Author: DW

Tens of thousands of Armenian protesters have called for the resignation of prime minister Nikol Pashinyan after the nation agreed to hand over control of several border villages to Azerbaijan.Demonstrators clashed with police after blocking main streets in the capital city of Yerevan on Sunday and the police said 196 people have been detained. The gathering was the latest in a weeks-long series of demonstrations led by a high-ranking cleric in the Armenian Apostolic Church and archbishop of the Tavush diocese in Armenia’s northeast, where the four returned villages are located. Image: Pic: Reuters Image: Pic: AP Bagrat Galstanyan spearheaded…

A US congressional delegation met new Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te on Monday on a visit aiming to show Washington’s continued commitment to Taiwan amid growing assertiveness from China, which claims the self-ruled island as its own. The visit, the first congressional visit to Taiwan since Lai’s inauguration, comes days after China carried out military drills nearby that Beijing said were to test its ability to seize the island.  Beijing also said it had ordered the exercises as “punishment” for an inauguration speech by Lai, whom it calls a “dangerous separatist.” What was said during the visit? Michael McCaul, the head of the House Foreign Affairs…

Despite mass pro-EU rallies and pressure from the West, Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party has shown no sign of repealing the “foreign influence” bill. Critics of the bill, who have dubbed it the “Russian law,” have said the Georgian government intends to implement similar tactics to those used by the Kremlin to crack down on opposition, civil society and independent media. If signed into law, it would require nongovernmental organizations and individuals receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as entities “bearing the interests of a foreign power.” The government has claimed the bill is aimed at transparency. But opponents have said its goal…

A former army officer who has run a marathon on every continent dressed as a fruit or vegetable is preparing to run the world’s highest marathon wearing a lemon costume.Sally Orange, a former major who served in Afghanistan, is in Nepal preparing for the Everest Marathon, which starts at the Mount Everest base camp, to raise mental health awareness. The 50-year-old runs dressed as pieces of fruit because her surname is Orange but said her outfits also help start conversations and break the stigma surrounding mental health. Image: Pic: PA Ms Orange, a former army physiotherapist from Salisbury, said: “At…

Children born with Type 1 diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa died in childhood, said Biyi Adesina, a diabetologist in Nigeria. That was certainly true until very recently. Now, increased awareness of the condition throughout the region has allowed many of children with Type 1 diabetes, who depend on daily insulin injections, to live past their first and second birthdays.  But Adesina told DW that diagnosis was just half the battle. In Nigeria’s private health care system, the majority of the population is uninsured. Drugs for non-communicable diseases — such as insulin — are frequently an out-of-pocket expense for patients or their parents.  Parents can’t pay their…

“Who said that the flag doesn’t belong to us?” Abacaxi wrote in one of his Instagram posts. The photo shows models sporting the fashion designer’s Brazilian collection: Clad in flag-inspired yellow and green shirts, skirts and bikinis, they wave the Brazilian flag. The Rio de Janeiro-born designer released the clothing line in the middle of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, between 2019 and 2022. At the time, the Brazilian flag was seen as a political symbol of the populist right-wing politician and his followers. “He ripped the flag away from us,” Abacaxi told DW in Rio. “The Brazilian aesthetic disappeared from the favelas, Brazil’s…

A heat wave in Vietnam in May and June of last year led to major power shortages across the north of the country. Factories owned by some of the world’s largest tech firms, including South Korean tech giant Samsung, experienced weeks of blackouts that the Vietnamese government says caused $1.4 billion (€1.29 billion) in economic losses, roughly 0.3% of GDP. But the bigger casualty was Vietnam’s reputation. Vietnam was arguably the biggest winner of the global offshoring of supply chains away from China that began in 2018 with then-US President Donald Trump’s trade war with Beijing. This allowed Vietnam to attract some of…

More than 2,000 people have been buried by a massive landslide in northern Papua New Guinea, the country’s disaster agency has said.The landslide levelled the mountainous Kaokalam village in Enga Province – about 370 miles (600km) northwest of the capital Port Moresby. It hit the Pacific nation at around 3am local time on Friday (6pm on Thursday UK time), and the United Nations had earlier said it estimated 670 people had been killed. Local officials had initially put the number of dead at 100 or more. The Papua New Guinea national disaster centre said the landslide had buried more than…

There were audible gasps in the room when Alexander Zverev, a pre-tournament contender for the French Open title, was drawn against Rafael Nadal, the 14-time champion in Paris and one of the sport’s greatest ever players. With Nadal in the twilight of his career and struggling with injuries, the intriguing first-round matchup on Monday is likely to symbolize a changing of the guard in men’s tennis. But looming large for Zverev, the reigning Olympic champion, is a very different court battle, one whose outcome could have major implications for his own career, as well as the way tennis handles domestic…

NATO member Poland on Monday elaborated on a plan to reinforce anti-drone surveillance and construct fortifications along some 700 kilometers (430 miles) of its border with Russian exclave Kaliningrad, and Russian ally Belarus. The system, called Shield-East, is to be completed in 2028 and aims to protect Poland from hostile actions across the border, which up to now have included pushing migrants illegally into the country, an EU member. The presentation of the plan comes as many countries from the former “Eastern Bloc” increasingly fear Russian aggression in view of Moscow’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What has Poland said about the plan? The…