this is d.w. news live from berlin the struggle to reintegrate fighters from one of the world's most violent to militant groups al-shabaab spread mayhem across somalia for years fighting the government and killing civilians but now some militants are being offered a chance to rejoin society. speaks exclusively to form a fox is trying to come to terms with their violent past also on the program. cuba faces more u.s. sanctions this time against the state's own shipping company to look at cuban life and the u.s. in particular which has been in place for more than 16 teams. on the afghanistan

twins of football coach tells of the feat for president should resign following his handling of the sexual abuse scandal. i'm phil gayle welcome to the program. the islamist militant group al-shabaab has been waging a violent campaign in somalia for more than a decade they're a reason to replace the u.n. backed government and impose a strict version of islamic sharia law though the capital mogadishu is now controlled by a force from the african union al-shabaab controls around 20 percent of the country now the government is offering amnesty and rehabilitation to militants who leave the jihadists the w.'s mellen a quarter of the bell has been given rare access to a rehabilitation center in jubilant province she spoke with former militants about

why they left al-shabaab and the nightmares they still suffer. that you know they were part of it killing machine terrorizing somalia's population but now they're asking for forgiveness this facility in juba land is home to 86 young man who used to fight for one of the deadliest islamist extremist groups in the world. here in southern somalia in a town once under siege by al shabaab a program is being implemented to rehabilitate one extremist fighters with the hope of peacefully reintegrating them into society. the former fighters here mostly men aged between 24 and 29 have been granted amnesty and seeking a 2nd chance 2 of them are willing to share why they decided to defect. for their safety and security we have withheld the location and real identities by calling them and that he said was just 15 years old when he joined the group 5 years ago

but boredom book would be at 1st people join because the religion they say about promoting religion but this is just a front actually they're killing innocent people for no reason or the thought of this could be. similarly who joined us at the age of 16. years to escape from the group to see. if they also killed muslims in their tank when i saw my people dying i decided i had to break away that. many men growing up in disenfranchised and poor parts of the country into joining up for financial reasons and to spend that belonging. to address this these men now receive locational training and hands on group classes. i did not know how to live within society but i learned that here i've learned how to

support myself. but many here are still haunted by nightmare. they struggle to fathom how they were capable of such violence. just 70 kilometers away from this now peaceful town peacekeepers mandated by the african union are still waging overall against the militant group. but. it's the we owe it father lot and liberated several areas in the past 2 or 3 months. we are also working on a plan to liberate the areas still under the control of al-shabaab and and them over to the somali army. to be. back at the rehab and taishan facility these young men receive professional psychological support. but above all it's companionship and leisure time that are helping them to overcome their trauma. before we can talk to each other about all

the things we've done wrong and give each other support about how not to fall back into a destructive winds. for somalia a hope for the birth of a united government and for my life i hope to work for the benefit of my country and for my people with plenty of skills he sent men to intend to make a positive contribution to society again. they help other young people form repeat that mistake of joining up in the 1st place. and that report was produced by the double is that melanie could it about who joins us now from nairobi welcome melanie how successful are these rehabilitation programs. well phil it seems they are very successful of course it's impossible to get nationwide numbers we are speaking of a country which is currently at tuol but at least in the south of somalia we can say about this facility almost 300 former fighters have been in rehab and i

they're about to already have gone back into their communities and start a life that the government grants amnesty to everyone who wants to leave the group so there is an incentive but of course that's very difficult to do the man i spoke to told me that they had been wanting numerous times that if they did leave their families afford experience violence that they themselves would be killed so many are terrified of retaliation by al-shabaab but do feel like they want to speak out and inspire others to follow suit and the as well do they face retaliation. as well people whose families may well have been killed or injured by these people once they try to rehabilitate rehabilitate themselves back into society. they don't really feel that they have to be scared of retaliation by the somali

population and speaking to many somalis on the ground i can say that they themselves believe that having amnesty programs having rehabilitation programs like this one is very essential in order for the country to move forward to build peace to defeat al shabaab in the end and that could be surprising considering that they have been at the receiving end of brutal violence by al-shabaab i've spoken to many women who told me about witnessing their husbands being killed in front of their very eyes about being on the run for a year is not being able to go back to their villages which are still under control and it was heartbreaking to see how scared they are to live in their own country there is no safety but at the same time they're hopeful because there are programs like this one house al-shabaab become so powerful that it controls a 5th of the country. many factors contributing to our

strength one of them being that in a country plagued by poverty ultra bob has money in many ways you could refer to as the somali mafia being able to extort money from the local population being able to make money from illegal taco production and exports then there is also the weakness of the state which contributes to the power of. is able to provide services to the somali population that the government is not at this very moment and finally yes there is an african union peacekeeping mission in the country which has successfully flushed out from many major and strategic cities but experts do say that there are simply not enough troops in the country to get rid of al shabaab and to defeat the thousands of fighters that are still waging a war against the government could have to bow out in the end you think you.

saw remember the curious about was there in nairobi kenya of course now to some of the other stories making news around the world at least 80 people are feared drowned after their boat sunk oh the coast of tunis you know the target of zazi is 4 people were rescued one has since died in hospital the migrants that set style from europe. for europe from the bill on monday. to both the says it has seized the supertanker suspects the shipping crew or in some form syria despite the e.u. sanctions law enforcement agencies border the grey swan which is believed to be carrying 2000000000 barrels of crude oil from syria's ally iran. russian president vladimir putin has met with pope francis at the vatican it talked for nearly an hour but no details of that discussion have been released by law it was expected to touch on the crisis in ukraine its leaders are due to meet the pope on friday. the united states is tighten sanctions against cuba by hitting its state

run oil shipping firm the u.s. treasury says it's imposing financial sanctions on cuba metallica's because of its key role in propping up front as well as president nicolas maduro who president trump once removed from power the new sanctions are turning the screws on ordinary cubans who have been coping with u.s. sanctions for more than 60 years. former rita to merit to days a good day there's fish for dinner cuba is surrounded by water but these days the 48 year old has to stand in line for over 2 hours to buy fish. basically on the side of the bottle sometimes when a product is available again i mediately call my brother or a friend and say hey there's chicken here then i get in line. but i always want to . but for marie it's even more important than food is whether or not she can get her medication or her brothers both suffer from high blood pressure. we have the impulse we are living in a time of need that's the reality today. there was never really an excess of

anything here but now even soap and toothbrushes are hard to come by staples like rice flour and beans are strictly rationed people here are lining up for chicken. older people are often overwhelmed just recently a woman waiting in line right in front of me collapsed. cuba has been hit hard by america's sanctions cubans living in exile can't send as much money back to their families now nonetheless cuba is still putting on a happy face but even the tourism industry crucial to the country is hurting cruise liner operations have been canceled and any american doing business in cuba faces possible charges back home well i wish trump nothing but the worst this president doesn't have feelings none of it in and out but while the sanctions right now cuban say it's because of venezuela ever since the days of hugo chavez and fidel castro

these socialist nations have been economically and politically close then as wally gets doctors and support from cuba's intelligence agencies and cuba gets crude oil but venezuela is in a deep crisis and can't supply much more oil many think the u.s. believes if cuba's economy collapses it won't be able to support venezuela. every conflict with the usa is difficult because of its leading position as the world's most important market and no one would risk an argument with the west because of cuba policy. larry to has arrived at her allocated pharmacy to pick up her medication she can only get it here initially things were looking good but then a problem arises. i got my medication but they didn't give me what my brother needs maybe it will arrive next week or i will call the pharmacy central head office and ask if i can get it in another part of the city. the us is powerplays making life

here much harder it's his brother has to eat a lot of garlic supposedly this will keep his blood pressure down but at least today there's fish to go with it. here in europe are sort of on the line and has been brussels meeting the man she hopes to succeed as president of the european commission djotodia having secured the backing of european heads of governments germany's defense minister now has to convince a skeptical european parliament's that she is the right woman for the job presence of the european council on talks because it and pains to approve this front alliance nomination and they vote in less than 2 weeks. because one had better be got in brussels welcome bad so sort of on the line already has donald claudio because backing so why would she meeting with them today . and it's basically continuing with

a stop to through the european institutions today it was an easy stop in brussels because both men have a friendly with. but she has to ghana more support especially from the parliament and today she was seeking a she put it smart advice how to do that and that's very necessary because she never ran for office in the european parliament she never had the post in brussels she's a total surprise for many of the parliament terrorists and also for the people again busses so she's looking for some hints of what she can do in the next 14 days to get more support for her candidacy today as she was showered with kisses and hugs by john claudio because she usually as he usually does with all his guests she he showed her a new office but this is not sufficient to she needs to roll out a pen for europe in the next 14 days as she put it and everybody is very looking

forward to see what she's really standing for winch when it comes to the european policies because nobody knows that exactly so who needs to hear a lot who does she need to convince. but she needs support in parliament she need support from our own party the christian democrats see she needs a socialist borge she needs to deliberate and also she needs maybe some votes from the greens to get a majority an absolute majority in 14 days when the vote is set and that is still an uphill battle because there's fears a position from the socialists especially from the german socialist and also the greens not convinced and they want to hear from the fund a line what she wants to do and there will be some more hearings next week when it was a letter from the line to be back in brussels so what happens if they say no if the parliament says no. then you're both slip into

a very deep institutional crisis because that never happened before and then the council has to come up with a new candidate within 4 weeks that's what the treaties say and you can imagine how difficult that would be because it took already 3 days to come up with funda line and nobody wants to imagine what that means and then in september the parliament has to vote again and also this will then go with breaks it which is supposed to take place in october and if there's no new commission in place everything can get very messy. in brussels thank you. some good news scientists in the united states could be on the brink of a breakthrough in the search for a cure for aids hiv they've managed to remove the virus from the d.n.a. of infected mice a process they hope will be a major step towards developing a cure for humans. until now it was almost impossible to remove

the completely from someone infected with the virus but to us scientists come out and howard gandelman are pursuing a new approach that combines 2 methods 1st they treat mice with antiviral drugs over a sustained period of time although these drugs repress the virus they don't reach what's already settled in the animal cells so next the researchers used the crisper cast method also described as gene scissors to remove the genetic material from the subject this successfully destroys the leftover inactive viruses. the results are promising a 3rd of the mice treated with this double approach showed no signs of hiv. but if the researchers use only one of the 2 methods the hiv indicators remain in the body howard gandelman says the study is an important step to advance treatment of hiv.

our hope is from for this observation the science is that we generate the ability to eliminate hiv. infected human this work gives us that 1st step that the potential for an hiv cure is within our grasp the new method will next be tested on monkeys if those experiments show signs of success the 1st human clinical studies could be carried out is early as next summer . lots of people on facebook instagram and whatsapp been having major problems using those social media platforms over the last 24 hours they've lost the ability to send and receive photos videos and other files so what's going on there is i don't tilton can probably tell us. what is behind these acts as well according to facebook over the last 24 hours they have carried out

some routine maintenance and that led to a problem in their back and in their server farms which basically made it impossible for people using their service and not just facebook we should also say as you said on whatsapp an instagram prevent them from uploading and transferring media files i mean i had this it's 2 experiences well my wife wanted to send some pictures of her in law for the last 24 hours and they were kind of stuck in a in a waiting queue for 24 hours until early this morning when facebook managed to clear up the issue now facebook says it was just part of it some basic technical maintenance and it was just kind of a configuration error that cropped up however there have been some rumors online that this might somehow be tied into facebook's initial plans to unify all of their services into a larger service later on however facebook has a comment on any of those rumors because it's worth bearing in mind that facebook instagram and what's up oh yes he has been for a while now they've been looking to integrate all those services into one kind of overarching platform but those plans are still quite a ways down the road. how have users been reacting have to be able to react

a lot of us was that have to just get up and go and twitter well it's all exactly what twitter saw online and that's exactly what they did in fact it's actually kind of become almost a kind of a funny little tradition where when one of these services goes offline people jump on twitter they look at other different platforms and start complaining about facebook and the big service is really going down we've seen hundreds of gypsum means cropping up to that end where people really kind of taking aim at facebook and mark zuckerberg and generally the entire facebook ecosystem in general but it's not just people i mean a lot of companies are actually complaining as well because you have to remember facebook is a huge market and huge. platform for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide and when they go down these companies can't do business and that means real world losses in terms of you know their bottom line ok so it's not just cut videos what builds up as if that the people who decide that they have had enough of them out they've had enough of facebook ok well i mean of course a beam we're talking about the online world there's a social media platform for every color for every stripe for every disposition i

mean so facebook goes down you can take to twitter you can look at telegram you can look at thousands of other different social media platforms but really kind of at the core of the issue is outages like this really show you the you know the almost world in compassing power that facebook has managed to actually develop in the last several years i mean a question to you how many users of facebook have i have no idea i'm sort of one of them so me and a few others i would guess it's the actual numbers 2700000000 users i mean if you want to put it in like terms of mass religion that's more than the amount of christians are on the planet there's more than lot of muslims there on the planet it's an absolutely huge market it's a 3rd of the entire population of the world and for a lot of these people facebook is the main method of communication i mean for me i mean look my family's united states i live in germany my wife family's from russia that's how we communicate with each other when a platform like this goes down it cuts off a massive amount of communication and also we're talking about businesses just

a little minute ago facebook has almost gotten so big it can't really be considered a company more it's really gotten to the level of the utility where even the company itself says facebook is an intricate part of the infrastructure for the world economy for modern living so really when we have when you see outages like this it kind of raises the question are governments willing to like sit back and just kind of say ok facebook you have so much power you can turn off sections of our economy like that when you have a slight little mistake are they willing to say you can have that power and keep it or as errors like this crop up and we just saw another one a couple months ago are they going to say maybe we need to get involved in kind of take a little bit of power back from the company good luck to them in their efforts. here thank you. in the women's football world cup the netherlands have secured their place in sunday's final against united states the european champions were pushed to the limit by sweden but came out on top thanks to a goal in extra time. the 2nd semifinal in 2 days in leone started with more

crunching tackles than clearcut chances. are quick to close down vienna medium are here. both sides could have scored in the 2nd half but both keepers fiercely defended their goals sweden's neela fischer was denied by a fingertip save from sorry found one end before a bullet header from media was met by an equally impressive stop from heydrich lindahl the other. ultimately neither team was able to break through in 90 minutes in extra time though a superhero from distance shouted the death of the jackie grown with her 1st ever world cup goal sending the netherlands into their 1st ever world cup final. no chance for keeper lindahl and no way back for her side only the mighty us now stand in the netherlands way. and while the women's world cup has been attracting fans

around the globe a darker side of the game has also been making headlines last month the faithful banned the former head of afghanistan's football federation from all football related activities for life following allegations that he and of a sexually abused female players now afghanistan's coach is telling you she's dissatisfied with thief handling of the case and things favor president jani infantile should resign. let's have the week days of the footballing world is on france and on the sidelines of the woman's world cup a campaign has been launched to eliminate abuse harassment and exploitation in women's football in attendance was afghanistan's coach kelly lindsey who told me how difficult it was for her players to get the help they needed from following reports of abuse. the dialogue went on but it didn't feel like anything was progressing it didn't feel like our players were receiving the concern and care that they needed and many of them were getting death threats many of them were being abused at the time we needed to get make sure they were safe we needed to get them out of the country so that they

could speak the truth and help us understand what was really going on and it just felt like 8 months of a tennis match where nobody wanted to be held accountable and nobody wanted to really talk about the details and sort it out. back in november it was former player paul who 1st went public with allegations that key figures in the afghan put ball federation had sexually abused players june former president care of them was banned for life and fined 900000 euros but a lawyer representing him has said he will seek to appeal the ruling. evidence doesn't meet the. standard of truth. and that's that. kelly lindsey disagrees but has also lost faith in future president giani in fenty you know. he's not my president he

did not hold up the gold standard that should be held up by fifa and human rights and women's rights and i don't believe he should be the president after the way this case was handled the woman's world cup has been a big success but the afghan abuse scandal is a reminder of the long road ahead. well to tell this in day 4 of wimbledon has seen the women's top seed. round the australian took less than an hour to defeat to alison. but a federal britain's jade clock while in a match a spanish men's 3rd seed rafael nadal faces controversial australia and nick is one of the star of the tournament so far. i was reminded of our top story this hour. and the nominee to take over as president often european commission has been meeting the current president and other top officials in brussels but she is facing opposition from some members of the

european parliament who must. point. to focus on europe looks at how breaks it could mean smuggling. makes a comeback in iowa that's next album back of the top of the top of the.

blue. does. appreciate music. for a swiss cheese maker is trying it out. his lemon tom received 6 months of loving attention. and he plays music for it as well so can you taste the difference was the idea of choosing the. next couple.

home or. sometimes books more exciting than real life. bring to. your home. what if there's no ski. list. plus streets. where i come from we had to fight for a free press and was born and raised in a military dictatorship with just one t.v. shadow and if you newspapers when official information has attorneys i have work off the streets of many cantrips and their problems are always the same core to the social inequality a lack of the freedom of the press and corruption weak on the floor to stay silent

when it comes to the fans of the humans and see for my little souls who hunt decide to put their trust in us. my name is johnny carson i work i d w. hello and welcome to focus on europe i'm liable lola my so have you with us a new beginning for turkey those are the words of istanbul's new mayor who broke the ruling party's hold on the city tens of thousands of residents celebrated extremism all those sweeping victory after president aired a one demanded and last a revote in.