Author: DW

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was open to speaking to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as well as meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a midnight meeting with international news agencies on Wednesday. Putin spoke on a range of matters, including what he called a resolution to the war in Ukraine and the recent hostilities between Israel and Iran. Russia launched an illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Despite repeated attempts at negotiating an end to the war, including from US President Donald Trump, Putin has shown little interest in stopping the fighting. What did Putin say about…

War is expensive. Besides causing destruction, personal tragedies and deaths, it costs a lot of money to buy and mobilize equipment. It also costs manpower as Isreal — and its economy — is finding out on multiple fronts. Since the militant islamist group Hamas attacked the Jewish state on October 7, 2023, Israel has been engaged in intense fighting in Gaza. After that, Israel launched airstrikes into Lebanon as retaliation for cross-border Hezbollah missile and drone attacks. Last week, Israel struck deep within Iran with the aim of disabling its nuclear capabilities. Israel has big problems and big budgets With all…

Lauded pianist and author Alfred Brendel passed away quietly at his home in London on Tuesday at the age of 94. He gained fame for his sensitive interpretations of works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Liszt, among others.  Brendel was born on January 5, 1931, in northern Moravia in the present-day Czech Republic. The boy of German, Austrian, Italian and Slavic heritage grew up on the Adriatic coast in what is now Croatia. He went to school in Zagreb, studied at the Conservatory in Graz, Austria, then moved to Vienna in 1950 and to London in 1970, which was his home until his…

Appendix cancer is one of the rarest types of cancers, with cases generally limited to older adults, if ever, in cancer clinics. But a new study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine has found that the number of appendix cancer cases has increased dramatically — specifically in people born after the 1970s. While the number of people getting appendix cancer is still very low — just a few people per million get the disease per year — the incidence has at least tripled, or even quadrupled, in younger generations, compared with those born in the 1940s. What’s concerning health…

For Karen, it started with an ad and an influencer. Next came a 30 reais (€5, $5.80) bet. Then shame, spiraling debts, using her mum’s credit card and a battle against addiction that, though calmed for now, still rages. “If I was at a party, I’d be gambling. If I went to a restaurant or a bar, my cell phone would be in my hand. Even taking a shower, my cell phone would be in my hand. Under the shower, my arm stretched out,” the 29-year-old from the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil, told DW.   She struggles to…

Israel’s assault on Iran was discussed with Washington before it was launched. “There were no surprises here,” Fox News anchor Brett Bair said after an interview with US President Donald Trump last Friday. The US government has made clear that it was not actively involved in the attack, though questions arose as to whether this would remain the case when the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was rerouted from the South China Sea to the Middle East. And, on Tuesday, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that the United States knew the exact location of Iran’s supreme leader,…

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed hope Tuesday for renewed cooperation with Ottawa as he met with his new Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney. This comes after a bitter dispute over New Delhi’s alleged involvement in the 2023 assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist. “I congratulate him on his great victory and I am confident that together with him India and Canada will work together to make progress in many areas,” Modi said when he met Carney on the sidelines of a G7 summit.  Carney, who took office in March, said it was “a great honor” to invite Modi to the summit in…

The Strait of Hormuz is a key waterway that lies between Oman and Iran, and connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) describes it as the “world’s most important oil transit chokepoint.” At its narrowest point, the waterway is just 33 kilometers (21 miles) wide, with the shipping lane just two miles wide in either direction, making it crowded and perilous. Large volumes of crude extracted by OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq from oil fields across the Persian Gulf region and consumed…

An almost century-long dispute in Germany is coming to an end.  The House of Hohenzollern — a German noble family to which the last German Emperor, Wilhelm II, also belonged — had long laid claim to various objects in German museums. They had also demanded millions in compensation for expropriated palaces and inventory. The whole thing went to court — until Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia, the great-great-grandson of the last German emperor, finally changed the aristocratic house’s strategy in 2023. He withdrew the compensation claims and thus cleared the way for out-of-court negotiations. The talks began in late 2024, resulting in the newly-reached agreement. Georg…

First came Solar Orbiter, the European Space Agency and NASA mission that revealed the sun’s poles for the first time in early June. Then came Proba-3, less than a week later. It’s another European mission, launched from India in December 2024, to observe the solar corona — the outer atmosphere of the sun. To do that, Proba-3 achieved yet another first. The mission consists of two spacecraft flying 150 meters (490 feet) apart. Together, they performed a millimeter-precision flying maneuver so that one cast a shadow over the other — creating an artificial solar eclipse. It allowed Proba-3 to block out…