of society. differently. what do they do with their power. and how sustainable is this culture. that conclusions of the. starks marching on t.w. . takes a bite out of german company exports to the u.k. tumbling 30 percent in january hasn't helped but the rising cost of doing business appears to be the bigger culprit. on the show students in paris are feeling are feeling the pandemics isolation and worrying their best years are being spent socially distance several of them. and he's no longer china's richest man small indignity perhaps for any group founder jack ma but his run ins with beijing have cost him big we'll look at the lessons of last fall from grace. welcome to the show

m c. it's good to have you with us german exports to the u.k. in january were down by almost a 3rd over the last year that according to figures released tuesday the combination of the pandemic with the new post drugs at customs border appears to be behind the drop german exports to britain have actually been declining since british voters opted to leave the e.u. 5 years ago while last year the pandemic force exports down some 15 percent. and for more we go to our financial correspondent in frankfurt chelsea delaney hi chelsea a big dip in exports what does that mean concretely for german businesses. well there's so much attention paid to the how bad it has been for you kate businesses but it's also been a major blow for a german business as well even with the decline last year germany is sold about 67000000000 euros to the u.k.

so if for some industries including the german auto industry the u.k. remains one of if not the most important market also for things like the pharmaceutical industry of the mechanical engineering industry it remains a very crucial market so now all of these businesses in germany are also having to deal with this new bureaucratic customs paperwork all of these things that have made it really difficult to keep exports flowing into the u.k. officials are trying to try to downplay to some degree how how big of a problem this is they say it's just teething problems and that it will get better but for now it's a major issue for this is on both side of the channel in shows you some of the new figures from january retail sales down more than expected and unemployment only lightly give you a picture of the german economy right now from these figures but we know. if you look at the german economy broadly there's really 2 different tracks you have on

one hand the manufacturing side of the economy which is still doing very very well data out yesterday just confirmed that the manufacturing industrial side is still booming in part due to the strength in asia particularly china but then you have the services side of the economy which is very much struggling after after a lock downs that have been in place and some cases since november so we've seen as we saw today retail sales tumbling about 75 percent for some stores all of this is going to be continuing if it's a lock downs are expected. to live in frankfurt thank you very much. well student days are supposed to be among the most carefree social times in a young person's life but the pen demick has dramatically changed that as well forcing many in higher education into isolation and even poverty food aid programs in france are now trying to assist those in need. just turned over your favorite

show of a clever young to judge all good fun of course standing in line for groceries many of the students at the paris known terry university are here to pick up donations. their situation is dire. no matter. what you think right or noodles. is also a student the 24 year old volunteers to distribute food in her area today there's baked beans oranges and canned goods on offer. hot foods to change thanks to distributing groceries i get out and meet a few people helping others gives me strength it keeps me going. she also depends on food donations she's in a real is with her rent and lost her job at a movie theater now she only has 170 year olds a month to live on her family can't help her. without the assistance of aid organizations she would be lost. more than

normally your twenty's are the best time of your life but it's the opposite now. now she spends most of her time alone in her 15 square meter room in front of her computer she has at least 3 online courses a day she thought getting her master's degree and cultural history would be very different. for this man knows the students problems but only from a distance math professor vest sought marta carex papers at home on the sofa he only meets and teaches his $120.00 students virtually with mentally and physically the students are in horrible shape and there's no real hope that it will get better any time soon the situation is horrible. walking around campus is strange the complex says over a 1000 apartments but looks like a ghost town common rooms have been barricaded. only up to date if there are more

than 3 people in a room by security guards knock and tell us it's not allowed for everyone is totally isolated. tornadoes. today she's working for the aid organization s.o.s. . and is getting donations ready. she's always shocked that there are students who are worse off than she is. only neil only has $150.00 euros to live on each month here she can get some of the bare necessities but only 2 rolls of toilet paper if you go to morrow and start i lost my job to do so but when you have all my now i only have my stipend devolving into getting groceries really helps. otherwise it would be a total disaster story to say yeah ever never there are so many needy students and if you are still waiting in line for help there is much to do for

the other global business stories making headlines. tweedledee jaros has won the title of car of the year hybrid car beating the fia 500 seance who performance are folks wagons id 3 came in 4th in a competition dominated by electric and hybrid models. united airlines has ordered $25.00 new $737.00 max passenger planes on expectations of increased travel demand it's also moved for the delivery of previous orders $737.00 max model was grounded for 20 months after being involved in 2 deadly crashes. e.u. citizens have a right to repair as of march a new law requiring sellers of refrigerators washers dryers or t.v.'s to insure those appliances can be repaired for up to 10 years the law aims to reduce the vast mountain of global electrical waste. video conferencing absolves expecting further growth of 40 percent in 2021 despite the prospect of lockdowns ending surge in remote working brought about by the pandemic sent company sales rocketing almost 5

fold last year. while jack ma is no longer china's richest person that according to figures published on tuesday alibaba and group found their top of whom global rich list the last 2 years but has now slipped to 4th moniz companies have been under tough scrutiny from chinese regulators who cancelled at groups i.p.o. scheduled for last november china's richest person is now founder of bottled water brand non-food spring junction sun. let's go down to the 2 businesses clifford couldn't who has covered china for years clifford we want to talk about jack ma may be a small indignance he's only he's not the richest man in china anymore but his fall from grace is really significant it's been tied to beijing stopping his company's i.p.o. do we have a better understanding of what exactly happened there. well stephen the original

thing was an october 23rd he gives each criticizing regulators which didn't go down well baking i think it's fair to say because he disappeared and for 3 months. and then reemerge with a very brief terse video. after that we don't really know what happened what it does seem to be is a massive systemic bottle here between china's formerly china's richest man. and the communist party particularly which is now very focused on xi jinping who is green everything into sort of state control and meanwhile jack my represents the fin tech industry and with financial which is 500000000 customers and the tech is very very powerful so it's a kind of a systemic bottle i think. cliff or do you think that mas experience offers any lessons that right now other tech titans in china are picking up on pretty quickly but i think i'd be pretty nervous if i was a head of

a big tech company i notice that the 2nd person in the list is. and. he is basically also from $0.10 and they're also coming up for scrutiny and later this week we have the national people's congress and the china's new apartments and that's expected to introduce new regulations on the tech industry so i think that the sort of hubris maybe represented in the tech industry now is going to be the government is the communist party is really going to come after that now so i guess a for a lot of the other. for a lot of the other tech titans now they must be thinking about this is probably a time to keep their keep their heads low. on focus on on these regulations that are company and are i think without them they'll laugh you know and i think that's where they're looking now at the n.p.c. in focus all right i want to leave it there clifford couldn't do the business in berlin thank you very much. back to europe now where after months of

lockdown some attractions on the continent are gradually reopening their doors in genoa the local aquarium is now welcoming guests again that's good news for its own bottom line but also a boon for the sea creatures themselves. who's inside who's outside and who's looking at whom it all depends on your perspective turns out the fish at the genoa aquarium need their visitors just as much as the other way around. either live or to be we hope to hear the sounds of children again and their parents the animals missed the sounds of humans while we were closed they have been taken care of as if the aquarium was open but they missed humans they missed their voices and that is not just the marine mammals of birds fish to notice the absence. of gods. so these dolphins might be jumping for joy performing for the

crowds again albeit very small crowds but that's better than nothing not least for the company running the aquarium in the town's harbor cost to edge a tenement which has other venues as well lost 33000000 euros last year as visitor numbers plummeted to half of what they used to be. and i have been good. to be able to reopen is a glimmer of light and optimism which we hope can expand not only within the region i really hope the residents of neighboring regions will soon be able to visit us to . be printed. with visitors trickling in it's not only the aquarium that's hoping for better days but the hotels restaurants and other tourist attractions in legal ria to. read here's a reminder of the top story this hour. german exports to the u.k.

a fall by almost a 3rd over the last year the 30 percent drop this january compared this last is being attributed to a combination of the crow virus and brags that. dot com slash business and severely its watching. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing what does the latest research say. information and context the coronavirus update. on t w. how does a virus spread. why do we panic and when we'll. introduce through the top. weekly radio. if you would like and the

information on the krona lara's or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast you can get it wherever you get your podcast you can also find us at twitter dot com. science. your immune system is critical for fighting off disease but millions of people around the world are immunocompromised their immune system is weakened by a genetic disorder chronic illnesses like cancer or diabetes. living with such diseases is hard enough in the best of times but in the age of 19 a positive test could be a death sentence. as nations race to get their populations vaccinated those with an already compromised immune system are often. not at the top of the list so how can

overburdened medical systems keep these at risk people from falling behind. welcome to a new edition of the 19 special here on d w i want to get johnson billing good to have you with us and even better if you are among the lucky ones those who already got vaccinated because the majority have to wait their turn even if their health is already compromised for 4 weeks now tossed in kabul has been at the last talk you know versity medical center in germany the 49 year old was diagnosed with cancer last summer the chemotherapy and surgery made him weak and compromised his immune system while news about the coronavirus pandemic was dominating the headlines. next of course it's scary more know that you now have this extra danger out there and you don't know what's on the horizon what are we walking into here and what kind of impact will the chemotherapy after because of the high risk of infection tossed in kabul lived in strict

voluntary quarantine when still at home he was separated from his family with all possible hygiene measures. he will shortly be leaving the hospital and hopes for a vaccination soon to at least get rid of the fear of covert. that would be a huge leap forward it would be a massive relief when i'm in pretty bad physical condition but i can't imagine that i would survive even a moderate case of the coronavirus. of. a german government vaccination board regulates who will get the vaccine and when several 1000000 doses will arrive in the next few weeks this frees up places on the waiting lists and increases the chances for youngest seriously ill patients to be vaccinated more quickly it's a real opportunity say experts to have at least a little bit of normalcy. the psyche plays an important role in healing but contact

. contacts and social surroundings are a very important resource in coping with answer and these are now very limited or not possible at all for some patients. and to compensate for that along with all the other problems is quite a challenge. for all. doctors should now be able to directly register their seriously ill patients for an earlier vaccination appointment how this will work in practice needs to be regulated as soon as possible. in addition to the revised vaccination recommendations our organization is interested in working together with the cancer centers to create a kind of point system so that we can do justice to the situation of the individual patient individual. patient that this news brings a ray of new hope for tossin garble he wants to fight for his health

a vaccination would take away a lot of his worries and for more let's bring in caleb alexander a professor of epidemiology and medicine at johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health very good to have you with us and 1st of all please what is the difference between a weak or a compromised immune system and a suppressed immune system. well thank you very much for having me and it's a pleasure to join you and your audience sometimes we use these terms interchangeably a weaker compromised immune system and a suppressed immune system but in health care sometimes we seek to suppress a person's own immune system using that dozens in people that have auto immune diseases such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis or schroeder's syndrome and so sometimes we use medicines to suppress the immune system and in other cases people

have diseases such as cancer or aids hiv or advanced cardiovascular disease that weakens their own immune system so when i have either a weak and you system or my immune system has been suppressed how does the for affect my chances when fighting code in 1000. well it's an outstanding question and i wish that there was a completely simple answer for you of course we can start understanding that it's better to have a fully constituted immune system when possible but the effects of immunosuppression on being able to fight cold it may depend in part on why one is immunosuppressed and there's some good news as well for example we've been looking at the effect of medicines that cause chronic immunosuppression such as prednisolone or tacrolimus or michael fennelly these are medicines that are often given to people to help suppress their immune system and what we've found is that individuals taking these

medicines don't fare any worse than their counterparts if they were infected with cove it so the bottom line is that individuals with immunosuppression need to be vigilant need to engage in what we know are evidence based public health measures such as wearing masks and maintaining social distancing in order to minimize the likelihood of covert infection but the likelihood of severe disease if you do get infected may depend in part on why your immune system is being suppressed oh well that brings me exactly to the next question because when it comes to a suppressed or a weak immune system is the situation the danger of getting seriously ill with colic 19 is that the same for you mentioned any accounts of patients of those suffering from diabetes for example and those whose immune system has been actively suppressed because of a heart and kidney transplant patient is there

a difference. i think that the totality of evidence to date suggests that the risks of severe cold it or the risks of infection may vary depending upon why once immune system is suppressed so i've already told you for example that for individuals taking medicines that suppress the immune system that they have appeared to do ok i mean just as well as their counterparts if they get infected but we do know that many people with one condition that can sort that can cause immunosuppression say cancer don't just have cancer many of these individuals are of advanced age they may have diabetes some may have obesity and they may have a history of tobacco use i mean there are other risk factors and so what we see that really put people at the greatest risk is not necessarily when they have one specific condition that can pose potential harm but individuals that have multiple

co-morbid conditions and these stack up on one another and can really put people at increased risk of more severe outcomes right and of course there are already quite a few healthy people out there they're very skeptical skeptical towards getting vaccinated. should people with a weak immune system before it. well i'm an active internist and i have a clinical practice and i encourage my patients whether there are you know suppressed or not to get vaccinated the vaccines that are out there such as the m.r. and a vaccine these are not live virus there is no risk of causing povich by getting these vaccines but we do have to recognize that that the that the vaccines have not been studied in large numbers of individuals with immunosuppression so we don't have all of the information that one might wish for i think the most likely thing is that the vaccines will ultimately turn out to be less effective because people

may have a chronic condition such as cancer or they may be taking medicines that suppress their immune system they may not be able to mount as aggressive or as robust a response to the vaccine itself and so it's very important that so so i think this is an important consideration absolutely absolutely cane about xander that professor of epidemiology and medicine and tom's hopkins bloomberg school of public health thank you so much for your time thank you for having me. now while vaccination seems to be the best way out of this pandemic effective treatment is also important and that brings us to one of your questions and our science correspondent eric williams. could you use convalescent plasma from people who have been vaccinated as well as from people who have for cover this turned out to be tricky to ensor i need to run over some

background again convalescent plasma is taken from the blood of people who've survived an illness and given to those who have caught the illness it's a method that's been employed with varying degrees of success to treat patients for for over a century now the idea behind it is that the antibodies to a pathogen contained in the blood plasma of a survivor might help hinder the emergence of full blown severe disease in those who've been exposed to the pathogen for the 1st time potentially saving lives in the current pandemic there's still no really solid evidence from trials that convalescent plasma is definitely an effective treatment for carpet 19 but there are enough indicators that it does help when given at the right time for the f.d.a. to approve it for emergency use in the u.s.

now vaccines also prompts an antibody response in recipients so theoretically blood from someone who's been vaccinated could also be used to produce convalescent plasma however in its guidance the f.d.a. says people who want to donate have to have actually had the disease within the last 6 months which is to ensure the covert 19 convalescent plasma collected from donors contain sufficient antibodies directly related to their immune response. infection which is pretty vague so no specific reason given really for why but it's likely the decision involves the fact that approved vaccines only produce antibodies against a quite specific target on the virus the spike protein having the disease on the other hand produces a wider spectrum of them so convalescent plasma from people who've been vaccinated

would be different and require its own trials confusing the picture even more for a medicinal product where the experts are still trying to clarify effectiveness. that's all for today thanks for watching.

to. take on. a dark day for the teams at the bottom of the league. last place to charlotte that loses sacks it's coach and plans for the 2nd division. but the competition is also struggling. for relegation contenders for defeats causing hardly any threat to the opposing team told to come. to 30 on d. w.

. from hong kong they couldn't be more different yet these 4 activists have one thing in common. they become enemies of the state in china and they currently live in exile in london. from there they continue their fight against political repression in their homeland the close up. 90 minutes on d w. children to come to. one giant problem and maneuver it in almost the scene and the picture you. embodied in a little key change in the late fuel economy. how will climate change

affect us and our children because. we're w dot com slash water. imagine how many portions of lush us turned out in the world right now climb a tree in the 1st half the story. faces wife leslie way photos one week. how much work can really do. we still have time to work i'm going to. study says. click subscribe like.

this is. from free at last hundreds of nigerian schoolgirls were abducted from a boarding school have been released spoke in the northwest of the country say they've secured their freedom despite many obstacles being placed in that. also coming up international concern grows out the situation in myanmar as the military steps up its use of force to quell the ongoing protests more reports of live rounds being fired on civilians southeast asian for been.