celebrate the human spirit against the arts. al-jazeera cinema. it's. the street is quiet the signal is given. out so it's safe to walk to school last year there are more than thirty metres in this community in one month the police say this area is a red zone one of several in some townships and children sometimes are caught in the crossfire when rival gangs fight so parents and grandparents have started what they call a walking us to try to take the violence i lost my. go i also lost my but there are more than one hundred fifty volunteers working for several walking busses teachers say it is working class attendance has improved the volunteers also act as security guards.

days after they arrived in syria international inspectors are finally allowed into duma to investigate a suspected chemical attack. this as acid's forces turned their attention to the rebel held areas homes. hello i'm barbara starr you're watching al-jazeera live from london also coming up on the program we go deep into the d.r. see where ethnic violence has displaced the hundreds of thousands of people but the government insists that the situation is under control president mccrone urges europeans not to retreat into selfish nationalism as he warns of an atmosphere of civil war in the e.u.

and scientists discover a plastic eating enzyme that could help tackle the planet's pollution problem. international chemical weapons inspectors have arrived in the former syrian rebel on klav duma to investigate a suspected chemical attack that happened ten days ago inspectors had been due to arrive in the russian controlled area twenty four hours ago the u.s. accused russia of tampering with the site while moscow blamed the delays on security concerns the team from the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons will investigate what happened on april seventh but it won't assign blame western powers accuse syrian forces of using nerve gas to kill dozens of people but the mask is and its ally russia has sent a holder has more now from. the o.p.c.

w chemical weapons team has been given access to dumas they are investigating the alleged chemical weapons attack. both russian and syrian governments have been accused of delaying the work of the. syrian capital on saturday they are now in. western nations accuse the russian government of the possibility of tampering with the evidence on the ground because you know this chemical weapons attack happened over a week ago and russian military police were had access to the. russian government categorically categorically rejected now as this is happening the syrian government is stepping up its military operations it is declaring an offensive to target controlled territories in the southern in southern. controls a number of districts in this area and the syrian army gearing up for what it's calling a major battle to clear this area but it's not just southern damascus the syrian

army is also turned its attention to other rebel controlled territories among the northern countries. where there has been heavy bombardment and heavy shelling over the past forty eight hours and the syrian military also applying pressure on rebels in the western and. this could be the start of a new offensive against rebel territory hopes. the syrian government appears to be turning its attention to the strategic region following its victory in eastern huta much of the central province has been recaptured in recent years but the opposition has long held an enclave in the northern countryside that a strategic for damascus if it wants to secure the roads linking government controlled cities in the west of the country the opposition is promising a fight. they were able to hurt us with. and they did try to advance on the

ground they failed we warned them that if they want to fight they will lose a lot of. every so often the army drops leaflets on these besieged neighborhoods demanding rebels to reconcile with the government surrender and leave or face attack that's the way the government takes areas by imposing sieges and then bombing the rebels and the population into submission. we fear they might displace us just like they did to others in other places people are petrified because they don't want to be left without homes or shelter. hundreds of thousands of syrians have been forced from their homes because of these so-called reconciliation or evacuation deals and they know returning is only a distant possibility you have. to be displaced i want to stay with my family and friends i don't want to go anywhere else to be humiliated. holmes says not the government's only target there is

a rebel enclave forty kilometers northeast of the capital damascus rebels in the western region have been given an ultimatum to accept a state to rule or leave the faction in the town of the mayor has agreed to surrender to stave off a military offensive the opposition has little chance of winning the battles in the northern countryside of homs and in the western column one and clave those areas are under siege they have been for years but it's only recently that the army has been able to apply military pressure throughout the conflict the pro-government alliance suffered from a manpower shortage and has had to prioritize battles. now the army is mobilizing on the frontlines in southern damascus both and the opposition controls a number of districts there it seems the priority will be the battle with ice so before a deal is offered to the rebels that would end all opposition presence in and around the capital where thousands gather to celebrate syria's independence day and this

year the government is marking the anniversary from a position of strength has never been this comfortable since the start of the conflict more than seven years ago. beirut. well a false alarm calls the triggering of syrian air defense systems overnight that's according to state media earlier pro-government reports suggest that missiles bound for two syrian military bases have been intercepted but the sunnah state news agency now says there was quote no external aggression. the un's a new special envoy for yemen says he's working on a plan for talks to end a three year civil war which has led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis washing griffiths will present the plan to the security council within two months and insists all sides are prepared to negotiate an end to the fighting but he is

worried by unconfirmed reports of increasing troop movements inside yemen which he says could ruin any prospects for peace i'm concerned about the increased number of ballistic missiles launched towards saudi arabia and i note that this council has already pronounced on this in addition i am concerned about intensified military operations in governor military confrontations and the strikes have continued in numerous other areas of yemen including sunnah types of jobs mara all who data. by and large governorates the clashes continue without major changes in the front lines but with disturbing reports of civilian casualties . the philippine government is the mounting justice for a filipino maid who says she was abused by her saudi employer agnes when c.b.s. says she was forced to drink bleach because she didn't make tea properly she's in

a serious but stable condition after emergency surgery the philippine government has been angered by reports of regular mistreatment of maids by their bosses in the middle east. now the u.n. says more than one hundred thousand people have fled their homes in an eastern region of them across republic of congo since the start of the year attacks on civilians by s. that militia have driven people to leave it to the province but the government says only about a tenth of that number displaced and insists it is in control of the crisis al-jazeera is malcolm webb accompanied the provincial governor on a visit to the affected areas. homes made of plastic sheet don't help much in the rain. people have in this camp for displaced people in the town of in the democratic republic of congo they were attacked by militia who cut and killed people with machetes and burned houses. the government says the situation

now under control. we join the provincial governor on a visit to the conflict area. it's remote as it barely broke. we found small towns full of people who fled the countryside and came to hear what the governor had to say. the commonest saying there must be peace is encouraging people to go home and saying the government will do. and cried security people here a skeptical about his message. each time we visit more displaced people who say it's not safe to go home oh the attackers are all from the lendu ethnic group the victims are ethnic hammers and some lenders to two groups have been rivals in the past could most people here say there is no ethnic conflict right now. with many lendu friends. but they're telling us the government is responsible for what's

going on that this is a war of the government they're saying this to us every day. many people here have told us they share the same suspicion of the government's role. the u.n. doesn't it has the world's second largest peacekeeping force here we met the mission's chief visiting one of the camps people are insisting that it's a. conflict that nobody no. mind i did not heard at all that the government is behind it i did not that. the government in kinshasa denies involvement as did the provincial governor. i want to assure everyone that the government has done nothing even the provincial government has done nothing we don't have any interest in destabilizing our own territory or killing our own population whoever is behind the violence convincing the population to return won't be easy most homes remain deserted. behind them two fresh graves of those killed

hacked to death others burned in their homes it will take a lot to convince people of thirty three year malcolm webb al-jazeera the province in the democratic republic of congo police in nigeria have fired tear gas at hundreds of shia muslim protesters in a budget it's the second day of rallies in the capital demonstrators are calling for the release of their religious leader. he's been jailed without charges since the september two thousand and fifteen. slovakia's national police chief says he's going to step down after weeks of public pressure over the murder of a journalist it's the third major resignation of top officials and politicians in slovakia after investigative reporter a young could see a canis fiance or shot dead in february on monday the interior minister said he was resigning and the former prime minister robert fico left office last month tens of thousands of people have been taking part in regular protests calling for an

independent investigation into the shooting. two more cattle and politicians have appeared before a judge in the dritte to be formally charged with sedition and rebellion the former interior chief of the catalan regional government to arkema foreign and the ex foreign minister role romania seen here on the left are the latest procession leaders to appear in the supreme court trial proceedings have begun against a number of other politicians and police chiefs for their roles in the un sanctioned referendum once a session last year. man morris president has granted an amnesty to more than eight thousand prisoners when they signed the presidential pardon which includes the release of foreigners and thousands of political prisoners drug offenders along with the sick and elderly will also be freed from prison nationwide for mass pardon only covers those who have been convicted the two jailed the voices journalists facing trial for investigating myanmar's range of crisis have not been

released. i'm happy for getting these amnesty but i'm sorry for the other prisoners who were left behind i hope they'll be released soon because some of those left behind in prison are innocent. well still to come in this half hour a thousand venezuelans a day cross into brazil seeking a new life but find their struggle for survival goes on and the former cambridge analytical employee testifies to the u.k. government over how the company harvested personal data and used it for political gain. hello we've got plenty of warm spring sunshine across china over the next couple of

days temperatures in hong kong picking up once again to around twenty five celsius a little bit of cloud maybe some patchy right up towards chung but so not looking too bad as we go on through the next few days for most it will be fine and dry southerly winds coming in here well as you try to across a good part of india china hanoi at twenty eight celsius could see one of two showers there into vietnam as i wanted to show is into southern parts of india and also into his flank upper for much of india here it is looking a lot of the dry bangladesh could see wanted to show us once again underneath these fund ahead switch remain in place as we go on through wednesday night a little further north woods and east was turning to snow over the high ground somewhat weather there too into nepal for most it will be dry add hot once again that three monsoon heat lifting temperatures to forty one celsius maybe forty two in the poor little cloud you notice still lingering across southern parts of india into tom will not do and also into carol a chance of some showers coming in here meanwhile the showers pulling away from the

arabian peninsula always a chance of a little bit of time weather into yemen particular around the gulf of aden over the next day or so but for most it's fine dry wall and sunny. in the next episode of techno the team looks into the environmental impact of waste management trash is a big business than unfortunately the smelly business to the complexities of recycling with different plastics and landed together then the recycling becomes difficult to impossible and the science that often solution is very easy for us to have a hundred percent recycled material techno on al-jazeera. time

now for a reminder of the top stories on al-jazeera international chemical weapons inspectors have arrived in the former syrian rebel stronghold of duma to investigate a suspected chemical attack ten days ago the un's new envoy for yemen says he's working on a plan to bring the country's warring parties back to the negotiating table after three years of conflict and a surge of ethnic violence in eastern democratic republic of congo has forced more than one hundred thousand people to flee their homes just this year. the saudi foreign minister says his country is willing to send troops into syria as part of a wider coalition. air says saudi arabia has been discussing the point with the u.s. since the beginning of the syrian crisis he also added that riyadh had previously

proposed this idea to the former u.s. president barack obama. brazil is struggling to cope with the influx of venezuelan migrants entering the country it's estimated as many as a thousand people cross into brazil each day to escape economic and social unrest back at home many of the people crossing are children al-jazeera is on the reports now from boy vista in brazil. a school in brazil where the classrooms are increasingly filled with children from been a swale an elder who little first comes the language and learning portuguese the school and bowl of beast of brazil in the far north of the country received more than one hundred kids from venice will live this year alone are forced to adapt and they appear happy but most are too young to fully comprehend the difficult reality of why they are here. at the nearby border crossing about one thousand

venezuelan migrants a day line up to cross into brazil they're desperate fleeing a country they say lacks food and medicine most are like now year aguilar who bring their children when a better man who talk about i'm here for a better future for my two kids i hope they can grow up here they can study a better future for them but it will be a difficult road ahead especially for the youngest. with little money many of the families end up living like homeless at a local park they're in need of the basics for survival at this encampment everybody is hungry someone finally brought some food so they're lining up including the children for many of whom this will be the only meal baby whole day. across town at a gymnasium turned into a rudimentary shelter kids who are not in school do whatever they can to keep busy monica kuranda a former model in venezuela said she fled her country as

a last resort it was a way that i well i hope to start working the good job and have enough money to raise my children a united nations official here estimates half of all the migrants in shelters are children so it's indescribable situation when you start having child to as many people living on the street and so on children it's nice all five use up any final violence abuse exploitation. it's a growing migration crisis with an entire generation of venezuelan children whose future is across the border in a new land. gabriel's andro al-jazeera full of eastern brazil. france's president has warned that the european union could the send into what he calls civil war because of increasing divisions between liberal democracies and euro skeptic nationalists emmanuelle must crawl was setting out his vision for the future of the e.u. in a speech to the european parliament he urged members not to sleepwalk towards nationalism

at the expense of a european unity well they were cheated joins me live now from paris with more on this pretty strong words from the french president what else did he have to say well barbara as usual yes we have a lot of eloquent rhetorical flourishes from the manual macro but very light as far as policies were concerned but he did have something very strong to say about what we've seen happening in italy what we've seen happening in hungary and also developments in poland and that's what he called the culdesac of nationalism as you said that he is saying more or less that he wanted to to to tell the n.e.p. as in strasbourg. there was a vision worth defending the vision of europe the sovereignty of europe and he was saying very very strong indeed that it was time that everybody in europe pull

together to try and chase that vision let's hear some more details of exactly what he said barbara contexts when informed the gift if you don't look in a context where a form of european civil war reappears where our differences sometimes are national selfishness seem more important what unites us with the rest of the world a concept with a fascination with the liberal grows every day. gone the sexual shit but it's just that if. i didn't want to allow this deadly illusion which is precipitated our continent towards the abyss the illusion of strong power nationalism the abundance of freedoms faced with your thoughts here it isn't surrounds us everywhere the answer is not authoritarian democracy but the or thirty of democracy so barbara as i was saying some very fine words some fine phrases but what you didn't really hear was anything about the euro zone reform that is the key issue that is what everybody wants to see from him what does he exactly say needs to be

done what about the european stabilisation mechanism what about the the euro zone economy what about the european monetary fund all these ideas have been suggested a lot of this came up in his main speech in september last year but at the moment no sign of exactly what the meat of those policies will be and there's a reason for that the reason is of course of in about two days time he goes to see angela merkel the traditional axis of the european union the franco german axis in the problem there is that a lot of people in the conservative wing of the grand coalition and in angela merkel's own party have been saying were let's hang on a bit here we don't want to see germany funding yet again the budget of germany funding the rest of europe so that's why he remained more or less silent on those vital issues and they will come up again in that meeting in berlin in two days'

time it will be interesting to see what comes out of that meeting for the moment david chaytor in paris that thank you. well a country that said tensions of the european union is poland but now it says that it will observe an e.u. ban on logging in an ancient forest after the european union's highest court ruled it illegal poland stopped cutting down trees in the bio leave asia forest earlier this year after previously ignoring an order from the european court of justice the two thousand square kilometer forest as a world heritage site the issue of logging has become a political one with the nationalist ruling party unhappy with the e.u. interference a us judge has ruled that facebook must face a class action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology people in illinois say the company broke state laws by collecting biometric information without their consent facebook though says the case has no merit it's the latest

challenge for the social media giant after the british consultancy firm cambridge analytical was found to have improperly access the facebook data of nearly nineteen million users. meanwhile a former employee of cambridge analytical has been giving evidence at a u.k. parliamentary commission committee recently keiser was that the rector of program development and discussed the company's work in the run up to the bracks it referendum or insley has the story. this is where brittany kaiser was asked to testify as a woman who had worked on the political campaigns of both barack obama and donald trump in the united states working for cambridge analytical on the trump campaign she made it clear her role was to target small groups of people harvest their personal information and attempt to change their political opinions a practice she did without compunction then but had now decided it was disgraceful illiad spent too many years using technology to take advantage of people's openness

and get well and i won't stand by any longer to observe this privileged abuse of power intentionally or unintentionally i want to help shed light in these dark places and to help people be more responsible in their actions cambridge analytical then moved in on the leave dot edu campaign during the breaks at referendum the company she said told our own banks the millionaire backer of leave so that they could do for the bricks and camp what they had done for donald trump in the end she said believe campaign haven't taken their services but in a major allegation she claimed that mr banks had taken their idea and harvested lists of his own commercial customers and targeted them for political messaging a practice is illegal in britain mr banks denies the claim when i did visit the elgin insurance and leave you had quarters which was the same building with the same staff that when a senior scientist and myself spent time with their phone bank i was told by the

people using the phone bank that the individuals that they were calling were out of the insurance database like her former colleague christopher wiley she painted a picture of cambridge analytical as an organization which was a moral and which was happy to destabilise any political campaign on behalf of any wealthy backers it all adds to a body of evidence being gathered by the you. governments which is increasingly worried about how the use of dates is potentially undermining basic democratic principles lawrence lee al jazeera london. russian investigators say it's likely that last month's shopping mall fire that killed at least sixty four people was caused by an electrical fault the winter cherry center in the same variance eighty of kemet over went up in flames on march twenty fifth many of the victims were children a spokesman for the emergency situations ministry says the preliminary investigation

is pointing towards the cause being a short circuit in the building's wiring now a leading south korean actress who was once abducted by north korea and forced to make films for the regime has died at the age of ninety one choi was kidnapped in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight on the orders of kim jong il her film director ex-husband was also captured six months later choice starred in at least one hundred thirty films including more than a dozen made while captive in the north the paris cape after eight years north korea has always denied a thing the couple say they had sought sanctuary there. scientists believe that they've made a major breakthrough in the fight against plastic pollution it's estimated around ten million tons is dumped in the ocean every year and it could take hundreds of years to decompose with a devastating effect on marine life but an international team say that they've engineered an enzyme that eats through the most popular form of plastic and the

bell is now reports it's at the sky every that came about by accident. piles of plastic in every city in the world in remote regions with nowhere to go. since its invention last century the disposal of plastic has plagued the world three quarters of it sits in landfills floods the oceans even the tampa st that's recycled is simply remold it never truly broken down until now we can break it down to its building blocks and then put it back into. this water bottles and things like this subject to recover those urgent type properties bacteria discovered recently in a japanese recycling plant feeds on the world's most common plastic known as p.t. this is an enzyme aging the plastic magnified three thousand times the scientists wanted to study how it works but accidentally spit it up we actually thought we

were making the enzymes floor by by changing a few amino acids but actually we've made it faster we've made an improved version of the enzyme better than the natural one already that's really exciting because that means that there is potential to optimize this and say even further the science has a long way to go the enzyme can only digest plastic and needs to be scaled up in a commercially viable way basically we can just make gallons of powdered enzyme and then pour in a fox that this is what we're aiming to do so just in the same way that washing powder to terence were developed and made more stable been able to work at high temperatures low temperatures we're going to do the same with this enzyme and hopefully create something that we can use in an industrial scale every minute one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into our oceans if we continue this trained by twenty fifty it's predicted there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish it's

an all consuming problem that scientists hope enzymes could help eat up charlotte dallas. now reminded of the main stories on al-jazeera international chemical weapons inspectors have a arrived in the former syrian rebel duma to investigate a suspected chemical attack ten days ago inspectors had been due to arrive in the russian controlled area twenty four hours ago the u.s. accused russia of tampering with the site and keeping them out meanwhile moscow blamed the delays on security concerns the team from the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons will investigate what happened on april the seventh but will not assign blame. now the o.p.c. w. it's still not clear when they're going to release the findings but we have to make clear that western nations are not waiting for the results because they already

carried out retaliation they carried out attacks on saturday targeting syria's chemical weapons facilities so the o.p.c. findings are not going to trigger another response but definitely if the o.p.c. w. finds that indeed a chemical weapons attack actually happened it will be damning for the russian and syrian government. the u.n. special envoy to yemen drawing up a framework for talks to end the three year civil war which has led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis washing griffiths will present the plan to the security council within two months and insists all sides are prepared to negotiate an end to the fighting police in nigeria have fired tear gas at hundreds of shia muslim for testers in a it's the second day of rallies in the capital demonstrators are calling for the release of a jailed. a surge an ethnic violence in eastern democratic republic of congo has forced more than one hundred thousand people to flee their homes just this year the

government says it's now in control but many of the displaced say it's still not safe to return. the french president the man when mccall has urged the european union members not to sleep or could towards nationalism address in the european parliament on his vision for the future of the e.u. mccrone warned of what he calls a civil war within the european union between liberal democracies and the euro skeptic and nationalists that is it for me for now going to have more news for you in just under half an hour coming up next on al-jazeera it's techno thanks for watching us you sue if i.

sometimes feel that we are really looking into the hearts and the souls of those directly involved in advance taking place very good at telling all sides of the story from the political elite to those people who've been affected you really get to know what's happening on the ground that's very important for me as a generation past that can often feel that my continent is misrepresented and we've changed that your story is important to us it doesn't matter where you come from. this is techno show about innovations that can change lives the science of fighting a wildfire we're going to explore the intersection of hardware in humanity and we're doing you will. this is a show about science. now that i signed it seems to us tonight. it's everywhere our. landfills overflowing is so smells so bad but someone.