Author: DW

Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, has been regularly accused of going on extravagant shopping sprees while her husband, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sends Ukrainians to war with Russia. Sometimes, she’s said to have bought jewelry or a luxury yacht, other times, it was a private estate once belonging to the British royal family. False evidence purporting to show that the president and first lady of Ukraine are living a lavish life and have amassed untold wealth — financed by corruption — regularly circulates online. The most recent of these claims suggests the couple bought one or two luxury sports cars from the Italian manufacturer…

On Sunday, France will once again head to the polls to choose the makeup of its lower house. Last Sunday’s early election round saw the far-right National Rally (RN) net 33%. It was a jolt for a country that was last under far-right administration when occupied by Nazi German during World War II. By current projections, the anti-immigration and Euroskeptic RN could win a parliamentary majority, possibly making the 28-year-old party president Jordan Bardella France’s youngest-ever prime minister.  Should the RN emerge as most powerful party in France’s parliament, Bardella would have a strong case for building a government in an awkward power-sharing deal known as…

German police are investigating a video which appears to show a football fan being kicked and punched while being held by security staff at a Euro 2024 game.Footage published in Portuguese media featured several security staff in orange and yellow vests marked “steward” detaining two men in a concrete tunnel leading towards the pitch where Portugal were playing Slovenia in Frankfurt on Monday. The video showed one person being held face-down on the floor, with another restrained next to a wall appearing to be punched three times in the head, then pulled to the ground and punched and kicked again.…

A trade group representing United States writers has filed a class-action lawsuit against ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in federal court. The suit, organized by the Authors Guild, was filed on behalf of more than a dozen best-selling authors, including  Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, George Saunders and “Game of Thrones” novelist George R. R. Martin. It alleges OpenAI unlawfully used copyrighted works by those and other authors to train its generative artificial intelligence software. The complaint is one of several currently pending against generative AI providers, including Facebook-owner Meta Platforms and Stability AI, which alleges their AI systems were trained by accessing and ingesting written copyrighted works…

British cyclist Mark Cavendish wrote history on Wednesday when he won a record 35th Tour de France stage, overtaking the legendary Belgian rider Eddy Merckx, whose record 34 stage wins had stood since 1975. Cavendish, 39, raced home ahead of Belgium’s Jasper Philipsen and Norway’s Alexander Kristoff following a sprint finish at the end of stage five from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Saint-Vulbas, near the southeastern French city of Lyon. For two-time Tour de France winner Cavendish, who won his first Tour stage 16 years ago back in 2008, it was a first stage victory since 2021. Cavendish made cycling history He…

The new Prime Minister of the Netherlands Dick Schoof on Wednesday vowed to continue “financial and military support” for Ukraine. “We should not be naive. A few hours’ flight from here, there is a horrific war, where human lives do not matter for Russia,” Schoof, a former spy chief, told parliament. “Ukraine can continue to count on the Netherlands for financial, military and political support,” he emphasized. The 67-year-old Independent candidate is succeeding departing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who is set to become the next secretary-general of NATO after 14 years in office. “I assured [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy] that the Netherlands’…

This ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and throughout the region has intensified – leading to widespread displacement and raising serious concerns about the humanitarian situation in North Kivu Province in particular. On June 28th and 29th, M23 rebels in the Eastern DRC captured the towns of Kanyabayonga and Kirumba, respectively. Kirumba residents like Tsongo Augustin say more and more people have been forced out of the area, which had become home to many who already had been displaced by the conflict. “Kirumba is gradually being deserted by the population, and therefore the humanitarian situation is very complicated. This area has welcomed…

Mark Cavendish has broken the record for Tour de France stage wins.The British cyclist secured the historic milestone after triumphing in Saint-Vulbas, eastern France, to win the 35th stage of his career. Cavendish, from the Isle of Man, had been level with Belgian great Eddy Merckx on 34 victories. Image: Cavendish crosses the finish line to take the win in Saint-Vulbas. Pic: AP “I’m in a bit of disbelief,” the 39-year-old Astana-Qazaqstan rider said shortly after the win.”Astana put a big a gamble on this year, to make sure we got here, the Tour de France. “A big gamble to…

What’s the oldest story ever recorded by humans? Scientists now think it’s a story as old as time — humanity’s place in nature — painted at the back of a cave in Indonesia. It’s a scene of humans interacting with a pig, painted on a wall in red and black pigments; the flickering of torchlight makes the figures dance and leap, animating the scene into a story. New analysis, published July 3 in the journal Nature, has found that this sophisticated scene of human-animal interactions is around 51,200 years old, making it tens of thousands of years older than other narrative cave art in places like…

How can you know if this text was really written by a human? I know, because I am writing it right now. But, of course, that previous sentence could have been written by artificial intelligence. It seems we now have to live with this uncertainty of who or what the author of something actually is. Writing as an end in itself The difference between man and machine has been a recurring theme since at least the time of the Industrial Revolution. But in this age when robots are programmed to speak of themselves in the first person, it has gained…