♪ >> this is dw news, live from berlin. britain's king charles arrives in his first state visit as monarch. he was welcomed at the brandenburg gate here in berlin. the three-day trip is a post brexit opportunity to rebuild relations. ahead of the un's nuclear watchdog visit to ukraine power

station for the second time, he still hopes a deal can be done to protect the plant which has been captured by invading russian forces. so that's our program. let's see how much we can get through this. welcome to the program. king charles has arrived in berlin on his first overseas visit since becoming british monarch. but it was meant to be the second stop of his european visit, last week's trip was canceled following days of

street protest over the french governments planned pension reforms. the king and his wife, camilla, the queen consort, will be in germany for three days. tonight they been attending estate banquet -- a state banquet. clearly that's not going to happen. let's try this one. an open letter. so what should we do next? >> it's the first time the landmark has provided a backdrop for receiving a state guest. on his first official state visit abroad as britain's monarch, king charles is hoping to improve uk's strained relations with the european union post brexit and show he can win hearts and minds abroad, just as his mother did for seven decades. at his residence, the german president praised relations

between the two countries. today, six years to the day after britain began the process of leaving the european union, we are opening a new chapter in our relationship. together as friends and partners, we are now looking forward. the german president also praised charles long interest in environmental causes, a topic that will determine the agenda for the three-day visit. >> our correspondent has been following the king's visit. how political is this trip? >> i think it is safe to say that this is british soft power at its finest. it is not unusual for the u.k. to use the royals as a form of diplomacy, really. if you look at the past, in 1964, queen elizabeth actually made her first state visit to

germany, and that was seen as a sort of, it marked the beginning of conciliation between the two countries following the two wars. i think we can see a similar theme going on here, after years of dispute over brexit, finally we have now reached the end of a long line. i think now is the time or marks the time where we open a new chapter, and it is marked by the king's visit to germany. >> so three days of sightseeing here in germany. what is on his agenda? >> today he was greeted at the brandenburg gate, where he obviously was greeted with a big military ceremony with full military honors, which is quite unusual. i think tomorrow will be the center of the visit because that will be a really big day.

he starts off meeting with chancellor olaf scholz. he will then hold a speech in the bundestag. i think that is really interesting, because his late father -- it's quite interesting to see how well he holds up. >> we will be marking him for his conjugation as he goes along. >> i think they're quite popular. if you look at the polls, over 50% of germans say they are fans of the royals. i think it has many reasons. in a way they love the glitz and glamour and gloss that comes with the royal family. i don't think a day goes by when there is not a picture of the royals on the front pages. there are also historical ties. the connection has gone through

generations in a way. like i said, the queens husband philip spoke german, and charles speaks german, so there is a continuous connection. basically, there is that connection, and some of the reasons for why they are so popular here. >> our correspondent, thank you. russia says it has shot down a long-range rocket fired by the u.s. to ukraine. it confirmed it was the first time moscow downed one, it follows a long way to delivery of western battle tanks to the ukraine from germany and the u.k. so far kyiv forces have had to

rely on -- >> these men are farmers from the south. now they belong to the most feared units on the battlefield. this soviet era tank takes three men to operate, and driven at speeds of up to 80 kilometers an hour. the gunner says the tanks scare the enemy. >> i will tell you this, as soon as they see from the drones how the tanks are coming, they forget about the infantry, about everything. so they are afraid. >> but the tanks need a lot of attention. this one is more than a decade older, and it shows. >> if the tank is on really uneven ground, it is often this part of the track that breaks and needs to be replaced. every now and again we also have to tighten the tracks. >> these tanks may be old and

worn down, but they are easy to repair if the men can get the spare parts. they often find them on the battlefield. >> yes, many russian parts fit our vehicles. we often dismantle russian tanks for spare parts. the undercarriage is suitable, but often we find parts for the engine. >> at the start of the war, the ukrainian seem to be facing a superior tank force, but the russians deployed those tanks often in a very risky way without adequate protection from infantry or fighting vehicles. the ukrainians were able to take out and capture close to 2000 of those tanks, but they are saying now if they are to have a chance of taking back territory, they will need a significant upgrade themselves. >> the men here are waiting for better tanks to arrive from

friendly countries. >> the new ones are more maneuverable. they have other equipment. thermal sites, rangefinders. the crew is more protected. the ammunition capsule is placed at the back. when they shoot, the capsule flies out, but we don't. in our old tanks, we are sitting on a powder keg. >> what he is actually sitting on is this. all the tanks ammunition. that can go horribly wrong when an old tank like this takes a direct hit. tanks are seen as the key to a successful ukrainian counteroffensive. the more old tanks that are

destroyed, the greater the appetite for new, better ones. >> the head of the un's nuclear watchdog says he still has hope that a deal to protect ukraine's zaporizhzhia power plant can be reached. it is now controlled by russian invaders and the international atomic energy agency's director general has been pushing for security around the plant to be increased to prevent a nuclear accident. he said this was likely to involve -- rather than a physical buffer. let's join our military and security analyst in london. welcome back to dw. what are the risks around zaporizhzhia that he is trying to avoid? >> it seems there has been a bit of fighting around the station

recently, and there is concern that the area can become more vulnerable. therefore it is very important to in some way isolated from the fight, but it is very difficult, you don't have a neutral force to stop any kind of advances. i think that simply to have rules hoping the other side will enforce them is going to be tricky. but it's very good to highlight the risks and the dangers of some kind of accident or some kind of attack that would cause really massive sort of casualties if there is a leak or an explosion. >> so if we turn our attention to the fighting in the east of the country, the head of the russian mercenary group said the battle around bakhmut has

damaged his forces. what does that mean in terms of russia's ability to take or hold it? >> what he said was that waggoner had also degraded very much ukrainian armed forces. in the process of achieving that, the forces have suffered. i think that is an admission that the role has been very difficult and it has not been easy to take this city, but the reports that are coming out the last few days is that the wagner forces have taken 65% of the town of bakhmut. the other reports from the british defense ministry say that some areas are still quite -- it's clear the situation from the ukrainian perspective is

still difficult. the wagner forces have been the ones who have managed to at least advance. it's not a lot of territory they have taken, but they have managed to capture a neighboring city and also bakhmut. if they take the entire city they could advance further westward and to the northwest, to areas -- they have played an important role. overall the performance of the russian forces has not been as successful as expected, but they have been better than the rest. >> so the battle for bakhmut, this sounds like is just going to grind on and on until one side or the other just gives up or runs out of soldiers or bullets. >> i think that very much will

depend on what ukrainians are planning in terms of the counteroffensive. part of the argument for fighting in bakhmut was to degrade the ability of the russian armed forces to continue fighting and to lace strong resistance in a counteroffensive by ukraine. so i think that we shouldn't see it only as a battle over the city, but also an effort by ukrainians to really degrade the russian armed forces. the same applies for the russians, they are trying also to degrade ukrainian armed forces. if the ukrainian general staff is thinking that the job of degrading the armed forces of russia, a lot of it has been achieved, they might just withdraw in order to then effectively, more effectively carry out a counteroffensive.

so i think we should see this now in the process of the preparations that ukrainians are carrying out, in order to carry out this sort of expected counteroffensive which would happen in the next months. >> thank you so much for that. the jury of the rural press photo contest has announced its four winners. many of the images reflect the reality of the war in ukraine. they were taken in march after russian forces invaded the country in february of last year. they document the atrocities from may. one of the photos of a heavily pregnant woman following the strike of a maternity hospital has become one of the defining images of that war. the regional winner of the world press photo contest talked to us

about the story behind that iconic picture. >> thank you so much. thank you for inviting me to tell the story of what's happening in ukraine, what's happened before, and actually the story which we passed in mario poll -- m a year agoariupol these events, you definitely cannot forget. you want to forget, but the photographs and videos you are taking, we will try to forget, but it is so difficult and so impossible. but the photographs will always

remind us that what happened there -- this particular picture we are talking about, the 32 year old injured pregnant woman was carried by the rescue workers on that blanket, they rushed to take her to the ambulance, because she was in that condition that she might get first aid if possible. she had a big wound to her body. you cannot see in the picture but it was huge. unfortunately, she and her baby

did not survive. the doctors tried to do their best. they reported to us that they did not survive. i spoke to her husband, and he told me that he was searching for her in a disparate hospital -- a different hospital, in more, looking at different bodies trying to find her. in hospital number two, he found her. and they buried her with her neighbors in a cemetery during the shelling. nowadays he is trying as well to forget what's happened, trying to build a new life abroad.

unfortunately, this image, i think it was really important to show, because the russian propaganda and the russian officials claim that they bombed the hospital with no people in it. that there were no patients. but when we showed the pictures, there were pregnant ladies, and reported that three people had been killed during this attack. we saw and heard by our own eyes how the russian jet through multiple bombs on the city and hit the maternity ward at the

university. it was so important to show the society what russia is doing against civilians. >> that was the regional winner of the world press photo contest. here's a look at some more stories making headlines around the world. ukraine's president zelenskyy has invited china's xi jinping to visit. the invitation comes after the chinese leader met vladimir putin in moscow on what president xi called a peace mission last week. fifa has stripped russia of the right to host the world cup, following a statement where he declared his rejection of the participation in the tournament to israel. he is also considering further

sanctions against the indonesian federation. washington has condemned the decision by myanmar's government to dissolve former leader aung san suu kyi clinical party. -- political party. she had led the party to a landslide victory in 2020 and was ousted in a coup. the vatican says pope francis has been diagnosed with a respiratory infection and will remain in hospital for a few days. a spokesperson said the 86 year old was admitted to the hospital after complaining of breathing difficulties. an open letter signed by elon musk is calling for a pause on the development of more powerful artificial intelligence systems, citing risks to society and

humanity. his tesla is currently using a i-4 at self-driving cars but he is raised security concerns about ai along with experts and industry leaders. the letter calls on developers working on systems to pause their work for six months to make time for safety protocols. to prevent potential economic disruptions. so what might that look like? >> it would be quite wise to slow down the deployment of ai, and i think that is sort of what they are talking about. it goes counter to the very principle of open ai, releasing something and allowing the public to get acquainted with it , to become aware of ai and to use it and get an understanding of what it does.

and at the same time, not unleashing this in such a way that it becomes an uncontrollable lab experiment on the world population as it is. every time you feed a query into artificial intelligence like this, you're actually helping it get stronger, get more intelligent. so maybe they are saying we need to roll this back. they don't want to have more powerful artificial intelligence systems commonplace, and they want to have government bodies, they want to have educational institutions get on the right page, to get up to speed with this artificial intelligence. i really do feel if i'm allowed to editorialize a little, to read between the lines because it is quite vague, this letter. they're asking for outside help. they are saying we have unleashed something here that perhaps we shouldn't have. they are saying we need to slow this down somewhat, even though

the genie is very much out of the bottle. >> now tuning citing breakthrough by scientists led by the university of cambridge. an efficient way of harnessing power from photo sim at this. a powerful chemical reaction occurs in plants. research published in the journal nature seca one day become an important source of clean energy. -- say it could one day become an important source of clean energy. >> there is an explosion of energy, like the source of a river. extracting the energy at this stage has proven impossible so far, until researchers tried lasers. >> we shined it directly into a living cell. the rays are flash a million billion times faster. >> it lets them see what happens

at the start of photosynthesis in useful detail for the first time. he gave researchers a target. once captured, electrons were chaperoned out as shown here by the white dots. >> you cannot get better efficiency than taking it right at the beginning. because we are taking it right from the beginning we can reach maximum efficiency. >> a dinner plate sized amount of the bacteria -- this kind of efficiency is helped by how good plants are at soaking up sunlight. plants absorb 100% of light from the visible spectrum of the sun. compare that to solar panels which absorb nearly one third less. the way plants get energy from the sun is through photosynthesis. in photosynthesis, plants take carbon dioxide from the air along with water with the help

of sunlight and chlorophyll, turn it into sugar and oxygen. these in products mean the chemical reaction forms the basis of most life on earth. plants use the energy they capture for functions like growing, moving towards or away from sunlight, or for distributing nutrients around their stem, stocks, and leaves. not all of the energy absorbed issues, so scientists say the electrons taken from the plants are spared. >> the next challenge is to design agents by which we can move that electron to-- >> he could look like solar panels are a brewery. >> britain's king charles is in berlin on his first overseas visit since becoming monarch. he and his wife camilla were welcomed with full military honors by the german president

at the brandenburg gate. the king had originally planned to visit france over the weekend, but that was postponed due to ongoing strikes there. up next on dw, we speak to the mold open foreign minister and from minister. i will be back at the top of the hour. have a good day. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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>> welcome to "live from paris," world news analysis from france 24. france and switzerland face european court of human rights for their alleged failings to protect the environment. it is the first timeovernments are responsible for environmental protections. a demonstration in the west of france, there's a claim law enforcement delayed the