we shook light on the opaque world. who's behind the benefits? why are they a threat to whistle oak creek wools starts january 5th on d w with ah ah, this is d w. news live from berlin coded 9, st cloud's. yet another christmas. a search in the only cron variance of the corona virus is disrupting holiday travel. airlines are facing a shortage of staff, and that's leading to thousands of flight cancellations. also coming up 3 decades

and billions of dollars in the making. a powerful new telescope is set to blast off into space in just a few hours time. scientists type but will provide a view of the calls most never same before. had at his christmas eve mass hope processor does ever want to look beyond the lights and decorations and remember the world's media. ah i'm rebecca writ is welcome to the program. a surge in cove at 19 cases driven by the army con variant, has been disrupting holiday travel plans all around the world. thousands of flights have been canceled globally because of the impact of the corona virus on airline employees and on passengers. despite these people are trying their best to maintain the christmas spirit. twas the night before christmas

but instead of the usual last minute, christmas rush, the streets here in london have fallen silent. the u. k broke their record of coated cases for the 3rd day in a row, recording about 122000 infections. numbers have climbed so high that some estimates predict one in 10 londoners have the infection. the surgeon cases has dampened the christmas chia and left many industries struggling with staff shortages as sick workers. a forced to isolate it's a problem that has hit airlines, particularly hard flights around the world, had to be cancelled on christmas eve. adding another layer of stress to people's already precarious holiday plans. we were really concern last night when i saw on the new that they had can thought a 100 white and i'm like, oh my god,

we won't be able to get home. but luckily we kept checking the flight that a 2nd, the flight that is got here and everything was fine. so we were really grateful for that. in spain, he don't have to be traveling far to face disruptions to everyday life. just stepping outside your front door. now means having to wear a mask the prime minister announced the decision after 2 consecutive records in daily cases. it's come as an unwelcome surprise to many wears when the more when we got off the train and i saw everyone wearing their mask, i remembered that it was the 1st day of the mandates and i thought what a drag again with the mask. it's a bit suffocating, a bit claustrophobic. i'm not very happy. where we go? no, nothing. we're gonna linda paula. though it may not be the coven free christmas that so many had hoped for people a doing their best to make sure some of the festive spirit remains as get more from

peter in hong. he's a professor of medicine at the university of california and san francisco. professor, welcome back to d, debit. it's nice to say ali cron is turning out to be far more infectious or what is the knock on effect in terms of the sheer scale? can we expect that everyone across the world perhaps is going to come and contact and not just come in contact, but actually contract this virus in the coming weeks and months? well, that's what some people are thinking, rebecca, that it's so transmissible up to 4 times as much as filter that it would be hard to escape. but nevertheless, i think we could try to mitigate damage. i'm. we're most worried about unvaccinated folks. and folks with co morbid conditions, it's still going to result in a lot of hospitalizations, even though it's probably less ah, you know, severe to the general person as delta was. you mentioned vaccinate vaccine, there been studies just released in the last few days show that back seems to be

much less efficient than previous variance with one relatively large study in the u . k. suggesting even with a booster, you're only really protected for around 2 months. what do you say that? what does that mean for people? well, it all depends where i'll go. push is. if your goal posts is prevention of infection, then sure you can look at the vaccines that say, 2 doses, you know, 2030 percent a booster or probably doesn't give you much more but, and not for that long. but if you look at the outcome of serious disease, hospitalization, and death are the vaccines are really spectacular that and as an infectious disease doctor, if you told me at a choice between just preventing infection or serious disease, i'll choose serious disease at any time. absolutely. does that mean then that we're going to be having those to shots every couple of months?

well, again, it comes back to what our goal in society is. so i can give you all the science and tell you that this vaccine, or a booster might only last 10 weeks before it wins in african c against infection. but if we reevaluate and think that we were thinking mainly of hospital capacity and the ability of hospitals to, you know, take care of sick people, then maybe after, at some point we'd be able to accept that, you know, with 3 doses, maybe we'll be good enough with prevention of people going to the ice, you are dying and we will accept a certain amount of disease in the in society. i'm sure everyone certainly hope so professor peter ching hung in san francisco. thanks very much for your time. merry christmas. merry christmas. rebecca, thank you. i can it's 10 now to some other stories making headlines around the world in bangladesh, at least 39 people have died after

a crowded ferry caught fire in a river near jello. cathy some 250 kilometers south of the capital duck up and a st. most of the victims died in the fire. others drowned after jumping overboard to try to flee the flames. by ging has denounced a law signed by us president joe biden banning imports from china chin jang region of allegations a forced labor. the chinese foreign ministry says the bill quote violates international laws and interferes in china's internal affairs. and according moscow has find google and meta, the parent company, a facebook, more than $100000000.00 for they repeated failures to delete content that russia dames illegal rational fourteens have increased pressure on big tech companies. and what critics claim is an attempt to gain title control over the internet. scientists say there's never been anything like it. a revolutionary new telescope is set to blast off into space in a few hours time. the james web telescope,

named after a former head of master, is expected to be back new, close about the origins of the universe. the new i in the sky is the successor to the legendary hubble space telescope. it's 6 and a half meter mirror makes the hubble look tiny by comparison. the james web, the biggest telescope ever sent into space, is made up of 18 segments plated with a raise, a thin gold coating. the instrument has to be folded up to fit into the rockets nose cone. the telescope will scan the heavens using long wave infra red light. ah, astronomers will be able to look back towards the big bang, nearly 14000000000 years ago. back to the origins of the universe and the

formation of the 1st stars and galaxies. the new telescope could also prove decisive in the search for extraterrestrial life. 2, it can prob, so called exile planets. nearly 5000 have already been discovered orbiting distant sons. the james web will monitor how exxon planets move in conjunction with the stars. transits like this mean, it can take a virtual fingerprint of the atmosphere of these remote worlds and assess for the 1st time whether they hold the building blocks of life. before the research can begin, there will be a delicate 2 week operation in which the telescope has to unfold itself. never before has a satellite been launched with so many moving parts and nothing can be allowed to

go wrong. it will be 6 months after the launch before the telescope is ready to gather it's 1st scientific data. ah, antony marston is where the european space agency and archive scientists for the james web space telescope. he joins me from madrid, and he welcome to date abilene, thanks for joining us on what it must be a huge day for you and the many scientists involved in this launch. excitement versus nerves. how do you feel? well yeah, but like i'm a big moment in the and science. we have a launch it it can go wrong, but very, very rarely. we do not expect anything to go wrong here, but still means you have

a little bit of nervousness and date and lots of excitement i have it's, it's being doub hobbled to point i talk us through the upgrade there. is it like going from black and white to color? what will james web be able to do that hobble? couldn't there are several things here. we're talking about telescope that's using technology. this 30 is bombs. what you have with them are looking at a much larger diameter power telescope comes from its ability to collect the light from the universe. in this case, we're talking about infrared light. the fact that we're using it for red light is another advantage for many of the things that we want to study. for instance, plants around other stars and mit infrared light preferentially. so there are many advantages to the change. what from my understanding,

we're talking essentially about going back in time. and as we had met, pe said that the james webb will be able to take a fingerprint, if you will, all of the universe. what does, what does that mean? well, we can go back in time to see in the sense that we can pick up things that are very far away. i mean, we're going to get to the very edges of the observable universe as far as 13 and a half 1000000000 light years away. and anything that's emitting irradiation at that distance from us, we should be able to pick up that we can detect a b signature on the moon. so we can pick up things that are really very faint sitting at the edge of the universe. the fingerprints come from the fact that we can take what's called spectroscopy where we can spread the light out into the

different colors like the rainbow colors, but you extend that to the infrared and in you'll see the signatures of different elements, different molecules that make up the objects we're looking at. so for instance, if we have an atmosphere around the planet, we can work out the least some of what is a very exciting day for science anthony mountain from the european space agency. good luck. thank you so much for your time and merry christmas. no problem. merry christmas to you to that process has celebrated the annual christmas eve mass said saint pate as basilica despite a shop rising tie the cases, the traditional midnight mass was held at the earlier time is $730.00 p. m and focused on the plight of workers and the world's oh, the choir echoes over a reduced crowd to the 2nd deer in

a room. and estimated 2000 people attended the pope's traditional christmas eve mass compared to only 200 last year. the 85 year old pontiff focused his message on addressing global policy, saying that people who are indifferent to the world's poor offend god include saying that in the sine a child, a baby lying in the dia, poverty of a manger, humans had just a poor child wrapped in swaddling clothes, with shepherds standing by monday by 30 at that his way god is in little noisy. ah, francis also used his 9th address to remind people that serving others is more important than spending a lifetime in pursuit of success. but the corona virus pandemic still cast a shadow over the service. ah, just minutes before the mass began in italy announced another reco daily talley of

you covered 19 infections because despite the shop rise in cases, the fateful outside would just happy to be celebrating. again, this is the 1st time in the last 2 years that we've been able to gather both as a family and to attend mass because of that pandemic. so we're very excited and grateful. unlike last june, the pope will once again deliver his traditional irby at all the message from the balcony of saint peter's basilica on christmas day. ah, thanks for watching. we'll see he's down. ah! take your time for an experiment about time. ah, it can be measured precisely, and yet each person experiences it differently as if there are different forms of hon.