Author: DW

Unlike other wartime films showing death and destruction on the frontline, “Of Caravan and the Dogs,” co-directed by Askold Kurov and an anonymous filmmaker, was primarily shot in the newsrooms of different Russian media outlets. Yet, despite the unspectacular settings, the heartbreaking documentary allows viewers to directly witness the final nails being put in the coffin of Russia’s free press. DW met Kurov as the filmmaker was presenting “Of Caravan and the Dogs” in Berlin during the Dokumentale film festival. Many collaborators on the project, including the film’s co-director, are listed as anonymous to avoid threats in Russia. Meanwhile, Kurov has…

What happened with Hyundai’s India IPO? The South Korean auto giant Hyundai launched its initial public offering (IPO) on Tuesday, billed as India’s biggest stock market debut, and was projected to be worth about $3.3 billion (€3.05 billion).  The first carmaker to go public in the South Asian country since Maruti Suzuki in 2003, Hyundai offered 142 million shares for sale, representing about 17.5% of the total shares of its Indian arm. By the end of Thursday, the IPO was twice oversubscribed, drawing bids of $5.51 billion. Reuters news agency cited unnamed sources linked to the listing as saying that Hyundai would price its shares at…

A man has been arrested in Tokyo after firebombs were thrown at the headquarters of Japan’s ruling party and a car crashed into the security fence around the prime minister’s office.Police arrested Atsunobu Usuda after the incident on Saturday morning – which took place less than 10 days before a parliamentary election in Japan. The 49-year-old was charged with obstructing the performance of official duties – but additional charges can be added later. Image: The scene in the aftermath of the incident. Pic: AP Image: The vehicle which crashed into the perimeter of the prime minister’s office. Pic: AP No…

SpaceX has achieved a new milestone in space exploration, having caught its own rocket booster as it landed back on Earth this week.  SpaceX’s launch tower caught the rocket in ‘chopsticks’ as it performed a carefully calculated ‘landing burn’ while slowly returning to Earth.  This latest achievement is a key step in SpaceX’s goal to develop a reusable space launch system for its Starship space transport. Elon Musk— who co-owns the private space company — posted on his social media platform X that “Hopefully early next year, we [SpaceX] will catch the ship too.” SpaceX’s reusable rocket tech could reduce ‘space junk’ SpaceX’s rocket-catching achievement is…

“Footballers are often playing at or above their performance limit,” Professor Wilhelm Bloch of the Sports University Cologne told DW in an interview. The sports scientist is among those who question whether players can sustain such exertion at a high level of performance in the long term without suffering damage. This comes as the footballing calendar is constantly being extended  – and the games become more and more intense. Julian Alvarez, who moved to Atletico Madrid from Manchester City in August, is among the male footballers who played the most games last season. According to the players’ union FIFPRO, the attacker played 75 games…

Voters in Moldova are heading to the polls on Sunday. Not only are voters in the small Balkan nation, sandwiched between EU member Romania and war-torn Ukraine, choosing their next president, but they will also be asked about the future they want. In a historic referendum involving 228 polling stations across 37 counties, voters will decide whether to rewrite the constitution to enshrine joining the European Union as a strategic objective. Moldova, which has a resident population of around 2.6 million plus a sizeable expatriate community, already entered into official negotiations to join the 27-member bloc in June. However, the…

Cuba’s national electrical grid shut down on Friday after a failure of one of the country’s major power plants, its Energy Ministry said. The Antonio Guiteras power plant went offline shortly before midday on Friday, causing a total grid failure and leaving around 10 million people without power. What did Cuban officials say about the blackout? “There will be no rest until (power) is restored,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on X. Officials said by mid-afternoon they had begun taking steps to restore power but that the process would take time. Before the total failure, authorities had already canceled non-vital…

Anne Applebaum’s latest book “Autocracy, Inc.” comes just in time to illustrate why her work is being honored in Frankfurt, where she is being honored with the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade on October 20. The Pulitzer-prize winning author explains in “Autocracy, Inc.” how autocratic alliances undermine our democracy — not simply due to tyrants ruling from above, but also through networks cooperating behind the scenes in areas such as technology, economy, military and diplomacy.  Anne Applebaum is renowned as a key analyst of the Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. Her books about the Soviet gulags and the Holodomor,…

Do icons need agents? Well, when it comes to Charlie Chaplin, the answer is Yes! The film legend was born in England, made his most important films in Hollywood and spent his last decades in Switzerland. Yet, it’s on a quiet street in Paris not far from the Louvre where the Chaplin Office is found. It is a tiny place with a big job. It’s from here that a dedicated team is hard at work looking after Charlie Chaplin’s legacy and they are busier than ever, nearly 47 years after he died in 1977. Charlie Chaplin in control of it all…

A Spanish TV documentary has claimed that the explorer Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe. The claim could overturn long-accepted beliefs about the explorer’s identity as a Genovese from the Italian peninsula. The new claims of Columbus’ ancestry were presented in a documentary on Spain’s broadcaster TVE called “Columbus DNA: The True Origin,” and are the result of work led by forensic researchers Jose Antonio and Miguel Lorente from the University of Granada in Spain.  But experts have cast doubt on these claims — the results have not been published in a scientific journal and therefore cannot be verified.   …