Author: DW

Tech billionaire Elon Musk on Monday filed a lawsuit against Apple and ChatGPT creator OpenAI. As part of the suit, he asserted that the two companies are engaged in a monopolistic collaboration which is putting his own artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Grok, at a competitive disadvantage. What else do we know about the xAI lawsuit? Musk’s AI startup, xAI, alleged in the Texas lawsuit that Apple is preventing other chatbots from ranking above ChatGPT in its App Store, thus starving rivals such as Grok of valuable user interactions upon which the software relies to improve. Apple and OpenAI have therefore “locked up…

The scene: A pine forest near Izium, a city on the Donets River in eastern Ukraine. There are empty graves all around. This is where Russian soldiers buried the hundreds of civilians they killed in the spring of 2022. The graves are empty because the bodies in them have been exhumed for examination. Some of the people buried here were horribly tortured. Along with Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv, this is the site of some of the most serious Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine. Petra, one of the visitors here on this day, simply notes that the sand…

Forced medical research and human experiments are among the darkest chapters of the Nazi era. Pathogens, toxins and drugs were tested primarily on Jews, prisoners of war, Sinti and Roma, disabled people and other persecuted groups. Their organs were removed, they were left to freeze to death in controlled conditions, they were forcibly sterilized, and they were killed. The extent of the atrocities is almost unimaginable, with tens of thousands of victims. Now, detailed profiles of 16,000 of these people are available in a new online database. For the first time, there is systematic access to the names and personal details…

What exactly happened on the weekend? In the German Cup match between second-division side Schalke and fourth-tier club Lokomotiv Leipzig, Black Schalke player Christopher Antwi-Adjei delayed a throw-in to tell first the assistant referee, then the head referee, that he had been called the N-word by someone in the stands. The referee temporarily halted the contest as a result. After it resumed, Antwi-Adjei was booed by Leipzig fans every time he touched the ball. The fans’ reaction to an incident during a cup match in Potsdam, near Berlin, was different. After a player from the visiting team, Kaiserslautern, was racially…

SpaceX said on Sunday that it had canceled a test flight of its Starship rocket, citing an issue with the launch site. “Standing down from today’s tenth flight of Starship to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems,” the firm said on the platform X. What else do we know about the canceled Starship launch? The rocket was due to launch from the company’s Starbase in southern Texas and would have marked the tenth mission from the site. The launch was to be carried out at 6:30 p.m. local time (23:30 GMT), but was called off just 15…

The United States National Guard on Sunday began carrying weapons in Washington, DC. US President Donald Trump deployed the troops this month as part of a crackdown on what he calls rampant crime in the US capital city. “Starting the late evening of August 24, 2025, JTF-DC service members began carrying their service-issued weapon,” the Joint Task Force-DC said in a statement. Over 2,200 soldiers have been assigned to the task force in Washington DC. The statement said the troops were only allowed to use force “as a last resort and solely in response to an imminent threat of death or serious…

On a building on a corner of Beirut’s Hamra Street, where for decades crooked letters on an aging marquee announced a concert by the Egyptian singer Mohammed Mounir, there is now a new sign: Lebanese National Theater. On September 13, for the first time in many years, the lights will dim and the curtain will rise again at the once-revered Le Colisee. Le Colisee cinema stood empty for decadesImage: Hussein Malla/AP Photo/picture alliance “It’s always been a dream for me to revive these old cinemas, to bring them back,” said Kassem Istanbouli, an actor, director and founder of the Lebanese…

Israel’s government has remained notably silent over Norway’s decision on August 11 to partially divest investments in several Israeli companies, triggered by ethical concerns over the war in Gaza. Norway’s $2 trillion (€1.71 trillion) sovereign wealth fund said it would withdraw investments from 11 firms linked to Israel and terminate contracts with asset managers operating in the country. The fund launched an urgent review after media reports that it had invested in a firm that makes parts for Israeli military fighter jets. While Israel’s media labeled Norway’s move “deeply troubling” and “politically motivated,” some analysts think Israeli officials are deliberately keeping a low profile for fear of emboldening the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions…

“We wanted to send a statement from the first game at home and that’s what we did today,” said Harry Kane, who scored a hat-trick as Bayern Munich hammered RB Leipzig 6-0 on the first day of the 2025-26 Bundesliga season. Given that Bayern were last season’s champions and Kane was top scorer, the message rang out loud and clear across Germany on Friday. Come Saturday, the chasing pack had the chance to show they have what it takes to stop the Bavarian club winning a 14th title out of the last 15. Of the three clubs bookmakers expect to join…

The Home Cafe Days, or Kodukohvikute paevad in Estonian, are the summer highlight on the island of Hiiumaa. Every August, the residents of Estonia’s second-largest Baltic Sea island open up their homes for three days and offer up home-baked cakes, home-smoked fish and home-brewed beer. They celebrate their short summer amid children’s laughter and pop music. Ave Ungro, 44, thinks the festival is “extremely important,” especially now in times of war. “It helps us Estonians stick together: Celebrating together, talking, thinking about the future,” she told DW. She said that Kodukohvikute paevad was as important as the shooting lessons provided by the…