Author: DW

Japan’s second largest carmaker Honda on Thursday confirmed its first operating loss since 1957, before it started selling mass-produced cars in the early 60s.  The company has embarked on a major overhaul of its electic vehicle (EV) strategy, particularly in its core market in the US, after previously betting on more rapid electrification of the industry.  Honda had already warned of a sizeable financial hit as a result of this shift in March, meaning that investors were largely unperturbed by Thursday’s financial data. Indeed, Honda’s stock rose sharply as the company also predicted a return to profitability in 2026.  What were Honda’s losses…

The Andes hantavirus outbreak shows how easily disease labels are misunderstood — and why they describe patterns of spread, not how dangerous a virus is.

The July 19 World Cup final in New Jersey will be the first to include a Superbowl-inspired “Halftime Show,” with performances from American veteran Madonna, the Colombian voice of the 2010 and now 2026 World Cup Shakira, and South Korean boy band BTS.  The curator is Coldplay front man Chris Martin, who announced the lineup in a promotional video featuring characters from Sesame Street and the Muppets on Thursday. At 67, Madonna still gets headline billing — and like Shakira she is touring the Americas at presentImage: Pilar Olivares/REUTERS What did FIFA say about the event?  FIFA has said the event aims…

In early April, the Artis Zoo Museum in Amsterdam unveiled a handbag alongside a massive dinosaur skeleton — one made of “lab-grown T. rex leather.” Polish fashion label Enfin Leve designed the bag as part of its line of experimental clothing. But it was the material, not the design, that drew the most attention. “It has a character unlike anything we’ve handled. Dense, primal, operating on its own logic,” the label wrote on social media. The company plans to auction the handbag on June 11 in Paris. But what exactly do they mean by “T. rex leather”? Dinosaurs died out about…

The former head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi was presented with the prestigious Charlemagne Prize at a ceremony in Aachen, western Germany, on May 14. “You took charge of the euro during a time of crisis, and you stabilized the euro and the eurozone,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz said during his speech honoring Draghi.  With his 2024 report on the future of European competitiveness, dubbed the Draghi Report, Merz said Draghi had “pointed the way toward reform with his unsparing analysis.” “I think you’ll understand why his friends call him Super Mario,” the German chancellor joked. Who is Mario Draghi? Draghi is likely…

With memories of the COVID pandemic still fresh in many people’s minds, it’s understandable that communities are worried about hantavirus spreading internationally. “I know you are worried,” wrote Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), in a letter to the people of Tenerife, Spain, on May 9, 2026. The cruise ship MV Hondius — on which hantavirus spread, killed three people and infected others from April to May — was about to dock at Tenerife’s Granadilla Port.  From there, passengers and crew (a total 147 people) were to be repatriated to their home countries, including Germany, France…

The United States has announced exemptions from visa bond payment requirements for FIFA World Cup ticket holders whose teams have qualified for the soccer tournament. In 2025, the Trump administration began requiring visitors to the US from certain countries to pay bonds of between $5,000 (€4,300) and $15,000 to obtain a tourist visa. The bond requirement scheme was expanded in 2026 to include 50 countries.  Five of the 50 countries subject to visa bonds qualified for the World Cup:  Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia. The State Department announced on Wednesday that the US would waive the bond requirement…

There’s a special name for music that’s not produced by the big labels and that can’t be easily squeezed into a genre: “indie,” short for independent. Indie bands have an image of being authentic and non-commercial. Fans presume their favorite bands achieved their success through their great music and hard work alone. That’s why many were shocked to find out that the hype surrounding indie bands like Geese, as well as singer-songwriters like Sombr, Jane Remover and Mk.gee turned out to have been fabricated, at least in part, by social media manipulation. A kick-start for bands The uproar began with an interview in Billboard magazine with…

When Western firms pull production out of China or buy fewer parts from there in order to be less dependent on the country, this is called decoupling or de-risking. And you would think that China can’t stop the rest of the world from decoupling, right? Tell that to Beijing. Chinese authorities blocked Meta’s $2 billion (€1.7 billion) takeover of the artificial intelligence (AI) startup Manus last month, sending a clear signal that even deals structured outside China’s borders are no longer safe. Manus is headquartered in Singapore, but has strong Chinese roots. China viewed the firm as one of its strategic assets in the global AI race and blocked the deal…

On paper, Arcelia looks like a poor-but-average Mexican town. It sits in Guerrero, Mexico’s second-poorest state.  Official data gives it a score of 0.714 — firmly in the “high development” band on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI).    Then a satellite looks at Arcelia. Using artificial intelligence to analyze what it sees, it returns a lower score of 0.617.  By the UN’s own classification, that is no longer high but medium development — a different development tier and a different policy-reality for 33,000 people.  Arcelia is not a special case. More than half (58%) of the global population is in the…