the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection in developing what does the latest research say. information and contacts the coronavirus update 19 spent. on t w. children to come to. one giant trouble i'm. going on it does seem

a bit serious. how will climate change affect us and our children. and e.w. dot com slash water. people with disabilities are used to facing obstacles. as a group the often struggle to access education and are more likely to fall into poverty yet their experience is far more widespread than you might think. 15 percent of the global population has some form of a disability as people age the experience becomes more common. half of those over 60 are disabled among children it is one in 10.

for many especially in developing nations has made things all the more challenging overstretched health care systems and lockdowns mean many of the services they rely on day to day have disappeared how has covered 1000 affected 1st group of people and what can be done to make sure their needs aren't neglected. now doesn't come as a surprise that people in need special care are facing extra difficulties during a time when health care systems around the world are stretched sometimes beyond the limits of the pandemic is taking its toll on people with disabilities on several fronts here's one example from india. samir khan was just 10 when he was 1st diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy a rare genetic disorder that has a crippling effect on his whole body and means he needs help from others for all of

his daily activities. but despite his condition confound it a garment factory. district it took him 3 years set up the business and to establish trust with his clients. we the members have. had some hesitation in working with me. again but i was confident others were not. on for them to win their confidence was the biggest challenge. for them me and i said what i was for will come in. but then there was another challenge the covert 19 pandemic led to a nationwide lockdown the local markets were canceled his west shut down and even now the lockdown has been lifted business has failed to pick back up.

people with disabilities are among the worst hit as a result of the virus in india many have lost their livelihoods and face financial difficulty. particularly those working in the informal sector according to a study by an indian disability rights organization. your doggie was situation where everybody's been impacted right and people with disabilities were just be that much more impacted almost 3 times as much women with disability as well but have be even worse. and without intent and without political really it's going to be a conversation that endures. most of cars workers have not returned and he was forced to sell off half the machines in his factory can feel as a 2nd wave of the virus could mean the complete breakdown of his business. we risk our lives doing business and they give all that some of that i can't sit

around doing nothing for a very long time i have to work to fulfill my financial needs happening. in the name financially. in. the garment factory was a means for economic self-reliance for con he wanted to employ and support people like him. but today and for the foreseeable future the factory will remain empty. this pandemic is challenging on so many levels let's get more from jane buchanan she is the acting director for disability rights and human rights watch she joins me via skype from new york welcome to the program jane we are talking about a very diverse group of people here now facing a whole array of challenges which part of that group are you most concerned about during this pandemic. we're especially concerned about the most marginalized among people with disability is and that includes people who are segregated and locked away in closed institutions institutions or people disability

psychiatric hospitals as well as the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who are chained and locked in prayer camps and other types of institutions. you know i'm able to lever access any service as whatsoever and how is the been impacting the care for these people. people with disabilities around the world all types of disabilities can face a lot of barriers in accessing health care and that includes even just basic things like accessible transportation because if he had get to your doctor or the hospital there's no chance to even even get care so i'll many of the obstacles that people disabilities are already face in their marginalization are just amplified with a pandemic. jane is there any indication that people with disabilities face

greater health risks from covert 90. well that can certainly be true for people with certain types of disability is where for covert 1000 infection could create more complications but again people who are lacking access to health care and people don't have the information they need for about cope at 19 because governments are presenting it in an accessible way aerials are accessible to people maybe with intellectual disabilities who benefit from a different type of language in communicating about these things sign language interpretation for television broadcasts and messages about the pandemic and how to protect oneself where to get care now you mentioned that you're most concerned about people being locked away in an institution because of their condition do you

see that the danger that the concerns and needs of these people on a state level are being neglected now that societies are eyeing the vaccine and try to not catch the virus in general. but we're or extremely concerned about people who are basically already forgotten by society ignored as he said locked away. they've been left you know in very precarious conditions for the entirety of the pandemic in close contact with other people and without the opportunity to socially distance and so yes i mean even as societies began to really. take steps with the vaccine in syria to. minimize the impacts of kobe and hopefully reduce infections and deaths governments really can't forget those who are most at risk most marginalized. and they

people who are locked away shouldn't be there they should be out living in the community with the supports they need and that would be an end and also a really urgent step that government should take at this time to protect those groups which countries are you particularly concerned about and why. you know there's so many different situations around the world it's it's really impossible to pick one or another country i mean i think at this point where concerned about equitable vaccine distribution among the lower income countries and middle income countries you know for all of those people but again especially people with disabilities or others who really. may be left out of. the vaccine distribution early on but around the world we see you know people who are already. lacking access to the economic markets are more likely to be unemployed.

the economic impacts of cove it will be long lasting and in many places and there needs to be really. extra effort on the part of governments to ensure that quality an excess of the ready for people with disabilities otherwise they risk you know even greater paparazzi and isolation as the economic impacts go on to begin and of human rights watch thank you for your thoughts thank you. and now it is time to take a look at some of the questions about the pandemic you sent us and as usual our science correspondent there are growing ems says ready with the answer. you get vaccination if you had covert 1000 but we're safe and to master. the messenger r.n.a. vaccines now being approved for emergency use and in number of countries were

tested on tens of thousands of volunteers and and it's thought that between 5 and 10 percent of them had actually had covert 19 before those trials and there were no reports of serious adverse effects among those test subjects also in most other diseases there are mechanisms that would cause someone who had them once to react badly to subsequent vaccinations many experts have said they think that was covert 19 vaccinating someone who has already had the virus will act like a booster shot reminding the immune system that sars co 2 is still around and possibly even strengthening and reinforcing the immune response so if you had the disease already whether symptomatically or a symptomatically the current consensus is that getting vaccinated should be safe

and maybe even beneficial but but that raises another question if you've had covert 19 do you need the shot from what we've seen so far in the vast majority of people a natural immunity to the disease after an infection lasts for a while at least at least for several months and while boosting that with the vaccine makes sense don't forget that supplies of vaccines will be critically tight in the short term that means it's likely that many. governments will probably tend to bump people who've had the disease more to the back of the line assuming that they're simply in less danger than someone who's never been exposed but eventually when supplies of vaccine are sufficient i assume experts will recommend them for almost everyone including those who had copd at 19 and recovered.

do you have a question for derek well just send an email to feedback dot english add to d.w. dot com and type expert in the subject line or leave a comment on our you tube channel that's on shoals thanks for watching stay safe see you back here tomorrow. to the point strong opinions clear positions international perspectives. as the year draws to a close politicians everywhere are struggling to bring the pandemic under control but some are slipping behind our citizens paying for government's mistakes that's our topic on to the point. to deploy. the next common teetotallers.

high value meal and i'm game did you notice that 17 trillion land of them are killed worldwide shit so that we can eat them but it's not just the animals at all suffering it's the environment remain uninsured to find ways out to meet machines if you want to know how one click to the priest and the huntress changed as a thesis listen to our podcast on the green fence. sleep. carefully you don't need to be nice to get.

discovered. subscribe to the documentary. no big family celebrations no fireworks in many countries this year people have to for goby love a traditions because the pandemic is by reeling out of control here in germany that means locked down until january 10th of the earliest non-essential shops are closed christmas markets have gone dark nightly curfews and alcohol bans apply in places and schools are shut the u.s. canada and the united kingdom have become vaccinating but they're vulnerable citizens still face grave risk yet things could be different countries like ireland

impose tough lockdowns much earlier and are now reaping the benefits our title covert 19 crisis who pays when the politicians get it wrong. hello and welcome to to the point and it's a pleasure to greet our guests matthew condit chick is the chief europe correspondent for politico and he says germany's covert 19 policy is economically exactly. what the doctor ordered the new lock down in the quiet season couldn't have been better and it's a pleasure to welcome you leah fisher she is a berlin based journalist and physician who reports on science and medicine for radio broadcasters and turf pinion this year beloved traditions can have life

threatening consequences everyone who does not attend big get togethers saves lives. and it's great to have derek scully on the program again he is a correspondent based here in berlin with the irish times and he says ireland did it right in the 2nd wave after a 6 week lockdown the irish are looking forward to a relatively relaxed christmas and new year. so. matthew let me start out by coming back to the quiet season because it's certainly not a quiet season for medical personnel and for many people it working in clinics and of course intensive care units more and more are under strain here in germany what happened. well i think the government took overall a fairly flexible approach over the last several months in germany because they didn't want to have a hard lockdown like we've seen in other countries in europe in france and belgium

italy and so forth one reason is because the effects that that has on the economy and yes now the numbers are rising in germany but if you look back over the past 6 months and if you look at how the german economy has performed and it's outperformed most of europe it's done surprisingly well with for example in the 3rd quarter alone the g.d.p. rising by over 8 percent which surprised everybody i think you have to look at the entire picture here and say you know yes they could have done a full lockdown and we would be in a better place right now at christmas then we would have otherwise but there are also other effects of a lockdown that people i think often forget particularly on mental health and you know on schools and so forth so i think that overall germany should get pretty good grade here thank you very much we will come back to the economic side in just a minute but you say beloved traditions can have life threatening consequences so

clearly you think that the situation here is pretty dire yes and i think that not of aliens important to. the contacts that we're having because that is the one thing the virus really attacks unfortunately is the one thing that we really like really want to be together with our people but this this time we really just have to make sure not to see anybody who is not within our. bubble unless we can be for something but we really have to watch out this year so actually there are some restrictions or before these tighter rules there were some restrictions that had been put in place in mid november a so-called lock down light that was supposed to be a circuit breaker to really break through that chain of infections but it has. it turned out that way by not and hasn't worked as the politicians had hoped because i think. they hoped that the people in germany would act accordingly

to those fools more strictly we know that in march people reduce their mobility by 60 percent and they only reduce them to 40 percent this time and that is just not enough so we saw that different than in ireland for example people didn't work in the home office enough they did travel with public transport a lot of things like that so. in the whole that was not able to visit the jews the number hoped in the beginning. you pointed out that ireland did handle the 2nd wave differently so 2 questions about that 1st one how stable is the current situation there i was checking some news reports it looks like it's not quite clear if the infection rate may be trending upward again exactly i mean i look at these lockdowns it's a bit like cortisone cream you can put it on the rash the rush will go away the question is how quickly will the rash come back up and how do you talk on the underlying cause so these lockdowns are only ever measures but it's almost like when do we need the breathing space when we need the breathing space and time it

accordingly and i mean christmas is extremely important millions of immigrants like to come home many of them won't make it but for these people in our then they've had a very tough year they didn't have the breathing space in the summer the way we had in germany so to not give them the christmas there would have been a revolt so i think they just counted backwards from christmas 6 weeks and they said let's do it but as you said this morning the chief medical officer anon is worried things are creeping up again but i mean the numbers the comparable number is there at 48 cases per 100000 over 7 days so in parts of saxony in eastern germany there are 700 or so and in germany think it's a 10670 so we're still a long way but you know it's going to creep up and people are already saying is the price of our christmas we're going to be locked down in january again but people would say if i had a choice i think january everyone's mikes are at their credit cards anyway sitting at home in january is what they do best so maybe it will be less painful then so yeah a lot of governments are just making plans but i did see what our than they had a counter in front of the counter backwards and in germany didn't seem to like over

christmas forgot about it and now we're sort of facing into this and for retailers for families to be told that 2 days notice oh by the way christmas shopping is counseled i mean the panic having people panicking running into shops grabbing whatever they could in the middle of a pandemic really doesn't seem very smart and they knew christmas was coming. if you compare say the. way that germany handled the 1st wave 2 how it's handling the 2nd one do you see a change in the way that politicians have behaved here in this country i would say i see more of a difference in the way the population has behaved because people seem to be much less worried about corona now than you were in march because they didn't have the visibility when something happens for the 2nd time you tend to be lest worried about it if you've survived the 1st stage and i think that's what's happened here where most people understand that you know even if they get it their chances of

dying are not that high and you know they know what they need to do to avoid getting it back in march the whole situation with the masks for example wasn't really clear that was good or not there was just a lot of confusion about it so i think you know people tend to blame the politicians but i think that we all know now and we knew back in march that there was going to be a 2nd wave there's always a 2nd wave there was with the spanish influenza in 1918 and there is now do you think that's right uli or would you say actually politicians do bear part of the responsibility certainly there was some criticism about mixed signals that have been sent here in germany say when rates started trending upward again in early october and i think that has to that was definitely a problem i mean it's i think also it's very true that people are getting used to the virus and that because there's still a lot of people who don't know anybody who really got very sick from the virus or anything i think that that helps people or makes people underestimate the danger of

the virus much more than it was in spring and i think that's a big problem but i also think it won't be the duty of the politicians to communicate in a better and clearer way that the danger is still there and that we have that we have to act together and to do something against the spend that make a knife. sometimes in some parts of the country that run wrong derek whether or not ireland is the perfect example certainly some countries do apparently do better than others you zealand taiwan some other places in asia to what extent do you think that the approaches in such countries are transferable to others are there recipes here in terms of political guidance communication and so on no i think the social element is crucial i mean and it's also what works at what point you know the german approach they had the they were able to test quickly they had the

capacity early on tracking in tracing the they were also decentralized so they could act locally and this particular phase the descent of a prize approach that appears to work less i think a crucial issue is how much can the state expect of its people and i don't know much about 8 of the people have said there's a higher level of compliance with you know an order comes and people are more willing and western europe is more notion of personal freedom you know your infringer my person for ivan i am entitled to celebrate christmas as i wish in our then what i found interesting what i found fascinating was the level of social control is so much higher there than here in germany. meaning people could be shamed into doing things more quickly i mean shame was taken out it was like an instinctive irish catholic holdover i don't know what but people could be shamed into staying at home or you're going abroad it was never legal to go abroad but if you were going abroad you would hear about it from your neighbors offered so again that's not sustainable but it's certainly in the 1st stages it works and the sort of a social social cohesion i noticed in germany things seem to be at least in berlin

which is not germany but a much more individualistic approach you know there's a notion of society but the people aren't as close to each other so the consequences of your personal decisions crops are not as immediately apparent to you or you care less about the people in your of an immediate environment it could be affected by your personal choices let's drill a little bit deeper on the economic. side of the pandemic the difficult tradeoff that we face is of course not only about forgoing beloved traditions but also very much about material costs germany's new lockdown will have severe consequences for retailers in particular let's go to new and bag known for a christmas market whose magic has now abruptly come to an end. call them angels mulled wine shopping the epitome of german christmas especially at the world famous closed candles marked in no one bag this year it's cancelled only a few stalls are open selling fruit and vegetables to the handful of customers kind

in mind there is no christmas here there are no tourists any more it's just plain bad as you can see the market is completely quiet. people should only leave their homes in urgent cases alcohol is banned in public places and there's no nighttime curfew all enforced by the police in germany hesitated to impose a hard lock down for a long time and it was preceded by an unusually emotional appeal from the chancellor even was on that if you had too much contact over christmas and it turns out to be the last one with our grandparents we would have failed and that is something we should not to do when. in fact according to surveys around 70 percent of germans are in favor of a hard lock down but how long can people hold out. and let me ask matthew carney exactly that question because your opening statement

indicates that you think the germans are in a good position to bear the costs but the retailers association here in germany says that as many as one in 2 retailers could wind up facing bankruptcy if they don't get enough help quickly well fortunately germany isn't primarily a retail economy and i think people often forget this because you know when you go out on the street what you see are shops and when shops are suffering that's something that's more immediate to most people but it is and has always been an industrial economy it lives from exports and that has continued german exports to china and elsewhere in asia are back up again recently so i think this is what the government has really focused on and that's why i think that being more flexible over. the past several months has been a good idea because this is a crucial phase for most industrial companies the end of the year particular the 4th quarter and so while retailers are hurting i mean the lockdown started on

december the 16th so they're going to lose maybe a week or so of their normal business which is also a crucial time of year for them but overall i think the trade off is probably worth it because if you had started the lock down earlier closing schools for example that would have had a much more severe impact on the core of the german economy derek the german government says that it will help affected businesses cover their fixed costs to the tune of another 11000000000 euros a month apparently from the public purse the finance minister says that's ok germany can afford this astronomically high debt do you think that's right. the finance minister in germany the federal funds minister is a social democrat and coincidentally he wants to be elected transfer next year so i mean i think it's everyone wants to be the christmas everyone wants to be santa clause at the moment but the friends who aren't in politics aren't in finance they just said where is his money coming from so if the mom in the street is beginning

to wonder where the money is coming from rather than saying isn't it great we're getting free money it's worrying for me and germany i suppose a kind afforded more than other countries because for the last couple of years it was almost like a religion here they call it the shots and all the bobbins they want to do the black 0 the books have to be bonds but suddenly in the in the crisis they've been able to because their balance sheets were more balanced over the years is able to take money but even by turn standards this is a phenomenal amounts of money out of the certainly interesting what they can promise next year running up to the election the federal elections in september if they've actually blown all the money now you know they are looking at this tradeoff between economic burdens and the burdens on health systems because of the pandemic do you see. there really are alternative approaches i'm thinking about countries like sweden or switzerland which try to hard to let normal life go on and essentially that way preserve the openness of the economy

those models essentially have failed haven't done the work i mean we saw that the swedish have. many more deaths than we did and that the economy didn't live better and in germany so i think it's always it's always very difficult to balance these 2 options but. scientists know that if you have a heart locked down and you keep it short but strict normally it is good for the numbers and it doesn't hurt the economy as bad as if you if you keep a low mass it measures are light measures for a long time so i think doing our lock down now and hoping that it can be short it's better than yes keeping it going on the fairly high number there is one model here in germany that is sometimes seen as an alternative to the way that most states are doing things and it's coming from the fairly small southwestern town of tubingen

where the authorities green party politicians have made a very big effort to protect the elderly in the wrong durable for example by creating special times where only they can shop and mean while allowing life otherwise to go on pretty much as normal would you say that is a model that could work elsewhere at least in germany it is a nice model to really try to protect the elderly more but it's never gonna prevent the virus from getting to the to the vis groups because people mingle and you always have young people working at hospitals or social care homes and stuff like that so your. is a nice try and i'm sure it has a good effect but it's not. stop it's not government kind of stuff that i'm nomic of the virus is spreading also into the other groups matthew in many ways this discussion in caps elite's what we saw in the united states essentially in the

tensions between donald trump who said just let the economy do its thing and the pandemic will kind of eventually fizzle out to a joe biden who says the economy is never going to really get back on its feet until we get the pandemic under control which side would you come down on well i think the economy is going to start prospering again in the coming months as the vaccination starts to roll out we're seeing that already i think we're seeing more optimism in the united states because of that that's also reflected in the stock market which is sort of a harbinger of sentiment going forward you know trump didn't manage the crisis well it's clear if you look at the number of people who died in the united states or 300000 now dead and 3000 dying every day as we speak now so i don't think that was a success that said the economy has performed better than in many other countries because there wasn't a harsh lockdown and you know this i think is

a situation that is different in every country you have to listen to the people there different mentalities around the world obviously china was very successful in combating the virus they have methods i think that most people in europe would would not accept but they did succeed in bringing the pandemic under control very quickly so i think you just have to be somewhat flexible starting with massive surveillance and use of private data i want to come to the vaccine question just a moment but there is one more. political aspect and that is popular support for the measures we saw in the report and i've seen this myself i was out on the streets yesterday talking to people 7080 percent of germans saying they support this new lockdown they think tighter restrictions are. important should have maybe been put in place sooner. merkel has seen her popularity skyrocket yet again since she's been calling for these harder measures but the fact is that is now what is it likely to look like in 6 months or longer if people are losing their

jobs if retailers are failing could we see a backlash in which people lose faith in the politicians and perhaps turn to populism i think it's very likely i mean i find it interesting that there were enough people out on the streets yesterday to do a vox pop i mean technically we're not supposed to be i came here through the western city center and i was expecting another sort of zombie film scenario like in march where it was a bomb in the streets and a bit of rubbish blowing in the wind people read about and if you're awesome if one has a good reason to be out the question is only oh well of course there are strikes and so i think what we're seeing is this sort of cognitive dissonance in people's minds of course i know there's restrictions but i just need to like the person parks in the 2nd lane i just need to i just need to get my bread rolls i just need to go to the bank machine so i think that exceptionalism we all have this exceptionalism in our mind and i think that's growing in in march february or march april people were

just say no i mean there's no exceptions we just have to do trade so we're already now in quite an elastic phase in our brains and i could go on and i i don't think the populism i think that's more interesting in the americans party the christian democrats they have they're looking for a new leader of the interesting who wins there and will be a more authoritarian figure with the more a we need to like america figure we need to keep everyone together and to gratian this figure so i think that will be he will see that in the middle of january and i think that will be an interesting barometer of where a german public opinion is this is the largest party this person who's going to be elect is probably going to be the next chancellor and they will set the tone i think for the debate. let us now take a quick look at pandemic politics some countries that have largely failed to get the pandemic under control such as the u.s. and britain are now hoping that vaccination will put things right the united kingdom was the 1st country in europe to approve biotech pfizer's vaccine and it is

accelerating its rollout margaret keenan a 90 year old woman from coventry made history as the 1st to be vaccinated she's happy to have put code behind her and hopes that many will follow her example her shot kicked off the largest mass vaccination in british history elderly and nursing home staff are 1st in line for the vaccinations yuliya based on that british example do you think that authorities here could and should have accelerated the approval process and rolled the vaccine out faster i don't think so because i think it's really important to make the people see that this is. a process that's really following protocol and that all the standards that need to be applied are applied and that the people can really trust if if it's approved as a vaccine they can trust that it's good and for that reason i think it's ok that it's taking a while and derek how fast would you expect to britain's program to show results do

you think a quick rollout can begin to compensate for those failures that were in fact made by johnson's government i think actually what we're seeing with the vaccine rolled out is across infection bragg's realities it's a disastrous situation things are going to very tough they need to some political they need to the good news story so i would be very surprised if there weren't some phone calls made to say we actually need the vaccine and we need it now and the health minister went on british television was crying crocodile tears are moving it was to see this so i think there's a political reality to to be the enough course there is a political reality of the deaths and. i've been asking my british cozens why is nobody talking at the desk right here i mean this is like grand fellow and hillsborough and all of the terrible disaster in britain on a daily basis and he's not so you know he's on political under political pressure to deliver but in the long term it would be terrible if if for some reason this emergency. allowing the viking times when our no emergency rule is

a backfires on public credibility is the credibility of the vaccine is undermined will he take the political responsibility for that knowing bars johnson i'd say probably not. you politicians you're a warning that it's going to take a while for vaccines to truly bring the infection rates down germany's health minister says we might see a return to normalcy in summer do you think that's right is realistic. certainly realistic it might not be realistic to think that everything is going to open up again on january 10th which is now the official end of the lockdown that might need to be extended but i think by the time summer comes around again i expect things will have calmed down by then hopefully the vaccine will have been rolled out to many people not everybody who's going to need it but will be on the right path and i think the world will look much different and. just because we're almost at the end of our show let me come back to our title we asked whether citizens must pay

for politicians errors we have a larn hard winter before us before that vaccine really does begin to show results what would you want to see from politicians here in germany but also in europe as a whole in terms of trying to keep people on track to keep the pandemic at least somewhat under control when i really think it needs a year of why it really kinnear strategy we need to really formulate a goal that everybody's working to 24 hours and then we need clear coming cations by the politicians and we need the people to follow the rules and really act accordingly direct sentence what would you want to see from leaders you know european union solution that's what europe is here for it doesn't the virus doesn't care whether it's in belgium or across the border an hour away cologne and that we're doing in the national level and that's catastrophic in the long term thank you very much to all of you for being with us thanks to you out there for tuning in

see you soon. it's. a real.

in the far north. beyond the inhabitable world. it's lonely. barren. and breathtakingly beautiful. the arctic.

powerful expanse of bitter cold. and the sound of global warming thanks. to take a journey around the north pole meet profiteers and talk with people experiencing a changing environment. or the ice disappears earlier and it keeps retreating. our future depends on what happens here in one of the most fragile ecosystems on much. more than lights life arctic circle starts december 21st g.w. . come from the book you are now going on. because the length of. exposing and justice global news that matters to me for months.

was. much. much. all we can be the generation that ends it for good malaria must die so millions can live.

this is g w news live from berlin and he admitted to letting down his guard now he has the virus french president emanuel macron has tested positive for coke at 19 he's self isolating but there are concerns about all those he had contact with recently including numerous european leaders will have the latest on the tracking and tracing also coming up physically and emotionally abused e.w. speaks with 2 elite german jim guns who say they were bullied and mistreated by

their coach and 10 years ago today a tunisian street vendor set himself a lot sparking a wave of uprisings in armed rebellions against repressive regimes so what has changed since the arab spring. i'm burnt off to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states into all of you around the world welcome french president emmanuel mccrone has tested positive for the coronavirus the president's office says it's highly likely that the president caught the virus at a european council summit last week mccrone has begun 7 days of quarantine his diagnosis fueling a lawman anxiety among europe's leaders many of them had close contact with mccrone at that summit some of them are now restricting their movements and getting tested

. an affectionate squeeze that's how french president emanuel greeted officials and heads of government last week at the e.u. summit and how he welcomed portuguese prime minister antonio costa to the elysee palace on wednesday. but now that michael has tested positive for the corona virus those close contacts may wish they dodged his warm embrace. last night the president started to experience symptoms indicative of covert 19 immediately isolated and took a p.c.r. test the results of which confirm that he is positive for kovan $1000.00. dollars as for everyone who test positive in this country contact tracing began immediately in order to identify the president's close contacts. back home symptoms are mild he attended this meeting virtually from isolation but the positive test has abandoned both his agenda and the agenda of european politics as the u.k.

and the e.u. attempt to negotiate a breaks a trade deal before the end of the year. a growing list of european leaders who met with my call are now working from home working that is unless they become seriously ill. in paris there was little surprise at the president's misfortune. to say yes it's serious it affects everyone so no there's no reason to blame him. it's obvious given his job that this would happen so it doesn't surprise me. but i probably didn't respect the social distancing rules. michael joins a long list of world leaders who have caught the virus and just over a week before the e.u. was hoping to begin vaccinations well our correspondent richard he is in brussels he's on the story for us tonight good evening to you berent we know that president macron he announced the diagnosis today this afternoon he was seen speaking online

at a conference how important is it for him to show that he is still in charge but of course it's important for him to show that he is only mightily affected so far by the code 19 and they say he has a quiet he was teleconference he was sitting at a desk we don't know exactly where this this was presumably somewhere in his private quarters that the it is a palace but they also some concern that he is now i mean he can spread the virus to everybody in this surroundings we don't know if they have active missions or some. people working with him so this is also critical you're supposed to stay in your room and maybe also to get some rest if you have the coronavirus and not to work so it's a double edged sword a message which can go in in the other direction but of course michael wants to show he's still in charge he's governing and he will only current the current team

for 7 days and that he will start to resume his work again and his is office been says that he most likely got the virus at last week's european council meeting so what does that tell us then about the coronavirus protocols that are being enforced or not being enforced at these conferences. but at this point it is a pilot palace is saying it's most likely that he regretted that the bars last week here in brussels at the summit but there's no proof of that because all the other leaders so far have negative called batiste said isolating for precaution but they are not there's no positive test out so the german chancellor angela merkel tested negative for the virus she's not isolating she's continuing to have a couple of others who are. isolating so it's not quite clear if it's really as a summit of the what's the spread of an event we don't know what mccloy is doing in

private her concerns about his family his wife brigitte is also inside of isolation cease she's 67 years old and as such she's a part of a risk group so it's not quite clear if it really was the summit it was the other meetings call had in the several days ago he was meeting in paris there are several leaders he has a very busy schedule it's although the country is just coming out of a lockdown and some people are also criticizing that he's still so busy. rieger also busy tonight in brussels ben thank you well with the u.k. canada and us all recently kicking off mass vaccination campaigns the eyes of the world are fixed on a bet seen developed by a company right here in germany here's a closer look at how the firm by on tech is responding to bugs the plaudits and the scrutiny. biotech started out as a small start up back in 2008 now the world's focus is on the vaccine developer in

mines the german government provided funding for the company from early on and german chancellor angela merkel is full of praise for the founders it's i can see myself also as the head of the federal government we are incredibly proud that we have rejected a global pandemic he and his wife decided to redirect their resources from research in cancer to finding a coronavirus vaccine. site it's a very exciting time when we get the approval from the european authorities we can start delivering our vaccine potentially even this year our employees will work through christmas to make sure that our vaccine makes it to all countries. and. initially some 400000 doses will be kept for use in germany if the e.u. gives the green light by the 23rd of december vaccinations could get underway here by the 27th. it's clear who will be receiving the

vaccine 1st our primary goal is to protect people over 80 years old and those who live or work in retirement homes or care facilities. the health minister says other segments of society will be told over time when it's their turn for the vaccine if they need it. well here's a look now at some of the other stories that are making headlines around the world the king of sweden says his country has failed in its handling of the coronavirus crisis king karl gustaf whose role is largely ceremonial made the rare criticism during an annual television appearance sweden's pandemic policy has left measures largely voluntary and has been blamed for a high death toll among the country's elderly russian president vladimir putin has laughed off allegations that the kremlin was behind the poisoning of the opposition leader alexei navalny during his annual news conference in moscow he smiled and

said quote if there had been such a desire it would have been done. the bosnian capital syria is blanketed with smog prompting authorities to warn people to stay indoors fine particulate levels are said to be hazardous windless conditions mean that the build up is likely to continue over the next coming days the pollution is calls by heavy reliance on coal heating and aging power plants. we're now into a controversy engulfing german gymnastics there spiegel newsmagazine reported recently on allegations of bullying and mistreatment by a female coach in the city of camden d.w. has been speaking with 2 former elite gymnast who say that the problem is much wider than anyone thought. naomi and ruby vandyke are learning to love gymnastics all over again for many years their love

for the sport had disappeared. aged 10 and trying for big things between this move to an elite training center near cologne when their performances dicks they say they were called fat and lazy by their coach that's slim's the front is the worst thing when he said he wouldn't come to competitions with us because we were embarrassing him when you're 14 or 15 you need a coach he supports you no matter how badly he always let us down just before the competition saying you're so you have a barrister i may be out a mess on one occasion during a ball's exercise naomi said she was purposely dropped on her head to teach her a lesson before he pushed me 2 or 3 times to go down lower but i knew he wasn't holding me properly that's why i didn't go and then i did under pressure but he let go of me and said there you see. in

a statement to the local association the right nischelle turner said it was quite surprised by the allegations adding the r.c.b. takes the allegations raised very seriously and will clarify the facts as soon as possible. at the time naomi and ruby were given 3 options either put up with the coach quit the sport or as they ended up doing move to the olympic training center in penates earlier this month problems there were uncovered by the sheiko magazine a dozen other gymnasts accused the head coaching chemists gabrielle of fraser of bullying them and making them train through injury naomi and revie say pain killers and injections were handed out freely without prescriptions and without the knowledge of athlete's parents but the twins felt they couldn't speak up because of the package they'd come with. by it because we were. always told we were annoying a we were the problem we didn't want to be

a lawyer since we just wanted to show we were actually hardworking and so that's why we didn't mention a lot of things and at. one time all this big. fraser who's been suspended pending an investigation has called all the allegations baseless and says she never oversteps the mark it was her strong denials that prompted naomi and ruby to tell their story they can not be stating that we can definitely confirm these baseless allegations that the other girls have made by 2 or 3 of them were with us in canada and we witnessed how badly they were treated it like that we can easily say it's not baseless. and they convince us that. these days the twins only compete in the national league no longer trimming of international success but at least now they can perform again with a smile on their faces. i'm joined now by much 1000000 klein from the independent

athletes association of land or athletes germany makes millions good to have you on the program were you surprised are you surprised by these allegations now are not true. such cases and similar story on the surprise i mean you must assume that such cases of violence also the use of you know in the heart of films that i will not doubt whites and if you look to other cases and the revelations that you carry over us we should really use you in the germany is there any much different such cases that just in terms of the eyes. yeah we for example talk to. the vast majority. opponents indicate that they experience some form of a wire or abusive behavior about this boarding korea and why do you think that is i mean you say just the tip of the iceberg why is the abuse why is it so prevalent

you know spoiled in the school system especially in high performance was really provides favorable conditions that athletes are actually prone to use. as this whole system can be understood as opposed to. affix being socialized and this is the best of face a go an emotionally proximate use between athletes but also between athletes and coaches and stuff and they're really favorable conditions for that kind of behavior and especially in hype homes the sporting korea of athletes to be patted on the positions by the coaches by starting the federations and therefore there are really high variance of class the students you speak of and we know that we can't really change these dynamics about each type of competitive sports so what can be done then to prevent this abuse from happening in the future. well you know like 3

points we have to see that this must be. prevention of violence and abuse and suppose that this really has to be implemented on the ground across the not in the all over germany but what's really needed and i think the united states for example is a good example of that we need to have to speak up on the ground you have to speed up the parents stop and poachers and i so i think in the broader context after these elite athletes i find voices and they're speaking out on a range of issues now and i think the more africa speaking out on the views and violence and the more i know that they have to do so and 2nd the. structure of this whole system is often times set out that spoiled cannot be said regulate it's autonomy. many many issues in supposing specially violence and uses should not be self-regulated. if everything is sold so the salt in the system is

really hard to talk to the independent almost persons because they think i'm not trustworthy maybe the trust yeah it's good to have someone to talk to right that you can trust she you feel is independent makes me inclined for the independent athletes association not least. makes me we present your time and your insights tonight thank you. and. 10 years ago in tunisia street vendor set himself on fire in front of his local tell hall his desperate act was in protest at official corruption and it sparked a wave of uprisings and armed rebellions against free press should the regimes in the region but while some of the protests during that arab spring did topple some longtime dictators they also lead to a number of civil wars that continue to this day. this man lit the spark that left scorch marks across the entire hour bridgend on december

17th 2010 mohamed bouazizi says some cell phone fire to protest official corruption in chinese he died from his injuries a few weeks later but by then his story of desperation had inspired a nationwide i pouring of rage. and soon afterwards the arab spring protests took down their 1st high profile political target. tunis is vasher an autocrat xeni ben ali fled to saudi arabia with only a few family members and close aides in tow. the anti government protests multiplied rapidly be on chin is the is borders with anger over repressive regimes economic hardship and political failure spilling onto the streets social media was used to spread the word unorganized and few of our countries were left untouched by the vast some of the biggest upheaval was experienced in egypt where

decades long ruler hosni mubarak was overthrown setting the stage for a power struggle eventually won by the military. and libya syria and yemen became embroiled in for truck to conflicts which are still taking a huge humanitarian toll today. well the international community also played a role in this of people in the arab world. is a middle east analyst with the global public policy institute he says western countries prioritized their own interests over the humanitarian issues which sparked the revolt we should definitely look at the western democracies and how they have. development and since 2000. as they have often publicly claimed and stated that they support the ideas of these revolutionary protest movements right

and 1st and foremost that you know the european union and its member states and the united states have actually put their interest in stability in the region over the protection of human rights and the demands of the protesters for the most part at least the basic assumption underlying this is that did autocrats of the region will provide stability and but that is fundamentally flawed in my opinion as long as citizens in most arab countries experience this high levels of inequality the repression and injustice that has actually sparked the protests 10 years ago. and these are actually the very basis of the authoritarian rule as in those countries they do not contribute to stability in the region quite the opposite. the coronavirus pandemic has led to enormous peebles in our lifestyles how we work how we socialize and even the places that we call home a study in spain has found a significant increase in demand for homes with more indoor and outdoor space city

dwellers appear to be packing up and moving to the suburbs or to the countryside one reason is that more people are working from home but there are others. and to talk about that my colleague public is here at the big table with me. it's not just a spinner story and you can't do any of this if you don't have good internet you're absolutely right internet is key of course to many many jobs and you're right it's not just in spain but spain was released this report is from the notary general council so essentially the notary of course when you buy a property of go to go to the notary in several countries and it noticed that there was a drop in the number of people buying apartments and a significant pretty sharp rise in people looking for houses with a garden or i've door space of course in many european cities people would live in apartments it's not just in europe across the world we see people having apartments were often they don't even have an outdoor space or they'd have a shared space or a very small balcony we see that here in berlin and obviously people now after the

pandemic want to change they want different aspects of their life to be a little bit more doors eat because they they don't have to be in the city anymore because perhaps their job permits it so that what we're looking at here is kind of a migration out of urban areas to you know the suburbs rural areas well in the u.k. and in the u.s. it's similar to spain and actually here in germany as well there's been a shift and a shift and the number of people buying bigger properties of the state of israel to actually get you much more for your money exactly that what's happened is the question is. this kind of space stuff people want is it really something that is sustainable is this what's going to happen in the future i spoke to professor a young. datta now she's a human geography professor at u.c.l.a. in london and this is what she told me with many different types of work it is just not possible to move out of cities especially if you think about service sector

because if you think about people who are clean as bus driver and so on and so forth that place is still the case they it's not possible to do remote especially if you're frontline because you're if you're working in hospitals so these are jobs that never be are very unlikely to be possible to be down remotely and so then you will see problems with with you know seeing this as a kind of you know blanket application in which people are just moving in and out remote it won't happen everywhere so the professor there told me that basically not everybody can just work from anywhere our profession is one where you come some jobs or some you can't but it's it's more the fact that it's actually people from lower income backgrounds are the ones who are most affected and really the problem here is the pandemic is exposed at major decision scenes with urban areas across the planet small small housing is one of the main problems i mean and also you

can't afford apartments now so if people are going to move out these are big areas does that mean urban areas are going to become before double or these areas going to improve well really what the issue is we need to focus on where the problems lie in urban areas so if people are living in poor housing and they don't have access to parks green space even clean air or even you know proper facilities dots were really what we need to be looking out so it's essentially working from the bottom up as opposed to the top down all right probably in the us there's always public good reporting thank you. a chinese lunar probe has completed its historic mission and returned to earth landing in mongolia china is now the 3rd country after the u.s. in the former soviet union that has brought back samples from the moon's surface. thermal imaging shows the capsule with its precious cargo touching back down to earth helicopters then spot the lunar probe in the icy

wasteland support staff quickly move in to recover the spacecraft china hopes the contents will help scientists discover new information about the geology and history of satellite. chunk are 5 was one of the most complicated and challenging missions in china's aerospace history. when the rocket was launched on november 23rd it was a source of national pride. the probe was made up of 4 modules one was the land which has dug for rocks and soil the materials were then transferred into a return capsule for the journey back to earth it's the 1st time in 4 decades that material has been brought back from the moon. beijing now has its sights set on building a moon base cementing its role as a superpower in the new space race. the as tony in capital

tali has found a way to pay tribute to one of its most beloved residents the honoree roamed the streets for years before moving to the country earlier this year he was known for his shabby good looks as well as being a free spirit he brought the city together. fewer muds are men for that matter are more be loved and as a working class estonian neighborhood than sorich the stray. on that he touched everyone young and old the stoniest and russians he was a force for social integration he was never the tail wagging lick your face cuddly type still zurich's presence in the heart of the capital tolland was a familiar comfort and is so missed that his likeness stands there now. people donated money for this monument they wanted it here and they still follow his life even though he's old and frail ages ravaged his body and mind so he's been operated

to live out the rest of his days at a nearby farm the 4 legged vagabond has tried to escape back to the streets he's known since he was a pup even back then there were those who tried to have him rounded up and put to sleep others fought to feed and protect him this time his friends say kindness one yet again. our here's a reminder of the top stories that we're following for you french president emanuel micron has tested positive for code 19 and will self isolate for 7 days european union leaders who've had contact recent contact with him are concerned spain's prime minister is already in quarantine germany says it plans to roll out its coronavirus vaccination campaign beginning december 27th as leading doctors warn that intensive care beds are filling up quickly the country recently set a record high for new infections with more than 30000 cases recorded in the last 24 hours. you're watching the news we have some breaking news coming in in nigeria

hundreds of boys are now safely back in government custody after being kidnapped from a school last friday we'll have much more on that as an information comes in and stay tuned after a short break i'll be back to take you through the day we'll be right back.

the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing. what measures are being taken. what does the latest research say. information and context. the coronavirus and the code of special monday to friday on w. nothing.

i guess sometimes i am but i said nothing which it. makes me consider jemma culture of looking at the stereotype question that is think the future of the country that i now not pay. newton seen his pick for his grandmother am thus it's all that. i my job join me to meet the gentleman from v.w. . post. the solution for in suffolk monarch. fantasy. off. the side of the trans. national. secrets to success

starts december 25th to come off. the pressure to roll well nationwide vaccinations the u.k. canada and the us are already doing it. the european union hasn't even approved a vaccine yet that should change next week just before christmas and we know who french president emanuel will most likely spend christmas eve with himself and only himself today mccrone revealed that he has tested positive for the corona virus he responsibly admitted to letting down his guard pandemic fatigue he'll have plenty of time now in self isolation to reflect on what he did and didn't do i'm burnt off in berlin this is the day.

it gets that nobody not even the president of france has been spat that we've f.o. cool for extra vigilance especially as the holidays approach as we enter the coldest months we must be vigilant to keep this virus on the controlled instant fascination is a way out of this pandemic and we are well prepared for these vaccines will be the christmas gift for all europeans if everything goes well as the end when we see how many people are dying from coronavirus we know how many lives this could save for the next year we have got to christmas is normal for everyone. also coming up they say their coach called them fat and ugly and was even willing to let them fall to the ground tonight accusations of abuse in german gymnastics

you know me too gymnast to say instead of being trained they were bully and push me 2 or 3 times to go down but i knew he wasn't holding me properly that's why i didn't. and then i did under pressure but he let go of maine said that you see. our viewers up. b.s. in the united states and to all of our viewers around the world welcome we begin the day tracking and tracing all the people who recently shared the same space with the french president today emanuel mccrone announced that he has tested positive for the corona virus and is now in self isolation the news triggered a political gasp across europe and beyond in the last week mccrone spent time face to face with european leaders such as german chancellor angela merkel mccrone and his wife also had dinner with egyptian president of the l.c.c. for them and a long list of others it could be

a week of quarantine here is what france's top public health official said today about the president and his diagnosis that well that's what you know the president is an example to everyone he isolated have a slight is symptom that's what we say to old french people he took a test when he had the slightest doubt that's also what we want and he is a supporter of our tracing app i can say he is extremely attentive to hygiene measures is disinfectant everywhere and he had his the social distancing guidelines and then it's not the people. well emanuel mccrone was not the only prominent european dealing with a coronavirus misstep today the king of sweden in a rare public rebuke said that the government's pandemic policy has been a deadly disaster is words came just as a stinging report on the country's handling of the crisis was released an independent commission said the swedish government failed to protect the elderly from the virus nearly half of sweden's coded $1000.00 deaths have been in nursing

homes take a listen to how the keying summed it up let me live in the area to you that i think quite simply that we have failed to. many people have died and that is horror over here think it will be tripped up threat. well the 1st vaccine against the corona virus is expected to be approved and rolled out to the public sometime next week here in europe here in germany as has been the case in the u.k. and the u.s. residents of nursing homes their staff and front line health care workers will receive the 1st injections but the vaccines won't provide relief for germany's hospital's intensive care units are filling up and now a leading physician is predicting that in the coming weeks a growing number of medics will be forced to make decisions on who gets lifesaving treatment and who doesn't we have this report tonight on

a hospital where the situation is already die. a new kind of a patient has a drive by ambulance to try backs university hospital he's traveling in a special isolation pod so none of the transport team gets infected the patient is only in his forty's he's transferred to viviane it's what's months intensive care unit with 5 members of a team she turns him on to stomach the prone position is an important therapy for a seriously ill co the patients the team make sure the patient is well padded as he will lie like this for several hours after the excite the inflammation sits at the back of the lungs and a lot of fluid collects there the lungs can't heal if we lie on them the whole time by turning patients on to their stomachs their lungs get air and can heal and. once a day the team tends each patient on to their front and back and it's

a big effort. but printing and being put on a ventilator is not sufficient for many critically ill patients. need to be connected to an artificial lung to keep them alive. it pumps the patient's blood into a machine where carbon dioxide is extracted and oxygen added. to that the blood is and pumped back into the patient's body. for patients who are this ill there aren't many options left this is the last trump card we've got to turn up i therapeutic options are sobering we give accident and the artificial lung but that only gives us more time the lungs have to heal on their own up. in the hospital's pharmacy there's no wonder drug against the coronavirus ram disappear one of the great hopes at the start of the pandemic has yielded disappointing results as have many other drugs medics of the virus for

nearly a year now but the odds of surviving a severe case haven't improved much you know it's bad for the 2nd person on a ventilator dies behind each of those numbers is a human being much. in the 2nd wave many young and healthy people have also been infected but that's no guarantee for a milder cause of the l. ners. you could hope to get this is a young man 45 years old with a severe case of coma is a prime example that a young healthy person without any notable preexisting medical conditions can be brought to the brink of death by this fire i'm going to force them into the intensive care units really are at their limit and we have to be clear about that there might still be some spare beds that every day there's fewer and patients like here for a long time for weeks or even months and that means beds don't free up quickly.

at the moment they can still fight every single patients life has but the time off to christmas could turn into the intensive care teams was nightmare. grim scenes there let's pull in our correspondent simon young he's on the story for us tonight here in berlin good evening to you simon you know we have heard since the pandemic began that germany had huge hospital capacity that there were more than enough intensive care beds and now as we're seeing in that report some hospitals are in a state of emergency how did this happen. well we've got a worsening picture here in germany and hospitals are feeling the pressure the sheriff's a hospital here in berlin one of large one of europe's largest hospitals for instance has announced that it is halting routine non-essential operations from monday and moving to an emergency schedule in order to make sure that it has capacity still available from other places around the country we've heard reports

of hospital mortuaries that are reaching capacity and bodies stored in containers and as you've mentioned in some parts of the country doctors are even reporting they're already having to make that decision whether seriously ill patients should take up resources and get treatment or whether those resources should go to other patients with a better likelihood of survival so gemini says that still has 4000 i.c.u. beds available and another 11000 potentially in temporary hospitals so there is capacity left but it's a worsening situation infection numbers still on the rise a new record today over 30000 new infections. and it's a worrying picture that's why we've got a strict new lockdown now i mean even if the verse corona virus vaccine is approved next week here in europe they'll lag behind the u.k. in the u.s.

it remains obvious in troubling do we know why i journeyed did not push earlier to get an emergency authorization for the use of this vaccine. well indeed a controversial question germans are looking for instance at the u.k. where 137000 people are reported to have already received the vaccine here germany the country where one of the 1st vaccines was developed people still waiting but the reason is that germany took the decision back in the spring that it. would follow the european the e.u. vaccine approvals regime and the vaccine rollout so the health ministry in spong says that european processes or delay and its stara and he also points out that it's a full approval rather than an emergency approval as has been done in the u.k. and also in the united states and so he hopes that will contribute to public

confidence in the vaccine when it arrives fully they say in the week after christmas and of course that if there is confidence then that could improve take up of the vaccine is also a concern. about public sentiment are people in support of this this normal pace that europe is going on when it comes to approving the might see. well there is general approval in germany at least of the government's approach at the moment and for instance when it comes to the latest lockdown measures we've got over 2 thirds of germans saying that they happy about that and they think it's enough some of them even think it doesn't go far enough so there is general support for the government's handling but at the same time you've got experts saying that with the current rate of fall and infections of stabilization of infections measures will have to go on long believe beyond the 10th of january which is the

current date when those restrictions are set to be lifted so you know it's a mixed picture there. some young on the story for us here in berlin tonight simon as always thank you well still to come on the day 10 years ago today a young tunisian set himself on fire to protest hopeless living conditions his act of desperation gave birth to the arab spring a movement that did not last the anti government protests multiplied tropically be on chin is the is borders social media was used to spread the word an organized and few other countries were left untouched by the un math. to sports and the controversy within the world of german gymnastics there have been allegations recently of abuse bullying and mistreatment by a coach at a national gymnastics center here in the country you have spoken to 2 former elite

gymnast who trained at that center they say the abuse is real in that it extends far beyond where they used to train. naomi and ruby vandyke are learning to love gymnastics all over again for many years their love for the sport had disappeared. aged 10 and primed for big things between this move to an elite training center near cologne but when their performances dipped they say they were called fat and lazy by their coach just slims the front is the worst thing was when he said he wouldn't come to competitions with us because we were embarrassing him when you're 14 or 15 you need a coach he supports you no matter how badly he always let us down just before the competition saying you're so you have a barrister who may be out a mess on one occasion during a balls exercise naomi said she was purposely dropped on her head to teach her

a lesson before he pushed me 2 or 3 times to go down lower but i knew he wasn't holding me properly that's why i didn't go and then i did under pressure but he let go of me and said there you see. in a statement to the local association the right nischelle turner said it was quite surprised by the allegations adding the r.c.b. takes the allegations raised very seriously and will clarify the facts as soon as possible. at the time naomi and ruby were given 3 options either put up with the coach quit the sport or as they ended up doing move to the olympic training center in pemex earlier this month problems there were uncovered by the sheiko magazine a dozen other gymnasts accused the head coach in chemists gabrielle a fraser of bullying them and making them train through injury naomi and revie say pain killers and injections were handed out freely without prescriptions and

without the knowledge of athletes parents but the twins felt they couldn't speak up because of the baggage they come with. by it because. we were always told we were annoying a we were the problem we didn't want to be a nuisance we just wanted to show we were actually hardworking and so that's why we didn't mention a lot of things. on how. fraser who's been suspended pending an investigation has called all the allegations baseless and says she never overstepped the mark it was her strong denials that prompted naomi and ruby to tell their story. stating that we can definitely confirm these baseless allegations that the other girls have made. 2 or 3 of them are with us in canada and we witnessed how badly they were treated it like we can easily say it's not baseless. and.

these days the twins only compete in the national the no longer trimming of international success but at least now they can perform again with a smile on their faces. 10 years ago today a genuine street vendor stood in front of his local government offices and set himself on fire it was a desperate act to protest official corruption and it triggered a wave of evils across the region that became known as the arab spring. but while the protests led to the toppling of longtime dictators they also foreshadowed a number of civil wars that continue to rage today. this man lit the spark that left scorch marks across the entire hour bridgend on

december 17th 2010 mohamed bouazizi says some cell phone fire to protest official corruption in tunisia he died from his injuries a few weeks later but by then his story of desperation had inspired a nationwide outpouring of rage. and soon afterwards the arab spring protests took down their 1st high profile political target. tunis is veteran also a crowd xeni ben ali fled to saudi arabia with only a few family members and close aides in tow. the anti government protests multiplied rapidly be on chin izzy as borders with anger over repressive regimes economic hardship and political failure spilling onto the streets social media was used to spread the word an organize and few of our countries were left

untouched by the un vast some of the biggest upheaval was experienced in egypt where decades long ruler hosni mubarak was overthrown setting the stage for a power struggle eventually won by the military. and libya syria and yemen became embroiled in for trucks of conflicts which are still taking a huge humanitarian toll today. over more i'm joined tonight by syria yorkies she's a senior fellow with the carnegie endowment middle east program sure it's good to have you back with us here on the day you've focused a lot of your research on tunisia the one country that has an active democratic institution since the arab spring is tunisia is it the success story of the arab spring. it certainly is the most successful of all of the arab spring countries and i think if you divide tunisia's political and economic situation politically

absolutely if there's free and fair elections a robust constitution vibrant civil society people in the streets criticizing their government which would have gotten them thrown in jail 10 years ago that is certainly in the success column but economically you know the issues that really drove the revolution in the 1st place in that case speech is actually worse off than it was in 2010 unemployment is higher g.d.p. rates are lower people are actually having a harder time feeding their families and they were 10 years you know further afield the east many had hoped for democratic transition in egypt which is the region's most populous and influential country what went wrong there after demonstrators succeeded in toppling the mubarak regime the difference between egypt and tunisia is the role of the military and the military in egypt played a much more heavy handed role from day one even during the revolution they were much more willing to kind of go against protesters i eventually they staged

a military coup that unseated the democratically elected muslim brotherhood government so egypt you had this idea that there were power forces at play that were much bigger much more powerful than the protesters in the revolutionary whereas in tunisia the military was on the sidelines they never played that sort of interventionist role and then you've got other countries in jed's syria and yemen that have descended into chaos and civil will work does having populations divided along sectarian lines does that make it harder to you know plant the seeds of democracy. sectarianism is definitely a factor and the more divided the society is the more difficult it is now in the case of tunisia one of the things that made it as a resoundingly success in the early years was the ability for all the political leaders to come together you had people islamist secularists people who really did not agree with each other or decided they were going to put democracy and its democratic transition ahead of their own political goals you did not see that in

syria and libya and yemen or egypt in those cases you had such the tearing divides but you also had just general societal divides and people who really wanted to be the winners. people decided you know what democracy is more important to us than actually having our own party of elite here you know when you look at all of these countries in northern africa in the middle east but they have in common is that they have young demographics and we're talking about majorities in the population under the age of $42.00 is a younger population is it easier for the c. of strongman leader is it easier for him or more him or her to control i mean is that a lesson from the arab spring. i think that the youth factor helped spur on the revolutions and one of the reasons for that was the use of social media which it's hard for us to imagine right now but you know 10 years ago social media was still pretty young so people across the arab world used social media in

a way that really surprised the dictators at the time the youths who were in the streets they were using these tools that the governments were not familiar with unfortunately the government caught on pretty quickly in the case of egypt mubarak shut down the entire internet but something that's pretty impossible to imagine happening today but i do think that the youth had a major factor you know that they were the ones who were much more innovative and they were much more willing to take risks than i think maybe some of the older generations were but that generation is now a decade older you know they're now not middle aged by any means but there are more mature and so they're handling the situation differently are you still see protests for sure everywhere across the region but you're seeing a different approach it's not the same sort of brazen approach that i think people who are in their their late teens or early twenty's would take and what about the role that was played by foreign powers you know i'm talking about those in the west but also iran. so the foreign powers had

a influence on things in both mostly bad ways i would say actually you know one of the reasons that tunisia also succeeded where others didn't is that tunisia was in a country where people are really pushing for democracy where the west where outside powers were really pushing for democracy the ben ali regime was very closed off it was a country where it didn't look like democracy was anywhere close to being on the horizon compared to a place like egypt or morocco or jordan where you had some sort of façade democratic reforms you had quite a push from the united states for example as well as from the european union in egypt on pushing for democratic reform which ended up backfiring i mean some of the revolution and she was much more kind of grassroots based it was much more natural it came from the people versus this idea that it was imposed by a sort of imperialist powers then you also have the other powers in the region you mentioned iran but also the gulf states who have continued over the past decade to play a role there is you know qatar saudi arabia people who really that's right are trying to kind of have a proxy fight in the region in

a way you know each of them have their own interests qatar supporting the muslim brotherhood and egypt saudi arabia certainly not ok syria is red rep if they are on syria he's with the carnegie endowment middle these programs here we appreciate your time in your insights tonight thank you. thank you. for finally many times this year many of you have written to me about all of the negative news that we report and you're absolutely right this year has been especially difficult it's hard on you trust me we know how you feel so you can imagine how happy we were when our team in our moscow bureau sent us a holiday video today one week before christmas seen it times together the years headlines with a bathrobe some yoga and a christmas tree ornament laced with a substance that rhymes with just a joke take a look. he'd.

kill. me now i am. for him looks to. be a gift is a clerk. is what is put in watts well that's a question brant i guess the thing that we can point out at this point is that we were in ministry has. phobia and that's a. different. feeling .

to feel. safe to feel. safe to. eat. fish.

enter the conflict zone with sara kelly putting 2 years ago ethiopian prime minister on the awkward road to power with a wave of hope but now he's weaved the military offensive on forces in the northern t.t.y. region my guest this week from addis ababa exotic of ross ethiopian minister for democratization where is the peaceful future his prime minister promised conflicts of. 90 minutes on d w. i am angry. all.

the more. i cannot see the pros who was losing money. in those smaller and smaller. ones lol good news. there's no. known love of a way for the work of. those. workers remember a girl. can't snoop. couldn't stand. the move. crime fighters are back africa's most successful radio drama series continues this season the stories focus on hate speech prevention and sustainable production

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this is g w news live from berlin safe and sound tonight hundreds of boys are back in the custody of the nigerian government after being kidnapped by militants the boys were taken from a northern school last week prompting anger and fresh demands to better protect the country's children get a live update from our correspondent in law goes also coming up tonight french president emanuel my call.