shortly. it was indeed obvious coming to live from but i do stay with that. i'm sure mackie has no children which makes her feel worthless and incomplete. in a society that expects them to be her children this is a burden many childless women in niger suffer from. a wife is only fully accepted

upon motherhood. a very personal film about the suffering of childless women in the richer. mistry starting january fourteenth on t w. to get. a boost from berlin the euro surges on germany's political breakthrough after marathon talks the nation is closer to forging a pro gear a peon governing coalition. and facebook is set to overhaul its new spain to prioritize posts by friends and family over company. been fizzling let's do business the coalition talks in berlin have had a positive result on the currency markets propelling the euro to a three year high. the single currency shot up to more than one u.s.

dollar twenty one following the news that germany's two biggest parties intend to continue their alliance that adds to the euro's slow recovery against the dollar it's now gained around sixteen percent since the beginning of last year that's not all germany's doing its thanks in general to europe's growing economic strength but try to say metal is one of the biggest proponents of the eurozone project and her ability to remain in power will be key to ensuring stability. well let's talk about that prospective new government here in germany with michael but for the whole book university are we going to see a rerun of what we already had a grand coalition boring. sometimes boring is good promises debility and no real dramatic changes i think german industry we're very happy that finally there's some some calm waters ahead and the economy is growing fast we've had two point two

percent growth just announced and i think things are going along in their favor the degree to spend a lot more money so i think it's going to stimulate the economy as well i think that's where the markets are quite excited about the outcome from an international perspective germany is seen as a as a reliable partner as far as consistency goes but there are also calls coming from abroad for germany to both competition and investment in europe which it sounds like a bounce to do but is it going to go far enough well it's a bit of a timid first step but there is an agreement both parties have agreed to spend more money on infrastructure internet infrastructure as they call it help the schools germany's done not so well in terms of being modernized digitalisation all the rest you know this is a good sign we'll see what the final agreement is mostly who's the minister in charge to throw some of the numbers that you that talking about a fund for education research and digitization as close to six billion euros we're

also talking about a budget surplus of what some three and a half three point seven billion euros the money's there they don't want to take on you debts no new taxes oh no tax hikes. have how does that all come together well i think they're all counting on better good and better growth and that will bring in more tax revenues so i think i think the initial the idea of forty five billion that sort of calculates a bit of steady growth and i think some of that will be dedicated to investment which will stimulate the economy and may attract some additional foreign investment so i think the german situation is relatively comfortable i think they can grow into this these spending plans comfort can be a dangerous thing and isn't it dangerous to expect that everything's. get better that is going to be more and more growth well there's always a there's always a shock around the corner and you just mentioned your of being high that's not good for german exporters and it's also not good for so then european exporters who are trying to come out of their hole and i think they have but europe needs needs to

take it easy on the euro of europe can't get too strong this would be a bad bad news for exporters what about the tax situation and further tax increases no hike for the rich that was what was being pushed for design does that make sense that surprised me a bit i thought the s.p.d. would have would have pushed the their agenda a bit stronger strongly there but i i think on the other hand they've managed to give some relief for the people to lower in so there's a there's a sort of minimum pension it's been it's been agreed upon and also i think the social contributions will be reduced for the for lower wage earners so this is a positive effect i think overall it looks like the s.p.d. hasn't given up too much and we're also talking about a ten billion euro tax relief as far as the scrapping of the solidarity tax. that was to support poor eastern states introduced back in one nine hundred ninety with reunification. why are we seeing a shift to helping the poor of western states i mean the situation has flipped

since then hasn't it yes i think there's a general feeling that it's a bit like methadone you want to sort of take the the person out the addiction slowly and it's a these germans have gotten used to these transfers and i think it's time to to recognize that some western cities need some investment as well and maybe the spending has to be corrected me direction so when are we going to get a new government. will they say before easter and easter comes early this year so we'll. have to remain optimistic the still a lot to talk about michael there thank you very much for coming in maybe we can talk again then. facebook shares have tumbled by more than five percent after it announced an overhaul of its news feed from now on it will prioritize posts by friends and family over unpaid content by companies or media organizations the site hopes to stop businesses from crowding out personal motives for its uses facebook says companies that use pages to promote content will likely see a decrease in reach video watch time and referral traffic as a result c.e.o.

mark zuckerberg says the changes should make people spend less time on facebook but that the time spent will be more valuable the company is responding to a growing tide of criticism about its role in society. and what is its role let's talk about that with federico of baggio from our social media desk and stephen beardsley from our business desk federico get to you in a second steve starting with you this sounds like a really shrewd move it sounds like all that free content the media companies got that they're going to now have to spend a lot more money i think that's one way of looking at have been definitely is that you see organizations and businesses that were able to tailor make a lot of their content and basically get advertising out of it without having to pay for it are now being told those spots don't really exist anymore and you're being demoted what exist ad spots still exists or they all going to go and crowd in

and try and get those out spots facebook says there's not making any more or that it's not increasing the number of bad spots i should say you could also see this as an effort to really increase the user experience there's a long term benefit for facebook obviously in growing user experience and thereby growing its user audience that really is its product ok let's talk about the user experience with is this about facebook returning to its roots i think it's definitely an attempt to do that and for sure facebook has drifted fire away from what was its own. you know idea it have bringing people together and instead it's being accused now of making society more divided of spreading fake news hate speech of. influencing political results so on top of that it has also been accused of becoming much less personal and instead more of us a place where you can scroll down and see a lot of different news items sponsored content so and that has also changed the

way people consume content on facebook and he has made it a lot more passive than it used to be so engagement has also gone down and there are studies that show that this passive consumption of content on facebook can also have every bad impact on people's happiness so it looks like mark zuckerberg here is trying to change approaches he used to be much more dismissive about this in the past but now he's trying to change approach well talking about tailor made content it doesn't sound like facebook is a reliable media partner anymore if it is going to if they're going to build up departments within other companies where making products media products just like dr beller does and then suddenly they're being dropped yeah i mean it's tough to say there is a lot of disappointment from media outlets and from other businesses about this obviously they spins we spin this is what you tell

a lot of resources and time working on tailor made products for facebook in particular so what happens now some to say it's hard to say what the model is but it's definitely a shift for them and it's definitely going to be something that they're going to have to adjust to can they completely say we're not going to play with face a big facebook anymore can't really do that it's like swearing off multiple countries these are two billion users you're talking about the question is how do they advance from here how do they go forward let's the hard part trying to grow from two billion users is this about making social media more social old making more business i was. i'll leave it to the two of you i mean i think social media is big business it has been for a while there's no doubt about that i think that by improving the user experience again it hopes to improve its business model its business case so in this case you'd say both maybe go hand in hand but facebook is obviously looking at its bottom line here where do you see it is it more about business and more about social as stephen just said both but definitely there's also an attempt here to

make it more what they think people actually want and maybe people have been feeling overwhelmed with things that they're don't care about so much and which is how you make more business out of it. yet you it's a balance and that's what they're trying to do is they're trying to find that balance right i mean you have too much of one and you scare away the users in this case you have too much of the other and you're not making the kind of money you want but federico give you the last word here is this going to bring back more people to facebook is lots and lots of people have left facebook or boycott facebook or never been on i mean. it's a very tough challenge and what we have been seeing for example is a lot of young people young generations moving to other platforms such as snapshot or instagram and facebook has become in a way less cool and more of a place where parents or grandparents post their pictures with their cats so it's

going to be a tough one here to convince these young people that facebook is indeed it's a cool place and it's also a place where they can be hung out together with their parents and grandparents and see if it is cool the competition certainly does not slate federica baggio thank you very much for coming in from a social media desk and stephen basically from his status. just updating our top story the euro has surged on germany's political breakthrough after marathon talks the nation is closer to forging a program european governing coalition was doing business with the.

ukraine village surrounded by trenches. the second a rocket could destroy someone's home electricity water and food are in short supply how could anyone still live here alone near the separatist front line and her children are holding out. ukraine's surviving in the no man's land.

just as you got me is coming to luxembourg and let's go right to our correspondent he is in central istanbul i'm joined by michelle a couple of you know who's going to correspond more on those stories in just a minute but first this news just gets a whole bunch of perspective closer. germany state by state. commerce. yes. the most traditional. find it all at any time. check in with a web special. take a tour of germany state by state on d w dot com. unimpeded access to education and knowledge and the same opportunities for everyone . a central goal of the global community but what's the reality on the ground

into cation for all the w.'s multimedia special rates personal stories and highlights extraordinary projects around the world over find out more on the internet d w dot com education for all. hello and welcome to focus on europe i'm michelle henery glad that you could join us the conflict in eastern ukraine has perhaps fallen off the international radar but fighting flares up almost daily between government forces and pro russian separatists and it's the civilians who suffer most some are trapped on the frontlines with no place to go.