this is g.w. news live from berlin rival protests in venezuela oppositions of voters clashed with police in caracas venting their frustration over a nationwide clock out and calling for president by the road to resign but his supporters are also rallying against what they say is foreign intervention in venezuela's affairs. plus massive anti-government demonstrations in algeria now officials are hoping and early spring vacation confound the student uprising at the heart of the protests.

i'm calling asman welcome to the program opposition protesters have clashed with riot police in the venezuelan capital of caracas one by dope the country's self-proclaimed leader had urged his supporters to take to the streets they're venting their anger over a nationwide power outage and are once again demanding an end to president nicolas maduro as government but maduro 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 will that 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. we're going to very very sick again i fortunately 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 stage for self proclaimed president who have been arrested making tensions worse is the biggest power failure in the nation's history the government says it's the result of an attack by foreigners and to class that it will defend itself it is an attack on the homeland without any doubt it is an attack on venezuela supporters of president maduro have also been gathering to hold their own protest against what they say this imperialist aggression. the nationwide

blackout in venezuela is now entering its third day of the government claims of foreign cyber attack is to blame earlier d.w. correspondent all skosh lanka in caracas gave us his perspective on a possible cause of that 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 or better system if in fact it was a u.s. sabotage the government has said they have been planning it for years because. of dollars in concessions to build burma lector plant and none of those are operational today most of the grid is plugged into forty so if that failed seventy percent of the country is blacked out and this has happened before not a drive 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 have the magnitude we've seen in the last few days when the whole country was wiped out that was the w.'s also shrank in caracas for us officials in algeria have rescheduled spring break for its 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 to speak up students have been at the heart of demonstrations against the president's bid to extend his two decade rule friday's protests saw hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of the capital algiers and other parts of the country. protests have started peacefully thousands marched analogy is against president do to free his decision to extend his twenty year reign by running for a fifth term. but as the day wore on tempers frayed police and protesters clashed leading to injuries on both sides medical sources say at least one hundred

demonstrators had to be treated the government says over one hundred police officers were hurt some seriously state television reported that nearly two hundred people were arrested for offenses such as looting the national museum and a nearby school were vandalized. those who were with families left and then another good came they came in and climbed up to the roof they could have killed us if the police hadn't of being the tiling but the offices they vandalized the ruins they burned the school they didn't spare anything it was too much. but with most demonstrators marching out of concern for that country the protest also provided a business opportunity for some vendors capsulized on the crowds patriotism doing a prisk trade selling algerian flags. the board of germany's largest bank has reportedly agreed to merger talks with the second largest according to the veldt newspaper the board of doj

a bank will discuss the fusion with its traditional rival. the german government has been urging the two banks to merge after years of losses deutsche bank has also faced scrutiny for several recent scandals including accusations of money laundering and interest rates. 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 call 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 the c.e.o. martin see it is that just a couple of weeks ago. strategy is right and it's working just the profit is increasing because we are growing in a core business. because there 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 go to ground is understandable. if you also understand or don't participate in it on others day nor in general. so we hear a lot here about the reasons why the trouble we hear about the speculation of a merger between commercial and what we don't hear is a 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 sorts 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 man you palatial of interest rates 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 tortured bunk with just the board one point eight trillion dollars that is far less than the

european competitors if you look at u.b.s. or the c.e.o. 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 though it should bunk ranks just about under the top twenty and is not really much of a global player anymore i don't mean left behind we can see it 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. i guess the best protesters marched in paris today for the seventeenth straight weekend and while turnout was fading for those who were main anger with president emanuel macross government is not the movement began over i feel 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 but organizers had hoped for stronger turnout

a show of force to answer president manuel mccollum's call for dialogue. because that there is a dialogue it's a first step by the government to go and wash out but really all they've got just download is useless just like to listen to and so. most protesters don't care much about my cross town hall debates which the president has held for the past two months more concerned about the police response to the demonstrations also the topic at the un this week we encourage the government to continue dialogue and urge full investigation of all reports court 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 also been criticised for the use of rubber bullets and in many e.u. countries government estimates put the number of injured protesters at above two thousand. but the police haven't escaped unhurt. because of

some of our colleagues have almost been lynched in 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. former us army intelligence analyst chelsea manning was jailed on friday after refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating the whistleblower website wiki leaks before entering the courthouse manning said she was prepared to go behind bars for her beliefs manning has already served seven years in prison for leaking a trove of classified documents related to the wars in iraq and afghanistan but president barack obama commuted her sentence in twenty seventeen. did your porter all also is here with me to break down this whole chelsea manning situation first of all what do we know about her jailing and why was she willing so willing to go to jail in the first place was a first of all a judge in virginia ordered manning to jail for contempt of court of the she

refused to testify before this grand jury investigating wiki leaks now for those who don't know a grand jury is a different thing from a from a trial jury the grand jury is there to decide if there is support for criminal charges. what exactly the jury the grand jury is investigating is secret basically we know it has to do with wiki leaks. and this is one of the things that manning objects to this whole secrecy around the around the grand jury now just a reminder that the u.s. has been investigating wiki leaks and its founder julian assange for many years now and manning she leaked documents to wiki leaks which ended up exposing cover ups and potential even war crimes by the united states government. now this is perhaps one of the most famous pieces of the footage that shows an air to ground attack in iraq in twenty three two thousand and seven seven men were killed in this

attack including a reuters journalists now manning has released a statement where she says that she revealed everything she knew back in her twenty thirty. courts martial and she continues saying i will not as a page in a secret process that i morally object to particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech speech so this is probably this last point is likely what she refers to when she says she's willing to go to jail for his beliefs how much support does chelsea manning have for this decision she has received a lot of support special social media from people within the whistleblower community if you like. glenn greenwald for example he gives what he calls an important reminder he says chelsea manning is in prison because the department of justice is trying to prosecute wiki leaks for publishing classified documents in the n.t. press a bomb a department of justice concluded they couldn't do that because it would be

a threat to call press freedoms. he's also getting support from daniel he's the whistleblower who famously released the pentagon papers that can one hundred seventy one now he writes an investigation into wiki leaks for publishing is a grave threat to all journalists writes and chelsea is doing us all a service for fighting it's now we also have a tweet from whistle blow and forma an essay contractor edward snowden he points out that there are likely flaws in the criminal justice system when when people don't terms former campaign manager paul mann affords or cia director david petraeus get off lightly while manning gets thirty five years for revealing what snowden calls evidence of actual crimes now the judges said that manning will stay in jail until she other decides to testify or until the grand jury ends how long that will take is anyone's guess. thank you very much.

all right coming up after the break it's the bundesliga with chris harrington byron's pursuit of leaders dortmund continued with a goal fest as both birds came to town could they return to the top of the table that a much more coming up on the go to sleep. if that's it for now more news of the top of the hour thanks want to. go to the news duramax channel. goodbye now story. with exclusive. the must see concerning courtroom culture.