Author: DW

Celebrity endorsements have become par for the course in US elections. It’s not unusual for your favorite athlete to voice support for a presidential candidate, or for actors to show up at party nominating conventions. Sure, politicians are always happy to have someone famous drumming up votes for them, but endorsements are not generally a huge deal. Unless, that is, they come from singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Swift, who is arguably the biggest pop star on the planet right now, shared a statement of support for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Instagram the night of last week’s TV debate between…

Over the European summer, the number of COVID-19 infections rose again, with test positivity for SARS-CoV-2 above 20%. Globally, test positivity was about 10%. The US also saw a rise in hospitalizations, apparently after a wave of COVID-19 infections in Singapore. Now, as we in the northern hemisphere move into autumn and winter, there is concern about two new variants. The first one is known as KP.3 and its sub-variant KP.3.1.1. The second is XEC, a “recombinant” variant which is related to KP.3. KP.3 is considered a global Variant of Concern (VOC) in the US by The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because…

Women’s football has been on a remarkable upward trend over the last decade, with significant steps taken towards growth, professionalization and equality. Domestic and national teams are evolving their support staff to develop a better understanding of the female body to enable players to play to their peak. Yet adequate care and support have often been lacking for players who wished to have children before, during and after pregnancy. There are strong disparities in available remuneration and support for athletes driven by which country and league they play in. European clubs continue to lag far behind what teams in the United…

In early September, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and bloggers began posting images of a drone flying over a forest, where Russian troops were entrenched in hidden positions. The pictures show the drone releasing what looks like a rain of fire. It is, in fact, a thermite mixture of aluminium powder and iron oxide ignited by an electrical fuse. The mixture can reach a temperature of 2,200 degrees Celsius (3,992 Fahrenheit), and it will set fire to almost any material, even steel. Highly efficient and precise When the images were published, Ukrainian army representatives confirmed these “dragon drones” had been used in combat for the first…

Polling stations opened in Sri Lanka on Saturday for the first presidential election since the 2022 economic crisis, which led to the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. More than 17 million people are expected to vote, with results anticipated by Sunday. Polls opened at 7 a.m. (0130 GMT) and are scheduled to close at 4 p.m. Economic recovery has been the central issue of the campaign, with the government having restructured over $17 billion (€15.2 billion) of its debt. Sri Lanka’s economy buckled in 2022 when it defaulted on its foreign debt, following a severe foreign exchange shortage. Sri Lanka goes to the…

A top Hezbollah commander has been killed in an Israeli strike in the suburbs of Lebanon’s capital of Beirut on Friday, two security sources have told the Reuters news agency.  Ibrahim Aqil, Hezbollah’s operations commander, was killed in a strike that killed three people and wounded 17 others, Lebanon’s health ministry said.One of the security sources said he was killed alongside members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit as they were holding a meeting.It comes as fighting between Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel has intensified in the past few days after 37 people were killed when pagers and radios across Lebanon blew…

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck is desperately trying to promote the use of heat pumps for heating German households. The Green politician is convinced the technology has the potential to create jobs in Germany while saving the climate. Heat pumps, which utilize ambient air or groundwater heat, are low-emission — especially when the heat pump is powered by green electricity from a private photovoltaic system. When Habeck and his Green Party became part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government in 2022, they successfully launched a campaign to change how Germans heat their homes, which caused production and sales of heat pumps to soar,…

Karen Watters, from Michigan, was 18 years old, newly married and had a young child when she started selling Tupperware in the 1970s.  “I couldn’t even get a credit card back then. The bank wouldn’t give it to me even though I was the one working. Those were different times for women,” she told DW. Before 1974, married women in the US could not apply for a credit card in their own name.  She hosted gatherings for her friends and acquaintances known as “Tupperware parties,” earning a commission for everything she sold. She then used the money to help her husband get through university. “He was…

Efforts to study the universe are being hindered by radio waves emitted from the Starlink’s extensive satellite network, according to a new study. The Starlink ‘constellation’ consists of more than 6,300 working satellites orbiting the planet at 550km, accounting for more than half of all satellites surrounding Earth. All those satellites create radio ‘noise’ — known as unintended electromagnetic radiation, or UEMR. While the Starlink network allows the delivery of high-speed internet services across the planet — a  service benefiting communities without reliable internet infrastructure — satellite noise risks undermining the work of astronomers. A study led by the Netherlands Institute for Radio…

Ukraine’s sports minister has urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to act against Belarus, after Olympic medalists from the country took center stage at a national ceremony in Minsk. On Tuesday, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko gave state honors to three of the four medalists, with their appearance at the ceremony in apparent violation of the IOC’s neutrality rules for the 2024 Paris Games. “We expect the IOC to take immediate action regarding this event,” Matviy Bidnyi, the sports minister, told DW. “The participation of athletes in a ceremony that contradicts the principles of neutrality demonstrates a blatant disregard for the IOC’s…