Author: DW

South Korea’s K-pop phenomenon, the boy band BTS, celebrated a triumphant return to the stage in the capital Seoul on Saturday evening, welcoming tens of thousands of adoring fans to a free comeback concert after a nearly four-year break from performing. The break was necessitated by South Korea’s conscription law, which requires able-bodied males to serve stints of nearly two years in the military. The first of BTS’s seven members began service in 2022 and the last finished in June 2025. With the Gwanghwamun Gate and the Gyeongbokgung Palace awash in color behind and fans waving BTS light sticks all around,…

The sums invested in different countries around the world by oil-rich Gulf states are astronomical. Sovereign wealth funds belonging to countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and other Gulf countries manage around $5 trillion (€4.35 trillion) worth of investments. “The global impact of the Gulf countries is not limited to oil,” Majed al-Ansari, the spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry told journalists during an online panel hosted by the Middle East Council on Global affairs on Tuesday morning. “This region is a hub of the international economy and if it implodes and decides to focus on its…

US President Donald Trump said Iran are still welcome to play in the 2026 football World Cup but maybe shouldn’t for their safety. Iran have said the United States should be kicked out of the soccer tournament, which starts on 11 June, not them. And FIFA President Gianni Infantino says the World Cup can bring people together. There is nothing in the FIFA statutes against tournament hosts being at war. However, Article 3 of the governing body’s statutes do pledge to uphold international human rights standards. Nevertheless, Infantino awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize to Trump in December 2025 and was also at the launch…

Yayoi Kusama is one of Japan’s foremost contemporary artists. She’s known for her Instagramable “Infinity Rooms” — immersive installations that use mirrors, lights and reflective surfaces to create the illusion of endless space — as well as her large-scale polka dot sculptures. While her works often appear playful, behind them lies the story of a woman who has faced major social and mental health challenges. Around the age of 10, Yayoi Kusama began experiencing hallucinations, seeing dots and net patterns enveloping everything in her mind’s eye. She has attributed these early visions to the psychological strain of growing up with an…

On Wednesday (March 18), Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, targeting onshore refinery units and gas storage tanks in Asaluyeh as well as offshore facilities connected to the gas field. In retaliation, Iran quickly hit back with missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar’s main energy hub, Ras Laffan Industrial City, the largest liquified natural gas (LNG) export facility in the world. The Ras Laffan facility encompasses nearly 300 square kilometers (116 square miles) and sustained “extensive damage,” according to QatarEnergy, the state-owned company that runs it in partnership with ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies and Shell. It was the first time an…

Germany’s 2026 World Cup preparations ramp up this month, with two friendlies against Switzerland and Ghana. Head coach Julian Nagelsmann picked two new names for his latest squad, announced on Thursday. Bayern Munich’s high-flying 18-year-old attacking midfielder Lennart Karl and 22-year-old goalkeeper Jonas Urbig have been included for the first time. The pair can now both have legitimate hopes of making Germany’s World Cup squad this summer given that Nagelsmann has already admitted that the squad for these matches would be very similar to the one for the summer tournament. “The decisive factor is that we have a core group of players, but can…

The skeleton found in a simple wooden coffin in Magdeburg Cathedral inside the official sarcophagus of 10th century king Otto I of Saxony almost certainly belonged to the man himself, officials said at a presentation in the city’s university hospital on Wednesday.  “With a probability bordering on certainty what we have here in front of us are indeed the mortal remains of Otto the Great,” Harald Meller, the director of the Saxony-Anhalt State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments and Archaeology, said in Magdeburg, standing in front of the carefully laid out and remarkably complete 1,050-year-old skeleton. Otto and his…

Standing in a 1960s industrial building by the German Baltic Sea coast, Florian Grose, holds a dosimeter as he moves towards a corner of the room. It starts beeping furiously. “That’s around 10 microsieverts,” he says, dressed in protective overalls. A normal dose rate is under 0.2 microsieverts. “This is an area where I’d say we maybe should move a meter away. You shouldn’t stand or lie here for an hour,” Grose, a radiation protection worker, warns in a disarmingly jovial tone. Inside special building one of the former nuclear power plant, parts of the wall are uneven and pockmarked —…

The shocking and unprecedented news that this year’s African Cup of Nations (AFCON) winner Senegal will be stripped of their title, which will instead go to beaten finalists Morocco, has sent shockwaves across the continent’s football community. Senegal’s football federation have confirmed they will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), with the federation’s secretary general Abdoulaye Seydou Sow quick to express his feelings. “We will contact our lawyers and file an appeal. We will stop at nothing. The law is on our side,” Sow announced on state radio RTS, calling the decision a “disgrace for Africa.” Titles being…

In the beginning, it was just a game. One we’ve all played numerous times: select the squares with a stop sign, enter the text below, reassemble the puzzle — and check the box declaring, “I am not a robot.” Yet, every time we select images determining whether what we see is a cat or a croissant, we end up working for Big Tech. When Guatemalan computer scientist Luis von Ahn first proposed the idea of “games with a purpose” (GWAPs) in 2004, his goal was to harness human brainpower so that computers could learn from it. His idea was simple: Get humans to solve tasks that are…