Author: DW

Volkswagen’s top executives on Tuesday said the vast automotive empire suffered a 44% reduction in net profits in 2025, with gains after tax dropping to €6.9 billion (roughly $8 billion) from 12.4 billion in 2024. That’s the company’s worst annual overall performance since 2016, at the height of the financial fallout from the so-called “Dieselgate” scandal.  “2025 was punctuated by geopolitical tensions, tariffs and highly intense competition,” Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz said in the company press release.  The VW Group is planning 50,000 job cuts across its various brands by 2030. It is struggling with falling demand and rapidly improving…

Five Iranianwomen’s national team players were granted humanitarian visas in Australiaamid fears of persecution back home. “Australians have been moved by the plight of these brave women,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a press conference on Tuesday. “They’re safe here, and they should feel at home here,” he added. According to Albanese, all other members of Iran’s squad are welcome to receive help, but it was up to them to accept the offer. Australian police took the five Iran squad members from their hotel in Gold Coast, moving them to a “safe location” after their asylum requests.Supporters of…

A tool of endless potential or a technology that threatens democracy via deepfakes? While AI-generated imagery has made its way into our everyday lives, its impact on society is still being explored. The exhibition “Fake! Early Photo Collages and Photomontages,” which can be seen at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam until May 25, takes a step back from the ongoing discussion to remind us that images were faked and manipulated way before the invention of Photoshop or AI. A 1908 photomontage shows how manipulated images were popular long before PhotoshopImage: rijksmuseum.nl”As soon as photography was invented, some 187 years ago, images have been changed, altered,…

China’s rise from poverty to the world’s second‑largest economy rewrote the rules of globalization. Now Beijing’s push into high-end technology is unfolding at an even faster pace. While the United States and United Kingdom had decades to absorb the first China shock at the turn of the century, those confronting the second — above all Germany — have had far less notice. An obvious sign that Beijing’s huge investments in high-tech were paying off emerged shortly after the first Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) rolled off transporters across Europe in 2023. While few believed they would make serious inroads against Germany’s legacy carmakers, just over two…

Traditional gender roles are undergoing something of a revival on social media, thanks to tradwife TikTok creators, right-wing influencers like Andrew Tate and others. Tate, one should add, is under investigation for abusing and raping various women. A new global study confirms that traditional values are making a comeback, while also revealing a surprising fact: almost one third of Generation Z men, meaning those born between 1997 and 2012, believe that wives should “always obey” her husbands. The survey – published ahead of International Women’s Day and conducted by Ipsos and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London – analyzed the…

As the first notes of “Mehr-e Khavaran (Eastern Sun)” rang out at the Gold Coast Stadium, nearly 13,000 kilometers (8,000 miles) from Tehran on Australia’s east coast, the Iranian women’s national team raised their hands to their temples in salute. Most also appeared to sing along to their national anthem before the Asian Cup match against Australia. Three days earlier, the same players had made headlines around the world by staying silent during the playing of their anthem before their opening match against South Korea. While it’s difficult to be certain, it seems likely that the players came under pressure from…

When the trailer for “The Devil Wears Prada 2” came out in early February, fans of the Hollywood favorite immediately recognized the familiar faces — seemingly untouched by the passage of more than 20 years. But while the characters may look the same, their world has shifted, and it’s the direction their lives are taking that’s creating intrigue. Rather than revisiting the original story for the sake of nostalgia, the new film positions itself as a contemporary update. After all, the worlds of fashion and media are walking a very different runway than they were in 2006. Within 24 hours,…

Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine are in the midst of an spat over a key pipeline that supplies Russian crude to Central Europe.    Shipments through the Druzhba pipeline have stalled since the end of January. While Ukraine blames a Russian drone strike for the disruption, Hungary and Slovakia slam Kyiv for the prolonged outage. What to know about the pipeline? The Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline carries Russian crude through Belarus and Ukraine and into Central Europe. Opened in 1964, it is one of the largest oilpipelines in the world, connecting West Siberian oil fields to major refineries in Europe. The pipeline has…

As a child, Laura Müller dreamed of becoming a Formula 1 driver – inspired by the legendary Michael Schumacher. “I always watched Formula 1 on Sundays,” the German said in an August 2025 interview published by the auto motor und sport portal. But nobody was taking her seriously back then, and since she didn’t know how to get started in karting, a motor racing career remained nothing more than a dream. Starting out in Australia Still, Müller would go on to work her way into Formula 1, becoming the series’ first female race engineer in 2025.  Her job means she is the main technical…

The Renaissance artist’s name recently made headlines as claims of a secret deathbed trove of artworks and a rediscovered bust surfaced. But what do we actually know about his life?