Author: DW

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…

A typical tourist online search for information could be something like the following: “I want to go on a bike tour tomorrow that’s a maximum of three hours. Afterwards, I’d like to go for a delicious ice cream.” Even with search engines like Google, it’s not always easy for travelers to get useful tips and suggestions as results can be outdated or incomplete. Business opening hours, for example, might not be accurate, explains Michael Prange, Professor of Data Science at the Kiel University of Applied Sciences. An intelligent travel planner  However, Prange is certain that travel planning will only get easier,…

On the night of 26 May, an Israeli airstrike hit the neighbourhood of Tel al Sultan in Rafah.At least 45 people were killed as structures in an area housing displaced Palestinians were set alight, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. Location of the strike Image: Pic: Sky News and Planet Labs PBC The affected area is less than 200 metres from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s compound in the north of Rafah.Geolocated footage and satellite imagery shows the strike destroyed buildings immediately adjacent to a sign identifying Kuwaiti Al-Salam Camp 1.While it is unclear whether the…

Women tend to suffer more often from lower back pain, depression, and headaches. Men, on the other hand, have shorter lives because they get into road accidents more often and have higher rates of cardiovascular diseases and, in recent years, COVID-19 — both potential causes of premature death. That’s according to an analysis published in The Lancet Public Health journal. Researchers looked at differences between the sexes in the 20 leading causes of illness and death, across all ages and regions of the world. “Throughout their lives, women will spend more time in poor health, while men suffer from conditions…

A few solitary election billboards and stands are the only indications that local elections are taking place this weekend in the city of Novi Sad in northern Serbia. The scene is similar in the southern Serbian city of Nis, where residents say they cannot recall such a quiet election campaign. Nevertheless, public sentiment suggests that the opposition may have a chance of defeating the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of President Aleksandar Vucic in both cities. “I believe the expectations are partially justified,” Dusko Radosavljevic, a political scientist from Novi Sad, told DW. “In these major centers in Serbia, the opposition…