Author: DW

The Turkish public has recently become familiar with a legal term that could seal the fate of the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP. “Mutlak butlan” means absolute nullity, referring to a situation where something is considered completely void or invalid from the beginning. This is exactly what could happen on September 15, when the trial against the CHP comes to an end. If judges in the capital, Ankara, decide to declare the 38th party congress of the CHP null and void, the party’s entire reform-minded leadership would lose its legitimacy. Turkey’s oldest party, which has mobilized millions of people to protest…

A princess, a pop star and a politician — Kate Middleton, Nelly Furtado and Annalena Baerbock — have all experienced online harassment because of their appearance. Experts explain why this is no coincidence.

The Delphi Filmpalast is a grand cinema located not far from Berlin’s fashionable shopping boulevard, the Kurfürstendamm. Boris Becker arrived clad in a light linen suit and black shirt, accompanied by his pregnant wife Lilian, son Noah, and sister Sabine and her daughters. As he enters the cinema, Becker is mobbed by fans and photographers, and it takes a while for him to get to the stage. During the presentation his tone wavers between that of an untouchable sporting god (“I have no limits”) and a poor wretch cramped in a prison alongside hardened criminals (“we are all equal”). But one central…

US health authorities are on alert as cases of Chagas disease, originating from South America, are increasingly being detected in the United States. Cases have now been reported in at least eight states. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are now about to categorize the infectious disease as endemic , meaning occurring regularly within an area or community. This is not just a medical formality but a wake-up call: The disease would no longer be considered an imported tropical disease but regarded as a permanently present health risk in the US. The proposed classification would have far-reaching consequences for monitoring, research and treatment.…

The United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt issued a joint statement on Friday calling for a three-month humanitarian truce in Sudan, followed by a permanent ceasefire. Foreign ministers of the four countries put forth a plan to end the deadly conflict in the northeast African nationand that called for a nine-month transitional process to establish civilian rule. What did the countries say about the war in Sudan? The transition should “meet the aspirations of the Sudanese people towards smoothly establishing an independent, civilian-led government with broad-based legitimacy and accountability,” the statement from the four nations said.…

The organizers of the Flanders Festival Ghent were open about why they decided to cancel a planned concert by the Munich Philharmonic: The reason, they said, was that its Israeli conductor, Lahav Shani, had not sufficiently distanced himself from the actions of Israel’s government.   By cancelling the event, the organizers claim they wanted “to maintain the serenity of our festival,” and state that it is their “deepest conviction that music should be a source of connection and reconciliation.”  But instead of serenity, the move has triggered a wave of outrage — especially in Germany.   An ‘unspeakable and deeply antisemitic…

Crime may not pay, but prison does. Behind the locked doors and razor wire, a parallel economy thrives. But who’s really cashing in? Governments worldwide spend hundreds of billions annually to keep more than 11.5 million people behind bars — mostly men. The exact global cost is unclear, but in the United States alone — the world’s biggest jailer — the prison budget is $80.7 billion (€69.1 billion) per year, versus Brazil at around $4 billion. India, with the world’s fourth-largest prison population, spends nearly $1 billion. Private corporations now profit from incarceration in many countries, from building cells to selling phone calls. Inside, organized crime syndicates run contraband empires and extortion rackets.…

A no-man’s-land only about 15 meters [16 yards] wide forms the border between Lithuania and Belarus, a close ally of Russia. Two metal fences line the 600-kilometer-long strip of land. The one on the Lithuanian side is topped with barbed wire. Above it, surveillance cameras rotate regularly from left to right, making a humming sound as they zoom in and out. Fears that there could be breaches at the border have risen in Lithuania since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. These have been exacerbated by Zapad 2025, joint maneuvers between Russia and Belarus involving tens of thousands of soldiers that are scheduled to…

South Africa’s Constitutional Court has ruled that husbands can take their wives’ family name, overturning a law that banned them from doing so. Thursday’s decision upheld a ruling made last year by a lower court, with Justice Loena Theron saying the existing law discriminated “on the grounds of gender” and was a “colonial import.” The law, which only allows a woman to change her family name when her marital status changes, was introduced during the apartheid years of white-minority rule. The court suspended the current legislation and gave the government two years to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act.…

The pain is still there, but Ilona Lüth and Patricia Gerstendörfer can laugh once again. Sitting together on two wooden chairs, they smile at each other. Their friendship is marked by a shared traumatic experience: Both lost loved ones to suicide.  “I asked Patricia all the questions I didn’t dare ask myself at the time,” says Ilona. “Do I need therapy now? Can I continue working? Can I manage without medication? Patricia encouraged me to do what felt right.”  When Ilona suddenly lost her husband to suicide six years ago, she was heading the customs department of a medium-sized company. Distracting…