in the u.s. and europe is the 2nd largest just to give you some scale were our 2 percent of the search market major about i suppose you reference about 2000000000 searches that's our monthly number so yearly it's more like 2530000000000 and so we do size of a volume in europe including germany. and we're really a private option the issue at hand though is that we think if consumers were really given an easy option

a one click option no change there for the device would be and times as large and so we've done some studies showing that generally of consumers are given options you know all the european search engines that you've heard of besides google and us and big and yahoo but google's market share with drop by 20 percentage points overnight and that's the pent up demand that exists right now it's just they're making it very complicated to get with us which yeah that's fascinating the numbers there are you worried mr weinberg that this lawsuit money not be motivated by purely antitrust considerations i notice that all of the attorneys general who are plaintiffs in this case are republicans there's not a single democrat who is a plaintiff in this case does that worry you. no i think that's just a it's a blip in the long term trajectory of us so you know there was a house and i trust her or you know if you're here. reported on an already $450.00

trip or about other an odd ways and that was we had by the democrats in the u.s. there's also addressed the issues by democrat barney generals going on and we expect them to file additional cases and or joint this last year i'm a little later gee you see this lawsuit being strengthened it's we're talking about it joe joe biden administration come next year. you know i think that the higher level point is this is a bipartisan effort or privacy itself is a bipartisan issue it's not on the right or left in the u.s. or any party in europe as you noted most people are looking at some poll numbers here 90 percent of people say privacy should be a human right and 93 percent of americans for per u.s. data final say they would choose a private opera they would consider choosing

a private option given the option and that's the issue of and here is they're just not options no one's really been asked whether they would like to use google even if the majority of people would still google a large percentage of people would opt for other things and if google is so clear that they would pick google and they should make it easy and we can test that argument let me ask you before we run out of time this trust lawsuit it could result in google being broken up how would you been is it from a break up of google. we actually are advocating it differently they want that is much simpler and easier which is just when here install a new device or browser you're really given the option to select your search pattern one click that's much easier to do break out but also gives us the benefit yeah i agree with you it's seems like a much simpler solution to the situation i think is going to take

a lot of litigation to get there weinberg founder of duck duck go mr weinberg it's good talking with you and please come back again i have a feeling this story will have some very long legs not talking with. the news is explosive it is set to ignite fiery debates and it has all to do with how people love pope francis has said that he supports civil union laws to protect the rights of same sex couples he made the comments in a new documentary about the pontiff entitled francesco which premiered today at the room film festival the statement marks a decided to shift for the roman catholic church the film also tackles other controversial issues such as racism climate change sexual abuse and relations between christians muslims and jews us. that

are for more i'm joined by our religious affairs correspondent martin tonight good evening to you martin we know that language is very important here so what exactly did the pope say about same sex unions. well the statement as it's been reported which comes out of the mentor as you pointed out has basically 3 legs the 1st when he said that gay couples have a right to a family. the 2nd element is that they cannot be completely left in a situation of well nervously or in a situation of rigor i agree and the 3rd one the study in fact the best way forward would be civil unions and sort of the big probably one of the most surprising statements is that in fact he says i stood for that so that means that you know this solves already something that has been. part of the heart of these folks

agenda but he did not use the word the term same sex marriage and that's important as it. well i think it is important but i think that it's also very important to put this into perspective we have basically the pope indorsing openly civil unions for gay couples across the globe. i mean you know one needs only to look at this recent church of church politics and church positions see sort of the sea change that we are actually witnessing and. so i think in a sense yes this will never satisfy all the demands or necessities of people that are actually fighting for gay rights or for sexual minority rights at the same time i mean the gesture is just so sad on such

a scale yeah you know the political impact you see media and you're seeing it. there have there been clues martin to the pope's thinking on this subject back in 2015 the pope visited the united states for the 1st time as the pope and we're going to show you some video here he paid a visit to a dear friend of his and that friends same sex partner you see them right there that. was a student of pope francis in argentina years ago now this meeting that we're looking at right now that it generated headlines it was part of the pontiff unveiling if you will of his own evolution on the subject of homosexuality and same sex couples i mean this is it's not a complete departure for the pope and what has what would have been his views on civil unions that we know of. i think that you know with various.

there is pro there are only 2 very clear periods one is the it difficult period in which you know the science had been sort of systematically there and it's not only been jesters but his being pretty much open statements believe it was in 2016 when he was on the way back to rome and he said that you know if there are gay people of pure hearts who is he to judge the of course the reaction was immediate the left the journalist said that this was not enough the right condemned him for essentially supporting or endorsing homosexuality the previous period which is argentina in their region in buster a work was one that was very much sort of. you know involved in the what he later came to call the church of the people so that meant that he dealt with a lot of sort of human tragedy a lot of sort of for himself you know a social a social disconnect in social a nation and people that were actually discriminated against and that were big himself by linson abuse for being on the sexual or being. part of minorities which

meant that he's position in relation to the gay community has always been more or less the one that we see now i think that this would could not possibly come to a surprise to anybody within the church but i think it's very important to remember as i said before that this statement is of such magnitude that the political impact of these it's necessarily going to be actually very strong as well what before we run out of time what about the the impact on this an intern servant of the congregations and i'm thinking of the catholic church in poland and the catholic church in africa which is conservative and is growing compared that with what you see here in europe or in north america. i think i mean the reactions are clearly going to be very loud i just do not think that the polish church he's significant enough in terms of like the global church politics but the american catholic church which has one of its branches at least which is the one that's

a seated usually with figures like cardinal burke or you know extremely extremely conservative had been extremely critical of this pope and have full o. sort of a form of god only see some that away from the principles of mercy that this pope as he has tried to push forth they do have sunny darty helping down there for other human beings they have taken a position much closer to american imagine jenny police something which has really brought you said i virgins from from the current church those people are already out in their airwaves and already out online sort of offering really lobby area criticisms of the spa pacy i think it's very important to point out that the reaction by and large has been quite busted if and the measure are places like menu and places like all in and probably not places like san francisco or new york all right our religious affairs correspondent martin jacques martin as always we appreciate your valuable insights into this thank you my pleasure.

aren't there less than 2 weeks to go before americans elect the president will it be a 2nd term for donald trump or switch to challenger joe by people around the world are following the campaigns especially if they have personal ties to the u.s. the w.c. alexander phenomena visited poland which has seen many of its people migrate to the u.s. she wanted to find out who's the favorite there but. sophia corrodes grandfather was the 1st to go hoping to make his american dream come true since then her family's relationship with the u.s. has been an enduring love story sophia corot spent 15 years there what about me. i'd like to be or i just got to like america a lot but i was going back and forth for a while. but i couldn't settle back in poland to finish building her house but her 4 children and their children stayed in america for good it's nothing

unusual and father in poland here in question is caught in the foothills of the top from mountains roman krupa is the mayor he tells me almost every family here has relatives in the us. 'd 'd we like america a lot because we are with. most of the houses you can see here with money our peoples what i have to make in the us. the ties go back to the 19th century when the 1st people from the top from mountains left the region to escape poverty and seek a better life in america many followed up until today poland has always been able to rely on the u.s. says district administrator appeared to bunk he's a fan of president and is rooting for his reelection bank believes trump will keep poland save the salt lake show. the fact that the american troops are in pole.

as our allies to deter potential enemies is important for us and one of the reasons why his reelection would be good for us. an assessment that it's in line with paul unselfish and foreign policy and never try victor we would be good news for the conservative polish government the current you as administration sees war so as an essential ally in the deeply troubled critical europe and in return america supports poland in a number of important areas such as defense and energy security that might all change if joe biden gets elected. joe biden doesn't have many friends in the region says mayor krupa most people here are conservative and prefer trump's agenda and you know. you go like this rational business oriented approach. and i support his efforts to secure the border to make it more difficult for

migrants to get. sophia quran says her family in the u.s. will certainly vote for trump and although she doesn't follow american politics closely there are things she likes about him. he seems to be very religious he prays for this and that. i had a good time in the us sophia quote says and although she reckons it's easier these days to find work in nearby germany or austria america will always be special to her. conversation continues on what your point is on twitter. remember whatever happens between now and tomorrow is another day everybody.

the food. and turf the conflicts come to the powerful. more than 2 years ago the new government in armenia came to power in a so-called velvet revolution with the hope of fundamental democratic reform my guest this week from europe on his armenian foreign minister saw up manasseh kanya on how much responsibility does armenia bad for the conflicts escalation conflicts of. next. slow

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beethoven is for. retirement is for. beethoven 202250th anniversary year long do you. mean german side has chosen the path of war it seems as if you're not signaling that you're serious about peace excuse me i cannot agree with me i will never agree with this more than 2 years ago a new government in armenia rose to power and the so-called velvet revolution which raise hopes of fundamental democratic reform and i thought in relations with azerbaijan over the long disputed territory of borno car about now the region has been hit by the worst fighting in decades and a cease fire remains elusive with both sides deflecting.