ah ah ah, this is dw news alive from berlin. the death toll from north america storm of the century goes up. and as americans dig their way out after holiday weekend blizzards, we look back at a year of extreme weather events that experts say are a sign of worsening climate change. a war of words between serbia and neighboring

cost of intensifies ethnic tensions are threatening to break out into open conflict . we'll have the details. and china ends as 0 coven policy. the people breathe a sigh of relief, but with her immunity still far off, dangerous from the virus remain. ah, i'm nick spicer. welcome to the program. it's been called the blizzard of the century. the snow storm battering the u. s. in canada and emergency has been declared for new york state, which is bearing the brunt of the storm. at least 50 people have died across the united states. snow has buried parts of buffalo, new york, and emergency crews are struggling to reach trapped residents. some of the dead have been found for vehicles and so banks. severe weather events are becoming

increasingly common. floods, fires, and extreme temperatures wreak havoc across the world and 2020 to $1.00 of the warmest years on record. places where cold is the norm are experiencing abnormal temperatures with devastating consequences. this is no rowdy ski holiday. it's a research station near the south pole and minus 11.8 degrees celsius was 40 degrees hotter than usual on march 18th. it's probably the largest temperature anomaly ever recorded. incredibly, at the same time at the north pole. some places were 30 degrees warmer than usual mountain glaciers, such as this one in the himalayas that feeds the mighty river ganges continued to shrink as india was hit by heat waves that came earlier and were longer and or hotter than usual. pakistan also swelter hd. a few weeks later,

both countries were hit by massive monsoon rains. one 3rd of pakistan was flooded, creating a huge humanitarian emergency. the floods destroyed farmland killed more than 1700 people and displaced more than 33000000. in my child died in the tab cold nights. we don't have anything to eat. my husband is unemployed and poor. my 2 children have died in the camps. do you think implement? west africa also suffered an unusually heavy rainy season with months of flooding in nigeria, displacing up to 2000000 people in east africa, the rains failed again, worsening the most severe drought and recent history. the un says 36000000 people are affected in somalia and parts of ethiopia and kenya with more than 5000000 children malnourished their sickly, most of the time they go to bed on an empty stomach about me. i just feel

terrible. and madagascar, the seasonal rains also failed. i. after 4 years of drought, the south of the island is facing a food crisis. in some places, residents of had to dig into the dry river bed to find water. 2022 also saw china suffer it's longest and harshest heat wave on record with the yangtze and other rivers reduced to mere trickles and many lakes turned into dust bowls. and for more on this let's talk to matthew capuchin. he's a meteorologist and atmospheric scientist based out of washington, d. c. matthew, good to have you back the, the blizzard of the century there, calling it has this storm in north america earned that title. and the most definitely has because it had so many different ads. it actually began to something called a bomb site loan, and he just rapidly intensifying low pressure system over the great lakes. the

cause a flash reason. east wide arctic side. you're eco parked across, sent to us that grow live it's nose and broad temperatures down to minus 40 celsius on the north. such us winds to probably 90 to 130 kilometers per hour. and then the 2nd back occur in buffalo. latex knows totally about a $150.00 or more centimeters in roughly $24.00 at least dead. and it's been, you know, that said a year full of extreme weather, as we've just seen in that report all over the world. is there even worse? you have to come to think so the questioner was asking is whether or not this particular event is tied to a human plan, a change when it comes to buffalo. so there are certain things we can link to climate change, certain things we can't change because weather course is sort of what you get in climate when you expect in the case what happened. buffalo, i think that, you know, if we were seeing more water temperatures in the great lakes and we would be saying yes, lightly, more snow fall and sort of more light effects knows what happened in buffalo though,

doesn't really bear that your brain because the water temperatures were normal and ice cover over the lake was normal. so buffalo probably not. and then said there are some things that will be made more stream things to climate change. a winter storm systems, more drought at times and do something called the classic relationship. basically, war air and hold more water, stronger hurricane and perhaps and like we said, bigger flood vents ultimately. and we were just looking earlier at a report about, you know, a warm weather in antarctica, in the arctic and, and the global events of climate change in 2022 is, is there much that humans can do to limit the damage to the climate that we've already cause to think so this will sound like a rather pessimistic answer, but unfortunately the time is kind of like a freight train that there are couple stable states. once you push her out of it, the earth will start accelerating towards a different stable state. so we're never counting place for

a while we started nudging or towards a hot house scenario. whether or not that we realized or means the see what humans should be doing is adapting in mitigating changing your infrastructure to be ready what's coming tomorrow. rather than building or infrastructure based on what was normal for today. ok, thank you. meter ologist and atmospheric scientists, matthew capuchin, washington dc. tensions are growing between the balkan states of serbia and kosovo with concerns about the possibility of armed conflict. breaking out, serbia has put its military on high alert and erected roadblocks along the border. casa o says serbia is preparing a pretext for a military operation. negotiations with the e. u and us are ongoing in a hope of avoiding renewed fighting in the balkans. vehicles blocked a route from kosovo to serbia. at the clubs living and not kosovo accused the government of discriminating against them and have barricaded the roads in protest

. the visa selby, as president says he is ever ready to defend them, realty, being sober, soliciting jones. i wish to inform you that we are indeed in a difficult situation, but we will give our utmost to preserve peace and stability. not only that, we will protect our people in the north, of course of austin. i will take all measures necessary to protect our national twins on monday. so we are put it's military on high alert. the interior minister with it of the troops and order of the fist and ready for combat. this, in spite of nato forces being in kosovo and calling to calm the situation. tensions are often high between the 2 countries, but this is the strange situation was triggered by crossville decision to scrap old license plates from serbia that come from prewar times.

local soaps saw that as an attack on their identity and autonomy, especially as the observer minority group making up only 6 percent of kosovo population. they protested enlarged numbers with other points. now the situation has worsened due to rumors that kosovo was planning an attack against its sub community crossovers. leaders say otherwise the whole world, the situation in the north of kosovo is becoming more and more serious and complicated wake either. the war mongering perform a fortune and his men installed in the north is crossing the red lines that the roy he must urgently draw his one from the north and ordered the removal of the barricades and had gone to the negotiating table or so. he could not challenge kosovo which is set for peace to relieve for our customer when sophia fought a war from 1998 to 1999,

after which constable unilaterally declared its independence. sylvia does not recognize that status until today. neither do sober living in crossover coming to the war in ukraine. now ukraine says it is ready to take part in an international summit to end the war. the, the foreign minister dimitra leave us as ukraine wants, a p summit within 2 months with un secretary general antonio gutierrez, acting as mediator coloma added. he doesn't think russia which invaded ukraine 10 months ago would take part the co leader of a plot to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmore has been sentenced to 16 years in prison. prosecutors described adam fox as the mastermind of the plan to abduct whitmore at gunpoint ahead of the 2020 presidential election. members of germany's coalition. government are debating when to declare an end to the pandemic

and dropped the last of the restrictions. public health officials say heard immunity may be close thanks to widespread vaccination and natural immunity. the german justice minister is calling for an end to all restriction, but the health minister has urged caution. meanwhile, china's pandemic restrictions are set to ease further, even though the country is far from her immunity and cases appear to be soaring. aging has announced its ending almost 3 years of border controls. on january the 8th, when coven 19 is downgraded to an infectious disease. but that may put the countries older and sick populations in particular danger. the end of visa restrictions for chinese wanting to travel abroad as spock to search in flight bookings from china. people there 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 army con variance is not as dangerous as 1st thought. thank you. we'll go you to fungal at the moment the pandemic response measures have entered a new phase in our country were faced by a new situation and new challenges. oh, jim, come 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 hasn't have cases or isolated in a centralized way. i've only got flooded or so we know anyone outside is clear what, what we need now is heard immunity to them. yeah. 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. so result of those developments. japan has announced it will require a negative coven 19 test, from visitors from china. the emergency measures come into effect on friday. earlier d, w spoke to molecular biologist, a manual wheeler. we asked him for his opinion on just how severe the coven situation really 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 the means. thousands, tens of thousands of people are going to die,

are experiencing disease digital also put extreme strain on like logistics on supply chains. so one of the things that we have to foresee is a lot of trucks are being made in china and luck of supply chain. this option of supply chains might also mean that we see and even more large, a 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 virus 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 immune s k, parents will emerge gcse what we have seen one year ago with the emergence of mac on baron in the south africa botswana. this is not the same situation as back then . so even though there is a threat that completely new version of source coming to can emerge from china

right now, this is not being generally considered as a major issue. and that's all the news for now. don't forget there's more to be found at our breaking news. we're app and on social media and the handle for instagram and twitter is at d. w. use nick spicer and berlin. thanks her watch. ah, [000:00:00;00] 3 ah christian with question about life, the universe and everything. do you know the answer?