trade may also refuted a u.s. accusations that the u.k. is trying to cherry pick the most favorable of its rules whilst dropping the ones they don't like the e.u.'s chief negotiator says he welcomes the carrot from the prime minister. bangladesh's told me on march withdraw its troops from the order an area widely referred to as no man's land where thousands of rangar are seeking refuge myanmar's been telling the refugees to leave the area for weeks and since thursday troop numbers that have multiplied and politicians in italy and making their final pitch to win over voters ahead of this weekend's parliamentary election before polls were blacked out two weeks ago pollsters predicted a hung parliament with former prime minister silvio berlusconi's alliance of center right groups expected to and much as the largest bloc with not enough seats to govern alone were up to date with all of our top stories up front is coming up next on al-jazeera i'll be back with more news at the top of the next hour in about

twenty five minutes time and of course as always our web site which is there dot com. it's coming up to nearly six months since puerto rico was battered by hurricane maria nearly half a million americans there are still without power and reported suicides have jumped more than fifty percent has president donald trump abandon the island one of his biggest critics mayor of san juan come and. also on the show jacob zuma was forced to stand down as president of south africa last month i'll talk to his nemesis the anti corruption czar. about his fall from power and the future of the a.n.c.

. common union crew thanks for joining me front it's been five months since hurricane maria devastated the u.s. territory of puerto rico where you are the mayor of the capital city san juan right now what in your view is the single biggest challenge for people living on the island how bad is the situation there still. first of all mary thank you very much for the opportunity to continue to other viewers in the united states and around the world right now the aftermath of medea has if that had to summarize it has contributed to our social melt them suicide rates have gone up crime is at the same level that it was before madiao which just was at

a high level still about thirty percent of the population does not have any electricity we have towns in the inner side of the island that have no electricity whatsoever and the reconstruction and transformation of puerto rico does not seem to get off the ground we have been granted four point nine billion dollars in a loan by the government of the united states we haven't gotten one single cent of that loan so we are looking at in the next months a deepening of a social crisis that was there before madiao vote but that definitely was widened and much more aggressive after an idea you said you said at the start thank you for the opportunity to update the world and u.s. view is do you feel in puerto rico that you've been abandoned by the world

abandoned by the u.s. because you're not a u.s. state but you are unincorporated u.s. territory the three point five million people who live there all u.s. citizens do you feel abandoned by the u.s. government how would you judge the current u.s. government response to this social meltdown in puerto rico. of the u.s. government response has been inadequate has been inefficient and has been inappropriate and there has been some people in the champ administration that have been. but i would say honest enough that they have admitted to that but the american people have been very upfront have been very open hearted and the world so you we have to make a very big differentiation it in the trump administration which will now say that they are dumping millions of dollars in puerto rico and what we want to make sure the american people know is that we haven't received that money that transformation has not taken place as u.s.

government agencies and institutions were widely criticized for their handling of puerto rico's crisis a un rights expert even said quote we can't fail to know the dissimilar urgency and priority given to the emergency response in puerto rico compared to the u.s. states affected by hurricanes in recent months do you believe puerto rico was treated differently unfairly and if so why. most of the and it's not only my believe but it's a widespread belief of the people of puerto rico i think probably it had to do a lot of it off because of ignorance it was also an issue of putting standard operating procedures into a different circumstance and not being able to and that and overcome that that was one thing too when that happened there was a stubborn streak in the trial by administration lead of by president trump himself that everything was ok this was a good news story and they continued to do everything they could in order to ensure

that this was a good news story there were even some e-mails written by the pentagon stating that we continue to have a lot of difficulty making sure that this story is perceived as a good news story and they even name me as one of the reasons why they weren't able to produce that just sticking with the to relief effort do you think texas louisiana florida got more help from the u.s. government from the federal government more attention. from the u.s. media in the why do u.s. public than the people of puerto rico because puerto ricans a lot in there in the caribbean the residents of a former colony didn't prejudice played a role racism even when we are a colony of the united states when there are all the decisions that are important to you are made by the congress of the united states. i wish i didn't have to say this because it is a very strong one we are a colony of the united states i wonder what motivation do you say will president

trump and his colleagues look at puerto rico all they look at puerto ricans as a different type of people to the people who live in florida texas louisiana that's what i'm wondering is your view. most definitely and the botched effort and their continued strategy of saying we're doing a great shop is there look right now. and i'll use the municipality of san juan we use twenty one million dollars of the ministry of san juan in order to ensure that we were prepared for both eritreans burma and we still have not gotten eleven point two million dollars reimbursement back from philly this is the largest municipality in puerto rico this is repeating itself throughout the entire island nation of puerto rico and what that does is that it hinders the municipality the city's ability to provide essential services like medicine providing medicine to

people just to be clear that and to clarify you're saying that the u.s. government's botched response what you call botched response to hurricane maria and the situation where rico was affected by racism on the part of the trumpet of inspiration towards puerto rico and it could be affected by raising it could be affected by ignorance it could be effective by the inability to adapt the standard operating procedures because there was no sense of urgency and there still seems to be. no sense of urgency if you approve a four point nine billion. loan in november and you still haven't given a one cent for the recovery there's no sense of urgency that after you publicly criticize the u.s. government relief effort president donald trump attacked you on twitter and suggested you were a politically motivated in great with poor leadership you responded by calling him unfit to lead why do you think he came off to you personally like that were you surprised to see those tweets now but you know that that's where the president

deals with people that tell the truth and this is not about me this is not about the president of the united states we happen to have the cameras in front of us so we had an opportunity and he had an opportunity to leave he had an opportunity to say look we haven't done what is right we haven't done enough but then he decided to grade himself in a given self a ten out of a ten i've said this and i will continue to say it if you are a leader and you grade yourself in a humanitarian crises and you are utterly satisfied while five months into it thirty percent of the puerto rican population still does not have electricity and i mean you need to regrade so clearly president trump has issues with honesty and ego but you produced some pretty inflammatory language in the aftermath of the hurrican you suggested that the federal government's failure to provide food water and the rest could amount to quote genocide looking back now that was an absurd thing to

say was it not and now it was not of your report of anything that you think the problem is that it was deliberately trying to kill the going to puerto rico and you . that's what a genocide is the deliberate killing of i think that what they did. believe me i know what a genocide is and to hold myself properly what i said that it would amount to almost something similar to genocide and i would still say that five hundred thousand people have left for the recall thirty percent of our population we don't want electricity to have air conditioning we want elevators city to be able to operate in hospitals without having to use the lights in our cell phones we want to electricity to be able to have our children goes for on a normal day and not on a part time basis as we're doing right that we want our tricity to be able to jumpstart our economy to depend less on what we are given and to do more on to ourselves even before the hurricane hit puerto rico was in the midst of

a major financial crisis the hoff the population lived under the poverty line the unemployment rate tripled out of the u.s. the island was seventy three billion dollars in debt it declared bankruptcy last summer before becoming mayor of san juan yourself served in puerto rico house of representatives for four years how much responsibility should be islands political class yourself included take for the dire economic situation in puerto rico even before the hurricane hit we need to own up to our own mistakes and i have said that over an hour that's why i say we need to just use this opportunity to transform the way that we look at things to transform the way that we do things to depend less than what it sent in a matter of help from outside and to do more for onto itself this is why i continue to ask anyone that would listen that we need to be able to built for example solar panels and puerto rico so anyone out there listening come to san juan will make it

worth your while a but we also need to ensure that the monies that are coming are not monies be used only to hire companies from the u.s. that come to puerto. that's a higher local so that the money stays in locally and that we can revamp our economy we need to be able to plug in into the world economy you've been a very outspoken critic of the governor and the puerto rican government's plans to privatized power companies and infrastructure in the wake of the hurrican what's your alternative to privatization overall saying let's not privatized but given the dire economic situation where to revisit what would you be doing instead if you were governor i'm on the governor on the mayor of the city of san juan but you don't have to be the governor to be able to have an opinion right so there's two areas that have to do with electricity generation and the transmission the transmission areas is now being rebuilt completely and it's been updated but it's

been updated to fossil fuel so we need to continue to have very specific targets and goals to transform and generate a lot more of our energy from solar energy from the wind and from the else desalinization plants in order to get our water ok one final question many crews do you have plans to run for pretty rica's governorship yourself in twenty twenty to make some of the stuff you're talking about happen some of your critics say that's why you've been so outspoken in recent months to boost your political profile i have said that this is not the time for political calculations this is a time for as you know really get out which we have a real issue in puerto rico with crime and we have to have some very difficult conversations about the future of the status of puerto rico but about how we transform and how do we make sure that we move forward from this humanitarian and economic crisis come in union cruz thank you very much for joining me on up front.

thank you for the opportunity. despite being illegal across the world what's being called modern slavery is more widespread than ever before but why in this week's reality check up from producer cured all the investigates one disturbing reports out of libya in two thousand and seventeen exposed horrible images of a modern day slave trade with captured migrants and refugees being auctioned off for labor people around the world were stunned but the reality is this exists beyond libya from the u.k. the gulf countries to india and china today there are actually over forty million modern day slaves victims of forced labor human trafficking and debt bondage and we're more complicit than the might be across italian farmlands where sun kissed tomatoes are harvested each season thousands of migrant farm workers from across europe africa and as far away as india are working in conditions of absolute exploitation with wages withheld and workers documents confiscated to keep them

from fleeing migrants are often forced to work twelve hours a day seven days a week without breaks and even subject to repeated rape and sexual assault these conditions help italy remain one of the world's largest tomato producers in brazil slave labor is rampant in cattle farms with a grand chance of working under the threat of being killed wages are regularly withheld as debts to the employer sometimes for years and workers are often forbid in from leaving the ranches where they're treated like animals even sometimes sleeping in the same corral as the cattle for many a slavery has become the grim trademark of brazilian beef which includes china and the e.u. as clients and its multibillion dollar export industry and take thailand the world's third largest seafood exporter is also one of the world's most notoriously dangerous work environments reports have found men and women from cambodia and myanmar being tricked kidnapped or sold into fishing. operations enduring for

starvation sleep deprivation and even behavior that we're going overboard for making mistakes we're talking about the seven billion dollar global export industry over two hundred million of which is just for pet food in the u.s. yes modern slavery should stunned the world but it needs to go beyond that if we as consumers and companies don't pay attention to supply chains behind the things we buy the world's most vulnerable will continue to be exploited for cheaper goods because to many it's not personal it's just business. after facing countless corruption scandals and surviving eight attempts to unseat him south africa's controversial president jacob zuma resigned from office last month his deputy cyril rama posed since taking over the presidency on an interim basis and pledged to clean up south african politics so zoomers departure really marked the start of a new political era for the country or is corruption too entrenched in the ruling

african national congress party joining me to discuss this is to south africa a so-called anti corruption czar who was the country's public protector for seven years and is also a former member of the a n c she's been credited with exposing zoomers abuse of public funds and she joins me now from cape town. thanks for joining me up front given you investigated former president jacob zuma when you were public protector of south africa up until twenty sixteen and given you wrote two incriminating report about him how much credit should south africans give to you for hastening his departure from office last month well i think if. i don't expect any credit because i was paid to do my and i did. could i was with him with a team every member of the team should get some of the credit south africans to so it gets the credit because if it wasn't for the. people enforcing some of the

decisions i made those decisions would not have been made and they traditionally in the media also played their roles in making sure that the truth came out south africa's national prosecuting authority has plans to announce in the coming weeks whether they're going to pursue eighteen charges for over seven hundred counts of corruption money laundering fraud and racketeering against zuma that date back to an illicit arms deal from over a decade ago it's a case that's been dismissed and reinstated in the court in the past do you think those charges against him still need to be pursued now he's out of office well he has charges have to have been sued with a person is out of his and you must recall that those charges that nothing to do with president zuma being in of his being relates to the i'm still clearer but having see it i think the most important issues that the president would have to answer to would be the issues relating to state care in what is seen is.

of surrendering his power to one member of his family and the group to family to run the offices of this government it's in the interest of the nation that he is unsellable for any wrongdoing he is alleged to have committed in the thin d.d.e. he is guilty of that wrongdoing he should face the same consequences as other people how is it of such a dark cloud of controversy spawning over a decade never prevented zuma from advancing to the highest office in the land to lead the party of nelson mandela with considerable support for you. yes it does say that the ain see all of the african national congress which is the governing party in south africa needs to look back and say what is that but allowed president to rise to the presidency given the fact that he had no commitment to the. and that

also applies to the current members of the highest decision making bodies of the in scene in c. has to ask should these people end up becoming president. do they have the right values which is the highest level of professional ethics is required by a six and ninety five of our constitution but didn't mandela himself nelson mandela who you were understandably a great admirer of many of those were didn't he lay the groundwork in a way for all of the political dysfunction and corruption that we're seeing in fact africa today he laid the groundwork for president for controversial successes like tarboro mbeki and jacob zuma is it time to maybe also reassess the mandela political legacy in south africa. well you could but i wouldn't really necessarily say it's meant to be less old he himself see it even the more spin overland of governments have within them persons with propensities for human failings nobody

could have foreseen what happened but you're right that there has to be introspective looking at what is it within the governing party and within our own ethical framework that allowed what happened to happen but mandela did praise zuma of leadership just over a decade ago when some of these allegations are already being made against him he called him inclusive he called him a unifier he urged the a.n.c. to rally behind him when i first met met president he was inclusive he was a unifying and of course you take people at face value nobody prepared south africa for the vice of presidency of president zuma in the use of. racial divide and the use of social injustice is that in

two investigations on corruption i don't think president mandela could have predicted ok i certainly didn't predict it well let's look at some of your predictions all recent statements cyril rama pose as soon as former deputy president who is now the interim. south africa until elections are held next year you expressed support for him online last month thanking him for putting your quote beautiful country on the pedestal of hope again but he's already facing harsh criticism for appointing a lot of scandal ridden controversial and c. figures to keep positions for example david the scandal ridden deputy head of the a.n.c. is now his deputy president he reappointed a minister of home affairs who's found to have lied under oath so are you giving rahm opposer a pass given he doesn't seem to be as worried about appointing officials who are accused of wrongdoing and corruption as maybe he should be. i have given him a pass and i still give him a pass he says in the has placed us on the side of hope but i have been speaking

about this for a month now and even in my column on this it's a president report indicated that he's not a saint and that where they he gravitates to the dark side or to the light side will depend on whether or not people stand up if the people do not behave in such a way that the governing party if it is them then you will find that president puts a fee is the dark side of the in c. and then he gets thrown to that corner too early you are part of the team led by nelson mandela the draft of the final post apartheid constitution of south africa ninety ninety six how worried are you that the a n c's recent time in office plagued with corruption scandals cronyism mishandling of crises will end up tainting the legacy of not just the a.n.c. and the way in which you created this new state but the memory of the party's entire anti apartheid struggle. i am concerned about in sea losing its direction

and until a few days. there was an indication that it had lost its direction and there was the possibility that it would lose its direction together with the country but i'm very hopeful right now that under armor points there we do have a balance of forces within the governing party and we have those who would like to continue covering for the plundering and looting of state resources in those who really wanted this country to be governed with integrity with in iowa to social justice so that it doesn't only leave to its potential but it also reclaim its position is a model of democracy in the world what about the argument it is time another party governed south africa or the a.n.c. has been in power too long it keeps winning elections since ninety ninety four since apartheid ended it's the only party that governs our love and maybe that's part of the problem. well if there was another party to govern maybe it would be the what people are right part is that more noble or whether it's in business or

politics perpetuates corruption if you don't feel losing power then you have no reason to do your best and that's what was happening eventually but by last year the a.n.c. is the governing party realize that it could not just. continue to allow lapses in terms of ethics and and depending of corruption one final question you've been encouraged to run for office in the past yourself do you have no political ambitions at all you're not tempted to run for office yourself to try and fix clean up south african politics from the inside certainly i don't have any political ambitions but i do have a patience to clean up the system that's why i've gone back to civil society is the chill social justice. stellenbosch university to make sure that we deal with laws and policies are on social justice i've also been part of starting

a foundation which is called the tomb of families in their foundation is seeking to boot democracy literacy within civil society and to excavate civil society to be their only part right to really mademoiselle or thanks for joining me all up front and spin them pleasure and a privilege thank you that's our show up front will be back next week. the way we communicate is what defines us. don't we use has been.

as innovation in technology continues to shape our lives. i am hearing content creation and distribution utilising cloud technology and artificial intelligence. the future has never seemed closer than it does. and what lies beyond the horizon. to take us to our frontiers the future of media leaders summit. limitless possibilities. as poverty and desperation sweep across ruhi just settlements women and girls are being barked sold and given away you know refugee camps when used to best the gates yet another dark side of the crisis at this time on al-jazeera i really felt liberated as a journalist was. getting to the truth as i would that's what this.

looming the will of the people hinges on the mass media state p.r. machine let's go into overdrive. but just who is going fill in saying. we just don't know yet where the lines will be drawn between what can be said and what conduct. some journalists decided to sacrifice their integrity for outside the polling the media opinion the listening post base time on al-jazeera. in london area top stories on al-jazeera at least twenty eight people have been killed in a coordinated attacks on the military headquarters and the french embassy in the capital of but do the witnesses say the last attack is used guns and explosives in the assault sonic eggo has more. plumes of smoke rising above booking

a fast says capital the third.