Author: DW

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a state visit to the US in June 2023, the pomp and pageantry reflected how keen the US side was to promote the countries’ strong ties. “I’ve long believed that the relationship between the United States and India will be one of the defining relationships of the 21st century,” said then-President Joe Biden when welcoming Modi. When Modi returned to the White House earlier this year to meet the newly elected Donald Trump, there was less pageantry but still considerable warmth and much talk of deal-making. Six months later, the situation has changed dramatically.…

This article comes to you a little later than DW’s Science team had planned. The day I was originally supposed to write about the connection between chronic pain and antidepressants, my hands and wrists hurt so much, I couldn’t type for longer than a few minutes at a time. Ah, the irony. Thankfully, the pain mostly retreated over the course of a weekend. In the past, I’ve had to take time off work for weeks as typing, or any activity that involved using my hands, became nigh impossible. As for the source of that pain? That’s a mystery none of…

Olympic refugee swimmer Alaa Maso had never planned to come to Germany. But close to 10 years after first arriving along with about 1.2 million other asylum seekers as Germany opened its doors amid a migration crisis, it is a country he is now hoping to make his permanent home. “I don’t believe that home is where you grew up or where you were born,” Maso told DW in a recent interview at his training base in Hanover. “I just believe that home is wherever you feel yourself at home. You’re given that feeling by the people surrounding you.” Back in…

Argentinian authorities are searching an 18th-century Italian portrait believed to have been looted by a fugitive Nazi officer 80 years ago. The painting has now surfaced in an advertisement for a property in the South American nation. The Nazi officer is believed to have stolen the painting from the Jewish art collector Jacques Goudstikker. Goudstikker had an extensive collection of over 1,000 paintings, which Nazi officials divided up after his death. Friedrich Kadgien took possession of the portrait and eventually settled in Argentina after World War II. What did the police find? Acting on an alert from international police agency Interpol, Argentinian police…

The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez, has been dismissed less than one month into her job amid other high-profile resignations over vaccine policies and health directives, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the White House. “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” HHS said.  Monarez not ‘aligned’ with Trump’s MAHA goals, White House says The post did not provide a reason for her early departure. White House spokesperson Kush…

Imprisoned Turkish cultural promoter and social justice activist, Osman Kavala, along with Chinese scholar and German language expert, Li Yuan, and the Belgian archaeologist and author David Van Reybrouck, have been awarded the 2025 Goethe Medal. Whether they’re breaking down cultural barriers, fighting for human rights and democracy, or finding a common language, the trio habe been honored by Germany’s global cultural body, the Goethe Institute, for their outstanding services to international cultural exchange.  The Goethe Medal award ceremony takes place in Weimar on August 28, the birthday of iconic German writer and polymath,  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Osman Kavala remains influential, despite life sentence “His lifelong commitment to…

Donald Trump has been accused of inadvertently drawing BRICS nations — a loose grouping of some of the world’s fastest-growing emerging economies — closer together by imposing higher tariffs on them than on other countries.  China, the largest BRICSmember, still faces the prospect of a 145% tariff if it can’t cut a deal with Trump, while Brazil and India have been slapped with a 50% rate — half of India’s penalty is for buying discounted Russian oil. South Africa was given a 30% levy, and even newer members like Egypt could see their tariffs go up, due to their participation in BRICS. Trump has repeatedly warned during the first seven…

Who is hosting? Following on from the last three editions, four nations will joint host the 2025 European Championship of basketball. Eurobasket, as it is commonly known, is to be played in Cyprus, Poland, Finland and Latvia this year. Cyprus hosts for the first time, as the sport looks to capitalize on the increased number of Europeans playing in the world’s most watched league, the National Basketball Association. Ukraine were set to be one of the four hosts before Poland stepped in. In January 2022, the word from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office was that hosting the tournament was one of his top…

Friedrich Merz and his Belgian counterpart Bart De Wever warned that seizing frozen Russian central bank assets to help Ukraine could set a dangerous legal precedent, or simply break the law.

Over the weekend, a controversial new law was presented to Iraq’s parliament after months of political wrangling. The law aims to regulate Iraq’s paramilitaries, the so-called Popular Mobilization forces, or PMF. Should it pass, its critics predict dire consequences. It would make “armed terrorist groups undermining Iraq’s sovereignty,” part of the official Iraqi military, the US State Department has warned. Supporters of the bill have a very different opinion, arguing that it could be a way of assimilating armed groups back into state institutions. That could allow “Iraq [to] finally break free of Iran’s two-decade-long influence over its politics,” Renad Mansour,…