the guts of this pandemic and we have. according or savant you just reportage clearly said that we regret this pandemic has been heavily politicized including such negation it negates in this rhetoric don't play off the severity of the situation by heads of state and government i mean reality not named anybody directly going to have a body knows who is. who is to be named and shamed but what can we actually do we have. worked on the commission to activate both of the us civil protection mechanism and other solidarity funding for a lesson america we have contributed financially to the codex initiative the commission has from the budget added 100000000 which is your budget $1000000000.00 plus european investment bank plus member states amounts to at all they're all aged to callbacks by the e.u. off $2200000000.00 euros and of course they're considered part of that we're going

to let in america and corporation amongst the states need to be improved and we can contribute because we know how to cooperate over the borders ok so there's the political i'm proud to call things that about the parliament can do or course to be done why don't you name the heads of state whose behavior you believe has contributed to this disaster in latin america. well at the debate the names have. several times. been named but well as everybody knows it was meant and it's not only in most of us narrow i mean the fact that the regime and men on sale are causes madura causes millions of refugees and 1800000 are in minutes we will come there the status of the protection status that. colombian government has issued to the refugees in from minutes and your so called torn

countries to next in a people for free regardless of their make rich restates so refugees must not be disregarded in inept in america when they are to be next in it i don't miss you of vaccinations with the supply of vaccines are here in europe picking up should we be perhaps sending doses to badly hit regions like latin america beyond just contributing to the kovacs. as soon as those is are available and capacity of the production capacity is there i would be very much in favor of that and everybody would support that but well as you rightly said in speaking of in europe every region is responsible for its own citizens 1st that is how things are. solidarity must be practiced. as soon and as wide as as necessary and possible. we thank you for joining us sir

thank you very much for that. from the european people's party. well i will take a look now at some of the other stories making headlines around the world will start in india which reported a new global record for daily care of the virus infections and some 380000 new cases hospitals are facing severe shortages of oxygen out of a medical supplies india plans to open fascination to all adults from saturday. police here in germany have detained a 51 year old woman on suspicion of killing 4 people at a hood and for the disabled in the city of potsdam here better than a 5th person was found serious injuries events and circumstances still to be established. china has successfully launched a rocket carrying a module for its 1st space station beijing hopes to complete the project by next year it will rival the only other continuously staffed facility orbiting the

international space station. now to russia where our position lead i like say the valley has appeared in public for the 1st time since the end he's nearly a month long hunger strike in jail the kremlin critic appeared via video link for illegal hearing on a slander case reporters inside the courtroom say he appears to have lost a significant amount of weight. straight to moscow than where we joined d.w. correspondent tilton welcome so talk us through. these court appearance. well he appeared in court today via video link which is actually something that he had requested a sensibly to take part in the trial in the appeal process today but he also used the opportunity to greet his wife who was actually in attendance and it gave us our 1st opportunity to really take a look at him after he began his hunger strike of earlier in the week it was

apparent to anybody taking a look at the video link that he had lost significant amount of weight by his own admission more than 10 kilograms and he also said that he's only able to take small portions of solid food basically saying that the prolonged effects of through the congress right make it impossible for him to eat large amounts now of course he was in court today as part of an appeal process against this slander conviction which was handed down against him earlier in the month and it's part of a kind of a broader campaign of legal pressure against him from moscow from the powers that be here in the russian capital now prosecutors took the opportunity of today's trial to actually bring new charges against him basically they choose him of forming an organization which goes against the rights of the russian population of the russian people now it's a new charge and that is actually comes in connection with his anti-corruption foundation and they found guilty well that would bring a fresh jail term on top of the one he's already serving at the moment yes that russian authorities have been tightening back grip. and corruption foundation

how has that been going today. well today in a separate trial which was also going on in a court here in moscow basically the his and a corruption foundation who was continuing to answer on the charge that is an extremist organization now this is something that the authorities here in moscow pursuing for a while now and if actually found guilty of being an extremist organization that would in effect ban the work of mystery of all these anti corruption foundation throughout the entire country now the pressure is really mounting in that aspect earlier in the week we saw a work stoppage ordered by courts here in moscow and it does seem that the foundation is despite what they previously said starting to buckle to a certain extent under this new pressure wave alina volkova who is a key ally of not only who works also with the foundation as well basically said that they were going to be forced to close all branch offices throughout the country saying that the current political atmosphere and this new wave of pressure

was making their work as opposition figures and as an opposition group basically impossible so while they initially said that they had all possible precautions prepared for it does seem that the organization is starting to buckle under the pressure to a certain extent and it might be a case that the damage is already done even if they haven't been declared extremist as of yet we here in the west the view elect is something goes as a sort of. a fighter for democracy how is he regarded in russia do people much care about what's happening to. well it's kind of an interesting question to answer because on the one hand around 20 percent of the population says that they support his action to support the actions of the anti corruption foundation and his opposition work there is slightly around 50 percent of the people who say they don't actually find him very sympathetic and they don't like what he's doing you know we in the west really kind of focus on him because he is an opposition figure he's one of the most prominent opposition figures here in russia but it would be

kind of a stretch to say he is the de facto opposition leader i mean that there is a large population of opposition parties here in russia some in the system some with out of the system election of ali is the most visible proponent of the opposition that being said after his poisoning last year and because of some of the demonstrations around him and now this jail sentence to be given you have noticed that his approval rating has started to crop up it's going up above 20 percent now it was below 5 percent certain parts last year but it would be a stretch to say that everyone supports him as the key leader of the opposition here in russia very interesting thank you for that out until to most. now here in germany the foreign minister heiko moss is visiting the afghan capital kabul 2 days before nato begins to withdraw troops he says germany remains committed to securing stability but talks between the tot about the afghan government to fold soaring many women fear the best hopes of

a better future therefore in jeopardy. makeup and hair styling are still tonic karim east passion the 24 year old discovered it here in the south in kabul the women working here are too young to have experienced the tyranny of taliban rule. but they worry that if the hard line islamists regain any power afghanistan's women will lose their hard won freedoms. of the fun and if we can be assured that we'll have peace in our people will be safe we do accept wearing the job but only on condition that women won't face restrictions that we will be able to work and study we don't want the old afghanistan i've never seen the taliban but i fear them. the saelens owner was born as a refugee in iran but she returned to her homeland to start a career. so for the home i didn't achieve what i have now easily i worked

very hard for it if the taliban really come to power and don't allow us to work i'll have no choice but to return to iran again and live as a migrant there's about a date on. 20 years after the u.s. led invasion ousted the taliban girls are in school women are in parliament government and business. but now the u.s. and nato are withdrawing their troops washington is pressing for a power sharing deal between the afghan government and the taliban activists want guarantees that the insurgents won't roll back the gains women have made. we keep on yelling and screaming and saying for got sakes at least do something with the talking about take some kind of fact some kind of assurance from them that you know or some sort of an. mc and isn't to be put in place in order to see that they are not going to be you know leaving that the road that they're supposed to be taking on their road to peace and the v.a.

thing from that. taliban control of afghanistan is greater than at any time in the past 2 decades the militants have outlined the freedoms women would retain if they came to power including work in certain professions but there is fear that after the last foreign troops leave no one will have the leverage to ensure they make good on any promises and women will once again be relegated to the margins of society. the former germany international footballer kristoff has been given a 10 month suspended sentence after admitting distributing child sexual abuse images he confessed to serving 18 illicit images and videos of a white south but denied another charge of possessing almost 300 files depicting abuse yourself and that's over my 47 appearances for the naacp. well tape he's now offered to turn several public awards including johnny's on to us next.

as if you're up to date i'll have more world news at the top of the hour up next here on d.w. british publishing house news asia after that.

scotland is out across from. maine possibly to. be joining the e.u. . is dividing the country. tyo family in the run up to the elections the debate is heating up. scotland's quest for independent. some displeasure of. 60 minutes on t.w.

. down the lowly. work people have to say 1st to us. that's why we listen to the stories reporter every weekend on d w. i was here when i arrived here i slept with 6 people in a room for the night similar it was hard as for. i even got white hair. learning the german language head nodding off this gets me and could help us to maybe to instruct let's say you want to do their story. and spur fighting and reliable information for margaret. india's coronavirus crisis i d w news special will look at the geraci situation and the impact of the triple

mutation on the country how can the rest of the wells how what can be done for the people and how can india bring the situation under control a special edition of d w news on the cover oh no virus crisis in india starts april 30th at 11 u.t.c. and d.-w. . this is due to other news coming up today india asserts another deadly record. more than 3600 people have died from colbert 19 in the last 24 was the highest ever death toll for any country during the prime suspect and brings us an update from the cup those deadly. blasts another blow to press freedom in hong kong a journalist convicted for hope watching the portrait of violent incidents the raised questions.

i'm british welcome to. join us the news from india continues to be bleak on thursday the country reported nearly 380000 cases and more than 3600 deaths from covert 19 the deadliest single day for any country battling the pandemic shortages of medical supplies continue including oxygen even though some hospitals in the capital delhi said they had enough stalks for at least one whole day on wednesday the government opened up a stray sions for 1000 vaccinations for anyone above the age of 18 some 11600000 people signed up for the new phase of vaccinations that gets underway over the weekend but the country is short on vaccines and only about 9 percent of india's population have so far received one shops here. with more on the situation in delhi . 4th quarter. number is the work to

pretty. supported with 20. now. many are now turning to twitter and instagram. beds and medicine but the death toll is rising that along even outside. element in the fight against. aids but already there often don't be affordability and availability of. wasted all of them out to everybody. yet to be even open for this. job back. a little not have enough to do but he is right now in addition to the indian

government has been i would manufacture the. private office and the above and the high upright bits of this concern that even the bending of the big. not everybody will be able to afford the job. to do. reporting from delhi but questions remain as to why the country is facing such a deluge of cases dr lancelot pinto is appalled monologist and epidemiologist working with covert operations in a mumbai hospital here he explains why he thinks india's current outbreak could have been much less severe i think we underestimated the magnitude of what we're seeing right now i think people are very short by the fact that the numbers decreased significantly in the month of december january i think it was a false sense of reassurance that if we had gone through all the festivals that we did at the end without expediency so just the worst was behind those and therefore we could do you know what i could be could be a little more liberal in the precautions that we take over the last year i think

that was a mistake in royal more humanitarian aid is arriving in india to help the country cope with the current outbreak 2 planes from russia. needed oxygen concentrator ventilators and medicines. are also on their way from the u.s. and other countries getting patients the oxygen they need to breathe remains a critical problem with reports of a fast growing black market for the vital commodity and with thousands of people dying from the. forty's or space. that is forcing them to conduct mosque cremations sometimes even in parks and parking lots. and you can keep trucking updates and more information on the evolving situation in india on our website e w dot com and on facebook and twitter.

free press advocates in hong kong are outraged after a court last week convicted a journalist for investigating an attack on pro-democracy protesters in 2019 bouche oil was found guilty of falsely obtaining information on license plates of alleged attackers involved in a violent incident in july 2900 unknown men dressed in white attacked pro-democracy protesters at the un long subway station police were accused of standing by and not intervening bows documentary on public broadcaster r t educate also used license plate numbers of some of the attack is to establish their connection to politically influential probe aging rule committees. journalism should not be a crime these people say. verdict last week sent shock waves through hong kong that day she became the 1st journalist

in a city to be convicted for an act of reporting. today is a very top thank you all journalists and all it all. to me personally. today it's not just the work on me or ruling on the person ruling on journalism in. power was investigating an incident during the city's pro-democracy protests in $29000.00. on july 21st a large gang of men in white shirts stormed into a metro station and the sort of people they believe to be protesters. the police were accused of deliberately failing to intervene during to mob attack they faced allegations of coalition with the thoughts which authorities denied they also denied alleged links between the assailants and hong kong representatives.

but both presents evidence of those links in her documentary hong kong connection on the evening of 721 a number of vehicles carrying white clad men appeared on from your street. connection made car license plate checks and found out several of the vehicles were registered names of representatives this fly since plate numbers are publicly assessable in hong kong and checking them was common practice among journalists until bar was charged full falsifying her request for the data and find the equivalent of $640.00 euros. many fear that last week's verdict amongst to a death sentence for investigative reporting in hong kong. for freedom of speech the press person for. the conviction also marks and other blow to the city's dwindling press freedom

which fell to 80th place in the latest global index a dramatic fall from 18th in 2002. in recent weeks authorities have vowed to probe what they call fake news that undermine national security. of these journalists and their supporters say they do not back down and will continue their work for as long as they can. on the line from hong kong. did you make false statements to obtain information from a vehicle for your documentary. absolutely a lot because like searching information on the coast has been a long time pretis in hong kong and i believe every journalist and hong kong has the same thing in the past 20 in the past 2 decades over the. 20 years

are journalists in hong kong a free to do studio database off to the coast for reporting and generalistic purpose and we have to fill up a form declare our purpose on making those as us do data which in crew legal proceedings. and cells or car and vehicle purpose and in parts we always chose our dovi coast transportation paths and we haven't we did not we never have an understanding that. journalists as a sing to doze data is a novel in hong kong so i give them fig that i am making false statements to doze information does that mean that you were targeted for reporting on an incident where police were accused of standing by and not intervening. well. i always talked to those who asked this question that i don't want to make

a guess on the intention of her teeth or making this and bossman and also this. in this new york fashion but we cannot the line that. attack on a 21st in 21000 has been a very controversial check to in hong kong and i'm the 1st journalists who has been arrested and charged by the police on making false statements for a particular s.s. to vehicle information so a lot of people concern in hong kong concerned about the intention of the police on making their arrests and also the justice department to decide to charge me on this incident. but we also have to look at the incident on a wider perspective that right after d n t extradition bill movement. government has tried to tighten up all as those 2 or pick information particularly on. containing sensitive information on the

excuse of. the excuse of boarding tossing to citizens and. of armed citizens so i guess is a very general rule. taken up country or all for generalists assets to public information how hard is a vow to work as a journalist in hong kong right now. i guess the situation's has worsened in the past 2 years 2 years ago over there and he extradition bill movement a lot of journalists has been facing has faced in. a lot of. violence from the authorities elected at the use of the use of bones or even what the most on journalists and then right after the movement. their 3rd the offered he has tried to find a definition of media representatives which limits. presence of

a freelance or independent journalist to cover protests at sports and when we are sort of saw a lot of media organizations they are facing some crackdown and even. from the tycoons or from the government and then we also saw the rate of daily wow is that human life has been a long time. so also my case and. i would describe that they has been a like a speeding up country over depravity them in hong kong we live a very private i mean but thank you so much for joining us from hong kong journalist barr troyer thank you. that's it for today there's more on our website did up with. a shout we'll leave it today with images of the launch of an unmanned space module by china it is set to become part of a prominent space station the company plans to complete by the end of 2022 are back

tomorrow. of our. the fight against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection in developing what does the latest research say. information and context the coronavirus update coming. on t w. e coli in. the country's economy grow kaminey its people and by meant when there are doers we

look at the bigger picture india a country that faces many challenges and people are striving to create a sustainable future clever projects from europe and again to. call. maybe it's a pill. or a spray. a liquid medicine. an easy and safe treatment to target some risk of 2. it would be given immediately after diagnosis ideally it's available over the counter in a pharmacy at cheaper antiviral tablet with bearable side affects. we have fraxinus we even have drugs that help with the most serious symptoms of coke at 19. in the hunt for drugs scientists are exploring many different treatments. but where are we

in the search for a pill. good question welcome to our coven 100 special i want to johnsonville and good to have you with us and wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just pop a pill in covert 19 would be nothing more than a nasty cold science is working on a variety of therapies but it's somewhat slow going. how do you switch off the coronavirus render it harmless german scientists co-write therapeutics set themselves this task a year ago 12 months later they seem to have achieved their goal. most drugs currently in development target mild cases of cold 1000 illnesses i. drug is special they designed to cure serious illnesses as well. and. their research and initial clinical tests which have been running for a few days were primarily financed by private investors and government funding from

the state of lower saxony. but now the company needs more funding. of course we want to be ready to meet market needs and our goal is to get the emergency approval by the end of the year. then we would have to produce in sufficient scale that we can supply patients with the necessary medication. currently the german government offers funding of $50000000.00 euros which is split between several companies. this compares with over 740000000 euros in funding for vaccine research. we need tens of thousands of volunteers for testing that's what costs a lot of money and where you simply need larger sums. when you vaccinate healthy people you need a lot more healthy people then when you are testing a drug that is targeted at the sick. and bike. recently however the

federal government appears to have rethought the issue and further funds have already been announced. we lost many many months because the financial resources were simply not available for the drug developers we can no longer afford to keep wasting time. kora therapeutics says it needs 50000000 euros to reach the emergency approval stage german government funds won't be enough for this so the biotech start up has been speaking to international investors. now antiviral treatments attack the virus and stop it multiplying but the virus doesn't fight fair using our own cells to reproduce and finding a treatment is difficult at the best of times let alone during a pandemic. so far the only antiviral drug approved for the treatment of covert 19 in germany is rendez severe studies show a 33 percent reduction in the duration of the illness. there are other treatments

being developed. american pharmaceutical giant marc is working on a similar drug called manu pair of air and pfizer has also started human tests on an antiviral drug. if the immune system overreacts in a later phase of the disease steroids such as dex a method zone come into play it's the cortisone the curbs the immune system in germany 2 decks of methods own is used in severe cases it is when the patient receives additional oxygen. there are also preparations for antibody treatment which helps prevent symptomatic infection the drugs from us pharma giant re general health former us president donald trump. antibodies are also found in the blood plasma of recovered covert 1000 patients there affected pan's on the severity of the illness and how long ago it was germany's public health body the robert cock institute says deployment in severe

cases is possible. yet i'm still going on is a senior id physician of the department of infectious diseases and respiratory meds since at university in berlin as a very good to have you with us especially because you are now offering the use of monoclonal antibodies in short in a b. or mab in the so-called map outpatient clinic in berlin what exactly does this therapy offer. well we offer treatment with one of the 2 a bale of mono antibody product and. mono clone a. tog a protein off the. 2 virus and they have a potential to prevent. the progression to cvo disease and symptoms and limit the progress in patients with mild to moderate

cold disease particularly we know that in those who have not developed yet. indigenous antibody response we know that there is potential that these patients benefit from this kind of therapy and who are these patients that are actually illegible to benefit from it is it available to everyone. well. there are some criteria which we look at too. and then the right patients. we look for patients who have a new positive test so we. need to. test p.c. our reside which is not order then 72 hours. to provide. that security that we only treat patients in the early course of infection. and

we look for certain risk factors in the patients. which are for example age or immuno. suppression for example are purely patients who are on to shimon therapy because of. the cancer. patients who are are going to transplant patients and therefore immunosuppression are candidates for the treat men and other patients for example who have received medication or just qadri took similar patients who suffer of aids are candida. people with down's syndrome are patients kidney. patients patients on chronic m.r. dilates those patients with obesity it with the.

elevated body mass index over 35 and you'll probably have to probably you probably need to go to your own g.p. and basically prove that you are one of those patients who who actually can get to this kind of treatment but could this therapy also help prevent an infection. well there are some. preliminary results showing that it could prevent infection but the results from randomized controlled trials are not published yet so we do not use it as a prevent shoot let's say as opposed to exposure prophylaxis when you assume infection so we so far only use it for patients with a provan infection in which we use their p.c. our results are not of course i have to remind you that we're all dreaming of

a simple cure as we said at the beginning of the program a pill a spray something like that to help us through infection how realistic is that notion. oh well of course that's what we are dream. so we do not agree have anything the clothes coming up closely for example just appear of course as the trials going on and we're looking for treatment options but so far there is no serious pill for example. which we can no hope to be the future easy treatment of the stigma and from the sharia to influence thank you so much. let's get back now to the root off our troubles and that of course is the virus and its variants time to hand over to eric. is it possible that the same variance arose

independently without travel in different places. the answer to this touches on one of my favorite evolutionary concepts called convergence and it's basically the idea that when different species face similar environmental pressures in different places then nature can come up with remarkably similar solutions to cope with them a good example of convergence is for instance the the protective spines that are embedded in the skin of both porcupines and hedgehogs the trait didn't arise just once in a common ancestor and then get passed down it evolved independently in both species because a spiny outside is clearly a good defense against predators if you're small and slow and just want to be left

in peace the ija leaves and then sets viral genomes also change constantly and it happens a lot faster than with animals because by iris is replicate so quickly and abundantly the vast majority of those changes will be neutral or even harmful but a tiny number of them will give a virus and advantage for example a mutated gene might change the spike proteins on its surface in ways that allow the virus to slip into cells more easily and because the source code be to genome is is actually pretty small the chances of specific identical mutations like that occurring in different places at different times. this is actually fairly high so we are seeing some of this sort of genetic convergence but because variants also collect many other highly individual mutations as they evolve

genetic sequencing still allows us to tell them apart. there is williams there and he'll be back again tomorrow to on some more of your questions just post them on our covert 19 you tube channel for now that's all for this edition of out a good night in special thanks for watching. scotland

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. this is the. u.s. president joe biden delivers his 1st speech to a joint session of congress this return to politics of international cooperation saying. also on the program. the government's climate change emissions targets threaten the future generations. brazil battles a 2nd wave of infections. as a variant 1st detected.