play play. play. this is d w news live from berlin rival protests in venezuela opposition supporters clashed with police in caracas venting their anger over a nation's wine lockout and calling for president woodrow to resign but his supporters are also rallying against what they saying is foreign intervention in venezuela's affairs also coming up germany's two biggest banks could soon become one of banks or reportedly agrees to merger talks with troubled rival max baucus after years of losses for both banks. and

a massive anti-government demonstrations in algeria now officials are hoping an early spring vacation to calm the student uprising at the heart of the protests. i'm calling aspen welcome to the program opposition protesters have clashed with wind power outage and are once again demanding an end to president nicolas maduro his government but has also called on his supporters to rally today as the power struggle between the two rivals intensifies. the day in caracas begins with anger and arguments the police are trying to stop opposition supporters gathering their protest i. am going to join us let's hug each other. don't shoot us don't kill us come on cops.

an elderly woman faints so far the opposition has been able to demonstrate peacefully and unhindered but then the police start to use pepper spray they got a record of intimidation if you're not pushing they say they have orders to prevent us from assembling so there will be no demonstration. but we're not giving up citizens have a right to freedom of expression it is time said the secret police arrive on scene the workers who wish to erect the state for self proclaimed president one have been arrested making tensions was is the biggest power failure in the nation's history the government says it's the result of an attack by foreign us and to class that it will defend itself it is an attack on the homeland without any doubt it is an attack on venezuela. simpletons of president maduro have also been gathering to hold their own protest against what they say it's imperialist aggression. a

nationwide blackout in venezuela is now entering its third day draws government claims of born cyberattack is to blame a little earlier correspondent off gosh lanka in caracas give us his perspective on the possible cause of the outage. well there are reports from the electrical company that a fire broke out and one of the lines of the coulee hydroelectric plant and that might add to a domino were far better to some if in fact it was a u.s. base seven the government has said then they have been planning it for years because in two thousand and ten who go chavez gave out there only as of dollars in concessions to build thermal electric plants and none of those are operational today most of the grid is plug into forty so if that fails seventy percent of the country is blacked out and this has happened before not a kind of all the second largest city has been weeks without electricity in the past year and outages like this one have been happening all over the country for

years but never of the magnitude we've seen in the last few days where the whole country was wiped out. that was. the reporting from venezuela the board of germany's largest bank has reportedly agreed to merger talks with the second largest according to the belt tug newspaper the board of dortch a bank will discuss the fusion with its traditional rival commands by the german government has been urging the two banks to merge after years of losses has also faced scrutiny for several recent scandals including accusations of money laundering and an interest rates game. and joining me now to break that down is lars halter he's with the d.w. business look lars we've been talking about this we've been hearing these rumors about a merger between these banks for a long time now how likely is it that will happen this time around i think it's actually pretty likely and the interesting thing is we don't actually need

anonymous insiders here to give us any hints because we're getting pretty good clues if we just listen to leadership maybe let's just take a listen to what c.e.o. martin says because that just a couple of weeks ago. strategy is right and is working just as profit is increasing because we are growing in our coal business. because their action is the right one the atmosphere of negative interest and price pressure severely limit the profitability of banks in germany and out of this the current speculation of a merger with dr grant is understandable. but you also understand that don't participate in that one of the day nor in general. so we hear a lot here about the reasons why they are in trouble we hear about the speculation of autumn merger between commercial and what we don't hear is the denial and that is of course pretty a rare one ever in the business community you have rumors about a merger and they don't want you to know of course it's going to be denied right away you don't have that here and you have the same answers coming from deutsche

bank c.e.o. kristen saving just recently said exactly the same thing of course a merger is an option we might not be talking about it right now but it's pretty clear that they're really looking at that ok so some clues there are a lot of on for one i mean this was a global powerhouse this was a respected bank i mean what happened talk about the fall of the oh well first of all of course the financial crisis happened that of course happened to the entire global financial sector and that brought down with it what happened after that of course might have been even worse for the arch of punk than most of its competitors it was scandal after scandal you mentioned some of them earlier whether it was the many palatial interest rates off of the gold price whether it was tax evasion moving clients people clients' money abroad just think panama papers whether it was breaking sanctions there was no financial scandal in the last decade that was not

part of or even leading the pack and that cost billions and billions of dollars and what happened now is just have a look at where deutsche bank stands now in comparison to other into. national banks if we just want to rank them by assets under management you have to a chipmunk with just the ball at one point eight trillion dollars that is far less than the european competitors if you look at u.b.s. or h.s.b.c. over in england it is far less than the american competitors and of course they are way way far away from the chinese competition some of those things are three times the size so today deutsche of punk ranks just about under the top twenty and is not really much of a global player anymore and being left behind we could see if maybe this will be a potential marriage made in heaven so to speak lars also from the business thank you so much you're welcome. now to some of the other stories making news around the world supporters of the far right national core party of clashed with police in

kiev the demonstrators were protesting corruption in the army ukrainian president petro poroshenko has made tackling corruption a key issue with head of elections on march thirty first. at least fifteen people have been killed by armed gunmen at a nightclub in central mexico according to local media mexico's president had launched a major offensive against a local gang this week but the attackers identities are not at no. rb singer r. kelly has been released from a chicago prison after a child support payment was made on his behalf a judge had ordered him jailed until he paid more than one hundred sixty thousand dollars that he owed kelly was separately charged last month with ten counts of aggravated sexual abuse relating to four women three of whom were minors. yellow vests protesters marched in paris today for the seventeenth straight weekend and while turnout is fading for those who remain anger with president emanuel

mccall's government is not the movement began over high fuel prices but it's now taking broad aim at his policies which protesters say are out of touch with the working class. yellow vests in the streets of paris once again they came in the thousands organizers had hoped for stronger turnout a show of force to answer president manuel mccollum's call for dialogue. it's good that there's a dialogue it's a first step by the government to go and watch our partner go there but has done all these useless micro just like to listen to him so. most protesters don't care much about microphones town hall debates which the president's held for the past two months more concerned about the police response to the demonstrations also a topic at the u.n. this week we encourage the government to continue dialogue and urge full investigation of all report cases of assess if use of force it is the images like

these that have cost french police in a bad light. the police have been criticized for the use of rubber bullets banned in many countries government estimates put the number of injured protesters at above two thousand. but the police haven't escaped unhurt. some of our colleagues have almost been lynched more than fifteen hundred police have been injured in the last four months. the tension was palpable in paris today but there were no major clashes between police and protesters. you know geria education officials have rescheduled a spring vacation for university students moving it forward to sunday more than a week earlier than planned it's being seen as an attempt to quell the growing protest against president bush a fleet of students have been at the heart of demonstrations against the president's bid to extend his two decade rule the protests have mostly been peaceful but on friday police used tear gas to block the road to the presidential

palace hospital sources say more than one hundred people were injured in clashes. joining me now in studio is a bus year a maroon he's with arabic now but you're you actually just returned from algeria just a few hours ago you were at yesterday's protests what did you see there in algiers is this a turning point for the country but for me it was quite overwhelming there were around one million people going out in the streets of jersey a lone. peaceful the atmosphere was very very. also friendly to each other they were playing music it was quiet festival they were not chanting political slogans so for the people they're very proud to have managed such demonstrations peacefully and i think from a psychological point of view it's a turning point dismiss these unprecedented i mean one million people

a lot one million people alone in the capital and we have also a dozen of other cities how much political support is left for the president i think has no supports since the last five years if not even long most of his supporters supported him. by theah and now the people have no fear to say it loudly that they are fed up with him and his clan so that's why we see now that it's getting increasingly these highlands around but if you come we're also hearing about some pressure on. algeria's military to diffuse this crisis i mean just tell me what role does the military play there it's not quite the military as an institution you have inside the regime consisting of hostiles the military of the intelligence services and the all the guards and they have internal struggles with each other that still is in office is because they didn't or

couldn't agree to have one person as his successor but now with the protests getting stronger they really need to have a plan b. to choose another successor and the crucial point is that the people are aware of this point speaking of plan b.'s what about algeria's political opposition i mean how strong are the the opposition parties could they come in and fill the void if you think a step down not at all in these two have no real opposition but to flee because of g.-man of the last twenty years to destroy every real position and movement from inside that infiltrated them they bought them so really really powerful position from the people tell me about your experience there you just returned from algeria what was it like as a reporter is it safe to be reporting there but i wasn't as a reporter officially i had family visit and of course. for

example the police told me that they were aware that i'm a journalist and they have i have no credentials for working as a journalist inside the drift of the moment all right do you use bashir broun from you arabic service thank you so much for that insight thank you. all right coming up after the break it's the buddhist legal with cress harrington by its relentless pursuit of leaders dormant continued with a goal fest as spirit came to town today we take the lead that and much more coming up on the road to sleep. and now for gad you can always get news on the go just download our app from google player from the apple store and that will give you access to all the latest news from around the world as well as push notifications for breaking news you can also use that d.w. app to send us photos and video. that's all for now more news coming at the top of the hour thanks for watching and stay tuned press herrington

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