Author: DW

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said a proposed NBA Europe league would “respect the traditions of European basketball.”  Silver used the occasion of Thursday’s NBA game in Berlin between the Orlando Magic and the Memphis Grizzlies — the first regular season game to ever take place in Germany — to give an update on the venture. He said the NBA was continuing to hold discussions with teams about its plans, which would see it partner with FIBA, world basketball’s governing body, to create a 16-team European league. Up to 12 spots would be reserved for permanent members, and at least four…

On average, the cartoons published on the Instagram account of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo get a few hundred reactions, but a recent drawing by cartoonist Eric Salch has prompted more than 15,000 social media users to express their dismay. It was published as Switzerland observed a national day of mourning to commemorate the victims of the deadly fire in a bar in Crans-Montana on New Year’s Eve, which killed 40 people, most of them teenagers. More than 110 others suffered injuries, some severe. The cartoon referring to the tragedy shows two apparently charred skiers, wrapped in bandages, skiing downhill in Crans-Montana.  The caption reads:…

Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have hit Moscow’s export operations significantly in recent months, but they are also affecting other countries, notably Kazakhstan. In late November, Ukrainian drone strikes knocked out one of the three main tanker loading facilities at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in Russia It’s at that export terminal where the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) oil pipeline ends up, carrying crude oil all the way from Kazakhstan’s massive Tengiz oil field more than 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) away. Meanwhile on Tuesday (January 13), news agency Reuters reported that three Greek-managed oil tankers had been hit by…

A crew of four aboard the International Space Station will return to Earth several weeks ahead of schedule due to a medical emergency. NASA confirmed last week that a serious medical condition was affecting one of the four members of the current ISS crew rotation. It has not released more details due to medical privacy, but said the crew member is now in a stable condition.  At a press conference confirming the emergency return, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the there was no capability on the ISS to treat the crew member’s condition, forcing his hand to return the group early.  It is…

Just as human history is often divided into the eras B.C. and A.D., it’s not unreasonable to imagine the Internet’s story split between B.W. and A.W. — the “W” denoting Wikipedia. When Wikipedia went online on 15 January 2001, it was the brainchild of two men: Jimmy Wales, an internet entrepreneur with a libertarian streak, and Larry Sanger, a philosopher who became its first editor-in-chief. Their collaboration lasted only a little over a year — but the tension between their visions still shapes the project today. From the outset, Wales imagined Wikipedia as a radically open project: a place where…

Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have hit Moscow’s export operations significantly in recent months, but they are also affecting other countries, notably Kazakhstan. In late November, Ukrainian drone strikes knocked out one of the three main tanker loading facilities at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in Russia It’s at that export terminal where the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) oil pipeline ends up, carrying crude oil all the way from Kazakhstan’s massive Tengiz oil field more than 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) away. Meanwhile on Tuesday (January 13), news agency Reuters reported that three Greek-managed oil tankers had been hit by…

Venus Williams has consistently broken records and barriers across a 32-year tennis career decorated by five Olympic medals, seven Grand Slam singles titles and 14 doubles Grand Slams with her sister, Serena. This month, she’ll add another record and break another barrier, becoming the oldest woman to play singles at the Australian Open. At 45, Williams, handed a wildcard for the tournament, is 27 years older than the youngest player in the women’s draw, fellow American Iva Jovic. By the time Jovic, 18, was born in 2007, Williams had already won four singles grand slams. The older Williams sister has said her love for…

All it takes is one night’s sleep in a laboratory, during which physiological signals are recorded, for a new artificial intelligence model to be able estimate a person’s risk for about 130 diseases later in life. That includes risks for Parkinson’s disease, dementia, heart disease, and cancers of the prostate and breast. SleepFM can make these predictions years before the first symptoms become evident, said James Zou, a Stanford University professor of biomedical data science and a co-senior author of the the SleepFM study, published in early January in the journal Nature Medicine. SleepFM was fed nearly 600,000 hours of sleep data collected…

US President Donald Trump on Monday announced a 25% tariff on any country that does business with Iran “effectively immediately.” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that “any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America,” while giving few other details. The move comes as the Iran faces its largest and most sustained anti‑government protests in years, triggering a brutal crackdown that has killed hundreds and led to the arrest of more than 10,000 people. The tariffs appear to signal Washington’s response to the unrest, coming after the Trump…

Even just a few joints a week can make a difference ― measured in milligrams of THC. A new study by researcher Rachel L. Thorne and her team provides the first concrete thresholds for the weekly dose at which the risk of cannabis use disorder increases significantly. Thorne is a research associate in the psychology department at the University of Bath, UK, whose areas of expertise include cannabis use and its consequences for youth and adult health. The study was published on Monday in the journal Addiction. How much THC per week poses a health risk? The researchers used data from the CannTeen…