she is determined to go to russia and i really applaud him and at my him for this decision as you say he was determined to return to the lion's den in his case is it fair listeners or is it foolishness i think this is true tool. the he's believes. he hasn't done nothing wrong. for all his career he has been fighting corruption graft and injustice in russia. his support among the russian population has increased tremendously despite the efforts of state propaganda to put him in the. black color and. you know provide negative care for him so far it's just natural that

he returns to continue his fight and i mean what to put this in perspective for us what has been the fate of those who decided to stay in russia like mr valma now. well i think nadal namely has carved out quite a unique position a mom crush on opposition. she for years has been the most prominent critic of a bloody beer putin was employing different techniques of fighting corruption but dissipating elections creating a political organization. i don't think he can be compared to that isn't it to others i mean we know several instances that when russian opposition politicians have been tortured and thrown in jail or like boris nemtsov alexy himself has been under tremendous pressure over the last years of his

brother served 3 and a half years in jail on totally falsified charges he has been attacked several times and we have learned recently that that attack on his life in august was not the 1st attempt to poison him and his wife was severely ill. during a previous attempt at poisoning so. he is you don't have to compare him to anybody he has been subject to immense pressure himself. he occupies a very unique position as you outlined there why does mr have on the rattle the russian leadership so much. i think it's several things he can do as we say he can play on different chess boards

he can organize must protest he can build and effect different is aisha he is very he has in his fame him investigations of corruption in large state owned companies and among government officials so he is quite rosso tile and he has proven that fuse result is really unrivaled vladimir a sure cough executive director of the anti corruption foundation thank you for speaking to us thank you. let's get you up to date now with some of the other stories from around the world. more than 20 c. food trucks have parked on roads near the u.k. parliament to protest problems in getting their produce to the european union many fishermen have been unable to export to the e.u. because of the extra documentation required after brags that the government has

said post regs it eating problems should be resolved shortly. in south korea the billionaire de facto head of samsung why levy has been jailed for 2 and a half years on corruption charges all this comes after the high court in seoul overturned mr lee's original suspended sentence he was convicted of bribing an associate of the former president park geun again. brazil has kicked off its nationwide mass vaccination program against the coronavirus the $54.00 a 54 year old a nurse in sao paulo became the 1st person to receive the chinese sign over after it and the astra zeneca vaccine were approved for emergency use brazil's covert 1000 death toll stands now at over 209000 that's 2nd only to the united states. well meanwhile here in germany chance on the americal is due to meet with

germany's state premiers on choose day to discuss tightening covert 19 restrictions beyond january although infection rates have improved slightly they are not declining as quickly as was hoped according to germany's robert costa institute december saw a spike in corona virus cases which pete just right before the holidays as you can see here on this the graph behind me while the numbers then went down going into the new year but around january 9th it went up again while they now appear to be on a downward trend but the country just isn't breathing a sigh of relief just yet because there are concerns that new coven 1000 variants are. transmissible germany's southern state of this area meanwhile is certified and $95.00 masks are mandatory on public transport germany hopes that a new round of even stricter measures will bring down the stubborn spread of infections. another bleak and wintry week in berlin the streets are mostly empty

and many who do need to go out where a mask seems to be helping there's been a slight drop in coated 19 infections but it's not enough the government is preparing to tighten restrictions and berlin is saying that's a good thing. i think being strict to make sense and i'm hoping this will finally bring it all to an end. honestly it'd be great if people just realize that it's not getting any better and that they should stay at home. i really hope that we realize that we'll have to put up with these restrictions until at least the summer. the government he said to want to stop office workers from commuting and push them into working from home more that's partly because travelling on public transport poses a particularly high in fiction risk politicians and health authorities are also extremely worried about the trait posed by covert 19 mutations which has led to

a steep rise in infections in some countries so. highly infectious variants of the corona virus have been detected in germany one very into sprayed 3 great britain the other through south africa and at the moment we have further warring reports from brazil. right now the pandemic has a firm hold on germany he even though the situation in hospitals and intensive care units is showing signs of easing. want to turn our attention now to the u.s. where president donald trump is preparing to issue more than 100 pardons and commutations on choose day as trumps a last full day in office well the list of clemencies includes some white collar criminals and high profile convicts but reportedly will not include mr trump himself meanwhile video footage has now emerged from the new yorker magazine showing rioters inside the senate chamber as the capitol was being round sacked

last week. or would go over the years. 6 like their life had already and the facts and. facts are never going to help us out all of our really aware of just security. is a very fractured area we know that from kentucky where you are coming from for this part of. her. or her eyes or her eyes were nice enough coal or. her shoulder was going to call her on certain scenes there were earlier i spoke with sherry berman she's a professor of political science at barnard college in new york and i asked her what she thinks of the florey of pardons al going prison doll top is expected to

issue on its final day. well presidents are entitled to get pardons but trump is act has made much greater use of this power than others and a lot of his pardons have been seen by folks as not just questionable but quite partisan the key question of course that people had in their minds was whether he would preemptively pardon himself or members of his family as your commentary mentioned earlier it seems he will not do that but that would be the biggest constitutional question of all and the sense that it would be unprecedented and the legality of that is quite unclear let's talk now about i mean his presidency has unraveled in a very spectacular await what will happen after wednesday well that is another excellent question and it's a big debate going on currently within the republican party of course as well as within the united states mitch mcconnell the senate majority leader has given his

colleagues the green light to book their conscience when discussions of trying come up when the impeachment trial moves to the senate and republicans more generally are really talking now about what the future if there is there is a real question about whether this party will continue to follow in the path of trump even after he is gone from office over whether it will try to shift back to a more standard traditional conservative party i mean this is a this is the big question not just for the republicans but for the united states our democracy cannot survive if one of our parties is dominated by people who really question the fundamentals of our constitution of our elections and of the norms of democracy more generally so i mean will the movement that coalesced around president trump will they just go ahead and and. get their own party i mean how do you see this how do you see this developing i mean will he go rogue and

start his own political party to rival the republican party well i mean look in the united states unlike in germany and most other european countries we have a 1st past the post majority areas system which carries a very very heavy bias against their authority so should trump try to form his own political movement as opposed to try to maintain control over the republican party he would be in a very strong structural of their disadvantage simply because as i said our electoral system you know it's a majority are in system so the biggest party is going to when voting for a 3rd party is generally seen as a wasting your vote however continuing to try to head up a political movement outside of one of the mainstream parties could enable trump not only to maintain a lot of influence but to maintain a level of sort of chaos and divisiveness in the american political system that would really stop the country and the biden ministration from sort of recalibrating

and trying to get us back on a course where we can solve all our social economic and political problems so what trump decides to do next with it within the republican party without will really obviously have a great impact on how the united states moves forward all right professor sherry or burma nuff from that barnard college in new york thank you for joining us. pleasure . stick around up next has been pursuing with your covert 19 special so now you can put up. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection in developing what does the latest research say. information and context the coronavirus update 19 special. on t w. every day counts for us

and for our planet. global ideas is on its way to bring you more conservation. how do we reach see the screen. how can we protect habitats. we can make a difference to. the wind do this the environmental series in the 3000 on w. and on. the race for a vaccine the rollout of mass inoculation programs the world's never seen so many funds flow into the prevention of a disease. but while everyone's focused on back scenes what about a cure or treatment for those infected all those of us who could still catch the corona virus especially as

a 2nd or 3rd wave crests in many countries. it is near now you need a 3 month lockdown and not 3 weeks there's no way the treatment and we still have problems. tens of millions of people around the world are still fighting for their lives the. hospitals only have a small arsenal of treatments against covered 19 and health authorities have their reservations about some of them the other catch is that all of the treatments have to be given early in the course of the disease otherwise they can be counterproductive. seriously ill covert 1000 patients can expect to get much more effective treatment nowadays doctors are no longer fighting an unknown calling and dizzy as they were in the initial stages of the pandemic you know much more about the coronavirus its effects on the medication which can help in an emergency oh i don't mind listen. for one we know that all depends on proactive treatment of symptoms consistently reducing fever pain relief antibiotics if needed

additional oxygen and if necessary prompt ventilation. and we also have 2 treatments strategies now which target the disease more accurately. to. doctors treating serious cases of covert 19 now rely primarily on those medications rem disappear is used to restrict viral record options. but it needs to be administered in the early stages of treatment however a recent study by the world health organization calls a stir when it said ramdass if you're only has a minimal or even no influence on mortality or the length of hospital stays. over 900 specialists of how over is university hospital so they've had different results with us. who have high quality studies which show rendez severe has a measurable effect on the course of the diseases often especially if administered

promptly and the patient is not seriously ill but he doubts the window of opportunity with patients like those in intensive care who've been symptomatic for longer than rem disappear probably won't work and the studies also clear about what it does or. doctors have also discovered that administering cortisone to severely ilk over 1000 patients can be quite effective we now know the coronavirus provokes life threatening immune system reactions involving drastic inflammation of organs and blood vessels cortisone reduces swelling and that can save lives especially. those patients need ventilating. the complexity of the disease makes finding a targeted therapy a serious challenge in later stages patients are at risk of developing issues such as thrombosis in their lungs and organs some patients can suffer long term effects great progress has been made in finding a vaccine for covert 19 the wait for a cure continues. in florida biopharmaceutical company that develops treatments

see. a month joins us so scientists have found several vaccines all the time but where does that leave people like you doctors researchers who are looking for treatments. yes for some of thanks for having me on the show and much appreciated yet treatments are different animals of the speak and i think there are clearly important with respect to covert 1000 you know the lot of people don't not really aware that this this disease has many different facets and many different faces yes there is a healthy population that needs to be protected vaccines are of at most importance and then there's those that get sick and get well soon and then there's those that get very sick and they need treatment and they may have problems and even diane it as we know that's that's why we are all afraid about this disease and i think treatments are important there are companies like ours that have studied and worked in the field of viral inflammation and viral sepsis for many many years trying to

prevent our immune response causing damage to tissues and organs and leading to more job failure and death and saw i think if this works and if we if we you can make an impact of course that's great news for the people that are greatly affected and there really is in the early critically ill but it also is i think it a great great thing to have for a new pandemics or for you taking viruses because your response patterns there are similar between viruses and if we were to be successful with a treatment that could be a great protection also in the long run just how effectively can drugs and therapies help sufferers cope with covered 90. we do believe they can i mean this the bar is selectively hot and you need to show it in well controlled clinical studies so you can't just have a good early results and say i want to run for an authorization approval you have

to really statistically plan a trial treat enough patience and prove that you would rock and in our case try to prevent mortality prevent death or another case prevent a patient's gets more severely sick get into baby get dependent on life or an organ support so we believe that there are drops in the early stages of the disease that may prevent the virus causing the strong immune response and causing look through replication and then there are folks like ours when you have a strong immune response trying to model it that response and trying to prevent that union system causes damage to your organs so we have seen interesting early stage face to data that point to a potential mechanism we've published this in the lancet rheumatology and we believe we can help patients that's why we went to face 3 and we're eager to see data this year and is that they the money the need the funds don't you to to

produce these drugs and that funding gap seems to be quite big between what's going into vaccines and what's going to treatments like yours. yes and thank you for bringing that up to me as you know we have we found an initiative in germany called being cautious and i know a lot of my colleagues are the same topic we've seen phenomenal and great fast funding for axioms and in fact in europe and specifically in germany we have not seen targeted funding for the late stage projects that are would be equivalent to vaccines so while there are very early programs for preclinical research which won't see the patient in the in the years to come and now those 1st programs for early stage clinical research that is of course size wise a multiple or with $4050000000.00 all together for multiple tasks we need a funding that is equivalent and that is that is a real funding for late stage projects meaning that you can produce material for the market for the patients fast that you can prepare for the market and if you can

run the expensive face to these studies this is largely completely lacking here and that's why we found it because we really want to make create awareness that this may be a fabulous importance also in the mid term we may have. therapeutics available already during this year and we want to get them to the patients very briefly tell me more about your drug and if it will actually get to the market. well i'm a i'm a c.e.o. of a public company i'm not supposed to make our forward looking statements predicting the future i talk a little bit about our conviction about the mechanism that we are after and there we are the founders of this company and one of them we have 20 years in this title research so we do believe there's a chance that we can make it to the market otherwise we would have not started 3 street and you know it's a similar thing with the vaccines there is always a risk that it doesn't work long term there's always

a risk that's not what we've taken the risk and we've seen phenomenal responses 1st once you're with a german company buy on tech together with pfizer then want to enter in the u.s. so why not also invest in therapeutics i mean if we have progress there it will make a whole lot of difference for effective patients and potentially also for future pandemics that's why i'm really advocating to put more funds to help therapeutics new therapeutics tired of player your picks to also make it into the clinic in florida state about thank you very much thank you very much for having. time for your questions on the coronavirus over to our science correspondent derrick williams. said the drug ivermectin being used to treat patients this medication has been widely used in some parts of the world especially south america as a treatment for coated 19 despite the fact that evidence that it works is still not

convincing the bolivian government actually authorized it as a therapy back in may after a very theoretical and controversial study in april indicated that ivermectin might help against sars copd to the compound which is made by microorganisms that break down organic matter in the soil is a powerful tool in our pharmacological toolbox for getting rid of a wide range of nasty parasites among them headlights and intestinal pen more in fact the researchers who discovered the class of substances it belongs to one of the nobel prize for their work a few years ago there are dozens of ongoing trials looking at whether or not ivermectin could also be used to treat covert 19 but so far none of them have

provided the kind of clear cut evidence that national or international health authorities would require to recommend it published studies are at all odds with some showing no benefits or or even the coded 1000 patients who took the anti parasitic drug got worse while others reported improvements or positive results like lower mortality rates in patients that took it the thing is for basically all of the studies published so far experts have complained about flaws in methodology so at the moment at least. i would continue to ignore any sensationalist online claims that ivermectin can cure or help cure a covert 19 and wait for more data from larger scale trials to come in and pretty much all authorities are still issuing warnings not to take the compound for anything except what it's meant for to treat an infestation with parasites and and

also to stick to the prescribed doses for that if their advice changes i'll let you know here. and just briefly officials are deploying dogs to sniff out code infections in some schools in italy the company that trains them says it was able to get their canine companions up to speed in a few weeks hundreds of students and teachers at this high school headed over mosques for testing adults managed to signal 5 out of 260 texts. thanks for watching.

that people will hold on for t.w. on facebook and twitter to date and in touch following. closely. listen carefully

to. the soon to be sure. to be a good. match. to discover the. player. subscribe to documentary on you tube. live. this is news africa coming up on the program they've risked their lives enough but not any more kenyan health which has our strike calling other governments to do more to protect them on the job leads die of covert nighty also coming up. more the wind supporters have even been denied access here he says in.