i was issued when i arrived here i slept with people in a room. it was hard. even got white hair. learning the german language a lot this gives me a great opportunity to interact with say you want to do their story. pointing out reliable information for margaret. washington scraps a diplomatic trip to taiwan the trip would have been a move by the outgoing trump administration to increase official ties with the self route island while also provoking china because the taipei from. also coming up his presidency ends next week just enough time for donald trump to slap new tariffs on

aircraft parts and wine from the european union. and an adviser to chancellor angela merkel gave evidence to lawmakers about how to the government's role in the wild card scandal go to frankfurt for the latest. welcome to the w business i want to get johnson berlin good to have you with us and it's a turbulent times for the u.s. with the presidents trying facing a 2nd impeachment and only days to go until joe biden's inauguration the outgoing u.s. administration has called off last minute trips by its top envoys to europe and to taiwan now the latter has caused much friction between the united states and china washington wants to end the quote complex restriction on diplomats dealing with taipei but beijing opposes any diplomatic recognition of the democratic island to which also happens to be a world leading tech up. as was. only to be expected beijing responded

furiously to the united states' plan to lift restrictions on official contacts with taiwan. we are drawn as u.s. secretary of state pompeo to have a clear understanding of the trend of history stop manipulating taiwan related issues and stop acting against the trend and not to go further down the wrong and dangerous path otherwise he will be severely punished by history the new arrow was said to be marked by the visit of an american diplomat to taiwan for 3 days this week the fact that all travel by the u.s. state department including that trip has since been canceled to assisted by transition is unlikely to call beijing taiwan is an essential global supplier of high technology to china as well taiwan is trying to fill the gap cost price engines on china especially in the microchip industry and it's been pressing hard for a trade agreement with the us. of a more. to end taiwan good to see you. well i mean obviously beijing is not happy

about washington's latest moves in taiwan including the plan to send an un envoy there do you think they'll be retaliation. 7 days left in office trump could still take further action to anger beijing but china knows clearly that trump would do his best to embarrass china and to her china's position in his fine old days so analysts believe that china will not want to take actions to hamper our 1st to reboot relations with us call me in the situation so apart from trading words china might not want to retaliate until. unless the things get to an acceptable level for example like trump suddenly visit in taiwan which is not very possible. until then can wait 2 to 4 charm to get out to all of the office because we have to be careful what's possible

and not with trump but leaving that aside the us is currently certainly busy dealing with domestic issues especially the transition from trump to biden where will that leave taiwan and its trade relations with the u.s. . well the u.s. trade representative lied hisor just said there was no time for a negotiation of the us and taiwan bilateral trade agreement and the 2 sides had not yet resolved obstacles to the trade dispute so the train goes asian could not start so in one of the biggest problems cited by light hires or is the u.s. in taiwan growing trade deficit from the beginning of last year to the end of november the u.s. trade deficit with taiwan reached $26900000000.00 so and so we probably have to wait until by the end straight we're presented of catherine dop catherine tai whose parents are from taiwan to see how she will deal with it and to see if that will

lead to a concrete progress of the trade agreement of the 2 sites let's say a trade agreement is reached what's this mean for taiwan's relationship to china taiwan of course major takeup supplying both the list and china where does it leave it well it's a heated debate here in taiwan because on the one hand it seems that taiwan's export highly depend on china's vast market but on the other hand china also depend on taiwan's export of high tech chips which they cannot mate by themselves so until then we can as they trade go in between the 2 sides. as always thank you so much. the european union supports abah us with subsidies on fast says the united states but they are themselves giving aid to boeing this lead to a 16 year trade conflict still on dissolved now in the last days of his presidency

donald trump has signed off on a new import tariffs on aircraft parts and other gets. a new round of imports duties just as the outgoing administration is wrapping things up a 15 percent tariff on aircraft parts including fuselage and wing assembly is not a big surprise and has been the aircraft sector where subsidies paid on both sides of the ocean have strained straight relations for a long time. much more surprising not only aircraft parts are subject to tariffs import duties of 25 percent have been levied on french wine a step that is highly controversial especially in times of the pandemic as it hurts the business not only of french wineries but also us restaurants tariffs on european wine really hit restaurants while their down european wines represent the most critical profit center for most u.s.

restaurants or at the very least for a huge number of u.s. restaurants so to hit directly at one of their most important profit centers just as restaurants are entering the most challenging winter of their last lifetimes is incredibly concerning and it seems really short sighted. so why exactly has wine been targeted maybe the lame duck president sees the french product as competition to his old ones be that as it may russell says it will seek a swift resolution of the issue with president elect joe biden who takes office next week. a high ranking german government official has defended the decision to lobby on behalf of disgraced fin tech company wire cart that during a visit to china last handle an advisor to chancellor angela merkel gave evidence to lawmakers investigating why a consequence he said that backing german firms in china was in the government's

interest and the americans put in a good word for wildcards during an official visit in 2019 of the spiced despite allegations of fraud and merging months earlier. who is now financial market correspondent joins me now at the frankfurt stock exchange cannot clearly when i'm going to travel to china back then there were red flags left right and center about why across it does berlin not scrutinize the companies it promotes elsewhere. obviously not enough money you know what also plays a role here is that an ex minister of our german federal government who is now a lobbyist obviously used his connections with the german chancellor in order to encourage her to push why a cuts case in china today in hindsight we can say that for the chancellor to have trust in this ex minister was not a good idea but we also have to be fair at the time nobody could really know what

kind of criminal energy was in place and was being active there and why a card. a few of those managers really established a whole system of faking and pretending and even you know the most renowned auditing firms like. where food by this the rights of the chancellor wasn't alone here what's the latest by the way that it went bust last summer but you can still buy shares. that's true want to but you know this is a penny stock worth only a couple of cents only gabble or there you know algorithms play with this share now if you own the share before the scandal where it was worth hundreds of euro's you will never see you know your losses reimbursed the insolvency processes going some of the lenders to why

a card will get back needle bit of the us but the shareholders not are you mentioned earlier it was not just the good german government but also others who somehow didn't quite understand what was going on with why account and how the list certainly have also been criticised for their lack of prudence particularly comerica and why's that. well you know one. was particularly bold particularly outspoken in criticizing the financial times journalists who brought up the story she at the time even accused the journalist of manipulating the market with the aim of making a financial game and that's a heavy accusation i would say you can make at the same time come out spawn had a very close relationship with wire card a business relationship they lend money to why a card so of course today we have to ask whether the chinese wards really worked

come out spun equity research stock research is supposed to be totally independent from all other business interests at a bank clear so that clearly that wild card story isn't going away anytime soon when i was in frankfurt thank you so much. time now for a look at some of the other business stories making news show i admitted it was wrong to apply for a patent for a technology which could single allergies we go a mere slim's the company said it would alter the filing which was uncovered by researchers rights groups accuse the chinese government of trying to wipe out the weaker minority in western china. ford workers in taba in the brazilian state of south paolo has protested against the closure of 3 production facilities in the country ford said it would stop producing in brazil where it has operated since 1900 unions and 2 factories said the move would affect just under $5000.00

workers. tesla is moving closer to launching in india the u.s. based electric car maker has registered a company with an office address and the country's high tech capital of bengaluru while there have been rumors of a production facility local officials say india would focus on research and development. google and you tube has suspended adama's trumps a channel and removed a recent video that it says violated its policies against inciting violence the us president will be unable to upload any new videos for one week it comes after twitter and facebook removed from the count's following last week's armed insurrection. general motors and they had a concept for a flying car the company's 1st foray into personal aero mobility now the drone like recall has room for $2.00 and $2.00 g.m. says it is built for those situations quote where time is of essence and

convenience is everything you've been at the office and now you need to get to a meeting across town neat however the vehicle exists only as a computer animation so far and it likely won't be built in the near future. or something to look forward to and that's your business update here on d.w. you can always find out more on our website that's t w dot com slash business for me and the team thanks for watching. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing what does the latest research say. information and contacts the coronavirus update 19. on t w. e n b r

e of climate change. they're still. going to use today. dot com. megacities. clear answer. the coronavirus keeps evolving. as it spreads it's mutating taking on new characteristics that can make it harder to fight. variants found in south africa and the u.k. a more contagious straining health services. this mutation has led to more

cases than we've seen ever before numbers that can't be explained away by the rise in testing. japan is trying to isolate a new variant from brazil there's no proof any of them are any deadlier but the virus is constantly changing and could eventually make that seems less effective. but watching evolution take place right in front of our eyes the new coronavirus is doing everything it can to survive becoming clever and jumping from host to host the hope is that where doing everything we can to survive many big economies are back in lockdown including south africa. this isn't a waiting room it's the treatment room for covered 19 patients at the hospital in kylie. one patient calls out to tell us she's been sitting and waiting for 3 days waiting for a bed to become free next door he's going to reduce the going to we think that we

do that on the street do people who work for the. dr susan move on call a has been working here for 9 years but the pandemic is pushing him to his limits a 3rd of his colleagues here have already had the virus. how do you feel the office building sometimes if you thought it was going to be enough for street from from we don't give enough who didn't want anything in 40 year old it's the one point to be difficult you did something you drew. do do you 1st be able to do that you should with the thought that sometimes 33 people. on average one person dies with coverage 19 in the hospital every day. there's a small room next door with somewhat better facilities for acute patients waiting for an intensive care bed at another hospital. but the local health minister admits

the not everyone can get an i.c.u. bed most are already full fill it up as a fire fight but then i see. that remember to i didn't cry oh i see you in that it is what it is but that house on fire. going south africans are battling a new more infectious variant of the virus the fast spread has led to tighter lockdown measures including a ban on alcohol sales and the closure of beaches but police are struggling with enforcing them. only patients over the age of 45 a. now being tested at the state clinics the demand is overwhelming. here in viral were just both going prizes laboratory every 2nd test is positive the peak of the 2nd wave is expected in south africa in mid january but even after that experts expect further waves i fear that neither the current enormous suge that we're

experiencing know nor the arrival of the vaccine sometime in 2 half way through 2021 for a small proportion of the population will be able to make a big difference. the government has said it's already in talks with vaccine manufacturers but there are no details yet emma holcroft is a molecular epidemiologist how much hope should we be putting in these vaccines so the good news is that your body learns to recognise many parts of the virus when it's exposed to these vaccines or when you've been infected with sars kovi too so even if the virus changes a little bit the hope is your body will still learn to recognise it and be able to mount a really good protective response however it's going to take some time to get enough people vaccinated so that we can really see this impact on the number of cases and it's important to remember that most vaccines need 2 doses before they're fully

effective so we really need people to keep using other non-pharmaceutical protections like hand washing and mask wearing and being aware aerosol transmission until we're certain that the vaccines are helping us to keep the case numbers low but why all the concern then about these mutations considering that there is so slight the loss of buy and take told d.w. that there would be one pest since and that wouldn't affect his vaccines effectiveness so why we also worried. i think one thing that is important to keep in mind is that a lot of the fear about vaccines is hypothetical certainly it's possible that the virus could change enough that your body doesn't recognize it anymore and then your protection could be impacted but until we have a reason to believe that some of these new taishan is are really having that effect on real people who've been vaccinated i think it's important to keep our worry a little bit in check now certainly there are said mutations that have some concerns from early studies but importantly these have all been done in the lab and

it's very hard to predict what the impact of a lab study actually means in a full size human and a full sized population so i think until we really have evidence that these mutations will impact vaccine efficacy we shouldn't be too worried what sort of time frame are we looking at i mean could it speed up the the rate of its mutations so luckily sars could be 2 has a pretty consistent mutation rate we actually call viruses mutations kind of clock like because there's so predictable in how often they happen so we don't expect the virus to mutate faster but one thing we do want to keep in mind is that while we have high case numbers where maximizing the viruses ability to explore different people different immune systems and maybe be put under interesting and unique selection pressures and this might mean that we see a new taishan start rising in prominence because it's been in one of these unique situations we can never completely eliminate that this might happen but clearly the

fewer people that are getting infected the less room the virus has to play in these different environments and hopefully the last chance that we see a mutation that would really rather nazi and imma tell me more about what we know about these mutations making people's antibodies less effective in neutralizing the virus. so there's been a few studies on some of the mutations that are found in both the 501 y. v $1.00 and $5.00 a one y. v 2 variance those are the variants predominantly found in the u.k. and in south africa and the news has been mixed here so what scientists do in these cases is they take the virus and then they expose it to what we call the say around the antibodies of people who've already had sars coby 2 for some of these mutations it looks like there isn't any impact on how well those antibodies work for some of the other mutations in some cases it seems like it might reduce the efficacy but again these are for single mutations and oftentimes

a few people sara so we really need to keep doing studies to find out not only how widespread might this affect to be but does this actually mean that it impacts the your immunity in a full grown human rather than just in a petri dish and whether this is something we really need to be concerned about the example i tracing or sequencing has become so important. so i do think that one thing that these new variants have really brought to the fore is the importance of jin nomic surveillance and sequencing we can only tell that a new variant might be responsible for a rise in cases if we have sequences that tell us that that virus has a different genetic makeup and importantly because that virus has this unique kind of fingerprint of mutations we can track how it's spread around the world as well which is why we know that this u.k. and south african variants are in different places around the world this is really important as not only does it mean that we can identify variants and the mutations that might be impacting things like transmission we can also understand how the

virus is spreading and whether we can protect countries from getting it or how we can contain it once it's there now the number of sicknesses countries are generating is really different from country to country and it would be great to see a more concerted effort to make sure that we have regular sequences coming in from every country around the world and a whole group of molecular if you give me a logistic thank you very much for being on the show tonight. and let's bring in our science correspondent derrick williams he's been looking at your questions surrounding code 19. why am visit the same household is not always infected with the coronavirus after one member is infected . this is an aspect of the pandemic that puzzled scientists from the start you know it kind of makes sense to to reformulate this question to something like if this is a novel pathogen that no one had ever been exposed to before then we should have

all been equally likely to get it and to get it equally bad right especially in a shared space like a household but we apparently aren't one possible reason why is that prior exposure to other coronaviruses might possibly lower risks for some people so their immune systems were maybe a little 4 armed then of course there are also plenty of people who are asymptomatic even when they do catch the disease they just appear for all intents and purposes to be healthy and they remain undetected even though they're carrying sars cove 2 and could maybe give it to others but we should also flip this question and look at the other half of the equation how contagious someone is so not how come some people don't catch the virus but instead why some of us seem to give it more easily to others there's some scientific consensus that for reasons that

remain unclear a subgroup of people often called a super spreaders or super emitters could be driving most of the transmission some experts think just 10 to 20 percent of people who catch coke at 19 pass it along to up to 80 percent of all subsequent cases so in other words. if your spouse or your child has the virus but for whatever reason isn't a super spreader they're less likely to give it to you especially if you follow isolation protocols that said there is broad agreement that during lockdowns transmission still happens more within homes than anywhere else simply because sharing a household with someone who has copd at 19 increases your exposure so statistically at least you're still more likely to get it from a family member then you are from

a stranger. finally the crisis continues to drive innovation has a mosque for the hearing impaired which is also eco friendly. juliet now would you wanted to tackle uganda's waste problem by recycling its mountains of plastic rubbish at the same time as using fashion to take on discrimination against people with disabilities regular masks were preventing her hearing impaired stuff from liberating these one stuck. a lot.

more super. discounted and inexpensive but animals are suffering and the environment is crying out. a new trend. and feeding resources. price more on the plate how good is cheap.

made in germany. in 30 minutes on d. w. . africa. these freshly hatched sea turtles in an ivory coast are under threat. humans are their greatest enemies. but one in geo is working with researchers and the maritime police to protect them. saving the sea turtles the ivory coast. to coast in africa. to 90 minutes on t.w. . it's about billions. it's about our work. it's about the foundation of the new world order the new silk road.

china wants to expand its influence with this trade network and so in europe conflicts are inevitable the consequences are unpredictable the guinness book of the shaking of the chinese state has a lot of money at its disposal again and that's how it's expanding and asserting its status and position in the world the fish job of course. china is promising its partners rich profits but in europe there's a sharp warning you could never accept money from the new superpower will become dependent on any. china's gateway to europe. starts feb 19th on.

plan. this is g.w. news live from berlin the u.s. house of representatives moves forward with a vote to impeach president trump over last week's attack on the capital trump projects responsibility for the violence the democrats and now also some republicans say he is a danger to the nation and must be stopped. also coming up indonesia launches

a campaign to vaccinate nearly 200000000 people.