Author: DW

The results of India’s six-week-long national election, the world’s largest, started trickling in on Tuesday, showing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was on track to secure a third term, but with a reduced parliamentary majority.     With vote counting nearing its end, the NDA was ahead in about 290 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, contrary to exit poll predictions of a landslide win. The BJP was also short of a majority of its own. This means the party will likely be forced to rely on coalition partners to remain…

Germany is considering resuming deportations of criminals to Afghanistan, the interior minister said on Tuesday. Germany stopped repatriating migrants to Afghanistan after the Taliban took power in 2021, because it does not deport people to countries where they are threatened by death. But after an Afghan refugee was accused of fatally stabbing a police officer in Mannheim last Friday, authorities are now reconsidering this policy. “It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters. “I am also quite adamant that Germany’s security interests clearly outweigh…

Novak Djokovic has pulled out of the French Open ahead of his quarter-final match.The tennis world number one was due to play Casper Ruud on Wednesday but has withdrawn due to a knee injury. The Norwegian will therefore go straight into the semi-finals.His withdrawal means Djokovic’s hopes to extend his record with a 25th grand slam trophy will not be realised.The Serbian will lose the world number one ranking to Italy’s Jannik Sinner later this month. Organisers said Djokovic had been forced to withdraw from the Roland-Garros tournament “due to a torn medial meniscus in his right knee”.The NHS website…

If you read German reports about the recent flooding disaster in the southern part of the country, you will likely come across mention of “Vb weather conditions.” These conditions, which are seldom reported in English-language media, were first described in 1891 by German meteorologist Wilhelm Jacob van Bebber, who cataloged typical paths of low-pressure systems and labeled them with Roman numerals. Although the terms Va, Vc and Vd have since fallen out of popular usage, Vb (pronounced five-B weather conditions, V = Roman 5) is still used by meteorologists to describe a rare pressure system that can bring heavy rainfall,…

Whenever Hungarians go to the polls, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has a habit of peddling bizarre conspiracy theories. The run-up to this week’s European Parliament elections has been no different. Speaking at a rally in Budapest on Saturday that organizers called a “peace march,” Orban claimed that the European Commission in Brussels is under the influence of US-Hungarian billionaire George Soros, who Orban said plans to send European citizens to war against Russia. He also claimed the continent would subsequently be settled by millions of non-European migrants and that Hungary would cease to exist as a nation. Orban told the crowd…

Nigerian authorities have beefed up efforts to thwart the theft of crude products in the West African country’s oil-rich Niger Delta region. Large-scale oil theft from pipelines and wells has been one of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s biggest challenges, damaging government finances and limiting Nigeria’s output and exports. Nigeria, Africa’s top economy and major oil producer, lost about 620 million barrels of crude oil — valued at $46 billion (€42 billion) — between 2009 and 2020 alone, according to the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, an organization that promotes accountability in the management of the nations’s oil, gas and mining revenue. Is Nigeria…

A man survived a shark attack by punching it in the face before being rescued by other swimmers at a popular California beach, a witness has said.The 46-year-old was in the water with a group at Del Mar City Beach near San Diego when he was bitten on the torso, left arm and hand about 90m from shore. One of the swimmers, Jenna Veal, was behind the victim during the attack and told Sky’s US partner network NBC News she heard him scream for help.”He punched it in the face. He punched it in the nose,” she told NBC’s TODAY…

I was 17-years-old the first (and only) time I used laughing gas — nitrous oxide — for fun. I was with some friends who showed me it was sold at the grocery store. As an anxious teenager, I was wary, but the fact it was available for legal purchase at the supermarket helped assuage my concerns. If it was really that harmful, I thought, surely it wouldn’t be available for anyone to buy. Health experts say this is a common introduction to the party drug. Kids are told, often by peers, that laughing gas won’t harm them. They may believe it because there…

From “Poppy Flowers” by Vincent Van Gogh to Rembrandt’s missing masterpiece, “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” to Nazi-looted works by the likes of Gustav Klimt, absence has made the heart grow fonder for long-lost artistic treasures. In 1969, thieves stole the “Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence,” an early Baroque painting by Italian artist Caravaggio, which the artist completed in 1609 and which hung in a church in Palermo on the island of Sicily. Fifty-five years later, its whereabouts remains a mystery. Depicting the birth of Jesus, the vast work extending near 3 meters in height was removed…

China’s lunar spacecraft started its journey back to earth after collecting samples from the far side of the moon, the country’s space agency said on Tuesday.  The China National Space Administration (CNSA) said the ascender module of the Chang’e-6 probe unfurled the Chinese flag before lifting off.  The craft was the first to ever successfully take off from the moon’s far side.  The mission comes as China advances its space program, aiming to put a person on the moon before the end of this decade.  Why is the mission important? The so-called dark side of the moon, which is invisible from Earth,…