news alive from berlin experts warn it could take weeks to dislodge a huge cargo ship blocking egypt's suez canal authorities are using diggers and tug boats to try to free the vessel more than 150 ships are waiting to pass through the channel causing a major headache for global trade also coming up. the worst wave yet german health

officials sound the alarm over the country's current code 19 surge they warn it could prove deadlier than the previous 2 plus a new ballet version of virginia woolf's orlando opens in moscow. it's german choreographer takes inspiration from the novel to play with gender identity. a michael thanks for joining us experts are warning it could take weeks to dislodge a huge container ship blocking egypt's suez canal more than a 150 ships are waiting to get into what is one of the world's most important shipping routes the suez canal opens up a 7000 kilometer route from asia to europe around 30 percent of the world's

shipping container volume transits through the canal daily the only alternative route around the horn of africa is much longer a prolonged suspension of traffic in the suez will almost certainly impact global trade which has already been hit hard by the pandemic. dredging teams work through the night to try to clear the canal bed around the $200000.00 ton ship and no wonder the stranded ever given is holding up around $10000000000.00 in trade every day it is stuck diggers tugboat dredges and a crack team of dutchman new and special forces of salvage operations have been drafted in to help it still contain those may have to be offloaded to lighten the vessel the one mistake could spell disaster. the battle is basically in asia the sterns in in africa in the middle is in the middle of the canal and what

you can do is take a lot of weight off the ends and put a lot of what they call a sagging stress on the vessel you conceivably crack the whole cause an oil spill but worst catastrophic lee fracture of the vessel and off which would close the canal for months if not years more than $150.00 ships are caught in the traffic jam each passing day piles on the pressure for global trade route already struggling with the coronavirus pandemic a hick up like this that affects. everyone with already scrambling to get back to normal and what have been quite strong demand. and yeah and i mean the lay on top of everything out. just how important and how the whole system needs those involved have warned it could be weeks before the vessel is freed bad news for those stuck in the world's longest mada time tailback . for more on this extraordinary story i'm now joined by captain john conrad

he's a licensed captain of the world's largest ships an author and founder of the shipping website captain dot com mr conrad welcome to you from the captain's perspective tell me how could it come to this. right piece ships have gone an incredibly large over just the last 10 years so in the last 10 years they've gone from about 10000 container ships to 20000 container ships but as the size has increased the international maritime organization the u.n. arm that does maritime in london they have not increased the crew size and they have not put new requirements for technology on the ship so you have significantly bigger ships and the same size crew the same technology really the same tug boats and equipment and navigating the ships and it's not just the length i mean this

ship is about 60 meters longer than the biggest aircraft carriers in the world but it's also the weight with a doubling of the number of containers on board. these ships way too to 300 percent more than the ships of 10 years ago and again we're using 1020 year old technology aboard can't gust of wind really blows such a massive ship sideways as the owner of the ship says. absolutely as you stack these containers up higher that you know you're a big steel wall where all the wind pushes against these containers an incredible rate the average speed of transit through the can now is 8 knots the ship was going 30 knots and we believe it was going faster to try to provide the momentum and inertia to overcome those gusts of wind but as you know driving fast down

a narrow passageway on the autobahn or during construction the faster you go the more careful you have to be especially when that wind comes in can easily push a ship like this or some of the new cruise ships they give those all those cabins that are stacked storeys high that's another ship that can be easily kept and we only have about 30 seconds i want to get this last question in which is the race to remove the blockage is proving extremely challenging how long do you think it will take to dislodge the ever given. well there's a there's a lot of hope that next week in the higher high tide they can get some fuel out and they can do what they're calling a back twist where they can corkscrew it out backwards after digging and dredging both ends if that doesn't work they have to bring in fuel barges take out the fuel and then somewhere in the world they have to find gigantic cranes on barges tall enough to reach those containers and start removing the weight so they can float it up higher but again as dr mark adriano said there is

a risk of whole track the ship was not designed and every time the tide comes in and out it's like bending a piece of metal it's doing micro cracks in the hall and you do that enough time and it could crack and that would take weeks at least if i have to stop if there captain john conrad really appreciate your time thank you very much thank you for. here's a roundup of other stories making news around the world at this hour at least 32 people have been killed and dozens injured after 2 passenger trains collided in southern egypt the crash in the province of so hog caused 3 carriages to flip over it's the latest in a series of deadly train accidents in egypt many of which have been blamed on poor maintenance if you prime minister has said that it has agreed to withdraw its troops from the ethiopian region of to grab. ethiopia's military would

take over the guarding of border areas amnesty international has accused forces of committing atrocities in the region. police say 4 people have been shot dead in bangladesh as clashes between officers and demonstrators turned violent many are protesting indian prime minister narendra modi's visit to bangladesh his capital dhaka to celebrate the country's 50th anniversary of independence it's his 1st foreign trip since the pandemic began but critics in bangladesh accuse him of stoking religious divisions in india. british prime minister boris johnson has condemned china after it sanctions several british politicians and organizations the measures came in response to criticism by london of china's treatment of its muslim minority the chinese said sanctions imposed by the u.k. e.u. u.s. and canada were biased and quote lies or base i should say in lies and

disinformation. in russia the kremlin has been tightening its grip on social media platforms this month the country's media watchdog threaten to block sites like twitter if they fail to remove banned content and now the video platform. on the kremlin's radar as well. time could be ticking for these bloggers the unlikely new enemy for the kremlin on . the social network is mostly about entertainment with videos of pranks and downs . but this month at a meeting with the police russian president vladimir putin made it clear he wants the authorities to be watching anyway. unfortunately we all know what the internet is and how it is used to promote unacceptable content it's critical for you to unite with other government agencies in order to monitor the web and be more

proactive and identifying people who are dragging minors into committing illegal actions the fact that minors are being dragged into illegal on authorised street protests as well is of course a violation of the law. to talk in particular has been on the authorities radar since the return of opposition politician need to russia his arrest in january caused a wave of opposition protests across the country and a sudden explosion of politics on tick tock. teenagers filmed themselves at schools replacing portraits of putin with portraits of. another ticked off trend was videos of teens getting ready to protest and telling their parents they might get arrested. russia's media watchdog responded by calling on tick talk to block videos calling for unauthorized protests and last week threatened to block

social networks completely if they don't comply with russian laws. but these moscow tip talkers want to keep dancing to their own tune without thinking about politics every week the bloggers meet at this so-called talk house with their producers to consult about their accounts and collaborate with each other to stay on trend talkers like that i need. film $2.00 to $3.00 videos a day the 17 year old thinks the videos about politics were just a short lived trend. too much politics on tech talk i went on there during the protests and there was none of the usual content in my feet it was all about politics not viney and putin for whom it freaked me out i stayed off to talk for a few days. also says she doesn't want to talk to become a political platform. talk is a social media platform for self-expression there's so much negative stuff around

us already on state television and so on if that stuff is on tick talk as well then we'll just drown in all these problems something has to stay neutral. but being neutral may soon no longer be possible according to my potential he's one of the owners of the p.r. agency promoting these bloggers. most bloggers are not for or against him they're just doing their thing but when they're told they're freaks when they're stigmatized these bloggers start feeling they're outsiders in this country and that's what makes them feel angry at the government. for now the talkers are steering clear of politics but even they know that the kremlin will be watching closely if they ever get out of step.

german health officials are warning that the 3rd wave of covert 19 currently gripping the country could prove deadlier than the previous 2 they're urging the public to limit social contact over the easter holiday to slow the spread of the virus more than 21000 new cases were reported on friday the head of germany's disease control center says the highly contagious u.k. variant is now the dominant strain of the virus in the country. we are facing some very difficult weeks we are at the beginning of this 3rd wave and it's triggered by the very end p $17.00 which we know is even more contagious and even more dangerous and therefore it's even more difficult to contain. there are very clear signals that this wave could be worse than the 1st 2 waves. veal or the head of the robert call institute speaking there are chief political correspondent melinda crane is following this story for us melinda greetings why

such a strong message from the head of germany's disease control center now. because the situation is indeed very serious here as the health minister put it this is like the last stage in a very long marathon people are tired and yet this stage could be by far the most painful so both he and the head of the center for disease control were encouraging germans to do everything in their power to bend the curve with the head of the center for disease control warning that otherwise we could see the number of new daily infections rise as high as 100000 cases per day just to put that in perspective we currently have about 22000 new cases a day and at its very highest point the 2nd wave was producing around a little over 30000 cases a day in december so very grave implications especially for the

country's health system and therefore this appeal by both speakers today to absolutely take every precaution possible to flatten the curve a never ending long night here melinda are we seeing so many new cases because testing is to go phenomenon mr viewer the head of the center for disease control said that in fact they are seeing increasingly serious cases of the new variant in populations that with formerly thought not to be all that vulnerable so working age people young people children and again that has very serious implications for intensive care units across the country yesterday chancellor merkel called upon germans to be more optimistic how realistic is that it's difficult to the fact is there's been so much back and forth on how to deal with this panda.