Author: DW

Italy and China signed a three-year economic cooperation deal on Sunday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said, following talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang. Meloni said her first visit to Beijing as Italian leader was a “demonstration of the will to begin a new phase, to relaunch our bilateral cooperation.” The leader of the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy party also spoke of wanting to see trade relations with China become “fairer,” the Italian news agency ANSA reported. “Chinese investment in Italy accounts for about a third of Italian investment in China,” she said, adding that she would like to see this gap narrow. Meloni later…

Venezuelans headed to the polls on Sunday to vote in a presidential election in which incumbent President Nicolas Maduro was said to have secured reelection against rival Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. Around 21 million Venezuelans were registered to vote. Tens of thousands of security forces were deployed, with border control ramped up and public gatherings and protests banned. Ahead of the vote, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington would not prejudge the results, yet called on parties to respect the democratic process which would be closely watched. Maduro against biggest ‘Chavismo’ threat The vote has pitted 61-year-old Maduro against 74-year-old former diplomat Gonzalez…

Sometimes nothing compares to the real thing – as Dublin’s wax museum discovered after it unveiled a figure of Irish singer Sinead O’Connor.Many reacted with shock when the waxwork was revealed on Thursday, leading the museum’s team to decide to withdraw the replica. The team admitted on Friday it “can do better” and said it would create a “more accurate representation”. Facebook This content is provided by Facebook, which may be using cookies and other technologies. To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies. You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable…

Researchers have investigated the spread of H5N1, a contagious and highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), at nine farms in the US states of Texas, New Mexico, Kansas and Ohio — and found that “epidemiologic and genomic data revealed efficient cow-to-cow transmission.” In a study, rush-released by the journal Nature on July 25 after an initial peer review, the researchers reported a “spillover of HPAI H5N1 virus in dairy cattle herds […].” They were also able to detect cattle-to-cat and cattle-to-raccoon transmission, highlighting, as they put it, “the virus’ ability to cross species barriers.” Their evidence suggested the mammary gland in cattle was…

Walking on stilts is a little-known tradition, even though people have been walking on stilts all over the world for centuries. This is probably because making stilts does not require any special materials or in-depth knowledge. Even children can carve their own stilts and ‘outgrow’ themselves. In their simplest form, stilts are a pair of upright poles with supports for the feet that enable users to stand or walk at a height above the ground. Who invented it? There is no specific era or region from which stilt walking originated. Different ethnic groups independently came up with the idea of…

Paris Mayor Sabotage Anne Hidalgo said Friday that the crippling of France’s high-speed TGV rail network would have “no impact on the ceremony” opening the Paris Olympics later that evening. She spoke hours after the country’s high-speed TGV rail network was struck by “malicious acts,” including arson attacks, that have disrupted the transport system, the national rail operator SNCF said. Later Friday, millions of eyes will be on the French capital as the Paris Olympics get underway.  Hidalho labeled the sabotage “unacceptable” but said it was having “no effect on the transport network” in the French capital, where hundreds of thousands of people will…

Two of the leading figures of the deadly drug trafficking organization, the Sinaloa cartel, were arrested in Texas on Thursday, the United States Justice Department said. “Ismael Zambada Garcia, or ‘El Mayo,’ co-founder of the Cartel, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of its other co-founder, were arrested today in El Paso, Texas,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. Zambada, who was believed to have been behind much of the day-to-day business of drug trafficking, had been one of the leaders of the cartel since the 1970s. Who are the Sinaloa cartel? Garland called the cartel, which originated…

Just last week, it looked like a near foregone conclusion that Donald Trump would return to the White House after the November election. But on Sunday, Joe Biden blew open the US presidential election by stepping out of the race and endorsing 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris. She is expected to bring new momentum into the race and become the official Democratic nominee in August in Chicago. Harris has already seen a huge increase in fundraising, bringing in more than $81 million (€74.4 million) in the first 24 hours after Biden’s announcement. It’s not just voters, donors or politicians who…

Abhishek Kumar had spent seven years working with the Indian government and the Central Bank of India when he realized he wanted to launch an international career. “I always felt like I was behind a glass wall, longing to be more connected with the world,” he told DW. In 2022, Kumar was awarded a scholarship to take part in the EU’s Erasmus Mundus Joint master’s degree (EMJMD) program. He left home in Mumbai to study at financial journalism at City, University of London, in the UK, which despite not being an EU member, has limited cooperation with the EMJMD. “The…

Former British marathon runner Paula Radcliffe has said she is “mortified” that she wished “best of luck” to a convicted rapist competing at the Olympics.Dutch beach volleyball player Steven Van de Velde was convicted in 2016 of raping a 12-year-old girl in England two years earlier. He was 19 years old at the time of the attack. He served a year of his four-year sentence, after being transferred to a Dutch prison.Van de Velde, now 29, was controversially selected to represent the Netherlands in the Paris Games, which start on Friday. Image: Steven van de Velde. Pic: Rex Features The…