this is d.w. news live from berlin and world leaders get set to debate transatlantic times at the munich security conference all eyes are on u.s. president joe biden who's due to address this year's virtual summit is about to restore transatlantic alliance out of the trump era neglect big barriers remain also coming out grief and defiance in me and mom demonstrators mourn the death of a young athlete who protester shot in the head by a police bullets a week ago her sister urges people not to give up their struggle to restore

democracy. the search for answers continues a year after a racist attack in the german town of hama and left 9 people dead was enough dumb to prevent it and could it happen again and. also on the show good news for the red planet. compared to the. masses perseverance rover touches down after a 7 month journey on a quest to find out whether life once existed on mars. time rebecca riches welcome to the program the leaders of germany and france a jew to discuss the future of transatlantic relations with the u.s. president joe biden during a special virtual many edition of the munich security conference it'll be an open.

unity to show how much or how little the e.u. has in common with the new washington administration chief international editor richard walker gives us his take on the potentially thorny issues. the 4 years of the trumpet ministration were a toxic age for transatlantic relations americal could barely conceal her relief after joe biden's victory it's good. with president biden we simply have a much wider range of political agreement. but that doesn't mean that the u.s. and germany suddenly agree on everything they really don't so we're going to take a look at 3 issues that are right at the top of the transatlantic agenda. first up north stream into a russian natural gas pipeline under construction to germany that team biden says must never be completed to deal because it divides europe it exposes ukraine and central europe to russian mint russian manipulation and because it goes against

europe's own stated energy and security goals to us is even threatening sanctions against companies involved in the project here in berlin the government says that that is no way to treat an ally so the big question is can merkel and biden find some sort of compromise next china the rising giant challenging us leadership in almost every thinkable way and shocking the democratic world with its crackdown on freedoms in hong kong. the u.s. and china are entering a period of profound confrontation and biden wants u.s. allies firmly on side but on that merkel seems decidedly cagey. we pressed her on this just recently asking why she seemed reluctant to line up behind the new president on china and. i believe that it is very important for the european union to have its own china policy you know politico out it's really no

surprise that merkel is so cautious china is after all a massive market for germany's export driven economy but there could come a time when biden says you have to pick sides. finally in the biggest crisis of all for the world perhaps more hope for transatlantic togetherness climate change is back as a top priority for the u.s. after 4 years of denial john kerry is the new team's climate czar a high profile name raising hopes that the u.s. and europe can make progress together on cutting back on carbon but there's one thing that transcends all of these global issues for leaders watching biden from here in europe they remember how his presidency began with washington bracing for violence after its very democracy came close to collapse their biggest question will be can biden restore some stability to america because if he can't they fear

another trump could be on the way. i mean it security conference is kicking off in just a few hours let's talk about it we did have a new political correspondent jared read jarryd what is the european security community expecting from joe biden today will he be expected to press the reset button as it were on the transatlantic relationship. well i think they're expecting some relationship repair to. trump years and it sounds like that things are heading in the right direction in that respect d.w. spoke to a good come the german defense minister on thursday she told us that she had just come from a meeting with the u.s. counterpart and noticed a markedly different tone in dealing with the by ministration then the trumpet ministration she seemed very positive about that meeting so it seems like that's

heading in the right direction but there are still significant issues like we heard in that report when it comes to china for example the u.s. sees china as a strategic threat bochy europe is deepening its ties with china when it comes to things like investment there was a significant investment deal reached at the end of last year and also when it comes to russia significant differences between the u.s. and germany or nord stream to bot more on the same page when it comes to condemning the kremlin for pursuing political opposition like alexei navalny so lots of differences but also plenty of common ground yeah right you mentioned a couple of things there but in terms of policy what else are we expecting to be discussed at the conference. well this conference is taking place of course during a pandemic that means it's been drastically scaled back from what it would normally look like so the pandemic is kind of looming large over over this what it's what

the future cooperation during this pandemic and future pandemics will look like what the economic recovery will look like also plenty of questions about vaccines and how to specifically get vaccines to poorer countries there are some proposals being made today and also when it comes to iran the biden administration has signaled it would be willing to return to talks with world powers and iran on possibly rejoining the iran nuclear deal so they're some of the things up for discussion today aren't they to be jarrad ray thanks very much for that for. and if you want to see the whole special edition of the munich security conference you can watch it live on the you tube channel at you tube dot com slash datable the news starting in less than an hour at $1600.00 central european time well before they made for the munich security conference leaders of the group of 7 economic powers are holding their 1st virtual meeting of the year discussing international

challenges chief among them of course the pandemic the focus is on the world health organizations kovacs program which i'm still unsure poor countries have access to vaccines britain which holds the g 7 presidency this year has pledged to donate all its surplus vaccine doses to kovacs and u.s. president joe biden has agreed to donate $4000000000.00 to the program which is currently falling short of its goals. as it's built on a big idea the kovacs pillar is founded on the principle of access this means in any country regardless of their ability to pay has the same access to vaccines but in reality the big idea is struggling as countries race and at times fight to get their populations vaccinated 1st. the head of the world health organization which code leads the kovacs program put it bluntly could

box emotionalism might serve short term political goals but it's ultimately short sighted. self-defeating we will not only make anywhere until. everyone. part of the problem is that wealthy countries have joined the kovacs initiative but have also made separate deals with vaccine manufacturers this is created an imbalance while poor countries are completely dependent on kovacs richer nations are accused of using it as an added extra and there's another issue the astra zeneca oxford university vaccine accounts for almost all the doses that the kovacs program wants to start distributing later this month but south africa is delaying the rollout over concerns that the drug may not be

effective against the new variant which 1st emerged there. the situation is actually newton 1000000 people or 2000000 people seeing that may not be effective in preventing hospitalization and so the disease other countries are now stepping in china has only recently joined kovacs it's now offering the program 10000000 doses but beijing has already sold all donated large quantities of its 3 vaccines to countries around the world. 50000000 doses of being bought by turkey alone. and moscow to prefers to do its own deals. iran just the latest to get russia's sputnik v vaccine. fax program still hopes to deliver more than $2000000000.00 vaccines by the end of the year scientists warn if that fails the world will pay the price it's not about

$1.00 country versus another it's about one. protected. joining me now from london is day w correspondent being it must be get donations a vaccine doses to poor countries to be made as we just heard the british are setting a very good example they want to donate a lot of vaccines but the timing isn't as clear what sort of a timeframe can we expect that's exactly where the catch is rebecca there is no time frame and the u.k. government minister has confirmed today that the u.k. population has to come soon there is this general commitment and it's being welcomed for example by oxfam charity but there is no commitment as to the number of doses and also what scale can be except it's expected one kind of be rolled out we know that the u.k. has been very successful so far in vaccinating its own population so

a quarter of the u.k. population have already been vaccinated but still the u.k. wants to play it safe and they're not giving an exact roll out an exact timeframe. so if of course as we just heard richer countries are part of the kovacs initiative but they also have separate deals with manufacturers and as you say that countries are going to worry about their own national populations 1st so the imbalance therefore remains as an ott. it seems that for now this is going to be the case president of france has tried to address that and he has given an interview to the u.k. newspaper and he has said that very very quickly 5 percent of the current supplies should be given by the should be distributed to countries that that are not rich and that the inequalities otherwise would be accelerated too much but so far we

haven't really seen anybody else taking this up so i guess it will be interesting to to look at this summit and see how the other leaders react to this precisely are we likely to see any solutions coming out of this summit and. my guess will be that we see more financial commitments for example the u.s. has been pledging or is pledging to to commit poor $1000000000.00 to help with the vaccination program but my other hunch is that there's not going to be that much sacrifice that most countries and the u.s. included world say that they have to look off their own populations forests are not going to in effect share what they have now but that's only my guess right bay of mass in london thank you very much. now to some of the latest developments in the pandemic japan says a new variant of covert 19 has emerged in the country's east of the 90 cases have been found mainly in tokyo brazil's health ministry says the country has surpassed

more than 10000000 coronavirus cases and the dutch parliament has approved an emergency nighttime curfew law after a court banned the measure earlier this week the curfew led to rioting when it was introduced in january. antique you protesters in man ma have been overshadowed by the news that a protester has died a week after being shot in the head by police the young woman is the 1st person to be killed in demonstrations that was fucked by the military detention as a man was elected leader aung sun suu chait a spokesman for the military did not deny that the woman had been shot by security forces and said an investigation was underway. the 20 year old woman became the 1st fatal victim of myanmar's uprising she was shot in the head by police 10 days ago. but the other did only her condition became

worse by the day and then her heart stopped beating. her death is adding fuel to the fire much of the country has been in open revolt ever since troops arrested civilian leader aung sang suu kyi. the rallies have been steadily growing in size and the hunter has responded by making mass arrests by escalating its use of force against peaceful protesters. in the presence of security forces has been stepped up across the country. we are being peaceful why are they using so much force they pushed us violently look at them do they need to act like this we are not blocking any roads they intentionally use this force they shouldn't do that. tens of thousands of people from across me and mar society.