Author: DW

02/20/2025February 20, 2025Zelenskyy voices optimism on US envoy meeting despite Trump insultsUS Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg is expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Thursday.  Kellogg arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday, as part of a wider European tour. He has already met with Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrskyi, along with other Ukrainian officials.  “Our meeting with General Kellogg is scheduled for tomorrow, and it is crucial for us that the meeting and our overall cooperation with America be constructive,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address on Wednesday. “Together with America…

Former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday decried the criminal charges filed against him which said he was involved in a coup plot to overturn the 2022 Brazilian presidential election.  Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The charges, filed by Brazilian Attorney General Paulo Gonet Branco on Tuesday, said the former president spearheaded a criminal organization that sought to hack the country’s electronic voting system. The charges alleged that Bolsonaro was involved in a plot to kill Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.   Bolsonaro says he is being politically…

Ukraine’s president appears to be fighting a war on two fronts – against Russian forces on the ground and against American assaults over the airwaves.View from Ukraine by Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor With Donald Trump openly attacking him, Ukraine’s president is dispensing with the diplomatic niceties towards a crucial partner and is instead fighting back.It is a risky move given the heavy reliance of Volodymyr Zelenskyy on American military support to fight Russia’s invasion and the US leader’s dislike of criticism.But the past week of disruptive, strongman diplomacy from the White House – upending traditional assumptions about US…

Sunbeams penetrate heavy steam and smoke in a gray factory hall on a cold February morning. The freezing temperatures are impossible to ignore even inside the Lössnitz Foundry in the eastern German state of Saxony.  But if you walk past one of the tall vats, you can feel the enormous heat. Glowing molten metal is transported over the heads of the workers to the spot where it will be cast into shape. The foundry produces parts for car companies like Audi, BMW and Porsche. These days, managing director Max Jankowsky and his team of 85 employees have a lot to worry about. “The current electricity prices are…

“Who belongs to Germany and who doesn’t?” This is a central question that drove director Marcin Wierzchowski in his documentary “Das Deutsche Volk” (The German People). The work premiered at the Berlinale, marking the fifth anniversary of the racially-motivated shootings that shook Germany on February 19, 2020. That night, a far-right extremist terrorist killed nine people — Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar and Kaloyan Velkov — and injured five more in the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt, in the state of Hessen. After his rampage, the perpetrator…

What did WADA and Sinner agree upon? The tennis world number one seems to have got off lightly with a three-month ban. He tested positive for the banned anabolic agent Clostebol in spring last year — on March 10 at the ATP Masters tournament in Indian Wells in the US and on March 18 during training — but he was not suspended. So the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) took the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and demanded a ban of one to two years. CAS was planning to hear the case in mid-March. But WADA has now withdrawn its…

Washington-based US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday declined to immediately block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from directing the laying-off of workers and accessing sensitive information. However, Chutkan did say the case — filed by more than a dozen US states — raised legitimate questions about Musk’s seemingly unchecked authority. What did the judge say? In her decision, Chutkan wrote that the states “legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight.” However, the judge said the states…

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro knew and agreed to a plan to poison his successor and current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as part of an attempted coup, Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet said Tuesday. Gonet formally charged Bolsonaro and 33 accomplices with attempting a coup to stay in office after losing the 2022 election. What are the allegations against Bolsonaro? “The members of the criminal organization structured at the presidential palace a plan to attack institutions, aiming to bring down the system of the powers and the democratic order, which received the sinister name of ‘Green and Yellow Dagger,'” Gonet said in the…

The bodies of the family of an Israeli hostage who was released two weeks ago will be handed over on Thursday, Hamas has said.Yarden Bibas was freed on 1 February – only to find out his wife and two children, aged four and nine months, had reportedly died in an airstrike.Israel has said it is extremely concerned about their condition but has never confirmed their deaths.Hamas leader Khalil al Hayya said on Tuesday that the Bibas family would be among four bodies to be handed over.Mr Bibas was taken hostage separately from his wife Shiri and children Kfir and Ariel.…

US President Donald Trump’s comments on February 4 about Gaza revived an idea previously touted by both him and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. His latest plan positions Gaza in terms of real estate potential, rather than the humanitarian or political situation for its inhabitants. After claiming that the US would “take over the Gaza Strip” and “own it,” Donald Trump said: “We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But the ‘Riviera of the Middle East,’ this could be something that could be so, this could be so…