Author: DW

The war in Kosovo ended on June 10, 1999, when the UN Security Council in New York adopted Resolution 1244, which formally ended hostilities that had ceased the previous day. Two-and-a-half months earlier, on the evening of March 24, 1999, NATO began bombing targets in Yugoslavia, a federation made up of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro. It was the first intervention by the NATO alliance without a UN mandate and the first to involve German military personnel. It was both a precedent and the breaking of a taboo: for NATO, because it lacked a UN mandate, and for Germany, because…

The UN Security Council has voted in favour of a US-drafted resolution in support of a ceasefire proposal between Hamas and Israel.The resolution lays out a three-phase ceasefire plan, which US President Joe Biden described as an Israeli initiative – though how effective it will be remains in question. Reacting to the resolution, Hamas said it is ready to cooperate with mediators over implementing the principles of the plan.Israel-Hamas war latestIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before the vote Mr Biden presented only parts of the proposal and insisted any talk of a permanent ceasefire before dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities…

Abstain from sex. That’s “the only way to completely avoid STIs,” is what we hear from public health bodies. Do not have any vaginal, anal or oral sex. It makes for sobering advice. But it also makes perfect sense when you read the latest data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on the spread of gonorrhea, a bacterial sexually transmitted infection (STI), and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Antibiotics, such as azithromycin, ceftriaxone and cefixime, are common medical treatments to cure gonorrhea, but they are growing increasingly ineffective. And that may be contributing to a European, if not global, increase in…

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Germany is “very well prepared” to confront any security risks during the upcoming UEFA European football championship. “We have a very high risk in abstract terms, but we have nothing concrete,” she said, adding that there was no such thing as 100% safety. The monthlong football championship, also called the Euro 2024, kicks off on Friday. “Security is the highest priority for us,” Faeser said, while visiting an international police center set up for the tournament outside the western city of Düsseldorf. “We are very, very well prepared and I therefore hope that it will be…

Lala grew up in Senegal and Mauritania, where she has long dreamed of a better life. She had saved enough money to pay for a pirogue — a traditional fishing boat that human traffickers use for their businesses. The small fishing boat was to take her from the capital, Nouakchott, to Spain’s Canary Islands. She was looking forward to a future in the EU. But the journey was treacherous, she told DW, as she struggled to recount her ordeal. “There were all sorts of nationalities. Malians, Cameroonians, Nigerians, Mauritanians, Senegalese. The police themselves came to take us to the beach,” Lala said. According to her, the small boats…

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier joined his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in Oradour-sur-Glane on Monday to remember the hundreds of victims killed in a Nazi massacre there during World War II. The village, northeast of Bordeaux, was almost entirely destroyed on June 10, 1944, when occupying German troops razed buildings to the ground and murdered 643 civilians. At a ceremony marking 80 years since the massacre, Steinmeier expressed his “grief” and called for freedom in Europe to be protected, “so that people can live in peace.” The event came a day after the EU parliamentary polls, in which far-right parties in several countries, including France and Germany, made strong gains. “Let us never…

An aircraft carrying Malawi’s vice president and nine others has gone missing.Malawi’s presidency has said Saulos Klaus Chilima was on board the flight and rescue operations are ongoing. “All efforts by aviation authorities to make contact with the aircraft since it went off the radar have failed thus far,” Malawi’s Office of the President and Cabinet said.Mr Chilima, 51, was on a Malawi Defence Force plane that left the capital Lilongwe at 9.17am (8.17am UK time), it said.The aircraft had been scheduled to land at Mzuzu International Airport at 10.02am, a trip covering a distance of about 370km. Malawian President Lazarus…

Eighty-eight people move on a large stage to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Some sing and reproduce the lyrics in sign language. The others perform a choreography of steps and gestures. They can barely hear the music, if at all, but what they pick up from the singers they translate into a visible art form for other hearing-impaired people. This performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, the Passion of Christ according to the Biblical evangelist John, is an atmospheric experience for hearing and non-hearing people on Leipzig’s main square. Soprano Susanne Haupt founded the inclusive singing ensemble Sing&Sign in 2017 for…

Iran’s Interior Ministry has released the final list of candidates for the presidential election scheduled for June 28.  The Guardian Council — the powerful, constitutionally mandated body made up out of six clerics and six jurists — has vetted six men to run after scrutinizing both their professional qualifications and their ideological devotion to the Islamic Republic. The council has also excluded many familiar faces from the election, such as the former president and populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, a conservative seen as an ally to ex-President Hassan Rouhani. Nearly all of the candidates to replace Ebrahim Raisi, who…

Tech companies such as Google and Facebook parent Meta are investing in new data highways and speeds for Africa. The first Google Cloud data center on the African continent has been up and running since January in Johannesburg, South Africa. “The big US tech giants have recognized the existing connectivity gaps and the need for additional investment associated with this as a major business opportunity,” Tevin Tafese, data scientist at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, told DW. “Prominent examples are Google and Meta, whose major cable projects are aimed at reducing the cost of accessing their own service in…