Author: DW

Last month, the European Parliament voted to approve a landmark package of migration and asylum reforms, set in motion by the implosion of the EU asylum system in 2015. It was the last major hurdle in almost a decade of political wrangling. A majority of lawmakers waved through each of the ten legislative texts, though the deal was slammed by many parliamentarians on both the left and right. Non-governmental organizations and left-leaning lawmakers said it undermined the right to claim asylum and that nothing in the deal would prevent people from making the dangerous boat crossings in the Mediterranean to reach…

The US Federal Reserve’s announcement on Wednesday (May 1) that it would not be cutting interest rates any time soon was not a surprise. For the past few months, inflation has crept back up steadily, causing significant headaches for policymakers, central bankers and investors who had been expecting not one but several interest rate cuts over the course of 2024. The picture is not hugely different in Europe. Germany’s inflation rate rose more than expected in April, on the back of strong food and energy prices. That has also reduced expectations that the European Central Bank (ECB) will make several rates cuts…

Noor Ul Amin Danish, 29, was once a well-known investigative crime reporter in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad. But he left the South Asian nation in 2021 and is now residing in Canada, working at a currency exchange point. “Journalism in Pakistan offers no financial or intellectual growth. The controlling institutional policies and media ownership are significant barriers,” he told DW. Danish is among the numerous journalists who have fled Pakistan in recent years, seeking physical safety and financial stability in either North America or Europe. The exodus is driven by security fears, financial struggles and job dissatisfaction, and it highlights the…

The UK will appoint a new envoy to oversee a plan to ramp up the production of weapons and ammunition, which is now a “national priority”, the foreign secretary has revealed.Lord Cameron, speaking on a visit to Ukraine, also underlined the importance of supporting the Ukrainian war effort against Russia, warning that the world was at an “absolutely critical tipping point” and Kyiv must prevail or else Europe faced a “very dangerous future”. However, he cautioned against an idea from French President Emmanuel Macron to consider sending NATO troops to Ukraine to join the fight if Russia’s Vladimir Putin achieves…

There are practical reasons why Sudan’sbiggest club Al Hilal S.C are leaving their homeland but the club’s desire is that its departure also brings hope to the people suffering across its war-torn nation. “The people of Sudan need to see that there is more to life than war,” Al-Hilal’s business manager Abdelqadir Musa told DW. “They need to see something on the television or hear something on the radio or television that is about sport and not just war and fighting.” Al-Hilal are a Sudanese powerhouse and are well-known in Africa and the Arab world having won 29 league titles and twice finished runners-up…

DW’s Freedom of Speech Award 2024 will go to Yulia Navalnaya and the Russian Anti-Corruption Foundation, Germany’s international public broadcaster announced on Friday. Navalnaya is the widow of the late Russian opposition leader — and founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation — Alexei Navalny. She will receive the 10th Freedom of Speech Award in person on June 5 in Berlin. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner will deliver the laudatory speech.Freedom of Speech Award: DW honors Navalny’s widowTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Yulia Navalnaya’s ‘unwavering courage’  “Yulia Navalnaya has supported her husband Alexei…

For Lydie Beassemda, May 6 will be an important date: When Chadians head to the polls to elect a new president, the 57-year-old will also stand for election. She’s one of ten candidates, but the only woman to vie for the most important public role in the central African country. She told DW in a recent interview that it was her father who had founded the Party for Complete Democracy and Independence (PDI), making a career politics a family affair for her. “I wanted to lend a hand and offer a break to those who were there and who had…

The 69-year-old mother of four babies who were found dead in a freezer in the US city of Boston will not face criminal charges.The bodies of the siblings – two boys and two girls – were discovered in shoe boxes wrapped in tinfoil on 17 November 2022 after a man called police. He said his wife had found them while she was cleaning his sister’s apartment in south Boston, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office said.District attorney Kevin Hayden called the investigation “one of the most complex, unusual and perplexing that this office has ever encountered”.Investigators don’t know whether the…

Rahul Gandhi, one of India’s top opposition figures, will contest in the ongoing general elections from Raebareli in the country’s north, his party, the Indian National Congress announced Friday. Gandhi is seen as a key challenger to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is vying for a third successive term after being in power since 2014. As India enters the third phase of the world’s largest democratic election, all eyes were on whether Gandhi would contest from Raebareli or the adjoining Amethi, where he lost in the last general election in 2019. The announcement came on the last day of…

A bus plunged into a deep valley in Pakistan’s mountainous northern region on Friday, killing at least 20 people. The bus was carrying around 40 passengers from the city of Rawalpindi near the capital, Islamabad, to the northern mountainous region of Gilgit-Baltistan, near the border with China, Fayyaz Ahmed, a local official, told the German DPA news agency. What do we know about the crash? The driver lost control of the vehicle on a bend near the city of Chilas in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, falling into a rocky ravine where the River Indus flows, the French AFP news agency reported.…