even in germany they've been around 2100000 cases so far but there is encouraging news in so far as that in fiction rights are on steady decline as they stand today section right is 115100000 of population over a 7 day period as i say that number has been steadily declining but not fast enough which is why the government and the states agreed earlier this week to extend current restrictions until february 14th this shuts down continues to shut down large parts of public life like schools and. shops as well and they are encouraging more medical wearing and there is going to be an obligation on employers to make sure that more of their employees work from harm so that the infection risk in offices is reduced and also on public transport the big worry at

the moment is these mutations that is starting to be seen in germany there have been isolated cases of them and healthful thirty's really want don't want these mutations to become dominant here well those health authorities have been speaking to journalists today and tell us more about what they've been saying. that's right we've just been hearing from a lot of who's the head of the robot called the institute which is germany's infectious diseases body he has been saying that there are 16000 nursing homes in germany and currently of those 16900 are experiencing quite serious coded 19 outbreaks and he's saying the ones that are doing better are the ones that have the results as an expertise to to manage this situation and he hopes that those that are not managing it so well will get the results as like staffie that they need he's saying that people continue to be

a significant risk group here in germany too and jared how are germans taking all of this the extended restrictions largely this supportive a recent polling shows that around 40 percent of people surveyed here in germany were for significant really significant hardening over a restrictions around 20 percent wanted them to stay as they are but by and large consistently over the last few months we've seen that public support for restrictions is has been consistently high our political correspondent jared reed thank you have a number of new cases in england has dropped from a peak of nearly 70000 per day in the 1st week of january to just under 40000 on thursday but the u.k.'s recorded more deaths per capita than any other country in the world and the number continues to rise hospitals up and down the country are

being stretched to their limits and we want to warn our viewers you might find some of these images disturbing. this woman in her mid twenty's is fighting for survival intensive care units have reached their limit the doctors are volunteers from other units of this london hospital they breathe a sigh of relief the patient is stable for now. she's someone's relative this is something precious that we're holding me trying to do and. yeah it's quite frightening. 12 of the hospitals 15 floors are filled with corona patients doctors tried desperately to find beds for new admissions. for the top and these are the stories. one bed has become available up until an hour ago had a free boy lay in it she was a mother a grandmother and just 640 wish this on anybody this is horrible it's real the corona mutation from the south of england is clearly more

contagious a strict lockdown since the start of january has done little to reduce the number of new infections. we've got to observe a good look down the stay at home message that's absolutely crucial in what is unquestionably going to be a tough few weeks that the flood of patients is not expected to ease and the death toll remains high the result of a coronavirus mutation that is out of control. let's go to london now our correspondent is standing by for us there how bad is the situation right now in the u.k. . it's pretty bad almost 100000 people 100000 people have died because of the virus and as it was explained in report many hospitals don't know where to put the patients they're really running out of beds

and the problem is the new variant of the corona virus which is quite prevalent in london and the south east but it has also been traveling across the country and this new strain is is very difficult for the authorities to get under control and and people that i know that are vulnerable are quite frightened and frightened and i have one friend who was always very pragmatic she's vulnerable but now she is really shielding completely so people are taking this very very seriously and the government the environment minister now says that the government is considering a full closure of borders what can you tell us about that. this is something that's being debated in the u.k. i think the context is actually when the situation gets better in the u.k. but we know that other countries across the world might be still struggling with new variances in the u.k. what has been successful is the vaccination program over 7 percent of the

population have now received at least one dose of one of the vaccines so that is in the international comparison it's really quite high particularly in the european context and now the government or thinking of how to protect their own country so once the u.k. has gotten this virus best on the control box in other countries that might be new variants how can they protect the u.k. so it's being discussed possibly to have government accommodation for travelers that are coming into the u.k. or electronic tagging or more closing of the borders and tougher border restrictions so all this is being debated at the moment and very energy said the situation is pretty bad the virus is spreading hospitals are overwhelmed how are people in london coping right now. well people

are definitely scared so when i walk through the streets of london the streets are pretty empty you don't see a lot of people congregating and most people know some know other people who have had. it. obviously a lot of people have it and then they get better but do you know some people know people who have died so it is very real it's a it's a very real threat now there is light at the end of the tunnel with the new with the vaccination so i think people are just hoping for the best that within a few months really that the situation will be better but definitely the next weeks are going to be tough because the hospitals also of oil overwhelmed and that is not going to change anytime soon they're going to ask for us in london thank you. the rate of new infections in israel remains high as the country battles a 3rd wave of infections but at the same time israel is vaccinating people faster

than anywhere else the government says all israeli citizens will be inoculated by the end of march israel was able to move fast after securing a special but also controversial deal with the vaccine manufacture biotech pfizer. this basketball stadium in tel aviv is now a vaccination center people under the age of 35 are already being immunized here while older residents are getting their 2nd jam. the vaccines are being administered in record time by untucked pfizer is delivering millions of doses in return the pharma companies are receiving valuable data that allows them to measure the efficacy of their product. and the launch of some of whom i don't have a problem with the data agreement or pursuit and i don't feel like i'm part of an experiment do the course we're leading the world on vaccinations and israel offers the right kind of infrastructure. it's israel's health care system with its

universal insurance that makes the country so interesting to buy into visor. insurance companies allocate doctors to patients streamlining the vaccination program. the digitalized and centralized nature of data collection has created a treasure trove of readily available information that. if one wants to understand how a real world rollout of a vaccine program impacts public health then israel with the digital health repositories and it's very strong with the logical capabilities and it's very good outreach of public health and clinical health to all of the citizens is probably an ideal place to do that. the main objective is to find out at what stage the vaccination drive achieves herd immunity and to figure out ways to get there fast the data used in the research has been made anonymous but that hasn't stopped critics from sounding the alarm people are saying what's the problem with adam

we're anonymous data and the problem is that anonymous data medical data today can be transferred to be not anonymised if you had the right tools and the right technology we want to have a kind of an offer sites experts that will make sure that this data is that going to be exploited later by 3rd party. prime minister benjamin netanyahu has him for sized that the findings will benefit the rest of the world but his prime focus is the impact that the vaccination program is having in israel itself. you know we will be the 1st country to defeat the pandemic. the deal i obstruct with pfizer of i was to vaccinate everyone above 16 by the end of march so for me it's. the ambitions target coincides with parliamentary elections which netanyahu is hoping to win but while the number of blacks and asians are shooting up so too

are infections a race against time that israel is determined to win. ok let's check in on some other headlines now japan has dismissed a report claiming its government has privately concluded that the 2021 tokyo olympics will have to be cancelled due to the pandemic a british newspaper reported that your pants focus is now on securing the games for tokyo in the next available year 2032 while the 2020 of that was already postponed due to the pandemic and is set to open on july 23rd. u.s. senate republican leader mitch mcconnell wants to push back the start of donald trump's impeachment trial to february that will give the former president more time to prepare house democrats have signaled they want to move ahead quickly with the trial saying trust must be held accountable for his role in the capitol building attack. the white house has announced president joe biden will seek a 5 year extension to the new start arms control treaty with russia it's one of the

new administration's 1st major foreign policy decisions the treaty was due to expire on february 5th it limits the united states and russia to deploying no more than $1550.00 strategic nuclear warheads each. president biden has unveiled a new plan to tackle his country's covert 1000 emergency it will include tightening rules on wearing masks stepping up testing and accelerating the country's vaccination program in the future travelers to the u.s. will also have to test negative and quarantine on arrival biden has warned that the penn demick will get worse in the coming weeks with the death toll likely to rise from 400002 half a 1000000 next month. taking charge of bringing the pandemic under control. this next one is keeping workers say when you do this. it day into his new job president biden signed a raft of executive orders to ramp up the federal response to the coronavirus for

the past year we couldn't rely on the federal government to act with the urgency and focus and coordination we needed and we have seen the tragic cost of that failure. over 400 people have their died in the u.s. on biden warns the toll is likely to rise to half a 1000000 in february but he hopes the strategy he's putting in place well eventually saved many lives is in good hands here our national strategy is comprehensive it's based on science not politics it's based on truth not. in this detail our plan starts with gresson safe and effective vaccination campaign to meet her goal of administering 100000000 shots in our 1st 100 days in office we're on day one this will be one of the greatest operational challenges our nation

has ever undertaken. the u.s. is currently administering almost a 1000000 doses a day but the road lives has been rocky and several states have complained of scarce supplies. biden is deploying the defense production up to help vaccine manufacturers increase production he's also implementing measures to improve distribution and after being effectively banished from trumpet ministration briefings the nation's top infectious diseases doctor is back. in the fight she says he feels liberated the science cannot speak. he's optimistic faxon's can suppress the virus despite new variants emerging just if we get 70 to 85 percent of the country vaccinated let's say by the end of the summer middle of the cinema i believe by the trend we get to the 4 we will be approaching a degree of normality it's not going to be perfectly normal but one that i think

will take a lot of pressure of the american public the message from the biden administration is clear hope is on the horizon but it will still take many months to overcome the pandemic and the devastation it has rolled. google has threatened to block its internet search engine in australia if it's forced to pay news organizations for their content google's representative spoke at a parliamentary hearing into new legislation intended to make tech giants pay media companies for using new snippets australia's prime minister said he would not respond to google's threat like in many other countries google dominates internet searches in australia according to the company 95 percent of searches are done through its portal. and let's get more on the story now we can go to a.b.c. reporter max walden in newcastle new south wales hi max tell us about this new

legislation how likely is it that it could be pushed through. yes a look at some proposed digital media courage should make companies like google and facebook have to basically a local media companies here in australia for providing that content both in searches but also sharing that content on social media platforms. the government seems very serious about about pushing through this it has been sort of back and forth with these companies for for a number of months since at least last year and as you mentioned scott morrison the prime minister was saying today that you know the government won't respond to threats he also said that these strongly in parliament lays out the laws under which you know businesses are allowed to operate in straight so certainly they don't look like they're going to back down so i think these laws in some form do certainly look like the government will do something for but what about this threat

from google to block the search engine in australia i mean how serious is that that being taken. well very serious as well course as you said the the head of google here in australia no silver told the parliamentary inquiry today that it would you know indeed it was untenable for google's continue operating in this trial she also released a public video in which she said that it would break google search you know if they were to proceed and it's certainly not just google and facebook you know in actual fact tim berners lee who invented the world wide web has also said that it would make the web unworkable around the world that was his words and you have other groups like the israeli business council that have spoken out against this particular raft of lords so. one expert described it to me is basically a high stakes game the that the government is playing with these tech giants and

certainly yet it looks like neither side is going to back down it's a high stakes game that a lot of people are watching max and what president do you think that sets for other countries that are trying to curb some of the power that tech giants like google half well that's precisely i think the reason that companies like facebook and google have really gone on the assault with this is that they do fear it could potentially of course start the president for bigger markets of course this trail is not particularly large market for a company like google but you know they certainly do fear it could spread to other parts of the world any day become kind of a president for other governments to follow so i do think as you say people will be watching this very closely and i think google alternately will probably be looking to to to come to some sort of negotiation i don't see that the government will back down completely but i think it's probably in both parties interests to to come to

some sort of middle ground a.b.c. reporter max walden with us thank you thank you. now russia is facing a growing problem with garbage the country produces around $60000000.00 tons of trash every year but very little of that is recycled environmental organizations say more than 90 percent of it is dumped in landfill sites often close to towns and villages the activists say these not only produce a horrible smell they also in danger the health of nearby residents as they get your ear shot to report some russians are becoming increasingly desperate. this is the lexan skip it it's as big as 45 soccer fields and is just one of dozens of garbage dumps on the outskirts of moscow president say just a few years ago with the paper was still deep in the ground now it's more of a hill and as if the garbage piles up the locals health problems due to the dump

lies just a few 100 meters from the village of novel shop of all. of us hometown the mother of 2 says the vet some days this smell from the side was so bad she couldn't even open the windows and the kids jaroslava and were often sick video saver finally had enough she and her children moved to clean a city several kilometers away. the little ones were constantly sick one day their pediatrician told me their children have rattling sounds in their lungs i didn't think about it for very long before starting to look for an apartment for us here and cleon later after we moved we went to the same doctor surprise surprise the lung rattling had disappeared how did that happen simple we moved away. busy few dosia family's fate is a no isolated incident. removal is one of russia's most pressing concerns

only 6 percent of the country's garbage is either processed or incinerate that is the rest just simply dumped environmentalist's of warner these landfill sites around moscow in particular are a ticking time bomb i rarely conforming to safety standards if they pull you to the soil the ground water and to the area. greetings taken by the state civil protection agency shoal the area surrounding alec's inskip it is also containment. 3 years ago authorities found that hydrogen sulfide levels were $25.00 times the acceptable amount. but nothing has been done to protect a local residence you only a few of us mother is another of those affected the 67 year old's house is dangerously close to the dump but unlike her daughter she says she can't move.

where would i go who would i sell my home to with that horrible smell outside who cares about someone like me and how would i even get by in the city my pension is $190.00 euros per month but i'd have to pay $130.00 euros for one room apartment. is usually a fair deceiver and to the other residents have tried repeatedly to stand up for their rights in court but to no avail. but that's the one said i don't know how much longer we can fight against the system there aren't that many of us and we feel desperately helpless. meanwhile the mountain of rubbish keeps growing and 2 there are plans to expand to the elections get done. bunda think of football now darkman will be looking to get their faltering title challenge back on track when they visit with cement and got back tonight and

midweek a loss has left them well off the pace another defeat but all but end their title hopes. things are not going to plan for dortmund this season she stays $21.00 defeat at fellow title rivals by a laver couzin has less than 10 points off the top of the table and it doesn't get any easier with a tricky trip to receive mention grab back tonight. in this concert of no mas for the we discussed the laver coups in match in great detail and we agreed that it can't go on like that but again we expect the guys to perform differently in this game or. in sputum us all sitting by her opposing coach marco rosa the match could be akin to a job interview he's tipped to take over at dortmund in the summer after impressing at brad back. much to me to speculate i don't want to comment on speculation we

have an important game against dortmund we really want to win it wouldn't have been . after their midweek victory glad back have the momentum but history is not on their side they've lost their last 11 league games against dortmund this one could be pivotal in the race for the title. thanks for watching it every. the be. the be. the beginning.

the be. true the point the strong opinions clear position the international perspectives the boy the us has a new president to lose promising to heal the country's divisions while simultaneously moving up the pace to reverse the policies of his predecessor after the wrecking ball to joe biden fix america find out why it's the best to the point the be next to the d.w.i. . in good shape. today. in sign

language. humans have 5 senses. what happens when one is mostly. speak with their. team of their. people living full lives some with sense or. retirement. in 60. w o o o o o molholm. sleep . b.c. carefully. don't move to the east to do good.

discovery. subscribe to a. documentary featuring. the united states has a new president sworn in during a ceremony that was a mix of familiar tradition and extraordinary precaution you normally joe biden's oath wouldn't have been witnessed by tens of thousands but due to the jewels threats of the pandemic and extremist violence and security forces made up the biggest crowd at the capitol outgoing president trump broke with custom and stayed away joe biden immediately signed a slew of executive orders to reverse trump's policies promising to heal the country's deep partisan divisions after trump's wrecking ball can joe biden fix

america that is our top of. the become such. a couple from. hello and welcome to to the point it's a pleasure to introduce our guests motto. writes for the berlin daily the tug and he formerly led the paper's washington bureau he argues biden stands for unity and reconciliation but many other democrats want trump and his supporters to be brought to account it doesn't fit together and it's great to have matthew crunch it with us on the program once again he's european correspondent with the u.s. daily politico his opinion biden will manage to repair america's divisions whether he'll succeed in repairing the relationship with germany and europe is a different matter and great to have with us pseudo david will she is from the

transatlantic think tank german marshall fund and she says joe biden will list stall a new version of global leadership for america but he will also think about the call the see in terms of how it affects the american middle class. one headline that we are seeing in the newspapers reads inauguration triumphed over insurrection referring to the worries that we could see a repeat of the extremist violence that gripped the capital just 2 weeks before the inauguration let me get a quick reaction from all of you about what was uppermost in your minds as you watched the inauguration matthew. well it felt to me like a restoration of american norms to be honest so you see biden there with former presidents clinton obama and george w. bush sitting behind him as well as many republicans including former vice president

now mike pence it felt to me like the entire ceremony was a important step towards reconciliation towards normalization of american democratic life so that i would agree with matthew and i think it was also a big contrast the 2 speeches what we heard from president trump in 2017 about american carnage verses american healing. this week with president biden and i think my daughter captured the moment very well who 16 you know who has experience president trump these past 4 years she said it was so refreshing to hear president biden's speech a lot of people have used the words refreshing and relieved. what about the view from from someone who knows washington well but of course is a german roots i'm afraid to say relief as well there is

a deep sense of that because we lived in the 4 years of permanent feeling of tension you never know what's going to happen each each day and know the feeling that things are coming back to civility and normalcy and quietness and and reason. in washington d.c. . it was a sense of relief. sort of mentioned carnage which was of course the reference to donna by donald trump in his own inaugural address and in fact carnage is what we saw on january 6th exactly 2 wicked weeks before the inauguration as a mob stormed the capital let's hear what americans around the country were saying in light of those events in the run up to the inauguration about their own concerns for their country. for. one. and. you don't know who to trust these days

i don't know what it is that work i think. i can trust or i don't know what individual in government i can trust i think it's awful. i am hopeful that we have a leader that will focus on unifying i hope that our politicians will move past the political divide these people heard so it's heartbreaking you know this is a this is a wonderful country that god has given us it's terrifying just to see you know the the capital of our country and you know we stand on values like freedom and democracy and you see these these walls and these are struction the last 4 years i have been ashamed to be american and finally although i'm not perhaps a biden advocate i am for anybody that's not tromp and i'm so excited to bring in this new change. master your opening statement was

perhaps surprisingly optimistic in regard to biden's ability to heal those divisions what makes you so confident. well i think it's as the last woman that we heard there said even people who are not particularly excited about biden are happy to see trump gone and i think that speaks for a glorified majority of the population i think in a lot of the reporting about the election there's the sense that the country is still very divided and you know that biden only won by a small margin he actually won by a pretty convincing margin he won by 7000000 votes which is you know not not a small number of votes by by any number by any measure and you know i think that if you look at the polling of the last week in particular looking at the entire population of the united states it's clear that a majority of americans are optimistic about biden they want him to succeed they want the country to move forward and i think they just want an end of the chaos

that we've seen over the past 4 years at the same time suder there are polls taken less than a week before the inauguration that show that many many republicans still do believe that the election was stolen from president trump and conservative groups were very quick to brand the new president immediately after the inauguration as far left so how up the mystic are you that he can truly repair the divide well i think joe biden is really the right candidate for america's division he is a moderate by you know all standards and i think he will want to govern from the middle he will want to reach across the aisle and work with republicans and it may be that right now the majority of republican voters and 2 thirds of the republican caucus are saying that the election was not legitimate but i do think that there

are pragmatic republican members that see that this you know illusion or this lie could really break the republican party and for the you know. sponsible leaders of the republican party because i do think there are still republican leaders that are responsible it's in their interest to you know sort of get rid of this bad blood in the republican party and move forward i want to quick point on that i think that also gets overlooked too often is that since trump became president the republicans lost control of the house of representatives they and amalgams in the midterms 2 years ago they have now lost control of the senate and they have lost the presidency so even though he has this very devoted following it has become clear that you cannot have a majority in the united states on a federal level with a candidate like trump because he just loses too many people in the middle and they drift to do they don't want to come back to the direction of the republicans in just a moment but let's stay

a little bit longer with with the new president and mother to you were in washington from 2000 to 2005 if i'm correct. joe biden was a senator for i believe over 35 years and he is known to have a lot of experience working across the aisle working with politicians of the other party even on a friendly basis with mitch mcconnell the majority speaker who in fact during the trump administration and prior to that has done everything possible to democrat denigrate democrats. joe biden these skills that he has they were from a very different time in america do you really think they are still capable of creating the same kind of bipartisan cooperation as in that past era very good question i mean he doesn't actually need the bug.

collaboration because as you just said the white house the senate and the house of . suzanne it is all in the hands of democrats so he has a lot of leverage he personally has a biography that that gives him some credit to postal losses she has and he has on family it's very hard to to consider him as a partisan put it isn't. what i think it might be a problem is see you have 74000000 people voting for trump and this is the new everything it was everything said about his lies about his tweets about everything that he did in knowledge about that 74 people all of them have different motives but can the be something like reconsideration with any kind of remorse there is i think the crucial question do 74 people feel some kind of oh i'm sorry i

voted for him and i supported him for years why did they say well i had a lot of credit after the 6 other lot i think a lot i think a lot of people and i have started with the 2nd lowest approval rating since since george bush the elder. it was just that george bush june just started with a low approval rating according to pew so so let's come back to that in just a moment but i'd like to 1st take a listen to how the newly inaugurated president himself is promising to heal the political divide and what he's had to say about its causes let's start afresh all of us must begin to listen to one of our again here one another see one another show respect to one another there is truth and there are lives. lies told for power and for profit. you need give us has a duty and

a responsibility as citizens as americans especially as leaders leaders who have pledged to honor our constitution protect our nation to defend the truth and defeat the lies. that are that was as close as president got to mentioning his predecessors culpability in his inaugural remarks and some of parents some republicans apparently were relieved by the subtlety are you seeing signs that the party is ready to break with trump. and trump is a straw man to lose a shirt that was just mentioned of hate and lies i think there are clear signs of that clearly not everybody is going to do it but in the past week we've also seen mitch mcconnell who you mentioned who's now the minority leader in the senate. make very clear in that in his view trump was responsible for the insurrection on the 6th of january mcconnell is somebody who's stood behind trump throughout the last 4

years and has now broken with him of the big question will be when the impeachment trial of trump begins in the coming weeks if mcconnell and others vote to impeach trump you need 17 senators in the group of 100 to come over to the democratic side there and that will be you know the biggest indication that we'll have but i just make one more point on that that i think is also often not really understood is that in the house of representatives which is a larger body you have republicans who are much more extreme in their views because they have to appeal to a much smaller segment of the of the populace and the senators represent entire states so they tend to be much more moderate and i think again as saying before for these republicans who want to appeal to a broader who need to appeal to a broader slice of the american public if they want to remain in power over the long term they're going to need to. leave trump ism behind and pursue

a more inclusive. politics. the president mentioned in his in his remarks that we just heard lying for profit and of course interesting is the fact that a number of big donors seem to be now be turning away from those politicians who who were most egregious about lying and supporting trump or do you think sudha could a 2nd impeachment help discredit to trump in a way that will promote healing and reconciliation or could it in fact widen the divisions so i mean in a pietschmann process is by virtue always bitter and it's usually a partisan affair but the fact that the house impeached president trump with 10 republicans is quite remarkable and i think january 6th was a watershed moment the storming of the capitol really was a wake up call for a lot of republicans and mitch mcconnell said you know he told his caucus vote your conscious so he's open the door to for republicans to find

a way to leave trump is i'm behind and the question is will the senate get a 2 thirds majority to convict trump in the coming weeks well let me ask you about another aspect of what we heard there from the president he mentioned not only lying for purposes of power but also purposes of profit and that goes to the role of the media which in fact was one of the points mentioned by by those vox pops that we heard with that one woman saying i don't know what media to believe. joe biden's asking americans to hear him out and to listen to each other but will they be able to do that given the did in of poisonous chatter on polarized media from fox news to the social media platforms i'm afraid polarization of the media will even accelerate the kooning of people just in their own living in the old will accelerate in one.