Author: DW

French Open organisers have banned alcohol in the stands after complaints by players, including one who claimed a spectator spat chewing gum towards him.Amelie Mauresmo, director of the tennis tournament in southwest Paris, also said that security would be tightened around the site of the Grand Slam. “Until now, alcohol was allowed in the stands. Not in every stand… But now it’s over. Everywhere,” she said. Image: Amelie Mauresmo is the French Open’s tournament director. Pic: AP Belgian player David Goffin complained after his first-round victory in five sets on Tuesday against Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard on court 14, saying…

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday said that he believes allies need to look at lifting restrictions on the use of weaponry provided to Ukraine. “I believe that the time has come to consider some of these restrictions to enable the Ukrainians to really defend themselves,” Stoltenberg said ahead of informal talks of NATO foreign ministers in Prague over the next two days. Ukraine war has ‘evolved’ — Stoltenberg The NATO chief explained that “in light of how this war has evolved, in the beginning almost all the fighting took place … deep into Ukrainian territory” however this had…

A government college in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad last year planned to merge its journalism and English departments, but an angry backlash from students forced it to backtrack on the idea.    “The administration claimed the merger of departments was necessary to cut costs, but it reconsidered the move after we protested,” student Ammara Rajpoot told DW. Students who want to pursue a career in journalism in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are not so lucky. Several universities there have shelved their journalism programs due to declining demand — and at least five others are at risk. “Nine teachers for 12…

It felt like a watershed moment. During his state visit to Germany earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron called for Ukraine to be allowed to strike military targets within Russia with Western weapons. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not object and stressed that international law does allow for Ukraine to hit targets on Russian territory. Prior to this, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg had also expressed support, along with government representatives from the United Kingdom, Poland, and the Baltic countries. The United States and Germany so far had argued against it, citing fears of escalation. Calls grow to allow Ukrainian strikes inside…

The Mekong River, which traverses over 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) of Asian countryside, is a crucial source of fishing, farming and transportation for around 65 million people. The Mekong originates in the Tibetan Plateau in China and flows to the South China Sea through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. However, infrastructure projects designed to meet the energy demands of Southeast Asia’s rapidly growing societies are on the rise in the Mekong. The intervention is being felt downstream and is putting increasing pressure on the river’s ecosystems and livelihoods. Cambodia to begin work on controversial canal Cambodia announced on Thursday…

Diego Maradona’s Golden Ball trophy will be sold at auction, despite his heirs claiming the current owner has no right to sell it.A French court ruled the auction go ahead, despite the opposition from his heirs, their lawyer said on Thursday. The trophy was awarded to the late Maradona after he was named the best player of the 1986 World Cup.But it went missing for decades and only recently resurfaced.The footballer’s heirs tried to stop the auction of the trophy by starting an urgent judicial procedure. Their lawyer Gilles Moreu said the court’s ruling “was not favourable to the heirs…

Sunshine at last! Time to go out to the park or lake and make the most of the nice weather. But at some point, enough is enough and our bodies need a break. If you spend too much time in the sun, you can get heat exhaustion. And those who work hard in the heat can even suffer a heat stroke. The terms heat exhaustion and heat stroke are often confused. Rather than two distinct things, you can see them more as two different degrees of severity of your body getting hotter. How does it happen, and how you can recognize both?…

Why is the USA hosting a cricket World Cup? Back in 2021, the USA were named as joint-hosts of this edition of cricket’s Twenty20 (T20) World Cup, the shortest format of the international game. A total of 16 out of 55 matches at the 20-team tournament will be hosted in the USA, split across venues in Florida, New York and Texas, where the USA face Canada in the tournament opener on June 2. The rest of the matches, including the June 29 final, will be played at grounds in the West Indies, a more storied cricket nation. The advent of T20…

Spanish parliamentarians voted on Thursday by a small margin to finally approve an amnesty for hundreds of separatists who took part in the illegal and unsuccessful bid for the independence of Catalonia from Spain in 2017.   The 177-172 vote, which overturned a veto by the upper house, could mean that former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont, who is a fugitive from Spanish law in Belgium, can return home without fear of punishment. The bill has drawn anger from conservatives and sparked far-right demonstrations last year. Contentious move The law was approved by Spain’s left-wing coalition government under Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, two…

Three black men who were asked to leave a plane after body odour complaints are suing an airline for racial discrimination.The three passengers were briefly ordered off an American Airlines plane in January – along with five other black men, according to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday. The claimants said they were told to leave a plane waiting to take off in Phoenix because a flight attendant had complained about a passenger’s body odour.The men said it appeared they were targeted solely because of their race.They did not know each other and had been sitting in different parts of the…