Author: DW

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…

When you move into a new German house or apartment and decide to have a housewarming party, the first thing you will likely receive is bread and salt.  The customary German gift is designed to ensure that the new household has enough food — and plenty of flavor! But the centuries-old tradition also symbolizes prosperity, stability and togetherness. Honey, candles, and even a broom, can accompany the gift.  What are the must-have items Germans have at home?To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video You might also receive a quintessentially German…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the son of assassinated US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, as well as supporter of Donald Trump and renowned vaccine skeptic — could be the country’s next health  secretary. And Kennedy has big plans for the job. In a social media post, Kennedy announced that upon Trump’s inauguration, water fluoridation in the U.S. would be stopped. He claims that fluoride is industrial waste and responsible for bone cancer, neurological developmental disorders, lower IQs in children and more.  What fluoride is  Fluoride is often confused with fluorine in common…

A German citizen has been arrested in Russia on Wednesday on charges of sabotage, according to Russian state news agencies. State media reported that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained a German citizen who had been allegedly involved in an explosion at a gas distribution station in Kaliningrad in March 2024 The 57-year-old German was also accused of organizing “acts of sabotage on local energy infrastructure,” Russian news agencies cited the FSB statement as saying. More to follow… mk/sms (Reuters, AFP)

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Tuesday said that it was suspending operations in the Haitian capital amid “violence and threats” towards its staff from members of the police force. In a statement, MSF said that the police had repeatedly stopped its vehicles and directly threatened staff with death and rape threats. “We are used to working in conditions of extreme insecurity  in Haiti and elsewhere, but when even law enforcement becomes a direct threat, we have no choice but to suspend our projects,” MSF’s Haiti mission chief Christophe Garnier said. MSF said that operations in Port-au-Prince and the adjoining metropolitan area…

A man has died after being attacked by a shark off the coast of a remote island to the east of New Zealand.Jade Kahukore-Dixon had been diving off a boat in the Bay of Waitangi, near Chatham Island, when he was injured by the shark, local media reports said. He was rushed to Chatham Island Hospital but died on Tuesday.Mr Kahukore-Dixon was a commercial diver who lived on the Chatham Islands and harvested paua, a type of sea slug with a colourful shell, and kina, a type of edible sea urchin, Stuff reported.His father Jacky Dixon told the New Zealand…

The European Union’s latest gas dispute with Russia blew up over the weekend after bubbling beneath the surface for months. On Saturday, Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom cut deliveries to Austria after the Alpine nation threatened to impound some of the gas as compensation for a contractual dispute it had won. The Austrian utility OMV said in a statement that no gas delivery was made from 6 a.m. local time (0500 UTC/GMT) on Saturday. Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg accused Moscow of “once again using energy as a weapon.”  Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said…

Russian ballet star Vladimir Shklyarov, who died in Saint Petersburg on Saturday, will be given a public funeral at the city’s revered Mariinsky Theater this Thursday. Shklyarov’s partner, Irina Bartnovskaya, said the event would allow admirers to say goodbye and “For Volodya to leave the theater for the last time to the applause of all those who love him.” The dancer will be laid to rest at Saint Petersburg’s Smolensky Cemetery after a service at Saint Nicholas Cathedral, according to the theater. A statement from the Mariinsky press office called Shklyarov’s “tragic death, a huge loss not only for the…

Millions of people die as a direct result of bacterial infections — especially when the bacteria have developed a resistance to the antibiotics we use to treat them. It’s this drug resistance that makes them particularly deadly.  And the latest data is not encouraging. The emergence of several drug-resistant bacteria species is proving a serious problem for health systems around the world, especially for low-and-middle income countries. It’s estimated that bacterial antimicrobial resistance was directly responsible for 1.27 million global deaths in 2019, and could be associated with as many as 4.95 million deaths, according to the the World Health Organization (WHO). Priority…

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. After the army’s initial rapid advances, Ukrainian troops were able to fend off the attackers, particularly in the northern border regions. In the south, Ukraine was also able to push the Russian army back behind the Dnipro, the country’s largest river. By the summer of 2024, troops were even able to launch an incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk region. Ukraine’s army has received support from paramilitary groups. Large parts of eastern Ukraine — particularly in the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — remain under Russia’s control,…