Author: DW

On December 16, the Beethovenhalle Bonn reopened after nearly 10 years of renovation. The concert hall welcomed audiences back with a “Beethoven Night” concert lasting nearly four hours. In front of approximately 1,600 guests, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivered the opening address. He thus followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Theodor Heuss, who inaugurated the “bold and modern building” (as the then Federal President described it in his speech) in September 1959. At the opening of the renovated venue, Steinmeier noted that the Beethovenhalle is not only dedicated to Bonn’s most famous son and his music. “It is also, and you can surely…

Donald Trump’s announcement of a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers travelling to and from Venezuela has raised questions about the economic consequences for the regime of leftist president Nicolas Maduro. Trump has made oil a central target in his ongoing campaign against Maduro, which was sparked by the US president’s claims that Maduro was to blame for the illegal flow of both migrants and drugs to the US from Venezuela.Maduro’s powerful international backers, including Russia, China and Iran, have repeatedly offered lifelines against international pressureImage: Pedro Rances Mattey/Anadolu/picture alliance The fragile Venezuelan economy is exceptionally dependent on…

FIFA introduced a new category of ticket prices called “Supporter Entry Tier” tickets on Tuesday, following uproar from national supporters’ associations about the cost of World Cup entry for traveling fans.  World football’s governing body said the discounted $60 (roughly €51) tickets would be available for all 104 matches of the tournament, including the final. This is significant as original plans for final tickets foresaw no prices below $4,000 for supporters buying via their national football associations.  The competition in the US, Mexico and Canada between June 11 and July 19 next year looks sure to be the most expensive…

The result came as a surprise to researchers at the Icaro Lab in Italy. They set out to examine whether different language styles — in this case prompts in the form of poems — influence AI models’ ability to recognize banned or harmful content. And the answer was a resounding yes.  Using poetry, researchers were able to get around safety guardrails — and it’s not entirely clear why.  For their study titled “Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models,” the researchers took 1,200 potentially harmful prompts from a database normally used to test the security of AI language models…

Their worldwide exports transformed them into some of the most prosperous regions in Europe, but now Germany’s auto capitals are veering toward harder times. Cities like Wolfsburg, Ingolstadt and Stuttgart — home to Volkswagen, Audi and Mercedes, respectively — are seeing dramatic drops in tax revenues as their flagship firms struggle. The result has been a messy budget season, with officials scrambling to cover widening funding gaps through borrowing, higher fees and spending cuts. In Friedrichshafen, a high-earning community on Lake Constance in southwestern Germany and home to auto parts supplier ZF, the city is set to more than double fees for…

Family doctors are probably the best place to obtain trusted, first-point information about vaccines and other medicines, say experts, amid a growing and public conflict between the Trump Administration’s health agencies and professional, independent medical groups. Forty-four such groups, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and American Academy of Pediatrics, co-signed a statement protesting a new recommendation by the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a high-level government advisory panel on vaccine safety and effectiveness. The ACIP voted that the hepatitis B vaccine, typically administered to all newborns in the US within the first hours of birth, be optional…

Angry spectators broke down barricades and stormed the pitch at a stadium in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata after soccer star Lionel Messi left the arena earlier than expected. Messi, who is on a three-day visit billed as a “GOAT (greatest of all time) Tour,” arrived in the eastern state of West Bengal early Saturday. Fans greeted the 38-year-old Argentina and Inter Miami forward with chants of his name. How did Messi’s fans react to his Kolkata visit? At Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium, Messi walked around the pitch, waving to the crowd before leaving the stadium ahead of schedule. Frustrated spectators, some…

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. ” This opening line from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” wasn’t just a sly dig at the marriage market of early 19th-century England; it is perhaps one of the most recognizable lines in English literature. It hooks readers with Austen’s trademark social satire, implying that a woman’s best chance at security was to marry a rich man. Today, her words provide fodder for memes and TikTok reels, while her six novels have been adapted countless times in countless ways, from the classic…

The bigger the boom, the deeper and longer the bust. After two decades of runaway growth, by 2020, China’s real estate bubble had pushed home prices to more than 17 times the average salaries. A perfect storm drove the boom, including reforms in 1998 that shifted housing from state provision to private ownership, the migration of nearly half a billion Chinese from rural areas to cities and abundant credit from state banks. A frenzy of construction transformed China’s skyline, families poured savings into apartments and property speculation became the norm, helping millions of middle-class households to feel richer and spend more. The turning…

India was due to send its own spacecraft, crewed with its own astronauts, into orbit in 2022. But COVID-19 and a series of technical setbacks have consistently delayed the Gaganyaan mission’s progress. ISRO — the Indian Space Research Organization — has now certified its LMV3 launch rocket for human travel and is aiming to complete three uncrewed launches of the Gaganyaan spacecraft in 2026.  If things go to plan, three astronauts (or “Gaganyatris”) selected from air force pilots Prasanth Balakrishnan, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap and Shubhanshui Shukla, will be strapped in for the maiden voyage. The earliest that launch could take place is…