Author: DW

The former head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi was presented with the prestigious Charlemagne Prize at a ceremony in Aachen, western Germany, on May 14. “You took charge of the euro during a time of crisis, and you stabilized the euro and the eurozone,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz said during his speech honoring Draghi.  With his 2024 report on the future of European competitiveness, dubbed the Draghi Report, Merz said Draghi had “pointed the way toward reform with his unsparing analysis.” “I think you’ll understand why his friends call him Super Mario,” the German chancellor joked. Who is Mario Draghi? Draghi is likely…

With memories of the COVID pandemic still fresh in many people’s minds, it’s understandable that communities are worried about hantavirus spreading internationally. “I know you are worried,” wrote Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), in a letter to the people of Tenerife, Spain, on May 9, 2026. The cruise ship MV Hondius — on which hantavirus spread, killed three people and infected others from April to May — was about to dock at Tenerife’s Granadilla Port.  From there, passengers and crew (a total 147 people) were to be repatriated to their home countries, including Germany, France…

The United States has announced exemptions from visa bond payment requirements for FIFA World Cup ticket holders whose teams have qualified for the soccer tournament. In 2025, the Trump administration began requiring visitors to the US from certain countries to pay bonds of between $5,000 (€4,300) and $15,000 to obtain a tourist visa. The bond requirement scheme was expanded in 2026 to include 50 countries.  Five of the 50 countries subject to visa bonds qualified for the World Cup:  Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia. The State Department announced on Wednesday that the US would waive the bond requirement…

There’s a special name for music that’s not produced by the big labels and that can’t be easily squeezed into a genre: “indie,” short for independent. Indie bands have an image of being authentic and non-commercial. Fans presume their favorite bands achieved their success through their great music and hard work alone. That’s why many were shocked to find out that the hype surrounding indie bands like Geese, as well as singer-songwriters like Sombr, Jane Remover and Mk.gee turned out to have been fabricated, at least in part, by social media manipulation. A kick-start for bands The uproar began with an interview in Billboard magazine with…

When Western firms pull production out of China or buy fewer parts from there in order to be less dependent on the country, this is called decoupling or de-risking. And you would think that China can’t stop the rest of the world from decoupling, right? Tell that to Beijing. Chinese authorities blocked Meta’s $2 billion (€1.7 billion) takeover of the artificial intelligence (AI) startup Manus last month, sending a clear signal that even deals structured outside China’s borders are no longer safe. Manus is headquartered in Singapore, but has strong Chinese roots. China viewed the firm as one of its strategic assets in the global AI race and blocked the deal…

On paper, Arcelia looks like a poor-but-average Mexican town. It sits in Guerrero, Mexico’s second-poorest state.  Official data gives it a score of 0.714 — firmly in the “high development” band on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI).    Then a satellite looks at Arcelia. Using artificial intelligence to analyze what it sees, it returns a lower score of 0.617.  By the UN’s own classification, that is no longer high but medium development — a different development tier and a different policy-reality for 33,000 people.  Arcelia is not a special case. More than half (58%) of the global population is in the…

Hassan Seif al-Din never expected that, at the age of 65, he would be teaching martial arts to children in a football stadium in Beirut. But these are not normal times. The coach fled to Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium from Dahiyeh, one of the capital’s southern suburbs, along with thousands of others. He now lives in one of the many rows of tents set up in the venue. The Middle East was plunged into fresh fighting on February 28 when the United States and Israel attacked Iran and the conflict spread into Lebanon just days later. In April, the Office…

Hamburg announced on Tuesday that Kathleen Krüger would become the football club’s new board member in charge of sport as of July 1. “By appointing Kathleen Krüger, HSV (Hamburg) is securing the services of a highly respected figure who has worked at the highest international level for many years at FC Bayern München,” the club said in a statement on its website. “Over the course of 17 years, she has gained extensive experience in the sometimes emotionally charged environment of an elite club, helped shape key processes and demonstrated exceptional organizational and leadership skills.” The former midfielder has held several positions…

It’s been a nightmare two months for global shipping, with the Strait of Hormuz largely shut to commercial traffic and the threat of fresh attacks on vessels in the Red Sea. Now, a third crisis is brewing — a resurgence in Somali piracy. Even before the latest escalations between the United States, Israel and Iran, around half the vessels bound for Europe from Asia and the Gulf were bypassing the Red Sea and Suez Canal due to earlier strikes by the Iran-backed Houthis. Faced with the threat of attacks around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow chokepoint between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, major shipping firms opted instead…

So far, three people have died, with several others taken ill, after a hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius. Hantavirus is a rare rodent-borne illness that has multiple strains of varying severity. With the ship now docked, passengers are being returned to their countries of residence. Each will face a slightly different process over the coming days and weeks, depending on their infection status and their country’s reactions to such outbreaks. A Dutch couple, who were the first to become ill and later died, had been visiting South America before departing on the ship from Argentina’ssouthernmost town, Ushuaia, in late March. Argentina’s…