Author: DW

Part of a Danish coin collection belonging to butter magnate Lars Emil Bruun, went under the hammer in Copenhagen, initially collecting €14.8 million on Saturday. The 20,000-piece collection had been kept off the market for a century as a stipulation of Bruun’s will, forged soon after the destruction of the first World War. The collection includes rare coins and medals from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and England dating back to the Viking age and is expected to be the most valuable non-US coin collection ever sold. Millions raised, including €1.2 million for one coin An eight-hour auction in the Danish capital…

You may know the feeling: You find it difficult to place sounds and signs. When you read, the flow can feel halting and monotonous, the sounds fail to blend together. You read the letters as individual sounds, not the words and meanings they make. You might even omit letters, syllables or whole words, or swap and add them when you read and write. Or miss mistakes when you write and find it hard to write legibly. Learning difficulties that can last a lifetime Dyslexia occurs in about 5%-10% of people worldwide, making it the most common learning disorder. The symptoms can…

Ugandans on Saturday paid tribute to Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who died after her partner set her on fire earlier this month. The 33-year-old debuted this summer in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics.Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the 2024 Paris OlympicsImage: Chai v.d. Laage/IMAGO Mourners gather in Olympian’s home village On Saturday morning, mourners paid their respects to Cheptegei in the village of Bukwo near Uganda’s border with Kenya. She was formally laid to rest at 3:00 p.m. local time (1200 UTC). “We are extremely saddened,” her estranged husband Simon Ayeko told France’s AFP news agency.…

An operation trying to salvage a stricken oil tanker, burning in the Red Sea for almost a month now after attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, has begun, according to a European Union naval mission on Saturday. The EU’s Operation Aspides released images showing its vessels escorting three ships making their way toward the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion. The operation aims to prevent an environmental disaster in the region. Second salvage attempt A Greek defense ministry source told AFP news agency that Aigaion Pelagos, a Greek-flagged tugboat, “has begun to gradually tow the tanker northwards, escorted by military vessels.”  Satellite images analyzed by the Associated…

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello told a press conference in Caracas on Saturday that Venezuela had arrested three American citizens, two Spanish nationals and a person from the Czech Republic, alleging a multinational plot to overthrow the government.  The arrests come amid severe tensions between Venezuela, Spain and the US, following July 28’s disputed presidential election that Caracas says was won by incumbent Nicolas Maduro. What did the minister allege?  Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said that the six were arrested on suspicion of planning to “destablize” Venezuela through “violent actions.”  He posed in front of a large number of firearms during…

A star ballerina who appeared in Beyonce’s Lemonade video and on Dancing With The Stars has died at the age of 29.Michaela DePrince’s death was announced on her Instagram page and confirmed by her family on Facebook, where they paid tribute to “an unforgettable inspiration to everyone who knew her or heard her story”. They said her death was “sudden” but no further details have been released.DePrince was born in war-torn Sierra Leone as Mabinty Bangura. She spent some of her early childhood in an orphanage, before being adopted by a couple from New Jersey. Image: Pic: AP/Denis Farrell 2012…

In a much-anticipated report on the 27-nation EU’s economic competitiveness, originally due in June, Mario Draghi has called for joint borrowing and much more collaboration among member states to compete with Washington and Beijing. The former prime minister of Italy and ex-president of the European Central Bank (ECB) also urged EU leaders to invest €800 billion ($883 billion) annually to boost growth. Released in Brussels on Monday (September 9), the report has demanded “radical change” amid growing concern over a massive productivity gap with the United States, where since 2000, incomes have grown twice as much as in the EU. “This…

When the Canadian mining company Lucara Diamond Corp announced its find of an epic 2,492-carat stone in Botswana in late August, many geologists around the world rubbed their eyes in disbelief. Were she around today, Oscar-winning actress Elizabeth Taylor would presumably have had a quotable reaction to that stone. Renowned for her adage of “big girls need big diamonds,” her love of jewelry was legendary — and her private collection was one of the most expensive in the world, including the whopping 69-carat Taylor-Burton diamond. That’s more than 60 times the average engagement ring diamond in the US today. So why are people so…

“Vb weather conditions” are seldom reported in English-language media, were first described in 1891 by German meteorologist Wilhelm Jacob van Bebber, who cataloged typical paths of low-pressure systems and labeled them with Roman numerals. Although the terms Va, Vc and Vd have since fallen out of popular usage, Vb (pronounced five-B weather conditions, V = Roman 5) is still used by meteorologists to describe a rare pressure system that can bring heavy rainfall, and often catastrophic damage, to Europe. Unusual trajectory In Europe, weather is often determined by low pressure systems that move across the continent from west to east.…

Rami Hamadeh has done what many of the world’s best goalkeepers have failed to do: keep Tottenham Hotspur star Son Heung-min off the scoresheet. But a few days before helping his Palestinian team secure a crucial and historic 0-0 draw in South Korea last Thursday, Hamadeh had been training on his own in Jerusalem while looking for a new club against the bloody backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war. “It is difficult,” he told DW. “The war is the worst thing in the world. Everyone, everywhere, wants to live in peace. I don’t want to see my people die like this: children, women, men. It’s not easy…