this is g.w. news live from berlin tonight america decides voters in the u.s. casting their ballots in the most divisive presidential election in decades no i'm not thinking about a concession speech or acceptance speech yet. hopefully i will be only doing one of those to win you know. winning is easy losing is never easy for me it's not. with record numbers already cast in early voting tonight we look at the choice that is facing the u.s.

voters also coming up all street in mourning the chancellor sebastian cordes condemning what he calls a repulsive terror attack 4 people shot dead by a supporter of so-called islamic state and germany's intensive care units freezing for a 2nd wave of coded 19 patients hospitals say they have enough beds but it's infections keep climbing they may not have enough nurses to care for patients. i'm burnt off to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and to all of you around the world welcome well tonight millions of americans are casting their votes in one of the most polarized presidential contests in u.s. history turnout is set to shatter all records around 100000000 had already voted before polling began today. well that's nearly 3 quarters of the total number who

voted in 2016 today long lines have formed in many states democratic hopeful joe biden made a last minute campaign stop in his childhood home of scranton pennsylvania that's that crucial swing state he's ahead in national polls but the race in many battleground states such as pennsylvania is looking tight meanwhile u.s. president donald trump has been thanking his campaign team a reporter today asked the president whether he had prepared an acceptance and a concession speech take a listen you know i'm not thinking about a concession speech your acceptance speech yet. hopefully you will be only doing one of those 2 and you know. waiting is easy losing is never easy now for me it's not. but i think we have when we when you see rallies the likes of which in the history of this got you probably in the history of the world nobody's ever seen before. there's a tremendous love going on in this country and there's really

a tremendous unity and surprisingly somber sounding donald trump there let's take the story now to our washington d.c. correspondent stefan simons good units used to get the u.s. president there is not is sounding as upbeat it as at least the donald trump that we're used to do you think that trump will cling on to power is he preparing us for that or is he preparing us for the reality that he may have to concede defeat. given this performance of the presidents of the last few weeks or so the last 2 weeks where he went on a mad dash across across the states critical states for him florida pennsylvania wisconsin minnesota and so on it's not to be expected that the president is actually really putting a focus on the concession speech and when he said like oh he would you know he doesn't really want to prepare one of the other i know everybody knows the

president wants to prepare the the succession speech of course now will it be the case that he is only he is the best advice but only really preparing for success for winning this election no he's not and why is that because as you mentioned in the intro here 100000000 plus people already have voted in they pass judgment on the president's performance before the last 2 weeks before the mad dash rally frenzy of donald trump and before the president is now striking some more conciliatory tone at least use you said almost 100000000 votes have been cast that was an early voting what about today election day i mean what's the turnout look you want so far. record breaking be i big big big big turnout really across the country in the least those states were polling stations are open now long lines everything seems to go fairly smoothly no victor

no reports of any any disturbances in one case or another one little problem and that is with the united postal service that is a federal judge order now that the inspector general of the postal service to sweep specific postal post offices who are under performing in delivering ballots mail in ballots voting ballots in time so that's a little bit disturbing hopefully the postal service takes care of that there's a deadline from the federal judge but overall major turnout in on side and day also voting today we know that their business is in washington where you are but also in other cities new york city for example businesses that have been boarded up why are people preparing for unrest. well the quick answer is because this is still a country divided there is division in this country there is polarization in this country and that's why authorities department of homeland security local

authorities expect really the worst that it doesn't matter who is going to end up winning this they will be the other side who will be not happy who will be angry and who is maybe prepared to take matters in their own hands in a in a very unpleasant way that means riots and unrest in the streets and that's why you see those preparations being made that's unfortunate this day here and those 100 something 1000000 votes cast it already that's a celebration of democracy no doubt and that should be celebrated now we will see how this going to turns turns out one way or another tonight when darkness falls on the rest the unrest that see you know we will see and we will be covering it live throughout the night on this election day in the u.s. stiffens time is on the story for us in washington thank you stephanie. well no doubt about it 2020 has been a difficult and traumatic year for the united states but also for most of the rest

of the world president will trump might have started 2020 hoping that his reelection was a foregone conclusion but as time in the year passed it didn't work out exactly as he planned. for president trump this election year was supposed to be great the best is yet to come but it didn't take long for 2020 to turn into something quite different. lives lost. jobs lost. a virus that shut down much of america. kovac 90 not the democratic hoax trump alluded to. it's going to disappear one day it's like a miracle it will disappear. no ah ah and in the middle of

a pandemic a black man pinned to the ground by a police officer who has his knee on his neck. minutes later george floyd is dead. america erupting in protest. anger that yes another black person has died in the hands of police. actually getting by right now at times appearing out of control president trump promising to restore law and order by force. today i have strongly recommended to every governor to deploy the national guard in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets.

outside the white house the plan apparently in place this protest is not dispersed with tear gas. and rubber bullets. clearing the streets to enable trump and his entourage. a walk to a local church for a photo op. a defining image of 2020. along with this one painted on a washington street close to the white house. while the flames of racial tension have been burning across the country many u.s. states have also been struggling with another apocalyptic crisis the outbreak of wildfires. from the rocky mountains of colorado. to california's wine country millions of a kids have gone up in smoke. hundreds of thousands of

people forced to evacuate. 2020 setting a record for wild feyerick tippity in california alone. meanwhile covered $1000.00 has also refused to die down. while deaths have continued to rise so to have divisions over how best to control it. the simple face mask taking on political significance. with donald trump mocking joe biden for choosing to wear one. i don't have i don't wear masks like him every time you see he's got a mask he could be speaking 200 feet away from him he shows up with the biggest mask i've ever seen or heard you walter reed hospital who are going to do or. be just days later it's confirmed that president trump has himself been trying to the

virus. he's given office agenda and taken to hospital where he's treated with a cocktail of drugs. in a controversial move and while still fighting kovac 19 truck pays a surprise visit to. forces have gathered outside walter reed hospital. he's finally released but the virus has spread throughout the white house how many soldiers. how many are 1st offered to take. part. in fact scientists believe this event is probably the virus super spread. this ceremony in the white house rose garden where trump formally announces a need tony barrett as his supreme court pick thank. that decision because of another 2020 shock the death of justice ruth bader

ginsburg. the 87 year old u.s. supreme court john jay liberal icon thank you now replaced by a pro-life conservative with a job for life thanks. 2021 year of anxiety and one most americans would surely rather put behind them. and there are still 2 months to go well it's not just at home that donald trump divides opinion with his america 1st policies and his brazen style of diplomacy he's also polarized opinion outside the us w. has been asking people around the world who they hope will win this election i expect that the united states can find their really dish even smallman because we are facing up to me here in costa rica we depend on. for example we really we have

. the frontiers open again when it was very i hope biden wins because with trump things are not going very well i hope that with biden's triumph relations with mexico will improve with. if there were elections in any other country we wouldn't even notice but the united states has a great geo political impact on colombia so in this scenario any election will affect us and it's going to involve us directly. that in the bible look at the thought of biden he's trying a very honest and direct strategy but as we as you've been understanding since less election 2016 that's not a way to go in america and for. fortunately because i think in europe we're more used to a direct and serious approach and i feel like my opinion is american elections are getting more into the soap opera area. i think donald trump will when he won so

surprisingly last time as well from many known ex-pats that's why i think he will win the election. if i give in action is my go either way because the 1st time i knew that trump was a racist by the vote for him but as for now i think people really enlightened that guy who every season doesn't have a clue contrary to barack obama so i think you might go with this time you might not want done alex. is really really not. a good president when it comes to. how he handles people. and how we see. people even the you watch. for doing the phone. thing to come to his motel almost like. american people we need to. joe biden i hope trump doesn't win i really don't want trump to win because he has been

hiding has really badly when it comes to managing politics cool weird situation but any kind of scenarios that it appeared in the last one. i'm expecting anything even a civil war anything can happen. well here in europe all street has declared 3 days of national mourning after 4 people were killed in a shooting rampage in the capital vienna a government opened fire at multiple locations last night in the city center where he's been identified as a 20 year old sympathizer of so-called islamic state police have arrested more than a dozen suspects in the hunt for possible accomplices of the killer. requite on the streets of vienna as a city woke up to a sense of dread. i did not sleep i feel i still feel the panic. nervous

i live in the neighborhood next to ours from there you could hear a lot police have regained control over the city center after the dramatic shooting on monday night transferred. them to what he called an islamist terror attack. it was an attack out of hatred out of hatred for our financial values out of hatred for our way of life out a favorite for our democracy people are equal in rights and dignity. but one thing is clear we will not be intimidated by the terrorists. until monday i had been spared large scale terror attacks motivated by religious extremism urged his country meant to remain united in the face of this new threat. we must be aware that this is not a conflict between christians and muslims or between austrians and migrants no this

is a fight between the many people who believe in peace and those few who want. to enjoy the 1st gunshots rang out shortly after 8 pm the gunman was killed in the ensuing fight he was later identified as a 20 year old man with both. and north citizenship he was jailed last year after trying to join the islamic state in syria he was later released. the police are knows with going through videos sent in by eyewitnesses to determine if he was a lone shooter. so. the video say thought if no indication off a 2nd perpetrator however since the revelation has not yet been completed we cannot finally say how many perpetrator actually responsible for the crime found

the same. chance that courts went to the site of the shooting to pay respect to the victims declaring 3 days from national in mourning. for now i'm joined by my colleague correspondent bresh banerjee he is in b.n.f. or is tonight good evening to you brush is there any clarity concerning how many people were involved in this attack i mean was there one or more than one gunman and that really is the question and it's a bit of an open question the police are constant consistent you say brand that they say it's a possibility that the government acted alone but they're also not ruling out the possibility that there was another government involved in the prime reason behind this really is a vast amount of data some one terabyte of data according to some of the on you do have minister of the country saying that has been submitted to police by the public

and their use of so far at least in the off the media can only sift through 50 percent of faith and used in that 50 percent it doesn't appear that there is another shooter beyond the one up or shot that's a very still a lot of all true and sift through and i'm determined if there was indeed another type out there if we understand that the suspect who was shot dead he had been through a deep radicalization program and he had even earned an early release from this program i mean is he one of those people that we hear about slipping through the system and do we know will there be consequences. this is something that the austrian interior minister addressed i mean in his words he said that it appears he deceived this system and he managed to deceive the judicial deed articulation program the program that you're talking about is essentially one that's made up of some 13 mentos who meet individuals twice a month and submit

a report based on that and essentially based on that a judgment call is made as to whether this person was radicalized or do you have to but then this question you could essentially expanded to almost do you have to close or should programs across countries in europe and most do not occur as if in programs across europe quite new and they are suffering from soest awful and not adequate funding of the essex s e's questionable but certainly they have been able to do something that service center needs to an open question as to whether its system that acquires and overhaul that it's something else that needs to be looked at and what about austria it's looking at 3 days of mourning now how shocked is the country. shock of shock really is the mayor of here and the other that comes to mind is you know just as one reason for that is of course how unexpected this was nobody can d.c.t.

if you've been to this city it's a beautiful cultural gem is what i had gold in you know. no one expected this sort of an attack this sort of they're also here an attack but the other thing is also the bust no element to it you don't really need to look far to find somebody who has been directly affected by these attacks for example we have friends who've told us that given examples of people have been directly affected for example one bad it was eating outside the restaurant and then the shooting began and a gentleman sitting on the table next to him saw on his best shot and this person just upped and ran and even all his belongings there was another person who was in a restaurant and then the shooting began and these she and other diners were shepherd it into the basement of 2 police commandos came to try and get them out of there i mean this from phoenix awful like this is really how cults with these types fuse the many b. and he's yeah terrifying accounts there berish rinna's he in austria on the story

for us tonight thank you brush. our let's take a look now at some of the other stories that are making headlines around the world britain has raised its terror threat level to severe its 2nd highest following the attacks in austria and friends severe means that an attack is considered highly likely the u.k. home secretary says the decision is a precautionary measure and not one that is based on any specific specific threat french forces have killed more than 50 shihad as aligned with al qaida in airstrikes on mali the operation took place near the borders with turkey to foster and there were government troops are battling an islamic insurgency and a 4 year old girl has been rescued from the rubble of destroyed buildings in western turkey almost 4 days after a large earthquake the death toll has now reached 102 with more than a 1000 people injured. france has reported 854 deaths from the coronavirus in the

last 24 hours that's the highest daily toll since mid april the country of seeing a huge surge in cases more than 36000 new infections today alone a month long national walk down is now in force. well staying with the pandemic germany's intensive care units are getting ready for an expected increase in coded 1000 patients as the number of new infections hits record levels the country has come through the pandemic with plenty of spare capacity in intensive care words but now germany has gone back into a partial lockdown in the hope of heading off what chancellor angela merkel says is an acute emergency situation. this patient has been in a kind of method for a week his condition is so serious that he has to be artificially ventilated his food he is old and one of 19 intensive care patients at this hospital in. the 2nd

wave of kind of 19 has arrived and it's different to the 1st. in the air. we had a lot of older patients in the 1st wave some young ones too but now they're almost all young which means age 15 or younger. and there's another difference to what happened in spring the hospital is treating more seriously ill patients from neighboring belgium the hospital's head of medicine says belgium took too long to introduce new stricter measures against covert. if. belgium is an example of what happens when these decisions are made too late there isn't enough capacity so we're taking in more and more belgian patients. during the 1st wave just under 50 patients were on ventilators at this hospital at any one time putting a huge strain on all of the staff but they're benefiting now from the huge amount

of experience they gained. we had standardized procedures last time. i will reactivate in those standardized procedures having these standards is very beneficial even if we get more patients we can just implement them. how well the system copes with the 2nd wave also depends on staff availability and there are shortages already caused by start getting infected with the virus by having to go into quarantine. and those on the frontline of the fight against covert haven't really recovered from the 1st wave. in the market like we're in summer even if we had vacation time we were here there was no real time off and after the 1st wave we still had to deal with normal cases and also all the paperwork that was left from the 1st wave not by the others because. there's little time to relax because the number of patients who are seriously ill with covert 19 is set to rise again experience to show that 2 percent

of covert patients end up in intensive care. so there will be more i'm expecting more intensive care patients than in the 1st wave. they were just under $3000.00 then i'm afraid it's going to be more this time as we're. here in our hand they're hoping to rise to the challenge all the way through the 2nd wave but the demands on all of them will be great. our this bring you up to date now with some other developments in the pandemic italy has reported 353 deaths in the past 24 hours that's the highest daily figure there since early may greece has begun a month long walk down in a bid to contain a resurgence of the virus in high risk zones non-essential businesses have closed and people are required to wear masks in public spaces britain will launch a covert 1000 mass testing pilot scheme in liverpool offering everyone in the city

tests whether or not they have symptoms. you're watching d.w. news coming up next a special edition of the day america decides dear we trust the polling numbers in 2016 they told us the next president would be hillary clinton in 2020 they say the next president will be joe biden will be right back.

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or not survive survival realizing there's a radically different way of living it is for profit. starts november 6th on t.w. . it is election day in the united states the decisions made today will impact america and the entire planet for the rest of this century the pandemic and climate change are getting more the american century feels like yesterday uncertainty and fear look more and more like tomorrow well that means unprecedented responsibility at the ballot box in the face of unprecedented.