Author: DW

More than 200 Palestinians were killed as Israel raided Gaza to free four hostages, Hamas claims, in one of the bloodiest days of the war.During the mission, hailed as “heroic” in Israel, the military said it freed the hostages under heavy fire and responded with strikes “from the air and from the street”.But the ensuing attack on central Gaza’s al Nuseirat, a historic Palestinian refugee camp, led to scenes like a “horror movie”, according to residents.While Israel acknowledged “under 100” Palestinian casualties, Hamas said at least 210 have been killed and more wounded – though it isn’t clear how many…

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak apologized on Friday for leaving D-Day anniversary commemorations in northern France early. He left the Thursday event, held to commemorate the landing of Allied troops in German-occupied France 80 years ago, to conduct a television interview for his reelection campaign in the UK. Sunak misses main D-Day ceremony Sunak returned home before he could attend a ceremony at Ohama Beach on the coast of the northwestern French region of Normandy. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and US President Joe Biden attended the event. King Charles III also traveled to France to participate…

2024 is known as the year of elections because in these 12 months more voters in more countries than ever before will exercise their right to cast a vote to choose who governs them. That is the march of democracy – even if nobody was convinced when President Putin was elected, again, in Russia. The UK is in the throes of a general election campaign which could end 14 years of Conservative rule. Americans will decide whether Donald Trump returns to the White House in November.In India, a victorious Prime Minister Narendra Modi is licking his wounds after his Hindu…

Monika Magashazi is a fighter. The 52-year old trans woman lives in Hungary — a country that has been ruled by Viktor Orban’s nationalist Fidesz party since 2010.  For transgender communities, the situation “has been becoming worse and worse and, unfortunately, we are desperate today in Hungary,” she told DW. She said the government was trying to portray trans people as pedophiles and criminals, using seemingly every opportunity to discriminate against them. Struggling with her own coming out, Magashazi even attempted to take her own life. “I reached a point when I had to decide on how to live on,” she said. Thinking…

If media campaigns in more than a dozen European countries were to be believed, the European Union (EU) intends to force citizens to eat insects instead of meat.  The claim has touched nerves, especially in Italy, where variations of it have been revived and splashed across billboards during European elections to pit Brussels against mama’s special sauce. But consumers of this claim are being fed pure nonsense, an example of countless fabrications launched or adopted by candidates seeking political gain at the cost of the truth. The fake insect-food narrative, which first surfaced last year in a number of EU countries, has proven so popular with malign actors both within…

Christophe Deloire, director-general of the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), died of cancer aged 53, the organization said Saturday. The former newspaper and TV reporter had led the media watchdog since 2012, helping it expand its defense of journalism around the world. “The team at Reporters Without Borders’ international secretariat … are deeply saddened to announce the death of Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders International and director-general of Reporters Without Borders, following a battle with cancer,” a statement from the group said. RSF said Deloire had “transformed the association, ” and was a “tireless defender on every continent, of…

Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck went on trial again on Friday in the German city of Hamburg for incitement to hatred. Haverbeck has repeatedly and publicly denied the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. This has made her a popular figure in the far-right scene. On November 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 10 months in prison without parole by the Hamburg District Court. She then filed an appeal. Almost nine years later, the case is once again before the courts. What is the case about? The current case concerns statements made by Haverbeck in April 2015 on…

A woman was killed by a 5-meter (16-foot) python in central Indonesia after it swallowed her whole, local media reported Saturday. The 45-year-old, from Kalempang village in South Sulawesi province, had told her husband on Thursday she was going to sell chilies to a collector.  When she failed to return, her husband and relatives initiated a search, village head Suardi Rosi told the Detik.com news website. The next morning, a python was discovered near the woman’s abandoned belongings, the report said. Along with some villagers, the husband of the woman — identified only as Farida — killed the snake and cut it open. Python with large belly cut open Earlier, her husband…

Greek authorities broadened their search for missing British doctor and TV presenter Michael Mosley on Friday. Mosley, who is well-known in the UK and beyond for his books on dieting, reportedly went missing on Wednesday while going for a walk on the Greek island of Symi. On the second day of the search, around 20 firefighters and police officers searched on land while coast guard units scoured the waters around the island. “There is a big effort underway to find him,” Symi police chief Petros Vassilakis told the AFP news agency on Friday. What do we know about Michael Mosley’s disappearance?…

Peter Magyar, a 43-year-old former government insider, spoke to a cheering crowd of tens of thousands of supporters in Budapest on Saturday — the eve of EU and Hungarian municipal elections in which he has emerged as nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s most serious political challenger. Though Orban and his Fidesz party — in power since 2010 — look likely to take between 44% and 49% of the vote, Magyar’s Tisza movement is tipped to take between 23-29%. A former Foreign Ministry employee in the prime minister’s Brussels office, Magyar left Fidesz over the corruption and state propaganda he said…