Author: DW

Thailand-Cambodia border tensions and Myanmar’s civil war will be key topics of discussion at the upcoming Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia, ASEAN’s current rotating chair, will host over 30 heads of state at the October 26-28 event, including US President Donald Trump, who is expected to oversee the signing of a peace accord between Thailand and Cambodia. The two neighbors have a long-standing border dispute that goes back over a century. Tensions along the Thai-Cambodia frontier erupted into full-scale cross-border combat in July. At least 43 people were killed and 300,000 civilians…

What springs to mind at the mention of “alien”?  Little green men with antennae in silver suits? Grey-skinned, orb-eyed beings? Brightly lit UFOs hovering in the sky? For social and political scientist, Christian Peters, the evolution of alien imagery in pop culture has reflected an amalgam of eyewitness accounts, cultural discourse, and media coverage. Why grey skin and flying saucers? Peters, the managing director of Bremen University’s International Graduate School of Social Sciences, explains how the little-green-men and silver-suit alien tropes of the 1950s were succeeded by the grey extraterrestials that also feature in today’s emoji-verse.  An institution: Even emojis depict grey aliensImage: Alex Milan Tracy/NurPhoto/ZUMA/picture…

The European Commission says the tech giants may have made it hard for researchers to access public data, which could impact research into whether users, including children, are being exposed to harmful content online.

The decision to allow two European league games to be played abroad caused widespread consternation earlier this month. While European football’s governors, UEFA, said it took the decision “reluctantly” on the basis they had no legal framework to stop it, there was a feeling among most fans, pundits and players that this would undermine the fabric of football still further. “There has been absolutely universal opposition,” Martin Endemann, head of policy at Football Supporters Europe, who advocate for fans on the continent, told DW. “We had a statement out, which was signed by 600 fan groups from 29 countries across Europe against this.…

At least 20 people died in southern India after a bus caught fire following a collision with a motorcycle, police said. The incident occurred early Friday near Kurnool, a city in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. “Eleven bodies have been identified and nine are yet to be identified,” local police official Vikrant Patil said. “Some bodies are badly charred.” Concerns over public transport safety Police said the motorcycle rammed into the bus from behind and became stuck under its fuel tank, triggering an explosion that engulfed the vehicle in flames. “As the smoke started spreading, the driver stopped the bus and tried…

Depending on who you speak to, EU leaders either just took a cautious step toward using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine  — or kicked the can down the road and left their summit mired in even more legal and financial questions than when they walked in. There was no endorsement of a massive €140 billion ($163 billion) loan for Ukraine that some states had been pushing for. Instead, leaders issued a much vaguer commitment to “addressing Ukraine’s pressing financial needs” for the next two years, and vowed to revisit the issue of Russian assets in December. “We agreed on the ‘what’ …

Noted human rights advocate and philanthropist George Soros has received the European Civil Rights Prize of the Sinti and Roma for his many years of work supporting Roma communities across Europe. The prize, awarded at a ceremony in Berlin where former Chancellor Angela Merkel was a speaker, was accepted on his behalf by George Soros’ son, Alex, who is the chair of the board of directors of the Open Society Foundations founded by his father. The prize comes with an endowment of €15,000 (around $17,400).George Soros is the founder and chairman of the Open Society FoundationsImage: Ronald Zak/AP/picture alliance What did Soros’ Open Society say…

As if European carmakers needed more reminders of their dependency on China, new ones keep popping up. The industry is bracing for production stops after chip supplier Nexperia warned that a spat between the Netherlands, where the firm is located, and the firm’s Chinese owners could hit supply.  They’re also preparing for a squeeze on raw materials key for electric motors after new figures from China’s customs office released last week showed China’s rare-earth exports fell 31% in September from August. On Wednesday, German car giant Volkswagen warned that the latest supply chain issues could lead to production stoppages. Production…

The decision to allow two European league games to be played abroad caused widespread consternation earlier this month. While European football’s governors, UEFA, said it took the decision “reluctantly” on the basis they had no legal framework to stop it, there was a feeling among most fans, pundits and players that this would undermine the fabric of football still further. “There has been absolutely universal opposition,” Martin Endemann, head of policy at Football Supporters Europe, who advocate for fans on the continent, told DW. “We had a statement out, which was signed by 600 fan groups from 29 countries across Europe against this.…

Andrzej Poczobut, a Belarusian with Polish roots, is a correspondent for Poland’s left-liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. For many years he has been an outspoken critic of the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and his regime.  Poczobut was arrested twice in 2010 and 2011 after reporting on protest rallies. In 2020, during the mass protests that followed a fraudulent election, the Belarusian regime’s hostility towards the journalist intensified. Members of the Belarusian intelligence service, the KGB, raided his apartment in Grodno on March 25, 2021. They arrested Poczobut and confiscated his computer, documents and Polish books. Lukashenko himself commented publicly on the arrest. “An…