♪ >> this is dw foil an alleged plot to storm parliament and overthrow the government. in the biggest anti-terror operation decades, police arrest 25 germany's top prosecutor says the suspects intended to use force to install a minor aristocrat as the country's new leader. also coming up, china prepares to live with covid in a major

policy shift. beijing announces an easing of coronavirus restrictions nationwide with less mandatory pcr testing and home testing for those with symptoms. >> we are treating nature like a toilet, and altama lee we are committing suicide by proxy -- ultimately we are committing suicide by proxy. >> urging immediate action at a global summit to save biodiversity. ♪ >> to our beers on pbs in the united states and around the world, welcome. german authorities have foiled an alleged lot that aimed to topple the government in berlin by force. dozens of arrests were made in overnight rates that spanned the

nation. it targeted suspected supporters of a far right movement that rejects the legitimacy of the current german state. top federal prosecutors said the plotters intended to form a new term in army and install a minor aristocrat as the country's leader. >> is the biggest antiterrorism rate in germany for many years. on wednesday morning, some 3000 police raided 100 properties in several german states and arrested 25 people. all of them suspected members or supporters of the so-called reichsburger movement, their goal, a coup d'etat out in germany. they wanted to overthrow democracy. >> the suspects are united by their rejection of state institutions in germany. the arrested suspects believe conspiracy myths consisting of different narratives, from the reichsburger ideology as well as the q and on ideology.

>> the network was made up of both a political and a military group, according to german authorities. they plan to invade the german bundestag and use violence. germany's interior minister said the investigations provided a glimpse into the abyss of the terrorist threat from the reichsburger movement. who wouldn't agree on a day like today where there is one of the biggest raids against the far right efforts aimed at attacking our state, that polarization is on the rise and we have to defend our democracy every single day. >> if they had succeeded, this man was to become the new head of state. a descendant of an aristocratic family from eastern germany, he still uses a symbolic title of prince heinrich the 13th.

she would have been installed as the new justice minister, a member of the german parliament for the far right alternative for germany party into last year. she has since resumed working as a judge at the berlin court. efforts to remove her from her position because of her volvement with far right extremists failed earlier this year. but the court confirmed that she was released from her duties on wednesday. the reichsburger far right extremists, deeply antidemocratic movement, its members reject the german state and its democratic system and are prone to violence. german authorities estimate it consists of 20,000 people. between 15 and mid-2017 alone, more than 10,500 crimes are said to have been committed by so-called reichsburger. >> let's get more from benjamin,

who has been following this closely for us today. an alleged plot to overthrow the german government, how big was the real threat here? benjamin: it was definitely a big threat, and that is also what authority said today. this group started meeting back in november of last year. they had regular meetings, it was a political arm and also one in charge of weapons, in charge of getting people from security forces, from the police, to go together with his plan to overthrow the government. they even went into bundeswehr barracks to see where their own soldiers would be placed. they had individuals who would say that state positions as head of the new government or as justice ministers. that is something authorities repeated today by saying the threat was real, and if you look

at how the investigation started, it was indeed the connection between this group of the people that were arrested and wanted to kidnap germany's health minister, and that's where the investigation started. 25 people were detained and will now face justice. >> how have politicians and authorities reacted to the news? reporter: there have been two reactions on one side, praising the officers involved in the rates and also domestic intelligence and services that also conducted the investigation over the past month. on the other side, they're also showing how deep this goes into the problems that we are seeing and that many are saying german authorities have a blind eye on right wing extremism. the german president said the incident represents a new level

in extremist threats, something similar the government spokesperson said, pointing out plans of attacking and the armed assault of the bundesliga. >> the possibility of the growing threat of political violence, what more can you tell us about that? reporter: there have been some attacks in the past years, a murder of a conservative politician and another far right extremist that also did an attack, domestic intelligence services have been accused of having a blind eye when it comes to right wing extremism. the focus on islamism and left-wing extremism. that something the former minister said, that there has been an increase of cases and they should take this more seriously. what many are asking the government to do an intelligent

service is also when there's a structural problem, when we look at the armed, and that's a big problem of this reichsburger movement, many of those who are in this group do not accept the german order in the constitution. they also have access into classified information. that's where many see this reichsburger is especially dangerous and are taking this very carefully. >> benjamin, thank you. let's take a look now and some of the other stories making headlines around the world today. detained by security forces according to the national police, the detention came after he announced he would -- they

voted to replace him with the vice president. demonstrators opposed took to the streets. spanish officials say 28 miants let a plane in barcelona when it made an emergency landing after a pregnant woman apparently pretended to go into labor. the plane had been flying from morocco to turkey. police say they detained half the migrants and eight will be deported back to morocco. protesters across iran have taken to the streets again to demand regime change, at the same time workers and shopkeepers continued their strike for a third day. rights groups say the regime's forces have killed hundreds of people since the protests for regime -- regime change began in september after young woman died after being held by the morality police. a country has announced its most -- china has announced his significant easing of coronavirus restriction since the pandemic began three years

ago. the government said it would allow home quarantining in milder cases and that mandatory pcr testing would be reduced. the major policy shift comes in the wake of nationwide protest over strict covert rules and significant disruption to china's trade and economy. >> this painful routine for millions of chinese people is now finally changing. in a major shift in that strict covert policy, china has announced new relaxed rules. >> with the exception of nursing homes, hospitals, childcare centers and schools, roof of negative test results will no longer be required. >> people with mild symptoms are no longer required to quarantine and govnment facities. for travel withichina, there is no need to show a negative test result. and whole neighborhoods being

locked down due to just one covert infection, that, too, is a thing of the past. it's a result of residents being fed up after living under harsh rules. >> it was so boring when i was locked down at home earlier. >> our life has become less complicated now because we don't need negative covid test to enter office buildings. >> the frustration became visie in covid restrictions were blamed for a deadly fire at an apartment. that led to protests across china. people demanded an end to the zero covid policy and political freedom. the unrest has largely been quelled by the state, but it is not only public discontent, but growing economic pressure that has pushed china to ease the harshest covid restrictions

anywhere in the world. >> the focus on global health governance in china's council of foreign relations and i asked what he makes of the timing of this opening. >> the timing is very interesting, because just a few days ago, the government was still talking about optimizing zero covid approach. now with this announcement of new measures, it seems to make the way for loosening of all these measures that basically announce the end of zero covid. >> so the death of zero covid and the rise of covid-19, how do you expect infection numbers to evolve? >> accorng to the leading public health experts in china, during the reopening, they

expect an immediate increase of covid cases. some pointing to that in the first viral wave, were talking about 840 million people will be infected. >> and vacnation rates are pretty low in the country. is the chinese health care infrastructure strong enough to cope with what might be coming their way? >> this is the problem, this hasty move to reopening. we found that the health care system is not ready for handling this many cases by the hospitals , they are not investing much in expanding icu beds, and the vaccination rate, especially booster rates for the elderly,

ag80 and over are relatively low, only 40% of the people age 80 and over, we are about 21 billion people are actually under vaccinated. >> is this too hasty, is it all going too fast all of audde >> i think that is the problem. we loo at those measures, but they are just talking about relaxing those measures. it does not point to how to reopen. we expect the local governments to jump on the bandwagon of relaxing policy measures and that will create a situation that the government did not want to see. in fact that was the reason they argue for ilementing zero covid. >> do you think we will see another tightening of restrictions? >> even though they want to

tighten the measures, given they have alrdy abandoned mass pcr sting and are no longer going to require the proof of negative test results, there are n longer requiring the lockdown measures, but it will be very difficult for them to reverse that process. i think the genie is out of the bottle. >> we need to bear in mind this move comes after a remarkable series of protests in china. do you think people are more likely to resort to protests now, given their aarent success? >> i think the relaxation of zero covid policy itself is a response to the social protests,

two weeks ago, these efforts are intended to appease public opinion, sort of a preemptive strategy to prevent further social protests. so i expect that we are going to see the increase of cases, occasionally overwhelming the health care system, but i think this social protests that we saw approximaty 10 days, two weeks ago, probably will not be repeated in china. >> our global health expert, thank you so much for those insights. russia's invasion of ukraine has caused devastating loss of life.

but both sides have been secretive about just how many of their soldiers have died. civilian casualties are also impossible to state with any certainty. our next report looks at why this is. a quick warning to our viewers, this report contains images that may be disturbing to you. >> nine months of fighting, airstrikes, artillery battles and close content -- close combat in towns along a 900 kilometer long front line, leaving thousands dead, but how many thousands is unknown. russia stated it had lost under 6000 troops but ukraine receny said about 13,000 of its soldiers had died in the war, but the u.s. said its number of casualties is also more like 100,000. the u.s. uses a variety of methods to figure out that number, including satellite footage as well as social media images of the battlefield.

when the eu stated that 100,000 ukrainian soldiers had died, kyiv reacted with anger, saying such figures were classified, and that the government would release statistics when the time was right. eu later backtracked from that claim. meanwhile the low numbers russia has released seem to reassure the public that the war is not a catastrophe. the civilian death toll big question. the united nations most recent statistics, 7000 civilians dead. at the front line is too dangerous for observers to make a real count. many russian occupied areas like the city of mary a poll where mass graves have been photographed by satellites, may hold tens of thousands more, and russia is not leading international monitors into those areas. russia in general makes no

comment in the number of civilian casualties in ukraine. >> earlier i spoke to an advisor to the ukrainian foreign minister and asked why the ukrainian government is being so secretive about the real number of war casualties. >> first of all, thanks so much for having me. regarding th numbers, the ukrainian government is so secrete because the war is not over yet. we know from the experience of our teams that russia can manipulate the numbers. for now we do not want to disclose those numbers. we will do it when the war is ov, when we win, and the difference between the ukrainian and russian side is that we are going commemorate, we are going to glorify all our fallen

heroes, but in russia, they are not going to be glorified, their soldiers. the regime in russia doesn't want to disclose these fures because it is too dangerous for them because the numbers are too high. and obviously it's not 6000 people, as they say, it is much, much more. the killed russian soldiers is almost 90,000. they don't even take bodies from their battlefield, so it is a huge difference, what we do not want to do it. of course these figures might be very demoralizing for our people. we don't have any other choice except fighting, so for now, we have to keep the spirit and we have to fight to end this war. >> i do want to get your take on

the latest developments in the war, the strikes on russian airfields. what do you make of them? >> as far as i know, there no official confirmatio from ukraine, but again, it is not up to me to talk about this, mod people should talk about this. >> i do want to dig a little deeper, even though you're probably not going to tell me if this is a new part of ukraine's strategy in defending itself. antony blinken today emphasized that the u.s. neither encouraged nor enabled ukrainians to strike inside russia. he seems to be worried about these attacks. do you understand that? >> what exactly? >> word about strikes possibly

coming out of ukraine and being launched into russian territory. >> i think that ukraine is defending itself, and if we have a choice to destroy russian military facilities, russian aponry, then we should do it, obviously because this is a threat to us. i am in kyiv and i spent a few hours in the bomb shelter just because russia launched almost 100 missiles, and the targets were mostly civilian infrastructure. our power plants, they want to deprive us of electricity and water. and heat. and you can imagine how dangerous it is now when it is so cold outside. so russia is targeng civilians

because they cannot win on the battlefield. >> today russian president vladimir putin said he expects this war to be a lengthy process. what is your assessment of the situation, especially going into the cold winter months? >> as i said, we do not have another choice except fighting. we know it is a lengthy process. in rsia, from the beginning they called it a special militaryperation, and today he called it war. even in russia, they prepare their people for this understanding that there cannot be losses of special military operations, like any military operation it should have some time indicators, but here they

don't have any -- they finally started admitting that this is war. obviously for us ukrainians, it doesn't really matter how long it will take, because for us, it's a matter of our survival. so it doesn't matter if we have to fight three months or four months or even a year, just because this is about our lives. they want to kill us and destroy us here. >> she is an advisor to the ukrainian foreign minister privette we will have to leave it there. thank you so much for your time. you and secretary-general antonio guterres has urged governments to end what he calls and or g of destruction as a biodiversity summit kicks off in canada. he warned humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction and

then it must change course. the experts are calling the summit of final chance to save the world species of ecosystems as we know them. >> the reports of elephants and poached ivory in kenya, images serve as a visible reminder of the threat humans pose to animal and plant life. the climate crisis and pollution are also taking a big toll. one milliospecies are currently at risk of becoming extinct due to human activity. this not only threatens to degrade ecosystems early -- further, but also endangers our own welfare. >> we depend on diversity for the food we eat, the water we drink, the medicines we take. 70% of cancer drugs come from biodiversity or nature. >> the u.n. biodiversity

conference will focus on how to protect land and sea. the target is needed to prevent the colpse of ecosystems and human prosperity in the future. >> the biggest threat is human beings. unless our relationship with nature changes, the situation will continue to deteriorate. i am saying so because 97% of the global biodiversity is degraded if there is lack of human action. >> we need to take urgent measures to protect ourselves from ourselves, experts argue, but who will cover the costs? some emerging and developing countries tend to be particularly rich in biodiversity. but these countries argued that they lack the resources to expand their conservation efforts. th are demanding financial support from richer nations.

>> we don't want to see a target which has absolutely no hope of implementation. >> scientists say there is no time to lose. however, even an ambitious target can only be the beginning. none of the biodiversity objectives agreed at the 2010 meeting have been fully implemented by the global community. >> with that, you are up-to-date. but stick around, we will dig a little deeper. after a short break, i will be back to take you through "the day." hope to 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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for.com.- france >> these are our top headlines. a big freeze to the war in ukraine, vladimir putin says that the nuclear risk is rising, he insists that russia will not fire first. meanwhile, the u.n. reaffirm support for cave. -- for kyiv. the right burger group has said -- right