♪ >> this is dw news coming to you live from berlin. former soccer star george radel wins -- george weah wins liberia's presidential vote. now liberia is set for its first democratic transition of power in decades. also coming up, italian prime minister paolo gentiloni sets march 4 as the date for a national election after the president is all parliament. we will get you the latest from rome. plus carnage in kabul, multiple

blasts rock the afghan capital, a suicide attack on a shiite cultural center killed dozens. and a portrait of an artist. we will look at an animated film called loving vincent. it is the story of the great painter vincent van gogh. 60,000 images were hand-painted in his distinctive style by 100 artists from around the globe. ♪ sarah: i am sarah harman. welcome to the show. former soccer star george weah has one library is presidential election -- won liberia's presidential election. supporters in the capital city of monrovia have been cheering for his victory. 51 numeral will be sworn in next

month in what will be the country's first democratic transition of power in more than 70 years. correspondent evelyn is in monrovia for us. why do you think people voted for him? >> the language said the campaign has been charged -- change from new government. that has been the start since the campaign, that they needed to change the unity of parties. there has been tribal just trouble for the vice president, so that is the underlying factor changed. sarah: what are the biggest challenges he will be facing as president? >> weah has a huge challenge ahead of him would only talk about youth unemployment and job creation. the country is challenged with the high youth rate unemployment and the property -- property.

over 80% of the population is below a dollar a day, so george weah's government will have this to crack. another thing with the poverty, which many believe, they have not been adequately able to address since 12 years. sarah: weah was a football star, play for italy. do you think he will succeed as a politician? >> he has not had experience in politics for the time he started. for football, people knew him from their. but others say, analysts say this could be tied around the people he puts in his government, the people in different positions and agencies who are going to make the work happened.

so they say it is possible he has a successful government, just depending on who he puts in what position. sarah: thank you, that is a reporter in liberia. -- our reporter in liberia. george weah grew up in a slum in the capital of monrovia. he went on to become a star soccer player for clubs in italy, france, and england. after retirement he got involved in liberia's politics, making his first bid for the presidency in 2005. he said election fraud cost him the race, but he did not give up. here is more. reporter: it was on football pitches like this were liberia's most famous son forged his reputation as a winner. george weah began breaking the mold in his early 20's when he left war-torn west african to score goals for europe's elite football clubs.

he never lost touch with home. >> from where i grew up, i came from his poor family -- i came from a poor family. i understand suffering because i have been through it. reporter: as well as winning at slough of team trophies, he was the first african to win the prestigious bell on door -- ballon d'or. after football he went to politics, tasting his first defeat in the 2005 presidential election. as a footballing superstar, standing out from the crowd came easily. a decade later his time had come. >> with another year under his authority, political victory in 2017. [applause] reporter: preparation that was marred when he chose the wife of ex-president and now convicted were criminal charles taylor as his running mate.

it triggers recommend -- allegations that taylor told the strings. liberians were desperate for work and did not seem to care. come polling day, weah was confident that his promise of prosperity was enough. >> i am not associate revolution. -- i am going to win. reporter: old habits die hard. now 51, george weah is watching the goals go in. but he keeps making history of his own, becoming the first liberian president to take power democratically since 1944. sarah: the italian government says the country will hold a general election on march 4 of next year. the president has dissolved parliament to make way for the vote. early prime minister paolo

gentiloni defended his record and say he was stay in office until a new government is in place. the election will be a three-way contest between gentility -- the democratic party, the populist five-star movement, and an alliance headed by former prime minister silvio berlusconi. let's go to philip in rome. parliament has been dissolved, a new election will be held in march. was this expected? reporter: yes, this is part of an orderly transition phase. the rough date of the dissolution of parliament had been announced some weeks ago. the date of march was already penciled in, and many calendars in particular, this was to avoid dragging out the legislature to the bitter end with the risk

that the government could lose confidence in parliament and therefore be in a weaker position for the caretaker role, particularly if -- and uneven or uncertain outcome of the election that the competing groups achieving roughly the same number of votes. sarah: what happens next? where do we go from here? philip: i think we will see a very likely election campaign in several months for italian politicians to offer their varying formulas to the electorate. there has been really an election campaign dragging on for many months now with the legislature moving towards its end, and today we are seeing populist, this -- populist promises from people like the

former prime minister and the five-star movement, universal wage for poor people in italy, other sort of sweeteners for the electorate. there are questions about to what extent the country could import these measures. matteo renzi responding, saying the country would be bankrupt if his rivals won. sarah: thank you very much. dozens have been killed in a suicide attack in kabul, the so-called islamic state claimed responsibility. multiple bombs shook a shia cultural center and a media outlet. 41 people were killed, dozens injured. security challenges continue to plague afghanistan, and there has been an uptick in i.s. attacks against shia targets in the country. reporter: they searched through

the rubble for signs of their loved ones. but after the force of the explosion, little is left behind inside a shiite social and cultural center. the bomb went off inside this building that is also home to an afghan news agency. >> when the explosion went off, we escaped from the room where we were working and went to the rooftop. we saw the smoke and flames coming from a basement. we went to help and see what was happening. the situation was very bad. reporter: students have been marking the anniversary of the soviet invasion of sunni majority afghanistan when the blast tore through the building. eyewitnesses described several explosions on the compound. >> while we were moving the

wounded to the hospital, a second explosion went off. a few minutes later, a third. reporter: the injured were brought to nearby hospitals, the several wounded taken in for surgery. >> i was there for a book reading. during the talk, there was a huge bang. smoke rose from inside the hall. my face was burning. i fell off my chair and sub stuff on the ground. the smoke was everywhere. i don't know what happened next. reporter: armed guards patrol the area where the explosions happened. the so-called islamic state has claimed responsibility for the attack. the afghan president called it

an unpardonable crime against humanity. he pledged to destroy terrorist groups. sarah: you are watching dw news. still to come on our program, priceless paintings by vincent van gogh brought to life for a new movie. we will take you behind the scenes to discover how the film loving vincent was made. but first china is spending 900 billion euros in the world's biggest infrastructure projects. you have been following for us. daniel: we are looking at the new silk, china's attempt to revive a 1000-year-old trade routes. they are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in railways, roads, and bridges across asia, africa, and europe. we are at the greek port of paramus. china's state-owned shipping logistics confirmed they spent

over 218 million euros on a majority stake in the port. they are due to poor in another 300 50 million euros in the next decade. for the greeks, chinese investment is paying off. telecom giants from china as well as america's companies are using this port as a gateway for products. port traffic volume is 20% years -- 20% of year on year. reporter: this is the port apparatus. -- of paraeus. freight volumes or four times what they used to be, and one of the two container peers is being extended. the plan to turn this into a gateway to europe is well underway. local executives are upbeat. so far this port is the only large private sector project taking headway in greece. >> this will be the first of the mediterranean houb -- hubs,

big distribution center and hopefully logistics center. this will be cargo. reporter: companies like sony and hewlett-packard ship their products from here to eastern europe. cosco has invested one billion euros in the container terminal. the passenger terminal is next on the agenda. already the largest in europe, it will get even bigger along with a massive facelift. old warehouses are also being converted. >> our target is to develop four and five star hotels that we do not have many in this municipality, and provide tourist services with other amusement areas, areas like restaurant cafeterias. reporter: they also want to

attract cruiseship passengers from china, and this port will be more than just a flying visit. they wanted to be home base for the luxury liners. big plans, but the unions are skeptical. they feared they are making contracts with subcontractors and working conditions will be undermined. >> it is an important questions and if necessary we will go on strike. we want long-term secure jobs. that is what we demand from him and from our government. reporter: as part of the deal with the greek government, he has to invest 300 million euros into the harbor in three years. the district around the harbor will also benefit. greece needs the economic stimulus the chinese hope their vision for the port will deliver. daniel: venezuela sits on top of the largest oil reserves, but a

plummeting crude price is changing that. skyhigh inflation this past year , hundreds of thousands of venezuelans are leaving the country and trying to make it elsewhere. some are cashing in with creative ideas. even that cannot hold them out of desperate straits. reporter: he is taking the bus not to work though. sadly his work is on the bus. he is selling money, useless money from venezuela. >> do you know when i can buy with this? nothing, gentlemen. having a job in venezuela is not enough to feed a family. reporter: the venezuelan salary is -- it does not by much. a pound of sugar cost twice as much. he left his country for neighboring colombia and is now panhandling on buses in bogota.

he explains the plight the local commuters hoping to start their hearts >>. i left my country with 2 million only bars. -- bolivars. they would only give me 20 pesos, so i decided to bring them here and give them away so people can give me whatever they feel in their hearts. i do it because i have a family. i have to do something to feed them. reporter: the concept works. he makes a few bucks every day and manages to send some money back home. meanwhile the crisis there affects the neighbors across the western border. columbia has its own economic problems, facing a large influx of migrants than they have ever seen before. >> there are a lot of people in the cities where there are issues with lack of logic, lack of schools, it is a challenge. you can imagine the population already has platforms accessing

basic services, now 600,000 more people arrived, it is very difficult. reporter: difficult but still better than in venezuela. for gutierrez, that is all that matters. daniel: the united nations is issuing a stark reminder of some of the horrors some children still face. sarah: such an important story. the u.n. is saying children who live in conflict zones around the world are being deliberately targeted and exposed to attacks. in a statement, the children's agency unicef called the step -- the skill of effects on children shopping. the agency said children were subject to rape, forced marriage , abduction, even used as human shields in conflicts from syria to myanmar and nigeria. karyn dwyer is with unicef and joins us now.

what is stunning is children have absolutely no protection in conflict zones. has the international community failed the children of the world? >> the international community but also those parties fighting wars with children who are on the front lines because the way wars are being fought, there is no safe place left for children in these countries, and that must change. sarah: how do we change it? >> first of all there are laws that say if peace fails, people go to war and start fighting, there are things they must do to protect civilians and children as you have seen, who are the most vulnerable and have special protections under the law. it is completely outrageous to use a child as a human shield, to turn a child into a soldier or force them into being a suicide bomber.

it is improper and outrageous to deny children food and medicine and use them as bargaining chips in a struggle. it is completely wrong the children and families in iraq and syria this year had the horrible choice of risking being shot by snipers as they escaped heisel -- isil in cities or being caught in explosive minefields and bombing coming against isil. they are caught in the middle, sometimes targeted, often with complete disregard for protecting them, so if parties go to war, they must do all they can do and obligations to protect families with children and especially children. sarah: thank you very much. here in germany, a major meeting of hackers is underway with mass

surveillance and data security among the key points of discussion. europe's biggest hacker collective, the chaos computer club, is hosting the congress, which is looking at the spread of fake news online. our reporter nina is that that congress. she spoke to one of the organizers of the event. reporter: i am now joined by one of the speakers of the chaos computer club. there has been a lot of talk about fake news. it is a topic in some of the panels here. what is your reaction to the term fake news? >> for us the term does not really fit into the topic because we are talking about news that are wrong, so somehow this is mismatched, and this is nothing that is new, because we have seen that in the past. we know that even classic media

produce raw news in the past, and the only difference is that more and more people are producing those news because the users of the internet are now participants in the news in spreading those information. reporter: what are some of the concrete measures you impose and can be used to counteract the dissemination? >> we talked about how to field the news and understand the news and to question information we actually read on the newspaper or whatever. we have to learn to view that on the internet. something to learn is if information flows around the internet faster, we have to just learn as a society to work with those informations to detect and eliminate wrong information. reporter: if you look into the future, what are some of the topics that you as a club will be dealing with?

>> we actually have been dealing with privacy concerns and like information security content in the past. we will be working on those topics as well, because we see that things, those topics are growing and getting more important. we have seen attacks like wannacry in the last year or this year, and we have to work on those topics because those should concern everyone out there. we have to understand as a society that we cannot depend on computer server systems too much. reporter: thank you very much. sarah: when vincent van gogh died at the age of 37, he was unknown to the art world. since then his paintings and his unhappy life have fascinated the world. now an animated film like no other is bringing the tortured artist to life again. we have a report now on loving

vincent and taking you behind the scenes. >> it is late. i wish you a good night and good luck, with a handshake and love, yours, vincent. reporter: the story of vincent van gogh's life told with the help of his own pictures. this reduction is one-of-a-kind. a movie painted in oil with real actors, the true challenge. >> since we worked with the blue screens most of the time, i had to know what the space around looked like in the painting and how i should move in it. reporter: a crime story that seeks to shine a light on the mysterious circumstances of his death and to explain his character with the help of his work. reporter: he was very lonely as a human and artist, despite having a very good friend in his younger brother who understood

him well. but he was still only, and that made him very sad. he felt underappreciated. reporter: immersing oneself into the world of the great painter with the help of high-end consumer -- computer software. with the real vincent have appreciated this? the production took four years and consists of more than 60,000 oil paintings, 12 individual paintings for each second. and this is where they were made . more than 100 painters from all over the world later re-created every scene that was shot on campus. >> right now i am painting the scene with the policeman. i use a projector to put the outline on my campus, then i compare it with my painting. i also have a tool to track my hand movements.

reporter: working on thousands of paintings for months takes its toll. >> with scenes that don't have a lot of movement, you basically drop the same picture over and over again. sometimes i had to go out for fresh air or to scream and release my emotions. reporter: by the way, some of these oil paintings are going to be auctioned off, but the complete artwork can only be seen in cinema. sarah: a reminder of our top stories is our. results show that the soccer superstar george weah haswon liberia -- has won liberia's presidential election. the official results are due to be released tomorrow. and the italian president has

dissolved the country's parliament. he signed the decree after meeting with prime minister paolo gentiloni. a short time later they sent march 4 as the day for the new national elections. that is your news at this hour. from our team, thanks for spending part of your day with us. we hope you join us at the top of the hour for more. see you then. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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