Author: DW

More than a week after they were supposed to arrive in Dubai for their first FIFA-recognized match since they were forced in to exile by the Taliban, Afghanistan’s female footballers are still in limbo after their entry visas were repeatedly rejected. The Afghanistan women’s refugee team was set to play its first match since 2021 against Chad on Thursday 23 October, 2025. The game is part of a four-team tournament publicized as the “FIFA Unites Women’s Series 2025.”  But Afghanistan’s female squad have instead been turned away at airports on multiple occasions with FIFA offering no information on whether the tournament…

On a cold afternoon in Leh, the capital city of Ladakh, India, the district court was unusually crowded. About 39 men stood in the open, talking in low voices — a rare sight in a region where crime rates are among the country’s lowest. They were arrested on charges of violence during last month’s deadly protests, which called for greater autonomy and statehood for the Buddhist-Muslim enclave in the Himalayas, which borders both China and Pakistan. Protesters are also demanding job quotas for local residents and special status for Ladakh that would allow the creation of elected local bodies to protect…

Tens of thousands of people on Saturday protested in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia, one year after the floods that killed 229 people. Demonstrators were demanding the resignation of regional leader Carlos Mazon over his handling of the disaster. They displayed banners with messages such as “Mazon to prison” and chanted, “They didn’t die, they were murdered.” With a total of 229 deaths, it was Europe’s worst flood-related disaster since 1967. Regional leader Carlos Mazon has been under immense pressure, with regular protests against him on or near the monthly anniversaries of the disasterImage: Jorge Gil/Europa Press/dpa/picture alliance Spain’s deadliest…

In a last-ditch attempt to avoid the demolition of a lakeside villa built for Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, the state of Berlin decided last year to offer it as a “gift” to anyone willing to take on the hefty upkeep. Built in the National Socialist architectural style and located on Bogensee Lake in the northeast of Berlin, the crumbling villa complex, which has been left unused since 2000, may now have been saved following the site’s temporary transfer to the municipality of Wandlitz to host guided tours and events, as reported the German Press Agency (dpa). Berlin has not relinquished ownership of the property and will…

The trade conflict between the US and China shows no signs of easing, with both sides digging in, hoping they can endure the economic pain longer than the other. The dispute has once again thrust a group of metals known as rare earth elements into the global spotlight. China dominates every stage of the rare-earth supply chain, controlling nearly 70% of global mining and producing as much as 90% of the world’s processed rare earths. How China outsmarted Europe and the US on rare earthsTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports…

It was the world’s largest invasion force ever assembled. But when they marched on Russia, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s “Grande Armee” was doomed to failure and death, and not just on the battlefield.   Now, a French research team has uncovered two new culprits that contributed to the annihilation of the 500,000-strong army during the 1812 Russian campaign.   The killers? Two species of bacteria, responsible for causing fever.  It’s a surprise finding by a French research paleogenomic group led by scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France.   Typhus and trench fever were previously established as diseases that tore through the ranks of Napoleon’s army during the 1812 retreat. The newly…

Germany’s aspirations to host another Olympic Games are set to face their first major hurdle. On Sunday, October 26, Munich residents are to go to the polls to vote on whether their city should bid to host the Summer Olympics for the first time since 1972. This would also include hosting the Paralympics. Not only Munich, but also Berlin, Hamburg, and the Rhine-Ruhr region are all hoping to host the Games. DW answers the key questions about Munich’s Olympic referendum. Who is eligible to vote? All European Union citizens who have had Munich as their primary residence for at least…

Germany took a step towards a first ever UEFA Women’s Nations League final after beating France 1-0 in the semi-final first leg in Düsseldorf on Friday night. Bayern Munich’s Klara Bühl scored the only goal of the game with just over ten minutes remaining, cutting in from the left wing and firing a low shot past French goalkeeper Pauline Peyraud-Magnin. “We had a lot of chances today, and one of them could have gone in earlier,” said Bühl at full-time. “I knew I probably only had one more chance before I got substituted, so I just went for it.” Head…

Thailand-Cambodia border tensions and Myanmar’s civil war will be key topics of discussion at the upcoming Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia, ASEAN’s current rotating chair, will host over 30 heads of state at the October 26-28 event, including US President Donald Trump, who is expected to oversee the signing of a peace accord between Thailand and Cambodia. The two neighbors have a long-standing border dispute that goes back over a century. Tensions along the Thai-Cambodia frontier erupted into full-scale cross-border combat in July. At least 43 people were killed and 300,000 civilians…

What springs to mind at the mention of “alien”?  Little green men with antennae in silver suits? Grey-skinned, orb-eyed beings? Brightly lit UFOs hovering in the sky? For social and political scientist, Christian Peters, the evolution of alien imagery in pop culture has reflected an amalgam of eyewitness accounts, cultural discourse, and media coverage. Why grey skin and flying saucers? Peters, the managing director of Bremen University’s International Graduate School of Social Sciences, explains how the little-green-men and silver-suit alien tropes of the 1950s were succeeded by the grey extraterrestials that also feature in today’s emoji-verse.  An institution: Even emojis depict grey aliensImage: Alex Milan Tracy/NurPhoto/ZUMA/picture…