Author: DW

Germany’s 2026 World Cup preparations ramp up this month, with two friendlies against Switzerland and Ghana. Head coach Julian Nagelsmann picked two new names for his latest squad, announced on Thursday. Bayern Munich’s high-flying 18-year-old attacking midfielder Lennart Karl and 22-year-old goalkeeper Jonas Urbig have been included for the first time. The pair can now both have legitimate hopes of making Germany’s World Cup squad this summer given that Nagelsmann has already admitted that the squad for these matches would be very similar to the one for the summer tournament. “The decisive factor is that we have a core group of players, but can…

The skeleton found in a simple wooden coffin in Magdeburg Cathedral inside the official sarcophagus of 10th century king Otto I of Saxony almost certainly belonged to the man himself, officials said at a presentation in the city’s university hospital on Wednesday.  “With a probability bordering on certainty what we have here in front of us are indeed the mortal remains of Otto the Great,” Harald Meller, the director of the Saxony-Anhalt State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments and Archaeology, said in Magdeburg, standing in front of the carefully laid out and remarkably complete 1,050-year-old skeleton. Otto and his…

Standing in a 1960s industrial building by the German Baltic Sea coast, Florian Grose, holds a dosimeter as he moves towards a corner of the room. It starts beeping furiously. “That’s around 10 microsieverts,” he says, dressed in protective overalls. A normal dose rate is under 0.2 microsieverts. “This is an area where I’d say we maybe should move a meter away. You shouldn’t stand or lie here for an hour,” Grose, a radiation protection worker, warns in a disarmingly jovial tone. Inside special building one of the former nuclear power plant, parts of the wall are uneven and pockmarked —…

The shocking and unprecedented news that this year’s African Cup of Nations (AFCON) winner Senegal will be stripped of their title, which will instead go to beaten finalists Morocco, has sent shockwaves across the continent’s football community. Senegal’s football federation have confirmed they will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), with the federation’s secretary general Abdoulaye Seydou Sow quick to express his feelings. “We will contact our lawyers and file an appeal. We will stop at nothing. The law is on our side,” Sow announced on state radio RTS, calling the decision a “disgrace for Africa.” Titles being…

In the beginning, it was just a game. One we’ve all played numerous times: select the squares with a stop sign, enter the text below, reassemble the puzzle — and check the box declaring, “I am not a robot.” Yet, every time we select images determining whether what we see is a cat or a croissant, we end up working for Big Tech. When Guatemalan computer scientist Luis von Ahn first proposed the idea of “games with a purpose” (GWAPs) in 2004, his goal was to harness human brainpower so that computers could learn from it. His idea was simple: Get humans to solve tasks that are…

Since the war in Iran started, worries about oil and gas have made the biggest headlines and sparked the loudest complaints from consumers. But another bottleneck in the global supply network is also causing alarm: a shortage of helium, an essential component used to make, among other things, semiconductors — those tiny chips that help run everything from electric vehicles to smartphones.   A prolonged shortage of helium could lead to a shortfall of advanced chips and have knock-on effects for electronics manufacturers who depend on them, or force others to scale back their datacenter plans. Why is helium essential for chipmakers? Considering that…

Senegal were sensationally stripped of their Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) title on Tuesday night and tournament hosts Morocco crowned champions instead, two months after African football’s showpiece event concluded with a chaotic final in Rabat. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) declared that Senegal had “forfeited” the January 18 final by leaving the pitch in protest over a controversial late penalty awarded to Morocco — an incident that also prompted an attempted pitch invasion by furious Senegalese fans. When the Senegalese players eventually returned to face the penalty 15 minutes later, Moroccan star Brahim Diaz inexplicably and controversially chipped the ball…

If you thought that the “I was here” style graffiti is a modern-day phenomenon confined to the backs of bathroom stalls, think again! New technologies are unearthing graffiti scratched on ancient sites like never before, giving voice to everyday people of the ancient world — from enslaved individuals to bored soldiers who etched their names onto walls. The ancient graffiti research epicenter, so to speak, is the once-bustling city of Pompeii, which was buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The eruption left buildings exquisitely preserved under meters of ash. Since excavations started in the 18th century, archeologists have…

US President Donald Trump recently hosted executives from seven major defense contractors in the White House — part of an attempt by his administration to shore up the sector as the war against Iran intensifies. The conflict has exposed strains within the US defense sector. There are concerns over US stockpiles of long-range missiles and air-defence interceptors, and over the sector’s capacity to ramp up production in the event of a prolonged conflict. Trump said he had discussed “production and production schedules” with the companies, namely Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), BAE Systems, Boeing, Honeywell Aerospace and Northrop Grumman, at the White House…

While the days of soccer being a go-to conservative punching bag for being “socialist” or a “sign of the nation’s moral decay” have largely subsided, right-leaning publications still regularly trot out arguments for why the “US doesn’t care about soccer” or the sport is “unjust and un-American”. In recent years, the sport has also served as a lighting rod in American culture wars, with the US women’s national team in particular landing in the crosshairs of Donald Trump and the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement for its outspoken progressive players. With the men’s World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico rapidly approaching…