in democracies for example and all thora tearing countries there are things that the whole world needs to work on and that's going to be taken as interesting reading i think in the white house at the moment as they prepared to kind of calibrate their approach to china and think about how much support they can actually expects particularly from european allies as they deal with beijing thank you for that richard walker d.w. chief international editor take a look at some more of the stories making news around the world been mass police to file charges against the ousted leader armstrong suchi for breaches of an import export law documents say illegally imported handheld radios was found at her residence comes as beef in the country took part in the 1st widespread protest against the military coup in the early hours of monday. britain has asked the e.u. to extend the bracks a grace period until 2023 according to the b.b.c. it comes after threats were made against port staff and checks were suspended

exemption pertains to checks for goods moving between northern ireland and the rest of the u.k. new regulations came into effect after breaks it was implemented. 300 students in turkey on their supporters have been detained this week following violent confrontations with police angry about presenter earlier ones appointment of a party loyalist as the head of a prestigious university in istanbul the rector of a sense of the rights was ruled out quitting despite you know. well health organizations experts of his or her research center in the chinese city of rouhani as part of their investigation into the origin origins of the corona virus pandemic who had is where viruses 1st thought to have crossed over from animals to humans in china disputes this. new data shows that russia's sputnik very vaccine is more than 90 percent effective western governments had initially expressed doubts about the vaccine because russia started using it before

completing the usual clinical trials but our results published in the leading medical journal the lancet appeared to back up russian claims that the job is safe and works hungary has already begun using. truckloads of russia rolling into hungary the 1st 14000 of some 2000000 doses the distribution of vaccines in the european union just not quick enough for hungary. the faster we vaccinate the weakest segments of society the quicker we can lift restrictions on public life. as we've just got to chicago with our shot sputnik beat was the 1st vaccine developed to fight coke at 19 russia began vaccinating people with it last summer even though clinical trials were underway hungary's emergency byelaws gave the vaccine the green light that's because sputnik he has already been administered at least a 1000000 times without any serious side effects so hungry has decided to sidestep

the e.u.'s common procurement policy. in very strict condition conditions under very specific criteria and then the member state is. russia's promising enough with its vaccine for 700000000 people sputnik to be is more than 91 percent effective according to a study published on tuesday in the medical journal the lancet the raw data used in the study has not yet been released unfortunately that's exactly what the european medicines agency needs. when the agency gets the data in the proper form so they can check it as with other manufacturers then i can't see why the vaccine can't be approved in europe. germany's chancellor agrees. yes every vaccine is welcome but only those that supply the necessary data and are approved by the a.m.a. will be accepted. it said the virus knows no boundaries but the data is correct

that can also apply to vaccines. all despite it being hit hard by the pandemic israel has also a vaccinated a greater percentage of its population than any other country or than 600000 people with infected with the virus in a country of night 1000000 and nearly $5000.00 died the country is still in lockdown after multiple waves of infection have moved faster vaccinations the promise of the entire country will be vaccinated on the end of next month's senior citizens have been cut off from society since the pandemic began. it's been a long rather lonely year food's roaches since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic last year the 88 year old israeli american has been mostly confined to have flat the internet has been her main source of contact with family and friends but now she has new hope a week ago she received her 2nd shot to see if that 2nd vaccine

so what if you can come and visit me i'm very excited seeing people in person. side about it it's really been hard not to see people it's a step forward but she's still a very cautious and large majority of israel's most vulnerable population over 70 it's received the 2nd vaccine in short the so-called green passport confirms the vaccination but for now that doesn't mean any extra privileges while israel as raf attacks in nation drive made headlines the country had to extend its lockdown once again to detect a 3rd wave of the pandemic the disease rampant in those you know we have the variants the south african. variant and we have the. the los angeles variant and the british variant which are which is the dominant current li. the disease is

spreading pretty quickly. yet the vaccines are spreading quickly as well and we are racing the virus was the vaccine. at the it section me a medical center a large hospital in the center of the country doctors and nurses worked tirelessly to cope with a constant flow of patients in serious condition january has been the deadliest month yet of the pandemic and that. all of us my colleagues doctors and nurses see a lot of cases here. myself williams critical cases and at younger ages seem very big in a few 100 metres from the cove at 19 ward it's mostly young people waiting for their vaccination last week people over 35 fair called up to get their 1st jab over 3000000 out of israel's 9000000 citizens have received at least their 1st maxine doe's in jerusalem ruth rogers and her cag of ameri are on their way to

a local shopping center what might seem ordinary has become special hasn't been here since march last year strange very strange very strange i hope in a couple weeks are going to the store and there and pick out stuff and now. it's a whole different experience for me now i feel back to. back to the real world. amid the uncertainty she hopes that at some point she will be able to see family and friends once the effects of to vaccinate dr kick in. the world's richest person is quitting his job jeff bezos says he's stepping down as amazon c.e.o. this year i had i was his resignation just as the company a post into 4th quarter profits of more than 7000000000 dollars. what comes next for the world's richest man jeff bezos founded amazon in

a washington garage in 1904 and built it into the he met that is appended the business of buying and selling goods the 57 year old has become one of the most respected and feared business leaders in the world and the richest but the net worth of almost $200000000000.00 in an e-mail to employees business wrote that being the c.e.o. of amazon is a deep responsibility and it's consuming. right by stepping back he'll find time to focus on his other projects such as the washington post which he bought in 2013 for $250000000.00. or his rocket company blue origin. phase that was has invested heavily in this business but is lacking behind rival tech boss ilan musk space x. . meanwhile his successor andy chassis is set to inherit a business that is increasingly under attack. for how we'll its platform to

undercut or even drive competitors out of business. for how it treats its sprawling network of 1300000 employees who have complained of brutally long shifts poor pay and unsafe conditions and warehouses. as amazon's influence and profit grow so due to the demands terrain and its power it now falls on jesse to answer those calls acceptance of told more became world of cyrus after he began raising money for british health care workers during the pandemic now the world war 2 veteran has died at the age of $100.00 after contracting the virus himself was unable to be vaccinated because of other medication he was taking. during the 1st wave of the coronavirus pandemic captain tom morris set out to raise 1000 pounds for britain's national health service by walking 100 laps of his backyard before

his 100th birthday his quest went viral and donations poured in from around the world totaling some 33000000 pounds more told d.w. how stunned he was a centrist absolutely amazing that search some amount of money as the road some sort of short time only the closers there's a really good one for him to who really is the source of all they think. by the arrival of his centennial birthday captain tom was an international celebrity. he wrote an autobiography which he dedicated to all those who serve on the front line of any battle. at windsor castle queen elizabeth the 2nd knighted him for what he did accomplish with his woks. his sunny attitude during the pandemic has inspired people to look beyond their illness and loss. groups

throughout the world and we can believe that it includes those all new people. is no no may do so out of the news but i would say to everyone. things will go but there's no doubt that wrongdoers will rule out onto the ground some who go on. captain tom died 100 space x.'s latest starship prototype ended a 2nd test flight in a fireball a stainless steel rocket managed a successful takeoff and high altitude test in texas but went up in flames on landing the last prototype met a similar fate in december in a webcast of latest launch the company said it had a great flight but still needed to work on their landing a little bit. the statement of the year as a reminder of our top story court and russia has sentenced opposition leader alexei

the folly to 3 and a half years in prison the court goal of the kremlin critic violated the terms of his parole on the only a fraud charges while he was in germany recovering from a poison attack just in the only florida say they will appear. as a chill up to date a whole world views of the top of the hour i think the big news asia is next i'm going to.

watch a global play against harmless to the body but it's still disastrous. fake. counterfeits on the web paralyze democracy threat the economy and. laurence tribe in business who profits from them and how do they infect

a song made in germany. in 60 minutes on d w d 2 you know that 77 percent floppy cars are younger than 6 o'clock. that's me and me and. you know what it's time all voices squad cars on the 77 percent talk about the issues. from the politics to flash from cars that you think to top this is where some welcome to the 77 percent. this weekend g.w. . would. be like the 1st one the coming to. a gigantic

coincidence. that sam previously the earth was just in a messy chemistry lab on a cold mission. where the impossible but the truth doesn't lead to the creation of our solar system with our planet is a bit like winning the lottery there is little. money for earth. starts feb 11th oh and b.t.w. . you're watching news asia coming up today we take a closer look at the application of artificial intelligence to health care and the role companies in asia might play in this machine learning revolution can the robots come to the rescue. plus you'll need a former korean forced labor still seeking justice from. and after more than 75 years.

i melissa chan welcome to asia the pandemic has disrupted many industries perhaps none more so than in health care and technology in the fast developing world of artificial intelligence many researchers have put time and investors have poured money into how machine learning might improve the medical experience in hong kong one company has worked on an ai robot by the name of sophia and now they want to see what she can do for patients. group her group your group improve. your. brother where. you get your morning exercise. science fiction or more this is sophia robot run by artificial intelligence it

she was programmed to specialize in caregiving. sophia's face is a mash up of classic beauties the ancient egyptian queen if it t.t. and the film star audrey hepburn. the robot has 60 possible facial expressions make us a sophia learns from conversations and get smarter every day. and very worried about google 19 lately i just hope humans remember that viruses don't hear about lines on about we're all in this together. critics say sophia it's nothing more than a chat bot was a face by the men who designed to insists sophia can be more. rolling in when perhaps humans can't during penned them make. can be so useful during the

used times where people are or her lonely and socially isolated and people need to be isolated from each other. because to be around people is dangerous these do the companies convinced the pandemic new opportunities resistance to robots will no longer prevail on fear puts it. so through you can help take care of the sick or elderly crimes of health care and medical uses. i can help community. and provide social stimulation even in difficult situations this ophelia is one of $24.00 that's been built that's just the beginning the company wants to start mass production later this year. joining us is nathan been a founder of the venture firm air street capital and an expert in a i been we just had a report on a robot human eye

a humanoid rather which is very visual but of course most of this technology doesn't show up like that so i want to start by asking you about the chat bot concept though where do you see the opportunities in the health care space. yeah thanks melissa for having me join this morning. so. our big opportunity actually is machine learning in ai in health care and there's a lot of different aspects of the healthcare system that i think is in a challenging space that machinery can really help with so one as you alluded to is this idea of chat bots which is you know delivering care to people virtually no matter where they are so they don't need to attend a physician in a clinic and this is particularly important in the context of the world that we live in today with the american. but in addition to that there's huge opportunities in drug discovery with companies that are for example finding entirely new drugs using machine learning and we have some investments in companies like lab genius

and agendas that do this. moving further incident patient pathway there's also companies that are helping cancer drugs be best personalized the patients so that the oncologist can understand which is the right therapeutic choice for patients. and finally there's increasing evidence that for example they got micro biome influences human house and been invested down to the called zone which basically delivers personalized nutrition for everybody that's very interesting now this story looked at a company in hong kong wearing a see the most advanced work on ai and health care and what our researchers working on that excites you. yes so the asian ecosystem in technology is really phenomenal the last couple years in a mass of the solar ration and in the context of ai specifically there's about 20 now unicorns for companies that are valued a 1000000000 dollars or more that are based in asia and in particular china is really it's the lion's share of this number with companies like by parents worth

$0.14 times and more and as you do to asia is really interesting for health care in part because of some some centralized systems better access over data and generally have a faster willingness to adopt new technology. and so healthcare is one example but the other aspect is intact that's really advancing the semiconductors and this is probably one of the most critical components of ai broadly trigg sample the biggest company that manufactures semiconductors for everybody in the world is taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company which itself started stock price rise 80 percent last year. and other us based on research which is an interesting data point that we got from our annual state of the report is that 30 percent of papers that are accepted into the best machinery conference globally are authored by individuals who have undergraduate degrees in china and this is up from 14 percent 10 years ago so overall the contribution of the asian technology go system to the

global technology ecosystem is really significant and great you brought up china because any time you talk about health care you talk about ethics and any time you talk about technology you also talk about ethics and this is a challenge for the world i wonder if you whether whether you knew the same kind of conversations about that happening in china which is an authoritarian state and and again even democracies are struggling with the ethics of ai. yeah it's hard to really peel back what exactly is happening but from a global stage it's certainly true that that ethical use of machinery and systems really hit them in the mainstream to primetime this year even though a lot of the undercurrents in academia and in certain big technology company labs as really been playing out over the last decade or so you know we've seen some big technology companies i think a stand on for example not using or selling fish recognition technology we've seen certain governments also ban the use of this technology in police forces due to

wrongful arrests. so it's really an evolving topic i don't know so you think that we have the right answers so far but certain countries are taking on a firmer stand and others and of course the focus on china but any other quite countries that are strong in ai in asia that you like to quickly mention. i want to say i think the biggest one is taiwan i mean the impact of that nation on the global semiconductor space cannot be underestimated you know this is a business that is that by far like the number one semiconductor manufacturing company which is actually crucial to building ships that are in our phones in our computers and every kind of waking you know computer device and so be underestimated how important this business is there's a whole geo political angle to all of this as well nathan been ange thank thank you so much for joining us. i suppose.

more than 7 decades after world war 2 some disputes remain unresolved between south korea and japan in this case 92 year old korean young has sued the japanese company mitsubishi saying they had used her as a forced labor in the 1940 s. in a factory that she had essentially been a victim of human trafficking she wants compensation but more than anything she wants an apology at all in her recent autobiography 92 year old south korean yang sets the record straight and describes in detail her experience as a force laborer for japan's doomed war machine at age 15 she was lured from japanese colonial korea to mainland japan with the promise of opportunity her family could not afford. the japanese principal said i could go to do you know high

school if i went to japan my father said he was lying and wouldn't allow it but i snuck away because once in japan i never even sold the school door i was taken straight to mitsubishi industries where i was worked nearly to death. if i had wanted to be a teacher but. yang worked at the mitsubishi plant in the gorier from june 1044 to october 1945. pink the bell workers at 6 am and we went to the camp to work 810 hours they made me paint airplanes they didn't have a lot of for us so i used wide planks climbed up and painted the pail of paint was too heavy for me and so to this day one shoulder still hurts that. we had lunch at noon they gave us each a bowl of rice but after 5 bites it was gone and then we had to go back to work i was always hungry. several of her school friends died in japan yang

still recalls the horse smell of the factory and sleepless nights. sometimes we couldn't sleep because of the bombing of why we had to spend all night in the air raid shelter and even when we came out we could still hear the sounds of bombs over and. then in the morning we had to go back to work. after the war yang returned to south korea where she forged a life a marriage 3 children and a business selling dried fish at the village market. then in 1965 south korea's military dictatorship accepted an apology and compensation from japan it spent that money on roads and industry not the victims yang and others refused to let go campaigning for a sincere apology and direct restitution so 3

a supreme court in $28000.00 ordered mitsubishi to pay her and $4.00 others nearly $90000.00 each but for yang that's not the point ok you can get out though money isn't important anymore it's the insult or the humiliation they didn't see koreans as human being was even though they said they'd pay us back our wages i don't want it. all the time that you're old now i just want to hear their apology before i die . so badly. yang is far from alone former korean forced laborers have filed dozens of lawsuits against japanese companies and as time passes their children are taking up the cause. that's it for today there's always more on our website www dot com forward slash asia we leave you with pictures from myanmar where the 1st protests are against the military coup are just surfacing hospital workers have been showing the 3 finger hunger games salute from the film

as a sign of defiance and nighttimes banging on drums has also been heard thanks for watching we'll see you tomorrow and goodbye. to. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing what does the latest research say. information and context around a virus update. on t w. are you.

sure of his wrist bands i. love and respect. wearing a mask is no big deal in asia they've been doing it long before the corona virus pandemic. western countries have been more reluctant. to a doctor a smart success a useful tool to fight a virus we don't generally recommend the wearing of masks in public but all the worries well individuals. because it has not been up to now associated with any

particular benefit. but eventually opinion changed hands you home soon masks popped up everywhere and experts changed their tune people congregating often without masks of being in crowds and jumping over and of boarding not paying attention to the guidelines that we very carefully put out we're going to continue to be in a lot of trouble and there's going to be a lot of hurt if that does not stop. as more variants of the virus emerged medical masks were back on the agenda even becoming mandatory in some places but can masks really beat the virus. that's the question welcome to our coverage 900 special i want to jones in berlin good to have you with us and just in case you're wondering why isn't she wearing a mask well the studios pretty much the only place i can take it off for now because things keep changing just like the virus itself and that also goes for the

acceptance off wearing masks and the evidence that they really help curb the spread of the virus in fact a study from germany has found that face mask could reduce the number of new code with 19 infections 20 days after their mandatory introductions anywhere from 15 to 75 percent and researchers also found that the reduction in new cases was the most for those above 60 years of age this is the 1st study to identify causal effects in a population rather than in a clinical setting highlighting the correlation between wearing face masks and a drop in new infections. plus they had a professor of economics at the gun is couldn't bear university mind is the co author of this study and he joins me now good to have you with us what i noticed is that your study doesn't mention specific facemasks why not. that's true we don't mention flu specific phrase merced because the regulation at that

time just required to wear any mask so the bees were probably normal made oh but it matters ok so we don't really know about the efficacy. when we take into consideration the medical masks which are now mandatory in many places or f.f.t. moscow do you have a hunch would there be even more effective. yes of course i mean there are other studies no it's very detail which type of nurses or effective and we know of course the. last masks are not the 1st ones or in 52 nurses and it's all you have a much better filtering yours is ok but apart from the model or the material of a face mask what other factors play a role in in making wearing a mask effect if i believe your study also points to different regions different climate. yeah well regions on climate i'm not too sure about but what

definitely matters is how good a mask since the issue is how many rare beer and then of course there's a lot of airflow over the mask and this can be a problem and in any case with any mask depends on the environment if you are in a. continuing to. inhale contaminated m.g.m.t. era then you can get infected anywhere you are in broken bones and more growth as they enter anyway right i just had to smile because you mention to be a tz and know a few colleagues here including our science correspondent who will find it difficult to pot with the beer. but back to the a ficus e of a facemask the average in your study says it's at around 4547 percent that's a good start but it means that we also need different measures to win this fight which rules are the most important all the rules that we need in place from your

point of view. well it's definitely true master you're not the only measure we should employ there should be other rules but if i should say something about rules i mean rules are one thing but compliance to rules is a much different and when we look for example at the sudden increase of infractions before christmas then no we this cannot be related to rules because the rules didn't change at that time but we know from ability daytoday around christmas which an be understood but nevertheless around christmas mobility increase the lot so the question is how much compliance is there to rules in their private environment and then another issue so for example a mask workplace i recently went to a small enterprise for mechanics to earth and everybody was without a mask i mean i was shocked i mean so masked and there were places they would all

who'd be your measure a swap is active you just mentioned statistics with looking as mobility before christmas i mean with what's been flooded with statistics on daily infection numbers now for almost a year now and more recently sadly we also get the daily death numbers and how helpful ah those statistics when it comes to assessing the situation right now. yeah this is a very important question the daily reported infection numbers we hear every day they have serious study script problems there's a systematic bias where does this bias come from well we test for different reasons one example is we test when people go to a doctor and have symptoms and then we test the individuals who had contact with the person who is infected or we test individuals that return from mali days the study think a problem resulting from this is when the relative importance of how many tests you

undertake because of symptoms or because of crevice or because of other reasons when this relative changes then the reported number of infections are not comparable over time there are of course other such as ticks which are less biased when we think about the number of individuals in intensive care units i mean this is definitely very i'm biased this is a very good measure and then as you said the number of deaths you don't want to hear this but this is also on by us measure but unfortunately these measures are late though i mean this is not in some tenuous measure of how your append any so what we should. we should not just test individuals i mean testing is extremely important test as much as possible and we should also report why individuals were tested and if we knew for example all the positive tests of individuals that were

tested because they have symptoms then we should then we would count quoted 19 cases so cases of the deceased and this would be on biased measure of this if you're reaching all the time to me ok so there is definitely some homework to be done certainly when it comes to effective testing just very briefly. at what point do you think can we begin our mosques ah well when the pandemic is over its own plans are ok if if if i had to give a rule. wait for the number of patients in the intensive care units to fold to a level that we had in spring 2000 range. then we can be more relaxed so we need to use unbiased measures and or on this weekend based long term rules and long term planning no right that sounds like a good plan classmate a professor of economics at the one is good and they're going to visit the mines

and co-author of the study on facemasks thank you so much you're welcome. so testing and wherein face masks to reduce the number of infections that's the battle won in some cases are less easy to trace than off us which brings us to one of your questions and over to a science correspondent williams. what do estimates now say about the percentage of infections caused by asymptomatic cases. to answer this we have to 1st look at differences and similarities in asymptomatic and priest symptomatic carriers of covert 19 now if someone is infected with the virus it might take time to develop symptoms but most people eventually do they're just priest symptomatic for a while one of the things that's made this disease so hard to combat is that unlike

for example people who got sars we think that 19 patients grow most contagious late in their incubate period so so while the virus is reproducing rapidly but before they begin to show symptoms for some reason truly asymptomatic people never develop symptoms but appear at lee go through a similar stage of shedding the virus what asymptomatic and present domestic people have in common are those few days where both are carrying the virus and shedding it yet neither is showing any sign of disease so maybe we should instead ask how many people are getting cove at 19 from people who aren't showing any symptoms a recent study published by c.d.c. specialists tried to answer that question the researchers had to make a couple of educated guesses but based on data from other studies they assumed that

close to a 3rd of all people who catch the virus remain truly. asymptomatic and that there are around 75 percent as infectious as those with full blown disease if those baseline assumptions are correct asymptomatic people would be responsible for around a quarter of all 19 infections preceptor matic transmitters are thought to pass it along at even higher rates than that so so the model therefore predicts over half of all cases of coke at 19 are transmitted by people who have no symptoms at the time they transmit it no wonder tracing infection change has proven so difficult it's more support for the advice that that wearing masks in public is a good idea even if no one around you is coughing.

which brings us back to the topic of this program that was derek williams of course and he'll be back to on some more of your questions again tomorrow that's all for this edition of covert 19 special but as we're all stars often called say in these trying times we want to leave you with some images from eternal rome from the colosseum to the vatican museum which you can visit again the facemask of course enjoy the news thanks for watching and see you soon.

want to global play against harmless to the body but is still disastrous. take. counterfeits on the web paralyze democracy threaten the economy and our thriving business who profits from them. how do they infect

a song made in germany. in 30 minutes on d w. we're all such a want to get to go beyond the obvious. government. we take on the world without. all the gadgets we're all about the stories that matter to you. my love of god would love to take my word for mocking pain. we are here is actually on fire.

it's about billions. it's about power. it's about the. foundation of the border the new silk road. china wants to expand its influence with history network also in europe conflicts are inevitable consequences unpredictable but instead of protocol ever since the chinese investor got involved here our situation has changed before the floor was privatized a work was much better and easier. is promising it's her 1st pitch but in europe there's a sharp warning whoever accept money from the new superpower will become dependent on it or can it get other shaking the chinese state has a lot of money at its disposal. and that's how it's expanding and asserting its status and position in the world the face of $50000000.00. china's gateway to

europe starts feb 19th on d. w. . this is state of the news life from lead policing them off file charges against ousted leader time soon change no one has heard from the country's former civilian leader since he was arrested in monday's coup meanwhile a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience against the military takeover is growing also on the program. russian police arrest more than a 1000 people after the jailing of trending critical next a revolving.