Author: DW

Ismail Skira looked relieved, a little exhausted, but very happy as he parked his bicycle in the coastal city of Agadir in southern Morocco. He had just finished a more than 3,000-kilometer (1,864-mile) journey from France that took four weeks. The Morocco-born football fan, who has lived in Paris since he was 21, was determined to support the Atlas Lions in person at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). But traveling by car or plane would have been too easy for the 59-year-old. “When I was at the Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast (in 2024), the fans were singing a song…

“It’s been quite a remarkable event in my life,” says linguist Paul Frommer, recalling his first encounter with James Cameron. Searching for someone to develop a constructed language for a science-fiction film, the renowned director had sent an email to the linguistics department of the University of Southern California. In his application for the job, Frommer convincingly expressed his enthusiasm for the challenge. “Welcome aboard,” Cameron told the doctor in linguistics at the end of their first 90-minute talk in 2005. “My life really hasn’t been the same ever since,” Frommer tells DW ahead of the release of “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the…

The long-running legal fight over Bayer’s weedkiller Roundup has seen nearly 200,000 cancer claims filed in US courts over the past seven years and is now being turned into a political tug of war. In prior Roundup lawsuits, the US Justice Department under former President Joe Biden, had argued that consumers should be allowed to pursue damages against Germany’s chemical giant, with most claims involving non‑Hodgkin lymphoma after long-term exposure to the pesticide. Earlier this month, however, President Donald Trump’s administration reversed course. After the US Supreme Court sought the Solicitor General’s view, the Justice Department sided with Bayer and urged limits on the tens…

In the early morning hours of Friday, December 19, you could spot the visitor from another solar system in the sky ― with a serious telescope, that is. Comet 3I/ATLAS flew by Earth at a distance of 270 million kilometers (168 million miles). That was its closest approach to our planet.  From here, the comet will continue its journey and pass by Jupiter in early 2026 before crossing the orbits of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune by 2028 and then leaving our solar system. The facts about 3I/ATLAS Beyond the fact that this is the third known interstellar object to have entered our solar system, “we don’t know…

The Women’s European Championship is coming home to its record champions. Germany, eight-time winners of this competition, are hosting their first women’s Euros since 2001 and a lot of the focus has been on the German FA’s (DFB) aim to make the tournament the first profitable women’s Euros. “The symbolism of a ‘profitable’ women’s Euro is powerful, but it’s not a guarantee of long-term health. Profit in 2029 must be judged by what it leaves behind for girls and women in Germany, not just by a closing balance sheet,” Popi Sotiriadou told DW. Sotiriadou is an associate professor in the department of tourism and…

Her guitar has been sitting unused in the corner for a month. “I don’t feel like it,” says 35-year-old Georgian musician and composer Natuka Natsvlishvili. “I’m depressed and I don’t think I have the right to sit at home and work on my music.” Natsvlishvili has been a musician since the age of 15 and has recorded an album. But now her focus has shifted. “My feeling is that we just have to fight now,” she told DW, explaining that she believes Georgia’s government threatens not only her freedom as an artist, but the freedom of the country itself. For the last…

What happened to the price of silver in 2025? Silver has experienced a remarkable bull market, more than doubling in value from around $30 (€24.54) per ounce at the start of the year to an all-time high of $67.65 per ounce on December 18. The metal traded on COMEX — the commodity division of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) — near $30 in January and hovered between $37 and $40 through the summer before breaking decisively higher in September.  Momentum then accelerated, with the strongest moves in the last three months of the year. The more than 110% year-to-date gain represents a dramatic turnaround for the…

It smells like Christmas in the countries that celebrate: In Germany, for example, scents of fresh pine, sugar cookies, mulled wine waft through the air. And they are likely to trigger emotions or memories in many people’s minds. “When you smell [this familiar] scent again, you’re back in the memory — in grandma’s kitchen baking Christmas cookies,” said Olaf Conrad, a doctor of otorhinolaryngology at Erlangen University Hospital.  Otorhinolaryngology is a branch of medicine that specializes in the head and neck, often called ear, nose and throat medicine. Scents don’t only trigger Christmas memories, of course. My grandmother used to come by once a…

The deal announced this week will see Bayern Munich become the owners of the Sportpark Unterhaching stadium on January 1, 2026, through a subsidiary that operates the men’s home ground, the Allianz Arena. It is reported to be worth an initial €7.5 million ($8.8 million) plus costs associated with renovations to the facility, to be conducted over the next few years. “The acquisition of Sportpark Unterhaching is another milestone in the overall development of our FC Bayern Women,” Bayern Munich CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen said in a statement announcing the move. “The new sporting home of our women’s team will meet…

Mention “perfume” and one might first envision fragrant liquids in fancy flacons. Yet the name itself, derived from the Latin “per fumum” — meaning “through smoke” — indicates that what we understand as “perfume” today differs vastly from its origins and uses among our ancestors. Its history is also a study in scientific breakthrough, knowledge transfer, trade expansion, colonialism and natural resource extraction, as well as latter-day Eurocentric marketing.  A painting depicting perfume makers at workImage: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/picture alliance Scent as old as time Britannica states that the ancient Chinese, Hindus, Egyptians, Israelites, Carthaginians, Arabs, Greeks and Romans were all reportedly familiar…