different on the islands of. here women are in charge. of the park appellate go as at a matriarchal system for centuries the reform of society do women differently than men what do they do with their power. from queens over rango starts marching on t.w. . germany sees a bit of growth at the end of 2020 despite its long lockdown that's good news for europe's largest economy as a strives for recovery but cold comfort for the country's many small businesses which are fighting for survival. also on the show signs of life in spain to a shoppers at the winter sales but once again it's smaller businesses they continue

to struggle. and what has the pandemic taught us about the global food supply here from an expert about how wealthy nations have seen new vulnerabilities in the past year. alone welcome to the show i'm seeing beardsley in berlin good to have you with us and germany's economy continues to struggle under the pen to make but figures out today suggest a new recession is not an immediate concern the economy growing 3 tenths of a percent in the 4th quarter of last year that according to an update a preliminary numbers the quarterly growth came despite a 2nd pandemic wave and a tough lock down put in place over the holiday shopping season the german economy contracted across the year some 4.9 percent led is now predicting a return to a prepared to make economy as early as summer 2022. let's go now to our financial correspondent in frankfurt ashutosh pandey good to see you as always help us put these new figures into perspective where they tell us. well

it is predominantly teles that the german economy economy where the log does better than expected remember the experts were expecting that the german g.d.p. would remain flat in the 4th quarter but certainly the german the manufacturers had different plans and they produced it produced. back of strong demand for their goods from china and even the construction sector they performed really well in the 4th quarter and these have been the main drivers that far as the german economy is concerned but to me a mean learning from this is the fact that perhaps the german economy to clone things from the 1st log down and they were better prepared to work around social distancing rules when the dumb kid did in the 4th quarter ok she talks about manufacturers they're driving this uptick in growth what about small businesses they've been closed for quite a while now well yeah that's it's

a mixed bag and they do smaller businesses in the manufacturing sector they are booming you know that the factory activity is at its highest since february 2018 but yes those in the services sector haven't been that lucky they are suffering. the restaurants the hotels the retailers the nonessential retailers that they are struggling because of the lockdown and they're looking at you and shedding jobs going forward but having said that there is a sense of optimism now keeping in. vaccine fuel recovery and a stronger demand for their goods there is been a pen to demand and they are actually banking on this going forward. monday in frankfurt thank you. over to spain now where the government there has announced a new 11000000000 euro aid package for companies and self-employed good news perhaps for the beleaguered retail sector which is also seeing

a surge of shoppers coming out of the moment for winter sales but once again it's the smaller businesses that are finding it much harder to match big competitors discounts many even shutting the doors altogether. bargain fever instead of covert lockdown winter sales are attracting thousands of people to the center of them and see all the stores are open despite the fact that the region still has one of spain's highest infection rates. magic on them not on i agree with how it's being handled after all we need some distraction and if it's done responsibly and according to clear rules then i think it's all right now but if there are. intensive care units or at more than 150 percent capacity hospitals are overcrowded people don't seem to realize that they act like everything is fine. they're courting days europe's largest department store chain is also open the authorities

only allow them to operate at 30 percent capacity but some departments are still crowded the company stresses that everything safe items of clothing for example are disinfected after each city. it's very important to us that customers feel safe shopping here. and according to department of health data there are very few are virtually no coronavirus outbreaks in retail stores she said this but smaller stores in particular are suffering the most from the pandemic as many spaniards are still holding back on shopping jose antonio pos store saw his sales drop by more than 50 percent so far government aid has only been available in the form of loans. now this. government is not giving out free money which is causing companies to go even deeper into debt. that businesses for many years

or even drive them into bankruptcy. for rent signs can be seen all around violence yet many store owners have shut down for good leading to the loss of more than. $50000.00 jobs throughout spain. in the clothing and fashion sector one in 5 stores is gone out of business. in a while it's a very bad situation because in valencia smaller stores are very important for the regional economy. even with infection rates falling it's unclear whether the people who will keep shopping one sales are over spaniards who are traditionally average shoppers have put more money into savings than ever before. meanwhile the u.s. federal reserve chairman powell says his country's economic recovery remains uneven and far from complete his comments during testimony to the senate banking committee were in contrast to the increasing optimism among analysts who believe the u.s.

economy will grow rapidly this year will said monetary policy still needs to support the economy and further reduce unemployment but he downplayed concerns about potential rising long term interest rates and inflation let's take a look now at some of the other global business stories making headlines. u.s. aviation authorities have ordered a special inspection of certain pratt and whitney airplane engines after a fan blade failure on a jetliner scattered debris over denver this past weekend inspection technology detects cracks in the blades that are not visible to the eyes. strong sales of apple's flagship i phone 12 model helped the company move up to the top spot in the global smartphone market in the 4th quarter apple sold nearly 80000000 i phones in the period all performing former leader samsung south korean company sold 62000000 units. right after years of progress food insecurity is

on the rise that's according to the new global food security index published recently a global poverty has been increasing again also in recent years despite the gains of the past decades the pandemic has made things worse lockdowns and poor access to health care disproportionately affecting the poorest those already struggling to put food on the table and here the country's most affected by food insecurity according to that new index sudan yemen zambia malawi perhaps few surprises there given the economic and conflict situations in those countries now affecting a much wider swath of the world's food supply is another ill climate change with droughts and natural disasters increasing around the world even wealthier european countries such as denmark norway sweden are seeing more disruptions to their food supplies and proximate saying is project lead for the global food security index with the economist intelligence unit i asked her what a year pandemic has taught us about our food system. i want to take

a step back and quickly provide a little bit of context to the g f s i or the global food security index essentially it's a measure of the drivers of food insecurity categorized by floor such as drive as affordability availability quality and safety and natural resources and resilience this year we incorporated that 4th category into the main index which was previously used as an adjustment act up so as you rightly mentioned right up front we have seen that global food insecurity is on the rise unfortunately we've been doing this index since 2012 and after 7 years of consistent improvements all the way through from 2012 to 20 meeting in 21000 we saw liked dip and then a further deterioration this year in 2020 in the overall food security environment to your point what have we seen and what have we learnt from this last you know

while the main driver of food insecurity is really a decline in the 1st category of food affordability we're seeing increasing prices or costs of food but most importantly following depend demick we're seeing a loss of income really high levels of all higher levels of poverty and most importantly a lack of effective as a social safety net programs of food safety net programs in particular and problem it's fair to say that that's affected both wealthier nations who traditionally have perhaps had more food security as well as poor nations. that's exactly right so one of the key findings of the index is that this is not really a developing economy issue out of our 113 countries in the index 66 so majority of the countries have actually seen a dip in affordability and like i said this is something because of lack of incomes and what sort of social safety nets and this is across different countries and

economies so we've seen this inequality of lines not just within nations but even internally within sight not just across nations but even within a country we're seeing inequality increase and the higher risk populations on europe and groups exponentially rise as a result of the pandemic i think a lot about those the significance of school lunches in a lot of developed countries i want to ask you as we're talking about how wealthier nations are also affected by food vulnerability climate change you mentioned earlier being incorporated a bit more into your report this year that's also something that is likely to affect a greater swath of the globe is it fair to say that's exactly right stephen so essentially one of the indicators we look at as part of the global food security index is one called volatility in agricultural production we've seen this increase in the past few years so there's increased from actuations or less of predictability and a lot of that has to do with rising crime climate risks like droughts or extreme weather and again this is not just an issue for developing countries it's also

something we're seeing in high income countries particularly like you mentioned sweden norway australia slovakia all of these countries have seen increased pressure on their ballot on their food supply and a $49.00 out of $113.00 actually seen an increase in this volatility this year. meanwhile the most vulnerable countries we saw those foreign after that we named were the biggest challenges that they face in terms of food security. yeah so one of the things we know is that inequality levels whether it's income gender but in particular have always had an impact but in particular conflict is really critical driver of food insecurity again this is no surprise but we know very clearly that countries that have high levels of conflict particularly active conflict zones like yemen and sudan at the bottom of the index are actually hotbeds of food insecurity really being able to drive in any sort of tech innovation or even getting chronic food and into these countries into the vulnerable populations has been

a challenge and this has only been exacerbated by the pandemic and so conflict really remains one of the main drivers of food insecurity and the least. i guess he's trying to countries are i'd want to leave it there for now probably missing project leader for the global food security index thank you so much. that's it for me and the business. as always you can find out more about these and other business stories online to check out the dot com slash business. watching. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection in developing what does the latest research say. information and contacts the coronavirus update coming. on t w. what keeps us in shape what makes us sick

and how come. my name is dr. i talk to medical experts. and i discuss what you can do to improve your health. stay tuned and let's all try to stay. on. 4 more months and then everything goes back to the way it was at least that's the plan in the u.k. where prime minister forrest johnson is floating a way out of lockdown he wants to lift all restrictions by the summer. no more lockdown in israel to what large parts of the economy open for business last week.

israelis can gradually go back to normal life the government is issuing a green pass app to anyone who has been vaccinated twice the 2 nations can relax a little due to successful vaccination drives a bet on the future a bit they can only win if that seems are effective against mutation. it's. oh my goodness as finally light at the end of the tunnel a heap of countries are easing restrictions again the difference this time being that we've got a vaccine but some people don't want to including a lot of health professionals something we'll look at on tomorrow's show 1st i spoke to as the shake director of the other institute about whether or not the exit strategies of the u.k. and israel i relisted so i think basically it is one of 2 approaches one is to try to eradicate the virus completely sometimes called a coded 0 strategy i think the other one the one i think is much more realistic is

the assumption that the virus is now here with those states and endemic so what we have to do is try and live with the virus which means that there will be some restrictions in place over the longer term periodically relaxed. and but basically it's a it's a long strategy where we recognize that the virus is in our midst a long time in the sense of forever. yeah i mean i think potentially just like we have with influenza influenza hits every season and every year period it leave there are a pandemic. but what we have is a way of you know actually living with it trying to balance. the ability to. minimise any social restrictions whilst. also trying to minimize any.

overseer mortality associated with the virus so what are you saying are you saying mosques are going to become. regular. we going to have to continue social distancing for for the rest of our lives. i'm i think what we now have are like scenes of various active and i think that will help reduce the number of serious cases i mean hopefully also reduce transmission so i think that's a very important instrument that we've got in our tool kits we also now got a number of treatments for people who do develop serious disease and i think that is also incredibly helpful with that's been i think we should be able to actually substantially reduce obesity and mortality but there may be periods of time where we do need to take additional safeguards and those that may include.

face masks that they may include physical distancing measures. the actual physical contact periodic lee and i think the other thing that we do need to develop and continue to develop is our testing capabilities and the ability to support people who are isolating in the testing positive what would you say just finally to people who are tired of all these lockdowns. would like to see an end in sight but . may not think they can live with this type of virus for the rest of their life you will not think we're all top of them in this is an incredibly challenging period for all of us. what we know from our own human history is that reason learn to manage viruses and learn to live with them when they're in an aran posit nature with coated 19 what we've seen is just really very very rough it acceleration of our understanding of our rights i think vaccines having treatments available and so

i think mean clearly it's been a very very difficult period for all of us i mean i think things will get improved i very much hope so but we need to be patient and we need to tread very carefully i think they say from the university of edinburgh thank you very much and to. well germany has seen a harsh winter when it comes to the pandemic but one region in the north has made it through the last months with exceptionally low numbers of infections what's their secret to success the w.c. testified to and on a card house visit or brought stock in the state of limbo west pomerania. is it the cool baltic breeze or the rather calm and collected mindset of people in the north of germany so far they have made it well through the covert crisis especially here in the city of. infection numbers are currently lower than the german everett

. to supernews we are disciplined northern germans are quite different from everyone else. so we're a bit more nordic and distance anyway maybe that's our secret recipe they be allowed to get so hard to try to break it down the put in rules so that it doesn't increase on the seniority does does the secrets timing might have been one reason very early on the city started testing more people than ever it masks quickly became mandatory in designated places and alcohol was spent on the streets earlier than in most places in germany. another reason might be him of our stocks mayor he is originally from denmark and had just started his political career when the pandemic hit before that he was an entry printer helpful when leading a team. minded people looked very surprised when i said now we're

going to shut everything down it took 15 minutes and then they started working all together as a strong team and immediately put my words in action and i can understand that when the new mayor suddenly says we're going to shut everything down they are going to see i was the. now he wants to do things differently again the mayor has suggested opening up business is before everyone else as an example for germany. we would be very happy to offer ourselves as a pilot city that way we can look at which concepts can be implemented that's a search reason for the low number of infections could be the north specs a nation strategy relative to its inhabitants they have vaccinated more people than any other region in germany. and there is something else a few family doctors are gaining nationwide attention because they started vaccinating people in their own practice unique in germany because so far people

had to go to vaccination centers to get the japanese administering it has been doable for doctors here contrary to popular belief the biotech pfizer vaccine can be stored at normal french temperature for a couple of days. my wish of course would be that when we have enough vaccine available in the near future that we will have proven with this model project it's possible the family doctors can do the vaccinations let us broaden this idea and let the family doctors take over. but germany is still missing vaccine doses until that problem is solved the country's north will have to continue counting on its discipline and maybe the fresh baltic breeze i mean hand you over now to our science correspondent eric williams he's been looking into your questions on the coronavirus if there is something you want to know just leave a message for derek on our you tube channel and.

are children as infectious as. you read over and over when you start to research this question is something that along the lines of the role that kids play in the spread of coated 19 remains highly controversial which is just a complicated way of saying we don't know but we're starting to fill in some of the blanks surrounding children and transmissions so so here's some of what we do know 1st of all kids in general tend to not manifest symptoms of the disease as strongly as adults do so they don't get as sick some researchers have polishes slee hypothesized that could be a reason why they don't transmit it as often even if they might have a viral load as high as that of an adult but another new study has muddied the

waters a little because it's linked viral load in adults at least pretty tightly to how infectious people are so actually some conflicting narratives there the other really interesting aspect of this issue however is that some studies show kids especially young ones appear in general to be less susceptible to catching cove at 19 in the 1st place there are several different theories out there about why that might be so but the important epidemiological takeaway is of course that the harder it is for you to catch it the less likely you become to pass it along many experts think that helps explain why schools don't appear to be driving community transmission but instead seem to only reflect it but the evidence is. overwhelming which is why so many schools are still closed so i can hear you say well what's the

answer are our children as infectious as adults or not. and i can only respond the role kids play in the spread of covert 19 remains highly controversial. a science correspondent eric williams there finally for 10 rockets hangs in indonesia the pandemic is made having to hitch a ride in a helicopter when released into the wild just recently a critically endangered animals had been in captivity wanted thailand and were rescued by the borneo a running tank survival foundation 5 males 2 females at a mother with 2 babies were released ratings was transported by chopper to prevent possible transmission of the corona virus in nearby villages coaching and habitat loss has decimated the population and the coronaviruses emerged as and now the

threat for the only great a native to asia can see the helicopter ride there and touch down into the wild. always nice to finish on a fluffy animal story we haven't had wanted a very long time so watching face safe i'll see you again very soon i'm going physical and i sat here all day w. about. the flock.

the been. following. vaccinations against the pandemic it's a race against time. it is business with the virus sure. will get the coveted vaccination doses the rich industrial nations already helped. the situation in india and africa. made.

30 minutes w. . small acts can inspire. people. going to africa fantastic. join them as they set out to save the environment learn from one another and work together the floor of the earth in church. many cars do you all but swimming in africa. in 90 minutes on d w. in the eye of climate change. for christmas. what's in store.

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this is deja vu news live from berlin and historic verdict in the world's 1st court case over state sponsored torture in syria a former secret service agent is found guilty for his role in repressing anti assad regime protests 10 years ago victims and their relatives hope the trial will set a precedent and finally give them justice. also coming up and.