experience outstanding shopping and dining offers. enjoy your services. be our guest at friends, footboard cd managed by from bought lou. ah ah. this is news life from berlin. extreme weather winter weather continues to recover across united states and canada. this blizzard is the one for the ages. certainly it is the blizzard of the century, but more than 50 people dead, the governor of the state of new york warns more extreme weather conditions are on

the way. putting more snow and ukraine's foreign minister says, his government is aiming for peace summit by the end of february, without russia taking part. what chance does it have of succeeding? china and it's 0 coven policy. people there? breathed a sigh of relief, but with her immunity still a ways off. viruses dangers for me. ah, i mind bluecross, welcome to the program. severe winter weather has been pummeling parts of north america. authority say more than 50 people have died across the united states. new york has been especially hard hit, the area around buffalo in the western part of that u. s. state 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, bringing the region huge amounts of snowfall. now that is exactly what buffalo is

experiencing now, along with heavy winds and arctic cold. 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 collect, 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 was able to find a rental car. there was not many, but i was able to find one. so when a start back, hanniman and i guess back in buffalo, more heavy snowfall is forecast. emergency crews are racing to free. those trapped while they still can. a little while ago i spoke to bruce, andrea, she's the assistant managing editor of buffalo news, major newspaper in the region. it's the hardest part of united states. i asked him

how his city is coping thinks are still not good. the worst of the 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 on a heard of. i can tell you now that having lived through this past weekend, this storm that we're experiencing now is worse. yeah. and you are certainly folks not unaccustomed to crazy winter weather and just for our non m u. s. id is 50

inches, that would be $127.00 centimeters of snow. how have local authorities or in fact, i guess national and state authorities been responding, do you feel like buffalo's been getting the assistance it needs well we had 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 calling. 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. and 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 lessen 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 and 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 as well. certainly i can just try a few miles to visit someone. the reality was you couldn't. and 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 turn out some other headlines making news right now. adam fox, the co leader of a plot to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmore, has been sentenced. 16 years in prison, prosecutors described fox of the mastermind of the plan to death whitmore at gunpoint ahead of the 2020 presidential election in an attempt to stir up extremist sentiment. members of kosovo serv. minority. i put up new vehicle road blocks in the north of the country and also defied international demands to remove those that have already been placed. tension between serbia and kosovo, have been on the rise for weeks. serbian government accusers,

coast of trampling on the rights of its serbian minority. russian president vladimir putin assign a decree, banning oil exports to countries that have imposed a price cap on russian oil. the band comes into effect february in set last 5 months. western nations have put in a price cap, the russian petroleum products as they tried to limit moscow's ability to finance it's war. ukraine, ukraine's foreign minister says his government is aiming for peace summit. the end of february would be around the anniversary of the russian invasion by the metro calais, but said he didn't see russian russia taking part in the summit to labor said russia needs to 1st face war crimes tribunals before his country can, would directly talk 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 been, you know, we got to,

we're ready to discuss any acceptable solutions with all those involved in the process. it's them not us who are rejecting negotiations through ukraine is pursuing its own peace initiative at a virtual meeting of g 7 leaders earlier this month. president vladimir zalinski outlined a 10 point so called peace formula to end 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, not to allow russia to manipulate the issue of peace because they are regularly 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 food supplies. it wants the united nations to mediate. though the details are sketchy observer,

see the initiative as an opportunity for children, my phone or la more have such a summit, offers ukraine the chance to bring to the table, even though states that have so far sought to remain neutral. but that see the global consequences of this war. countries like china or india. yes is i of were e. b 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 quoterush. china's pandemic restrictions are set to ease further, even though the country is far from the hurt immunity, it needs and cases appear to be soaring. beijing as announced it's ending almost 3 years of border controls. on january 8th, a coven 19 gets downgraded to an infectious disease. however, that may put the countries old and sick populations in particular danger. the end of visa restrictions for chinese wanting to travel abroad, has smoke to serge and flight bookings,

from china. people that have 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 omicron variance is not as dangerous as 1st thought. dante will 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 with 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 boy, how's it if cases are isolated in a centralized way, not only got flooded or so we know anyone 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, 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. all the 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. earlier i spoke to molecular biologists, a manual wheeler asked him for his assessment on just how bad the cova situation is in china. so basically with the situation, 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 chains might also mean that we see and even more large or 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. and 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 immune s k, parents will emerge. this is what we are seen one year ago with the emergence of

mac on baron in the south african botswana. this is not the same situation as then . so even though there is a threat, the completely new version of source code to can emerge from china right now. this is not being generally considered as a major issue. i'll leave it there for you for now. more of course, as he w dot com at our breaking news ab and as always on social media, twitter and instagram at d. w. news. the we much more for you coming up. i'm way of the craft. thanks very much for watching. nico it is in germany to learn german pollution pinnacle. why not learn with him online, on your mobile and free the chef fee w e learning course eco's v.