back into the history of slavery. we will truly be making progress when we all accept the history of slavery as all of our history. our documentary series slavery routes starts march turns on w. . you're watching news asia coming up today the fight for free speech once again turns deadly and finally dash bush tucker objects was sent to prison for his facebook post and died awaiting trial after this demand an investigation into his death and the rescue of the law that put him behind bars. plus it's all quiet on the kashmir front india and pakistan ease into an easy cease fire while residents in the region try to rebuild from the damage.

i'm melissa chan welcome to news asia activists in bangladesh have been hitting the streets to protest the death of mushtaq ahmed a writer who died in prison and who was sent there in the 1st place for what he said on facebook he had criticized the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic those demonstrating demand the withdrawal of the expansive and fairly new digital security act under which it was charged and they want an independent investigation not a government one into how he died. there and him was to march to bangladeshis interior ministry may know hundreds of mostly students joined in the protest in their way though the explicit barricade imes for a 4th day or began as a peaceful march turned into something. thing more likely. to protest his anger

is twofold it's about the death of a right mushtaq ahmed in jail and it's about a security law that they see is trampling on their freedom of speech i. think. we have succeeded in our programme to lay siege to the interior ministry the economy rates we demanded the elements of the digital security act we protest the way rights. died in prison under the secure custody of the state. authorities say ahmed died of a heart attack while detained in a high security prison he'd been charged under the law for criticizing the country's coronavirus response on social media protesters allege that it was tortured while in jail that his cousin a doctor was present at the autopsy the political question at the moment it's very difficult to accept this a 5354 year old man would die of

a single heart attack you could say it's an abnormal death but we can point out any other symptoms or causes that will result in this death. from our part bangladesh's prime minister has shrugged off criticism of the law and death. what can we do if someone dies after falling sick in jail no death is desired it's also not desired that unrest will be created. 6 such words will do nothing to quell the anger of these protesters who now have a martyr for their course was. joining us is sad how mahdi of amnesty he joins us from colombo saad un human rights chief michelle bachelet has called for an immediate independent investigation into which took meds death what do we know about his time in jail and what his death avoidable

. when you have a person in detention for 9 months effective teacher of attention for 9 months. what can you expect of the state of mind of that very soon and that too has been detained soley for exercising his right to freedom of expression of cherry polls of facebook how much of this is a crime in the constitution of the human rights law is something that is investigated it's also important to analyze and explain why this person had to be detained for such a long time is a 53 year old man has been in detention away from his family simply for exercising his right to freedom of expression simply for posting on facebook or whatever he has although it could be critical of the government which is that which is what

legal documents say that he has been critical of the government in lagos hopes on the government's response to the court 90 lb of it but does that really require question to be detained and kept in jail for such a long time without trial. and this digital security act seems to be a trend we're seeing in many countries i'm thinking of pakistan and also india where the governments have taken action against what they decide is misinformation on social media but which effectively becomes a tool to go to to go after critics is that what we're seeing here as well. so this is a situation that we're seeing across the region what they call it the electronic transactions act the unlawful activities prevention act of the digital security act in bangladesh is seeing that government something very sensitive about public perception people have been critical of actions and responses of the government and that has led to taking this trust actions of

a resting people and profiting laws that legitimize criminalization of free speech you must also note that the human rights comment he has observed at the threshold of even freedom of expression is quite high and this is certainly not one of them where if you're criticizing the government or political fears of public figures. you're not supposed to be detained and arrested for those for those actions and going back to bangladesh how likely is it that the government will drop or change the digital security act as a result of international and public pressure i'm afraid we don't know but this is this is really a time of sense where the government response to the calls of the international community and not just in class the community it's a call of the people of that country who are being subject to this persecution by the parties we not get to know they don't necessarily have to go to the head of the

state for ever for every action but when you have a law that is so vague it overbroad which can stipulate punishment up to 10 years imprisonment or just say something on facebook or twitter or whatever social media or online it's really challenging it goes out of hand at one point whereby country a 10 point one per cent of the government itself remains a sponsor both for the actions of and the persecution that people have to go through. sad how much thank you so much. india and pakistan's agreement to cease fire last week along what's called the line of control in the kashmir region has been cautiously welcomed by residents in the region a cease fire agreement had been in place for nearly 2 decades but it has often been ignored the last couple of years saw a significant increase in ceasefire violations and casualties took a toll among villagers living close to the defacto border on both sides for now the

shelling has stopped. not for the 1st time as easier raman is having to rebuild his home he lives on the pakistani side of the line of control like so many on the border he's long had to deal with the consequences of unrelenting cross border shelling. and reconstructing a portion of my house with a year's worth of savings and borrowing some money i didn't know when it will be destroyed again. and then ounce of cease fire along the line of control could finally provide some rest. relations with pakistan. in a peaceful. signs of the tensions between the 2 countries ever present this

bridge used to connect pakistani kashmir with india and kashmir it was a salvation for families separated by the conflict but it's been shut since 2018 this is the view from the indian side pakistani snipers stand guard at their end of the bridge everyone here knows what can happen. with my sons came and woke me up they said firing has started wake up our entire neighborhood was in a panic like situation i said the only way to survive is to pick up our blankets and to rush to the cowsheds we spent our nights until the morning that came out after firing stopped at 6 am. despite the cease fire the situation in kashmir remains volatile with those closest to it paying the highest

price. joining us is the w. shots at jelani shots at how likely will this ceasefire hold and what are the motivations for both governments to maintain the peace. melissa we have to bear in mind that the current ceasefire was agreed nearly 15 years ago in 2003 but they've been defeated violations on the line of control by both sides and there was a. major escalation in august breaking 19 when the indian prime minister narendra modi decided to effectively annex the indians tell you to focus need to this this border as we know is one of the heavily militarized border in the world which is a flashpoint for a possible nuclear conflict between the 2 countries beneficiaries of been seeing the ultimate price of theirs the shelling and fighting on the line of control they

live in perpetual fear so this is a welcome development for them but we have to be cautious this is not a peace agreement and the situation is still volatile and for john and frankly it can break down any time you talk about volatility so what might be the vul motivation for either government not to maintain the peace. so you look at the history of india pakistan they have had wars this picture of tension on the line of control in kashmir and i would say bolsa goldman's have used a question you can shew every now and then to divert attention from the domestic political economic challenges we have a government in india which is a hardline hindu nationalist government you have a government in pakistan that is effectively back by the military and both governments have used to fish meat issue for their own reasons now india has an issue with the border on china and it really cannot afford to open up too many

fronts so they may want to kind of calm the situation on the border and pakistan affectively has so many internal economic challenges that they would welcome any breakthrough any coming off situation on the border 'd in kashmir going along with india shots at jelani thank you. we leave you today with some adorable androids in japan sales for a little companions like bees are booming tech firms have found people are seeking more human or pet like robots to keep their spirits up while stuck in coronavirus isolation we'll be back tomorrow see you then and goodbye.

to. the fate of against the corona virus pandemic. has the rate of infection been developing what does the latest research say. information and contacts. virus update. on t w. i call meal and i'm game did you know that the 17 through the end of the killed worldwide so that we can eat but it's not just

the animals little suffering it's the environment we went on a journey to find ways out of the ignition if you want in a cold one click to the priests and the culture has changed in the 3 to listen to our podcast on the green. you may not realize it but you use mathematical models every day something as simple as the weather forecast is actually a complex model based on countless data points. welcome to our coverage $1000.00 special that introduction was supposed to be slightly longer but here we are i want to get jones and. i have some what contributed to prediction on mathematical models today by getting tested just like all the anchors here it is

a precaution and those tests on individuals costly that's why a researcher in rwanda came up with an efficient alternative. in the battle against the pandemic rwanda's coronavirus task force relies on comprehensive contact tracing. to get an up to date picture of how much the corona virus has spread rwanda tests a cross-section of the population regularly using an ingenious strategy called pool testing. the brains behind the strategy is will for eternity phone a professor at the african institute for mathematical science. if you go to the community and test people it doesn't tell you how many people actually infected because you can test everybody so you always sound poor and so to go from to some to the truth to reality you need to promote those the calculations involve complex

algorithms defun has translated them for us into an example from everyday life. the idea we're testing is really simple so imagine that you have 9 cups of beans and you have to order one of those bins. and you know that to which core part of the beings you want school beads and placed so you might find the. answer. to avoid this effort the mathematician resorts to a simple yet efficient trick he combines being samples from different parts if all the beans in this pool are good he no longer has to test each part individually only if there are better beans in the sample must he perform it dition all tests the principle can be applied any time groups are tested and it can be used to combat kovac 19. in rwanda sets of 10 and 20

samples are combined and tested similar taney asli if the pool test result is negative all the subjects in the pool sample are indicated as not having coded 19 but if the pooled result is positive each sample is retested individually the advantages of their putting up questions just to reduce the cost spends to the for the agence to do the turnaround time. and also to test the massively in the community also the group just. for the so does and the management of these for these if the virus is spread dramatically pooled samples test positive too often and retesting becomes costly and time consuming so far however africa has low number of cases compared to western countries and the method is proving useful there. this is really the purple for the

african countries but not only african countries even for the roping countries since we do love this and the problems. pulling up close tonight are people so we have been approached by civil countries ghana and kenya are now applying the strategy to mass testing in greece have also come from the u.s. and in britain the university of edinburgh is testing students with this method. oliver that man is a lecturer in statistics in the department of mathematics at imperial college london welcome to our program and before we get into the nitty gritty of mathematical modeling just very very briefly what exactly is it that you do at your department. thanks for having me today so i am part of the empirical culture on the covert 19 response team and we've looked at you know various kinds of

infectious disease models to inform on public health responses to the epidemic i guess the 1st and probably one of the most important pieces was wary of planned out scenarios and what would prevent hospitals to collapse and what prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths in the population so that was the 1st one and we showed it so as resistance in general knockdowns capping off non-essential services are really fundamental to that later on we looked at the age groups as a state and yet the demick showing that it's primary day 20 to 49 year olds 10 tribes. 78 percent of all transmissions are coming from those individuals with limited. contributions from school age children and more recently we looked at a spread of the more months. in england and p 100 cell and we show if you were 17 and it's. by a factor of 1.5 to 1.6 what transmissible the current variance their heart is in

a 2nd and when you say you look at all these things what exactly does this mean i mean talk us through the prices for example of what you've been doing in brazil. so we start by you know and allies in real real time data as it comes in and is reported so in this case it's a case data initially it was a case of data from from analysis hospital dates are just number of admissions a number of deaths burial dates or exams as you know it's been horrific only in indiana. and then we try to interpret it as data with mathematical models so these are. known in your morals it's a little bit unintuitive to to work with them it's not like i throw you a ball and you know where it lands so we really need a small dose to help us understand what's going on and how do you translate those

models that are not linea for policymakers to understand what's going on so that they can decide on specific missions. what we show you know the fits to the data itself along with 95 percent credible and the holes to president certainty we show for costs you know various what if scenarios and there's no single forecast right. but a difference in areas what would happen if you know if we're built here to reduce in a population what you know and other things. and then based on that you know based on that communication very thick asian from several teams different analysis from different regions alternately decisions being made at a policy level i mean let's take a concrete example because here in germany and there's a lot of discussions right now politicians are talking about how to in the lockdown

now if german chancellor angela merkel came to you and asked you what happens to the infection rate if we were to open schools and restaurants next week could you provide her with a model. you know. yes so that is what we've been doing that they are not they are out for the past year for the british government and it's just one aspect it's more than 10 or more league teams and institutions across the u.k. who come together and he back into this and so it's a. it's a very busy it's been a very busy period. i bet they actually do and taking you not giving advice you give them a model so they still have to sort of figure out what it means and make the right policy decision can you support them somehow to. maybe try to make authorities who have ever tried to really make the best transparent and easily accessible as possible so you know we give them graphs and we give timelines and projections

and conferences by having very similar incidents from very different times of models and he also transparent to some sense that undergo i mean when it underlined all these models all right so if you're in expensive will these days certainly but when the pandemic is over if it's over one day what models would you like to work on. what you know i could 19 is not the only infectious disease out there in the world and i'd like you know priority right now on an age to be. you know many other diseases are you've heard about aged and friends on the 1st case the snow 1st your new transmissions. already happened does year so there's no shortage of problems to twerk. i'm afraid you're right yes all of that happening from imperial college in london thank you so much for your time. searching cognitive gears now you'll see what i mean what derek. how much of the

population has to be vaccinated before we reach herd immunity. everyone wants to know this number which from the start has generally been estimated at roughly 70 percent of the population the problem is that pinning it down exactly isn't possible yet because there are still so many moving parts and this pandemic 2 of the most important factors that can have a major impact on herd protection are still big question marks the 1st is the extent to which people who've been vaccinated can still potentially catch and transmit the disease even if they never develop symptoms themselves the data we have so far on this aspect is quite positive evidence from a couple of larger studies now in peer review indicates that at least some approved

vaccines appear to help lower a recipient's chances of being a transmitter after being vaccinated maybe dramatically the 2nd factor that plays a key role and how soon we reach her protection involves variance when the virus mutates to become more transmissible people who get it more contagious so they give it to more people on average and that makes achieving her protection more difficult another potentially problematic facet of this problem is that that variance can also mutate in ways that lower existing immune protection to sars kovi to whether for those who've been vaccinated or for those who have had the disease so variants could turn people we thought were protected back into potential and factors to. spikey imponderables many see spalling case numbers and countries with

high vaccination rates as evidence that herd protection is already beginning to influence the course of the pandemic but we won't really know we have but until we get there. that's it thanks for watching.

picasso and a dark day for the teams at the bottom of the league last place to shine like that loses sacks its coach and plans for the 2nd division. but the competition is also struggling. for relegation contenders for a defeat it's causing hardly any threat to the closing teams go ahead coke. d.w.

. how does it feel of the world. where i come from that or that kid does this go it's just like this chinese food doesn't matter where i am it's always reminds me of home after decades of living in germany chinese food is one of the things i miss the most but that taking a step back i see if they're going to tell a different knowledge. then of for its 1st as american a sense that it's just the other part of the order haven't been ever mentioned in china that you cannot attack it's people wondering if they're going to take it but if you have a ride to learn that is this is the job of just under the law how i see it and of the why i left my job because i tried to do it except maybe an hour a day by they moved on into it and then i was added up to. 2

imagine being born this. year obama compromise. you want to look for them school. you want to be useful but all the love to. the doctor's knowledge when you fall in love they won't make you don't have children for fear they'll be invisible to. you. when you've gone there's no other ever exist. in every 10 minutes. someone misses. 10000000 people in the world the stakes have no nationality i'm told made up of all kinds. of that everyone has the rights to. everyone has the right to stay. home.

this is newsnight from hundreds of nigerian schoolgirls released from abduction leaders in the country's northwest side a secure goals freedoms despite many obstacles also on the program. but more reports of live rounds being fired at civilians southeast asian countries called on me and generals to compromise underlings to lead a. new travel restrictions come into force for certain parts of germany and france because of an outbreak of a coronavirus variant but critics argue that limiting the flow of people not

content infection. welcome to the program. is not with the release of hundreds of kidnapped schoolgirls in northwest nigeria government sources say the girls us safe and well enough to demand the duct of them from their boarding school and zamfara state on friday. their ordeal is over. officials say the almost 300 school children are healthy however and some did suffer physical wounds it's the psychological impact of their kidnapping but may take longer to heal. if you didn't when did most of us enjoyed our feet and we couldn't continue to walk our captors said they would shoot anybody who didn't continue we walked across the

river and they hit us and let us sleep under bushes in a forest. i know mother cried. for the families of the schoolgirls their relief is unsurmountable. a humbling. very happy. yeah i guess i'm not god has brought our or deal to an end that he is what we're so happy as them is that i thank god for everything. i do i look dead about god i did it to allow what anyone would in my lifetime to be and that the students were abducted from this boarding school by an armed gang last friday government officials have been in talks with the kidnappers known locally as bandits up they say these bandits in zamfara state often kidnap for ransom money and to press for the release of their members held in prison authorities are searching for the culprits. so think on this one don't think you

are. doing this when this thing has to stop out there you. are lying to you to a. halt when you see such home phones and couples employed in an industry i mean that. nigeria's president also tweeted saying they're working hard to bring an end to these grim and heartbreaking incidents of kidnapping saying the military and the police will continue to go after the kidnappers. this latest kidnapping was nigeria's 4th mass abduction in less than 3 months this time it had a happy ending but there are fears that children may become the kidnappers target once again or they doubly correspondent fred mooney is in nigeria zamfara state and sent us this update. the news of the girl's freedom will bring live for their

families and for many other nigerians who are following this story but there is a bigger issue at play there is little security here and so there is no guarantee that such a kidnapping on top then again hundreds if not thousands of communities and schools in this part of the country remain vulnerable. for move on and stay here in nigeria the united nations says a terror attack in the country's northeast was directly targeted at several humanitarian aid facilities a hospital and the premises of aid agencies in the town of decor were reportedly set ablaze or damaged affecting the support being given to nearly 100000 people nomics they say group is suspected of being responsible for the violent. now samir manuel the country's military rulers are coming under growing international pressure to hold their crackdown against the country's pro-democracy movement and to release the jailed leader i was hanks' hoochie foreign ministers from southeast

asian countries are holding talks with the military john to today security forces have stepped up their response over recent days using tear gas and rubber bullets police dispersed protesters by opening fire on them on tuesday and the u.n. says at least 18 people were killed on sunday when forces used live ammunition demonstrators the holy for i've returned to democracy following last month's military coup. bound zani and academic and human rights activists are based in london welcome to the w how a protesters responding to being shot at by the military of every remaining peaceful in response oh they have been extremely peaceful you know we have had waves of you know popular uprisings since the military 1st staged a coup in 1982 actually today is the 59th anniversary of the 1st march 2nd 1962 and the central

a messy coming from all communities that are involved in out pushing the military back to the barracks has been we must stay peaceful we cannot behave the way oppressed adust towards us and so yes they have been peaceful right we're also getting 1st reactions to the coup from they asked the foreign ministers meeting is indonesia's foreign minister or at no muss with me and i just thought asked the democracy we must pursue the restoration of democracy indonesia underlined the will the interest and the voices of the people of myanmar must be respected how to use order. i was only to expect the generals to listen i think they have to listen i think they're holding out because they they've believed that they have

a solid support from the 2 security council veto wielders of china and russia but i think you know the international politics and pressure come not simply from the security council will they feel they're protected but from all over the world i think even you know if you listened to and we just listened to retinues foreign ministers. the emphatic statement that restoration of a democracy and the civil liberties has to underline everything and so they have to listen and most importantly they have to listen to 53000000 people what we have is a situation where the military no longer has a functioning state and the only sector the military controls is the security sector and also the people have been terrorized by the military because the police forces have been withdrawn and reconfigured as instruments of the coup instead

of like community policing and you know protection of communities going after criminals and if there are groups against i'd just you know obviously you know you have the greater context here but how is this code different to others in as much as you have the generals in charge saying we're in charge regardless of what the wider population is is saying why do you think that this time there is more pressure on them than the last times. yeah i mean the greatest pressure that we must understand comes from the society itself because we are looking at i mean basically we don't have the the kind of society back in 1962 or even in 1988 where you know the you know certain segments of society revolted against the military to take over and reassertion of its power or primacy if you will but this time we have an entitled difference in our society where

a new generation have tasted a degree of even limited freedom and democratic democratic transition. process and this is also the generation that is so interconnected unlike my generation who lived on the 1st dictatorship so i think you cannot put you know a society that have tasted the blood of freedom but under the boot that has simply not has that that's an aside i just have to time is against us i just want to know that where you see this going because clearly you think the that freedom will win in the end but that doesn't appear to be any room for compromise i have the protesters win over or the generals continue and there's more bloodshed is there room for compromise. there is always a room for any situation even including in wars and

however i must emphasize to his son the society feels that they do not have a national armed forces you know that protects and promote the public safety and well being and so the on the part of the generals they feel completely under siege because they provoked a new type of society into this the people's power movement and said the people and the body of elected m.p.'s yesterday officially declared that the coup group state administration council ought to be designated as a terrorist group and as you know you see snipers on top and you know this isn't simply a regular police force out and confronting the protesters we are seeing mobilization of light infantry division and sorry divisions that way used against several he

injured genesis in the genocide and also other ethnic minority repression and so we are seeing a terrorist situation thank you so much for joining us and i'm lying about for some zani academic and human rights activists. well take a look at some other stories making news around the world now and reporters without borders is accusing saudi arabia's crown prince of crimes against humanity over the killing of journalist jamal khashoggi the media watchdog has filed a complaint with germany's public prosecutor seeking an inquiry under the country's international jurisdiction laws the group accuses saudi arabia of persecuting us from chile and dozens of other journalists. 3 l. g.b.t. activists in poland have been acquitted of offending religious beliefs the women seen here at an earlier court appearance were arrested after leaving images of the virgin mary with a halo in the style of the rainbow flag of the l.g.b. community around the church. your and secretary general i'm turning to cherish says

he's disappointed that only 1700000000 dollars has been pledged a donor conference for yemen in touch to raise more than twice that in order to help people facing starvation 6 years of war in yemen have created the the world's worst humanitarian crisis. germany's imposed new restrictions along part of its border with france to try and control the spread of coronavirus restrictions affect people entering the germany from the most region and will affect most affect the many commuters who work on one side of the border and live on the other in order to add to germany travelers will now have to present a negative code test german authorities are concerned about a more infectious variant that he's spreading in the south the w.'s barbara very little went to the border region to find out more this year joe off to you will feel deaf in no plays and no music since last year like then use everywhere instead

it's been turned into a somewhat unusual vaccination center and the town's mayor who is also a doctor is impatient to get going. controls the cross border workers why not. but it's not through tightening. travel borders that we will get on top of the virus. through vaccination. the region has finally received some extra doses of vaccine because the infection rate remains high e. 300 new cases put 100000 citizens every week and dr clooney is ready to pitch in for the 1st 3 words what. right left arm it doesn't matter but why does he think his area is being struck so badly. for the question because the exchange of hostile relations. from kyon view the

border town of schengen is just 20 minutes away where people move seamlessly from france to germany to luxembourg and back every day what worries authorities everywhere is the rise of the so-called south african mutation and differential part of was it. african barrick this predominant here. than in paris where it's the opposite the english mutation. the outer edge curve here shows the south african mutation but can this virus be stopped by further measures at the borders. closed down scientifically something that affects not. citizens however seem largely ready to accept daily life becoming even more complicated is who would actually do what i was going to say for people working in germany be really difficult of it completed that maybe because the epidemic has

already taken hold and it's rising why haven't they done it earlier. it's also normal when people are a bit fed up with. in the regional capital met the mayor had feared it total border closure because it would have extremely severe consequences to block everything. there will be more controls it will be restrained but maybe it will be necessary in any case the main mistake in the pandemic he thinks has been made in paris. we have very disappointed with the slowness of vaccinations. being to move you dr clooney wants to personally change that and get his citizens vaccinated as quickly as possible. on a virus pandemic has been described as the.