Author: DW

If it succeeds, Polaris Dawn will be the first non-government mission to perform a spacewalk. But not only that — it’ll do that about 700 kilometers (435 miles) above Earth. The highest ever. To compare: the International Space Station (ISS) orbits Earth at about 400 kilometers, where the radiation is less intense. It will also orbit Earth through regions of a highly-charged belt of radiation. There are two of these “Van Allen Belts”, an inner and an outer one. Astronauts tend to avoid the hazardous Van Allen Belts, but they will have to travel through them if humans want to fly…

German extreme athlete Jonas Deichmann set a world record after completing his 106th long-distance triathlon. The Ironman distance includes 3.8 kilometers (2.4 miles) of swimming, 180 kilometers of cycling and 42 kilometers of running. It comes two weeks after Germany’s Laura Lindemann won first place in the 2024 Paris Olympics’ mixed triathlon relay. What else do we know about Deichmann’s record? “New world record, 106th. Awesome,” Deichmann said. The previous record holder was the UK’s Sean Conway, who reached 105 consecutive days last year. “This has been my life for eight or nine months now, there hasn’t been time for anything else.…

Vox pops are very popular in Turkey. However, it is a society in which opinions cannot always be expressed freely and many people are reluctant to speak out publicly. Dilruba K., however, didn’t mince her words. Interviewed on the street by a YouTube channel in Izmir last week, she not only criticized the blocking of Instagram by the Turkish government, but also the official day of mourning for the former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which was decreed around the same time. “In the 21st century, handing the Republic of Turkey to one man means he’ll treat it like his father’s farm,”…

Three people were killed and five seriously injured in a knife attack in the western German city of Solingen on Friday. Police said they had launched a “major operation to find the suspect, who escaped in the turmoil and panic that initially spread after the crime.” According to media reports, a man stabbed passers-by at random with a knife at a festival celebrating the city’s 650th anniversary. The local newspaper Solinger Tageblatt reported that three people had been killed and others were in a life-threatening situation.  In the wake of the attack, the city of Solingen has completely canceled its 650th anniversary celebrations.  The events…

At least one person has been killed in Russia after prisoners at a jail claiming to be Islamic State militants knifed guards and took hostages.Russian website Mash showed a video of at least two attackers, with one declaring they were “mujahideen” and saying they had taken over the prison.Four uniformed officials could be seen in pools of blood – three of them motionless. Another was sitting upright in a doorway with a knife held to his neck.The attackers have reportedly killed at least one prison official.Security forces then stormed the prison to free the hostages, Russian TV news channels say.The…

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region has brought the gas transit hub in Sudzha into sharp focus. A few kilometers inside Russia from the Ukrainian border, Sudzha is an important processing point for Russian gas being exported to Europe. Gas from Siberia arrives there before it is piped via Ukraine toward EU countries such as Hungary, Austria and Slovakia. Last week, a Ukrainian military brigade published a video of its soldiers at the offices of Russian gas giant Gazprom’s offices at the Sudzha station and claimed it was under their full control. Russia claims Ukraine does not have full control of the facility. Earlier…

When US musician Dave Doughman was touring Germany with his band in the early 2000s, the show in Hamburg was empty until local football club St. Pauli finished its game. Suddenly, the venue was “full of people wearing Jolly Roger t-shirts” — the skull and crossbones symbol of the St. Pauli team — recalled Doughman. “What is this, a pirate convention?” he wondered. Coming from Dayton, Ohio, Doughman had “zero interest in football.” But the singer and guitarist soon realized that these “buccaneers” were both soccer and alternative music fans who were avowedly anti-homophobic, anti-sexist and anti-racist — values the indie musician shared.  The football club…

“Our body tells us more or less what to eat and when to eat, and maybe we should listen,” said Susanne Klaus, a chief researcher at the German Institution of Human Nutrition. That makes sense. But the way our body demands energy of us isn’t the same throughout our lifetimes. From being spoon-fed by parents when we’re infants to sneaking sugary sweets when we’re children, to eating everything in sight as teenagers and then pecking on small, simple plates in later stages of life, our appetites change as the years roll on. Understanding why can help ensure good health in…

The bar is always set high for the coaches of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. When the clubs only managed to come third and fifth respectively in a perceived two-horse race, change was inevitable. With neither side having won a trophy last term, for the first time since 2008-09 season, both have new coaches for 2024-25. Though they won plenty as players, Vincent Kompany (Bayern) and Nuri Sahin (Dortmund) have just an English Championship (second tier) title between them from their short coaching careers so far. So what is it about these two men that has landed them two of German football’s biggest…

Canadian mining company Lucara Diamond Corp announced it had unearthed a massive 2,492-carat (or 498.4-gram) stone at its Karowe Diamond Mine in northeastern Botswana, with President Mokgweetsi Masisi posing with the giant diamond on Thursday.  It’s most likely the second-largest diamond ever found within the Earth, after the 3,106-carat Cullinan diamond found in South Africa in 1905.  A larger black diamond was also found above ground in Brazil in the late 1800s, but that is believed to have been part of a meteorite. Lucara did not estimate the diamond’s value or comment on its quality but called it “one of the largest…