Author: DW

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signed a law that allows debt forgiveness for new recruits signing up to fight in Ukraine, government announced. The new legislation allows those signing up for a one-year contract to have their bad debts of up to 10 million roubles (€92,000, $95,835), written off. Law won’t apply to those already enlisted The law — approved by parliament earlier this month — will be applicable to potential recruits who have had debt collection proceedings initiated against them before December 1. Those who have already been enlisted would not be eligible for the new measure to attract…

Confronting Temu with the EU’s allegations is like doing business with the popular Chinese shopping app. You’ll get the information you want in many bits and pieces, just as Temu customers get their goods in lots of small packages. It would take the length of this article just to line up the many pieces of information DW has received from Temu, one of which was Temu’s standard phrase about “cooperating fully with [EU] regulatory authorities.” Temu appears to be used to responding to allegations, most probably because the company is constantly confronted with them. In early 2024, the European Toy Association found safety risks…

Representatives of dozens of climate vulnerable islands and African nations have stormed out of high-stakes negotiations over a climate funding goal.Patience is wearing thin and negotiations have boiled over at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan, which were due to finish yesterday but are now well into overtime. After two weeks of talks, the more than 190 countries gathered in the capital Baku are still trying to agree a new financial settlement to channel money to poorer countries to both curb and adapt to climate change.Talks have now run well into overtime at COP29, but a deal now feels much…

What goes in, must come out: It’s true for every human being in the world. Sooner or later, we all have to use the toilet. And, while most people in Germany take their own toilet for granted, the situation is strikingly different around the world. According to the United Nations, 3.5 billion people live without safe sanitation: This is a full-blown global sanitation crisis, according to the UN. Without proper facilities, diseases spread more easily and drinking water can become polluted, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. To highlight the problem, the United Nations has declared November 19 World Toilet Day. Do…

Trees and forests are often described as lungs of the earth due to their important role removing pollutants like carbon dioxide from the environment. It’s becoming clearer that forests help to make us healthier too. New research from the University of Bonn in Germany and Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil has analyzed local health outcomes after conservation measures in the Amazon. It found that these measures led to a reduction in the hospitalization and death rate due to respiratory health problems in the local population. The positive impact on people’s health was due to a reduction in forest fires. The conservation measures reduced fine…

Two Turkish opposition mayors were removed from office, Ankara said Friday, after they were convicted of “terrorism” for belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The pair are the fifth and sixth pro-Kurdish mayors to be dismissed on similar charges over the past two months, including the mayor of Istanbul’s most populous district. What do we know about the firings? Tunceli’s elected mayor Cevdet Konak, and Mustafa Sarigul, mayor of Ovacik in Tunceli province, in Turkey’s southeast, were found guilty of membership in the PKK, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies. The PKK has waged a guerilla insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984,…

No football has been played in Lebanon since September but the sport still has the ability to unite a country, one that is now hoping and praying that Celine Haidar recovers from life-threatening injuries. The 19 year-old has already played for the Lebanon women’s football team and a bright future was predicted for the talented midfielder. On November 16, however, she was hit in the head by shrapnel that came from an Israeli bomb dropped on Beirut. Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have flared in recent months. An estimated 1 million people have left the southern areas of the capital city due…

A lot has been written about the budding friendship between President-elect Donald Trump and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. What seemed like a strange pairing has turned into a job opportunity for Musk and, in the past week, the two have been seen together in Palm Beach, Florida, ringside at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York and eating McDonald’s on a jet. Before the election, Trump announced he would put the South Africa-born Tesla CEO in charge of a government efficiency commission. Last week, Trump made it more concrete and confirmed the new agency will be called the…

An eleventh hour proposal from a UN climate summit to channel $250bn to developing nations has fallen far short of the $1.3trn they need to cope with climate change.The draft deal from the COP29 climate summit has enraged vulnerable nations like Kenya, Uganda and Malawi, which are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, which they did little to cause. Ali Mohamed, speaking on behalf of more than 50 African nations, said the proposed $250bn target was “totally inadequate” and would lead to “unacceptable loss of life in Africa and around the world, and imperils the future of our…

A portrait of the mathematician Alan Turing painted by a humanoid robot fetched over a million euros at Sotheby’s auction house. Will the sale forever change art?