which since for the present, a future heads filled with ideas. so get ready for the brain update. 40 to the answer to almost everything starts january 15th on d, w. mm hm. ah ah. this is debbie news live from berlin, china effectively as it 0 covert policy. people there breathe a sigh of relief, but with heard immunity still a ways off the viruses. dangers remain. also on the show. blizzard is the one for the ages. certainly is the blizzard of the century. 50 people dead. the governor of

the state of new york warned further extreme weather conditions are forecast, including more snow and ukraine's foreign minister says his government is aiming to have a p summit in place by the end of february. but without russia taking part, it's unclear what chance it has of succeeding. ah, i mind bluecross welcome to the program. china's pandemic restrictions are set to ease further, even though the country is far from heard immunity and cases appear to be soaring. beijing as an absence, ending almost 3 years of border controls on january 8th, when coven 19 is downgraded to an infectious disease. but that may put the country's old and sick populations in particular danger. the end of these are restrictions for chinese wanting to travel abroad has sparked

a surge in flight bookings from china, people there has spent 3 years putting up with travel restrictions locked downs, mass testing, and other tough measures. the sudden lifting of these has caught people by surprise . the official reason the army con variance is not as dangerous as 1st thought. bunker. we'll go you to fungal at the moment. the pandemic response measures have entered a new phase in our country. we're faced by a new situation and new challenges. oh, jan. call will pivoting from preventing infection to protecting health and preventing severe illness. so hooking will build, obey the policy changed, has been welcomed by some people. at least that's what you wrote to me. of course are some people prefer control measures only which for you also have cases are isolated in a centralized way. i've only got 4 out of those, so we know any one outside is clear what, what we need now is heard immunity. so the government is quite right to do what is doing under the current circumstances. what i think mentality is very important.

there's no need to worry about it too much. if the government is allowing things to open up again, then that means it can't be that bad, right? if the virus is highly infectious in everyone's life is in danger, the government wouldn't be easing up. with that, i believe i'm headed. but corona virus infections have skyrocketed since the u turn by china's leaders. at the start of december. older people have been hard hit as vaccination rates among them are low, many hospitals overstretched. and it's estimated that coven 19, who claim a 1000000 lives in the coming months. the exact scale of the outbreak is hard to judge, as china has not published, official covered 19 figures since sunday. as a result of those developments, japan has announced that will require a negative coven. 1910 from visitors from china. emergency measures come into effect on friday. and in germany, here, it appears to be edging closer to an official and to the covenant in pandemic.

public health officials say heard immunity may be near thanks to widespread vaccination and natural immunity. the development has sparked a new debate among lawmakers about remaining rules. intensive care units across germany are full, but not with kobe patients. increasingly it's other pathogens that are making people sick. experts say there's now broad immunity against kobe in germany. leading biologists like christian justin and intensive care physicians say the pandemic is over. the pony me lawyer. naturally the pandemic will have run its course at some point. and exclaim, i'm extremely optimistic that'll be the case after this winter and the german justice minister believe biologist christian trust and is a very cautious scientist. marco bushman is calling for an end to all kobe protection measures. masks are still mandatory on the national railway. individual states set the rule for local public transport, pushkin's,

coalition partner and government. the s p d says it's too soon to scrap restrictions, then publish money. it's just a bushman is putting the on us on the states. if he wants to end the measures he helped devise the hood is arguing that if there's no more mutations in the next 4 months, we'll be transitioning to a phase where individuals decide on how to protect themselves in the positive id form for don't like ins. coalition partner the greens are urging caution fears i hadn't yet sneak, i was just no point in undermining our achievements by rushing to n restrictions about can even gone on. we'll need to roll back measure sensibly. so we're in a better situation. after the pandemic, germany's health minister wants to keep covet restrictions in place to continue protecting vulnerable groups. earlier i spoke to molecular biologist, a manual wheeler about the situation of cove it and asked him if he agrees with statements made by some of his colleagues that the pandemic is over. so a key feature of a panoramic is that we cds rapid and massive outbreaks of virus which we have seen

in last winter with you on our end and also to a certain extent in last summer this has been happening many countries. and this combined with a lack of widespread community, this is actually also what we observe in china right now. so this is something a period that is going to an end. and in so far it's justified to foresee an end of the pandemic soon. however, what i would like to emphasize that we should not charged the very top of iris and based on whether we call the panoramic or not, but whether it has an actual burden on, on how systems and, you know, moving over to china. it's finally opening up. does that pose certain dangers? so basically with this situation in china, as far as we can touch it from here, a quite worrying there seem to be massive number of infections to solve them means

thousands, tens of thousands of people are going to die or experience severe disease. digital also put extreme strain on like logistics on supply chains. so one of the things that we have to foresee is that a lot of trucks are being made in china and lack of supply chain. this option of supply chain might also mean that we see and even more and larger lack of certain drugs you in europe, for example. and, and beyond that, of course, what we know is that every infection is specific or certain, but small risk that the new but are in can emerge. which can eventual suppose a certain threat to us. this is not something that generally speaking, expected at the moment because there is not so much immunity around in china at the moment. so it's not so like, for example, new in eunice k parents will emerge. this is what we have seen one year ago with the emergence of mac on baron in the south african botswana. this is not the same situation, us back then. so even though there is a threat,

the completely new version of source coding to can emerge from china right now. this is not being generally considered as a major issue. we're going to leave it there for now. a manual wheeler of air molecular biologist with his input on the pandemic. thanks very much. severe winter weather has been pummeling parts of north america. authority say more than 50 people have died across the united states in the us state of new york been especially bad. the area around buffalo and western new york has been struggling with a weather phenomenon known as lake effect snow. that's when cold air passes over the warmer waters of the great lakes and brings to region huge amounts of snowfall, which is exactly what's happening in buffalo right now, along with heavy winds and articles. as city paralyzed by a mega storm. buffalo new york is at the epi center of the blizzard,

battering north america. people are stranded in their vehicles, in homes as snow pummels the region. the governor of new york gave a sobering assessment of this situation. we have then to a lot of wars together and this blizzard is the one for the ages. certainly it is the blizzard of the century. and we are here to can talk about our, our collab, our collaborative approach to dealing with this crisis, that it is a crisis. thousands of homes are without power. and a driving ban has been issued. the governor warned that the worst is not yet over. and as much as we can see, the skies right now, we know that though the storm is coming back. so anyone to declare as victory and says it's over, it is way to really to say president joe biden approved an emergency declaration for new york, offering the full force of the federal government to support the state. thousands

of flights have been canceled across the u. s. leaving many families scrambling to find a way to get home an hour. driving back to austin 17 hours so it was able to find a rental car. there was not many, but i was able to find one. so when a start back here in a minute, i guess back in buffalo, more heavy snowfall is forecast. emergency crews are racing to free. those trapped while they still can and we go over to that hard head city of buffalo, new york right now, or we have bruce and rach on the line as the assistant managing editor of buffalo new is a major paper in that region. verse, it's good to see you at least inside and i hope warm can you give us an update on what things are like in buffalo right now? things are still not good. the worst snowfall has passed

our airport, which is about 8 miles from where i'm sitting. no, i received 50 inches of snow and you know, the region itself is, is buried. we have, we've never seen anything like this. i'm, i'm old enough to remember a storm that hit buffalo 45 years ago. that's always been known as the blizzard of 77. those of us to are old enough to remember it. never thought we would see anything like it again. it also buried the city. i was 12 years old at the time. co school for a week, which was unheard of. i can tell you now that having lived through this past weekend, the storm were experiencing now is worse. yeah, and you are certainly folks not unaccustomed to crazy winter weather and just for our non u. s. id is 50 inches, that would be $127.00 centimeters of snow. how have local authorities or in fact, i guess the national and state authorities been responding,

do you feel like buffalo's been getting the assistance it needs well we had the, the people in the equipment here morrow before the 1st snowfall. the 1st snow fell on i believe it would have been friday morning. we were prepared. the precision of the forecast was such that we knew this was cutting. we knew it was going to be a blizzard. we knew how bad it was going to be, or rather we knew that it would be bad. i think that by friday afternoon, as you said, even those of us who are winter veterans were stunned at just how ferocious the store was used to. and i, i heard the reporter say that we're used to lake effect storm here, which just last month, dumped more than 7 feet us know 80 inches, which i guess would be almost double what we've seen at the airport. and that's not unheard of what is on a hurdle for buffalo. western new york is to have sustained snowfall and wins about

40 miles an hour for 48 hours or more in some areas. so even though we had the people, we had the equipment here, there was no way for it to move forward. just as one example. the governor said that let's say that you had a plow that was able to navigate the street. you wouldn't be able to drive more than a little bit before the way down conditions were such, you couldn't see in front of you and suddenly a car or another vehicle that had been stranded would be in front of you. and then that would have been out of action. they had to wait for the storm to less than a little bit before they could attack. and that proved to be a deadly combination as we're seeing now. you know, despite the preparations in the forecasting, and as you said, you are a veterans up there of wild winter weather still so many people die. people trapped in their cars, people stuck where they were. what is to explain to for that you know, that's a good question. we, there were driving bands, in fact, really before the snow began to fall. i can't speak to what was going through every

person's mind, but it's not hard to speculate that if you've lived here for a long time and you've heard about very bad storms, i think it's possible that some people thought it's not going to be that bad. it's not going to be the worst storm we ever had. then throw in the fact that it was christmas weekend and will naturally want to spend time with their loved ones with their families. and they might have thought, well, certainly i can just try a few miles to visit someone. the reality was you cut it in because cars began to get stuck so quickly. i think that that kind of had a chain reaction where you were stuck behind the car, then you were stuck and we've been hearing stories of people who not only couldn't move their car, could navigate the road, was snow, got so high, so quickly they couldn't even open their car doors it's. it's just unintelligible and hard to fathom how quickly and how hard this store. yeah. really snuck up on

people as seen, bruce and rach, assistant editor of buffalo news, stay warm, stay safe, stay dry. thanks very much for joining us. thank you. so much and let's turn to some other headlines making use right now. adam fox, the co leader of a plot to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmore, has been sent as a 16 years in prison. prosecutors described fox as the mastermind of the plan to object whitmire at gunpoint and 2020 presidential election in an attempt to stir up extremist sentiment. but he's 56 people have been killed in violence and south sudan fighting rutted on the weekend in july state. when members of the newer ethnic group attack members of a rival community, south korea's military has apologized for its failure to shoot down any of the north korean drones that crossed its border. recently was the 1st such incident in 5 years erased serious questions about souls?

air defenses and responds the country president says he's accelerating plans to create a special unit to deal with drones. attention increase on the korean peninsula. on the hunts south korean helicopters scoured the sky, the signs of north korean drones. authorities here say 5 crossed over the border on monday with one flying close to the capital. so now the military has been forced to say, sorry, after failing to shoot them down. when it would be terrific up, we'll look at been told, what are you day camino to with our military's lack of preparedness has caused great concern. yet what he put on shall get with the military will thoroughly check each troops detection and strike assets against the enemy's drone provocation on global poverty data, and actively employed detection devices to spot drones earlier talk and aggressively deploy strike assets, who's ada? would all treat pug isamena?

south korea's president yoon suk hee. all who his vow to take a ha the line on the north has used that moment to fast forward his plans telling a cabinet meeting and the military training on readiness has been insufficient for years. chilion, how can i true your we have a plan degree to military drone unit test with monitoring key military facilities and north korea who is socially dominant or j will advance the establishment of the drum unit as soon as possible. archer, children, uptown. gus will also introduce state of the arts still thrown strong and bolster or surveillance capabilities all. i'm shown cerio, ala english meta across the border. emp young, young leader, kim john own, is capping the year by meeting with key members of his rolling party, where he's hailed the countries growing economic and military power. the north,

his fire to record number of missiles in 2022, with his latest drone incidence, pouting. to growing concerns across the region, grant's foreign minister says his government is aiming to have a peace summit in place by the end of february surround the anniversary of the russian invasion. but meteor collabo said he didn't envisage russia. taking part in the summit. labor said russia must 1st face a war, crimes tribunal for his country would talk directly with moscow burning buildings, in fact, moot explosions are part of daily life for the people of eastern ukraine. but even as its assault rages on, russia has again signaled it's ready to negotiate. most boston you, no longer today, we're ready to discuss any acceptable solutions with all those involved in the process. it's them not us who are rejecting negotiations or, or you ukraine is pursuing its own peace initiative at

a virtual meeting of tea. 7 leaders. earlier this month, president vladimir lensky, outlined a 10 point so called peace formula to and the conflict in his country. his foreign minister wants to schedule a summit before the end of february. the idea of the piece formula is 2 fold on the one hand, are not to allow russia to manipulate the issue piece because they irregularly say that they are ready for negotiations, which is not true because everything they do on the battlefield proves to the opposite. ukraine is demanding guarantees from the world community on issues including nuclear and energy security and who supplies it wants the united nations to mediate. though the details are sketchy observer, see the initiative as an opportunity for children. my family or mom would have such a summit, offers ukraine the chance to bring to the table. even those states that have so far sought to remain neutral. but that see the global consequences of this war.

countries like china or india. yes, desirable, easier. the u. n. has reacted cautiously to ukraine's diplomatic push. it says it could only mediate if both sides make a specific request to secretary general antonio gutierrez, of. so p summit with both sides, not at the table. how that might work is what i asked our colleague roman gosh, sharing co from d w's russia desk. well, it is still not quite clear what exactly is meant. we can be sure that ukraine is negotiating with the united states about such a summit. western iowa allies of ukraine will probably also participate in the summit so in keeps eyes. i would say it should be a summit, or of more support for ukraine. ukraine would like to hear about more military military support, sending a weapons to ukraine,

and also about security guarantees. this is a key question for your crane from the very beginning. one aspect is that as far as i understand, at this point, ukraine is not ready to see russia on the negotiating table as well. the grant of the ukrainian foreign minister said that the 1st russia should be punished for what it has done. and i'm sure d, okay, by territories and ex territories, russia is absolutely not ready to do that. so it is not clear how russia would be part of that process piece process. but what we can consider at this moment is that this might be a beginning of over serious of negotiations. and at the end of the long process, i think it will take months, maybe even yes, there could be a solution. so we are talking either i would say rather about a start to a very long way. as you point out, it might be difficult to negotiate with your not negotiating with your enemy,

which briggs the question, how realistic is a negotiated outcome of this war? at least as things look right now at this stage, i would say it is extremely unrealistic because both sides drying or saying signaling that they are not ready to give up any of their maximum goals. for example, russia is saying that to negotiate, they would like to see no more western weapons delivered to ukraine. the western experts, military experts relieve ukraine and was his most important. russia insists on ukraine accepting the russian territorial gains. so the next territorial territory would be accepted as part of russia. this is a no go for ukraine, and i think noble for the western community and the russian former president meter images, mid video, once again said that the gold rushes go, remains and change of government in. and he hinted at occupying most of

ukraine. so president putting as well signaled we will continue our fight, so there is no, no much place for negotiations. it would be realistic when russia and ukraine both would be weakened by this war and we are not at this stage yet. roman contracts from d, w, or rush a desk with the latest. thanks very much. and now some more headlines for you right now. the russian president vladimir putin has signed a decrease banning oil exports. the countries that have imposed a price count on russian oil. the bank comes into effect in february and is that the last 5 months? western nations have set a price cap for russia petroleum products as they aim to limit moscow's ability to finance its war. and ukraine. members of kosovo, served minority have put up new vehicle road blocks and north. the country evolved

to 5 international demands to remove those already they are tension. may serbia and coastal have been on the rise for weeks. the serbian government accuses kosovo, trampling on the rights of a server minority christmas time. it's not just period of joy, but for those suffering from depression, their sense of isolation can feel even worse than usual. now in the capital, the belgian capital brussels. a new approach is being tried out to see if it help happy holidays aren't guaranteed. for many people. the city of brussels is trying to help with a pilot project, testing the effectiveness of treating depression with museum visits prescribed by a doctor. step on comp you on is one of the patients in the study. he's agreed to take us a long for this treatment session at one of the 5 participating museums. just the idea to, to go out to go outside and meet some other people and finger dr. esther is interesting point. he's chosen the sewer museum. is the

only museum that have never seen copy on says it doesn't really matter where you go as long as you get yourself out of the house. he thinks the prescription project is useful for patients like him. i forget my brother, m a n a and i see the wonders of the wonders of the world. combines therapist, dr. vansoluce, d. g at bergmann hospital is an enthusiastic participant in the project. one of 20 physicians taking part, but i think it's could be useful for everybody, but some didn't want to grow because they're shy to go outside or to, to, to, to leave, or the settings or where they leaves. but i most of personal and ah, interested half way through the pilot project now used as yay says other patients reactions are similar to that of different camp. young, the bushel fills in the ocean, positive emotion,

and of feels that he joined the normal community deputy brussels mayor dauphin huber, who's in charge of culture, proposed the 6 month study and arranged pre entry for patients and 3 guests. she hopes it will also help museum attendance, recover in the longer run covered so that the health factor was very in a, in a bad situation because a lot of people suffering and the culture cultural sector was also suffering. and so here you have this question of mental health and thinking both culture and health sector together for a very innovative and in the same time, very simple projects, helping the people to feel better. visiting brussels city museum spanish tourist. maria gomez carmona says she uses art therapy as self help. when i'm feeling bad or sad when of lacking a bad mood, i usually go to the prem, seeing the muddy. and it helps me deputy mayor who by says she hopes once the

project wraps up in march. the positive feedback she's already receiving will lead to wider adoption of this treatment to brighten spirits throughout belgium and beyond and whether suffering from depression or not. it can be tempting in winter to just curl up and stay home to keep warm, but it's not the case for giant panda's colder it gets the more active they are. their fur provides a natural protection against the cold, so they don't feel it as much. looking at pan to seared the quinlan giant pander research center in, in central china. and they are certainly rolling with the winter punches prevalence keeping warm as warm those panders away. the crop this all we have for you for now? ah,

with ah ah ah, it's the holiday season. let me. how do we take a close look at different christmas traditions all across the continent, a

. the 77 percent. next on d. w. ah, a new home in the arctic blue all are welcome and long european. no, we're visa require people come here for good salaries and breathtaking business. life in the arctic is hard and freezing cold. welcome to spits berrigan close up in 60 minutes on d. w. o, in you become a clue. pre kline aol already knows they're coming to

take talk with them about hackers and paralyzed me to your societies. computers than elsewhere you and governments that go crazy for your data. we explain how these technologies work, how they can go, what wilson for, and that's how they can also go terribly. watch it. now on youtube. it's the holiday season. merry christmas to all of you. from the 77 percent. my name is wendy. com. all right, let's get this. hi de, it started with christine or not. we are.