biz's d.w. news live from berlin a fragile peace takes hold in the philippines of a special report for you from the island of mindanao two years ago the so-called islamic state trying to establish an ancient caliphate there and was driven out by the risk of conflict remains also coming up the high tech spy and a growing number of homes for take a closer look at services like amazon's alexa a smart speaker that could be listening to the every word. and the protesters in sudan demand democracy now they want free and fair elections today not in two years

time as the newly installed military regime has promised. i'm calling assman thanks for joining us we start in the southern philippines and what could become the new front in the battle against the so-called islamic state the island of mindanao is the place i asked chose to install a caliphate in southeast asia even before its arrival mindanao had seen a long running power struggle between the christian majority and muslim minority and may twenty seventeen i-s. fighters made their move a few hundred fighters seized the city of moore all week the battle to flush them out devastated that region reporters petersen and hans christian post amman went to see what life is like they are today.

we are on patrol with the largest muslim rabid group in mindanao the moro islamic liberation front m.i.l.f. for decades they fought for independence tens of thousands were killed. but since the self-proclaimed islamic state burst onto the scene in two thousand and seventeen the muslim rebels have joined forces with the philippine army both sides feel threatened by us fighters now laying low. so the muslim minority strongly supports the m.i.l.f. only five percent of filipinos are muslims and almost all live in mindanao. areas are among the poorest in the philippines many here blame the christian majority government for their plight. we visit the military headquarters of the m.i.l.f. the government needs the rabbit support to secure a peace and to fight terror president rodrigue has promised them

a far reaching autonomy is. the chief of staff isn't in uniform a sign perhaps of the shift from insurgency to politics the m.i.l.f. has seen defectors joining i as we ask him what might happen if the autonomy project goes badly. people really become diminished. by. all. the will. there grow. and become bigger. he tells us that they will disarm up to thirty thousand fighters but only with full muslim autonomy. we will not. you commission of course this and we will not give up our

arms which we promised to the government. this is what both sides are trying to avoid and not the ravi the largest muslim city of the philippines lies in ruins bombed out after a few hundred s. fighters had occupied maradi for five months two years ago. more than one thousand people were killed tens of thousands remain displaced. it was president to territory who ordered the bombing but he's also a strong supporter of muslim autonomy his film a peace advisor tells us. it is a struggle signal to the bad guys. this country i have been in the peace process under several presidents and we have. this time the president feels that. if we give more of our for the locals but it must be under one

flag. but if the autonomy dr fay it's more disaffected muslims could join radical outfits in addition after the loss of their caliphate in syria and iraq more foreign i guess five tests might also decide that mindanao is the new front. reports by underpaid his men and she joins me now in studio sundered just first of all i want to know how big of a threat is the so-called islamic states in the south philippines it's hard to put down in any numbers that we have seen isolated bombings we see isolated skirmishes authorities tell us there are fighters laying low in the jungle in the marsh lands but to give you concrete numbers that we can do what we do know is that there is a lot of attraction you still find sympathies among the population we spoke to

a young guy let's call him up those he was part of the group that laid siege to be he's now also laying low and he says look if our life doesn't change i would pick up a weapon again so there is definitely some sort of threat there now the government has promised mindanao as muslims more autonomy right so what does that mean for the struggle against is islamist extremism there i think what the government is trying to do here is you know by creating more political and economic inclusion to basically. dr tara our to know by winning the hearts and minds of people they try to win over sympathies that might otherwise go to potential terrorists and there is a lot of jihadi potential in the region and we have seen decades of conflicts. we have seen. war in this region and of course that is something a local conflict which is they are that. we can tap into and you know if now

fight us with the side we have lost our territory in the middle east we're looking for a new front let's travel over there they could actually find ground there so you think potentially there could be fighters heading from say the middle east to iraq or syria and they're heading to this region oh it could happen to contra without what we did see in the middle east is that some of the foreign fighters there were actually from neighboring countries indonesia. malaysia and from there it's very easy you know to just take a boat and hop over to mindanao and also in this teach of maradi we saw that there were also foreign fighters there like this young guy up there and he told us when he went to a training camp in the jungle in mindanao he trained alongside obviously local friends but also alongside foreign fighters and he said yes most of them were from indonesia and were from malaysia but he also said there were chechens and arabs talk about the president of the territory he's of course known for this brutal

crackdown on drugs and drug users in the country could he maybe turn out to be the one bed brings peace to this region he's the first president of the philippines to actually hey it's from in the knowledge so he does have probably a better understanding of the conflicts like other guys before him and he really supports this autonomy drive he basically used all his bullying power to whiplash the philippine political elite to accept the drive for autonomy and also the rebels you know if the mainstream breaded group the biggest rebel group and the knowledge . they told us we trust to sincerity and i'm sure if you us many other people that's something they would not sign referring to president to territory and you were there you were filming of course in mindanao and and also was that like how difficult of a task was that well when we were filming in morocco obviously will go and allow it to move freely it's still a military exclusion zone so there were always soldiers by our side and they

determined where we could go and what we could phone and how long we could state equally if we joined the rebels like you saw that they took us on for told patrol obviously it was a program they designed for us and also then their territory they basically decided what we could film and how long we could stay but other than that we thought people were really friendly very easy to talk to but of course there is that threat and we were never quite sure. now the philippines it doesn't seem to be getting as much attention as the battle against the so-called islamic state in syria and iraq itself or other countries joining in this effort at all is there an attention being paid now to the philippines i think the united states very much face attention in terms of providing intelligence and surveillance also you know during them are obvious each that were very crucial to help the philippine army in telling things around also australia is another military partner of the philippine government but

yes i mean if maybe more attention would have been paid from all sides involved maybe we would not have seen this more obvious seach there interesting stuff. on the pages men returning there with that fascinating documentary thanks very much. and you can actually watch that documentary in full i highly recommend it it's called philippines in the sights of eye assets available right now on our you tube channel that's documentary be sure to check out. now let's take a look at some the other stories making news around the world in algeria police of fired tear gas at protesters in the capital algiers hundreds of thousands rallied for the eighth consecutive week to demand a political change they say last week's resignation of longtime president abilities beautifully is not enough they want the complete departure of the ruling elite and an overhaul of the country's political system. germany is donating fifty million

euros to help with reconstruction in southeastern africa that's one month after the region was devastated by a cycle die the storm destroyed infrastructure and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless in those and beak. the world bank has estimated the cost of recovery at close to two billion euros. in pakistan a bomb in a market in the southwestern city of quetta has killed at least sixteen people and wounded almost fifty others you tak appears to have targeted ethnic cazares and shia muslim minority no group has claimed responsibility for the bombing but these groups have often been targeted by sunni militants before. britain's opposition labor party has urged the government not to extradite weekly leaks founder julian assange to your united states assad was arrested on thursday in the ecuadorian embassy in london after ecuador withdrew his right to asylum is wanted in the us or revealing state secrets but his orders say he will not be given

a fair trial. no would you allow a stranger to listen to what you do in the privacy of your own home well if you own one of amazon's smart speakers you could be doing just that so a waiter is here to talk about the eavesdropper that millions of people have right in their living rooms i see you've brought a guest with you this one this one's unplugged so i think it's not listening to us but you never know if this is so if this were plugged in this is the echo device what is this. about the smart speaker from amazon and one of the jokes that was floating around when they first came out was oh you never know when it's listening it says it's not always listening but might be a minute turns out that yes in fact it is always listening to you not only is it listening but there is a person on the other end of the speaker that is listening to what you're saying and recording it now the thing that thing about this the good news is that it's anonymizer your name's not attached to it your address is attached but there are account numbers attached to it and there is

a stranger listening to whatever you say to the speaker in the intimacy of your own home and if we can take a look at the original amazon alexei ads they really were very going very strong on this idea of this little robot being integrated into your family it was comforting device it was going to help you live your life. it was going to help i was going to see if it was going to be your friend phone with you for exactly this is going to be this little passive friend in your life and now this story coming out is kind of blown back to smithereens no amazon has said that this is all about quality control improving the mechanism one of the advertising points they said is that it looks a lives in the cloud and she's always getting smarter but it's not this magical machine learning by which she's getting smarter it's people people are using her and teaching her how to be smarter so there is someone listening. you know what if

i don't want this thing listening to me can i turn that feature off for example the good news is yes you can there is an opt out option but of course as just as people don't know that there's someone listening they also don't know that they can opt out of it and this is a trend that we've seen with a lot of these big tech companies recently for instance it turned out that facebook was still tracking users for months after users deleted their facebook accounts we can see the ad preferences page here on facebook where you can see just how many advertisers have your information you can control a little bit but that is there long after you leave facebook and even google there was a report last year saying that people were still being tracked by google after they turned off their location services in google so it's not only impossible not to live your life without these services but it's also impossible to make them stop paying attention to you so if you are one of the seventy eight million people who bought one of these alexa speakers last year you should assume that yes there is

someone listening to you and they are recording what you are say ok amazon is listening to us maybe we should be surprised by that possibly he does use my slater and alexa thank you for joining us as well u.s. president donald trump's controversial ban on chant transgender people in the military takes effect today the ban exempts transgender people already serving in the military as well as soldiers who started treatment for gender dysphoria before the ban the deadline has led to some soldiers rushing their decision to begin treatment for undervoltage the transgender kicked off a dramatic race against time the army intelligence analyst had to decide whether to start gender reassignment surgery or risk losing his job and future. where i initially was planning to you know spend several months probably you know really just taking my time in figuring out what i wanted to do and figuring out my identity suddenly turned into this crazy race where i was you know missing

days on days in a row of work and then stressing and really just doing everything i could to get the diagnosis done in time to meet that deadline around fourteen thousand transgender people currently in the military trump announced a bond in twenty seventeen reversing obama's efforts to end long term restrictions on transgender soldiers as you know it's been a very complicated issue for the military it's been a very confusing issue for the military and i think i'm doing the military a great favor if the president says allowing transgender people into the military increases costs and lois operational effectiveness the claim is being rejected by some of the pentagon's top officers i'm not aware of any issues i am not aware of any issues in those activists of condemned the ban for the first time. one of our national institutions will be turning back the clock on equality.

shutting its doors to people who have already proven their ability to do the job trumps decision is being challenged in four separate appeal courts. whatever their verdict the banners are ready for an army specialist because your life into turmoil . you're watching the news still to come. looking to make history in the brain meet twenty four year old sadako dam as she prepares to become the first boxer from her country to fight in the fischel the. german chancellor angela merkel has vowed to stand by ukraine in its effort to maintain territorial integrity pledge came during talks in berlin with ukrainian leader petro poroshenko but the meeting was overshadowed by another issue or shingles bid to keep his job and a closely fought election back home. this comedienne used to play the ukrainian president on t.v.

now the aspiring politician volodymyr zelinsky this rehearsing for the real thing by meeting with french president. and paris but he did not get an invitation to berlin german chancellor angela merkel drew criticism for welcoming only ukrainian president petro poroshenko in the german capital and not his contenders olinsky at a joint news conference merkel deflected a question about her appearing to favor the incumbent. and she didn't it was my decision to invite the president we maintained steady contact with plenty of exchange during the election campaign as well i think it's important to keep talking. ukrainian voters head to the polls in the runoff election on april twenty first some this miss the candidacy of poroshenko scrivens and then ski a political novice as

a joke but recent polls suggest he leads the president by a wide margin poroshenko had to paris after his visit french president. choose to receive both candidates in the ad is the palace. pro-democracy demonstrators in sudan have flooded khartoum's streets again protesting against the military council that has taken over the country protest leaders say they're against the military stated plans rule the country for two years before calling elections the army has taken over after arresting president omar al bashir but the last thing most sudanese want is soldiers in charge of their country. the music of defiance these protesters refused to go home after the army declared a curfew some have been here through the night for many the moodies extatic yet they also feel they've been cheated after three decades under president omar al

bashir a new strongman takes his place defense minister i want it now if the head of the country's military turns ition council the council is planning talks with protesters. they will all attend and listen to what we want and we will listen to what they want to prepare for dialogue and for the exchange between us so we accomplish what we aspire to. but mistrust is running high among the very people he's trying to win over many fear the army is replacing the old regime with a new one. out. there of the military's acting under which constitution. we don't know what this constitution is because the consulate and they stopped all the government sectors will keep protesting and the regime will fall again. so people have lost their trust in bush's national congress party

we don't want anyone from the a.n.c. we want someone else who can represent the transition. we want a new system of governance and a new era we want to rebuild the country those people have no clear plan. the army has denied any greed for power it has retreated its promise of a new civilian government within the next three years but patients among sudanese protesters has already more insane. with me is adam biharis a sudanese human rights activist currently living in berlin thank you so much for joining us first of all now you fled sudan you were facing persecution under president omar al bashir i'm sure you've been watching what's been going on in your country every minute of what's going on now a member of the military council says what we've seen there is not a coup it's simply what they call a tool of change that could take up to two years what do you make of that and the

timeline. it is not. so much people who don't it's not. going to change it's well done in democracy because what is happening is also the leader of. it all for he is one of. the military structure in that he did a former bush you just mean just to the people who run be forced into running now i said just national can just. say not things that this national council but we have to stop to see is a people again is this. and that's what people need to have to change. people they're not happy with this they're in the streets they're angry what are you hearing from back home but what about your friends and family what are they telling you. i was talking with my family every every minute and look what's going on because also for me situation is that because i have to have to look what's going on and they tell me all the time they were not going back people is.

somehow born in just i was born obviously but the good deed is a point is this government. and it's clear to say we don't need any more military just like it's like something really created here and this present if you will also lead from what's going on before in egypt for example in other countries so they are watching what happened during the arab spring for exactly exactly exactly and but also the people in sudan they have wanted to see videos about this issue over of illusion they have made their pollution in one nine hundred forty six image evolution in nine hundred fifty eight but. the end of it it was again a new military and you say to people we don't need to do it again we can fight until the end to get a watery democracy is for them so that's part of the reason why they're so suspicious of that going on right now to talk more about the role of the military there i mean so the military backed of course bashir in the past how united is the army now and who are they support. i can't say that. especially people who are

not still in high powered position in the army and united because they are all the time in the beginning of the six of the. but it does and they are defending the prisoners of the time. but. the people who have a. high position in this army to give because those they have before as i said before this is now who is having the power. of the national muslim brother and some other people who is in for example two days they have the confidence and they announce they will try to bring. but what to do but they don't talk about to bring order people to justice for example and this is point one two people say you know we cannot accept especially if you see. what is happening in darfur. i don't

know no one no where is it just as a point out of the harm sudanese human rights activists here in berlin thank you very much it will come. well in sports twenty four year old son duff is preparing to make history as the first ever iranian woman to take part in an officially sanctioned boxing match she steps into the ring this saturday for a bout in western france but she's hoping she can land a blow for equality all the way back home. women have been fighting for equality in iran on many fronts and saddam's condom is breaking new ground for a country that allowed women to attain a min soccer game for the first time last october. now at the end of the day there are limitations that apply to each and every

country you can't just say that about iran there are some good things about iran and there are some not so good things too but at the end of the day you can achieve what he wants. to some iranian women do bucks but no woman has ever had an official bout. here in france that condoms training camp and she already gets a champion's welcome without her family in bracing the idea of boxing condom might not have gotten to this point of her aspiring career. my parents were against that but then they accepted the idea and gave me support and what i have now is because of that. win lose or draw cottam is dedicating her fight to other women boxers in iraq. coming up next on the. africa environment magazine so stay tuned for that i'm her

last but let's watch a. boy . oh boy.

he can africa. good spirits. look at. least they can name guys coffee maker sound and environmental projects with sustainable energy. doesn't look. no. next on.

the world. it's time to take. the few times you're just such the. fun for the troops. to overcome drugs and cut. it's time for. the coming up ahead. minds. sleep. carefully. don't seem. to be.

discovered. subscribe to the documentary on you tube. welcome to in the edition of equal africa program today francis reports from across africa as well as europe i'm now its highway are the university of nigeria and so in enugu south this agenda of course i'm joined by my colleagues e.l.o. noble and south africa hazy high you don't today jazz greats and good to see you again however you.