Author: DW

A beloved ostrich has died after swallowing a zoo worker’s keys.Staff at Topeka Zoo and Conservation Center in the US said they were “devastated by the loss” of the five-year-old bird named Karen. She had reached over a fence to snatch and swallow the staff member’s set of keys, the zoo said.Staff consulted with experts around the US “to undergo surgical and non-surgical efforts” in a bid to save the ostrich but had no success.Karen was euthanised on Thursday and “passed away in staff’s hands”, said Fawn Moser, the zoo’s interim director. The zoo in Kansas said there had been…

In the 1990s, charities, governments and individual philanthropists invested billions of dollars into one goal: malaria control. They wanted to halve the global number of malaria deaths by 2010. At the time, malaria represented one of the biggest health threats in the world. At least one million people were dying of the disease each year, the vast majority of them young children. The “Roll Back Malaria” campaign officially launched in 1998. With billions of dollars in funding from global organizations like the World Health Organization and World Bank, partners started dispersing mosquito bed nets and indoor insecticide sprays in affected regions. They also…

German prosecutors Tuesday said police had arrested an employee of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party on suspicion of espionage.  In January 2024, the accused is said to have repeatedly passed on information about negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament to his intelligence client. He also allegedly spied on Chinese opposition figures in Germany for the intelligence service. What we know so far The worker, Jian G, is said to have been an assistant to the AfD’s top candidate for the European Parliament elections, Maximilian Krah. Investigators think the suspect may have passed information on parliamentary operations to China’s Ministry of…

Another possible major doping scandal is shaking world sport less than 100 days before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris on July 26. What happened? According to research by the doping invesgations team at German broadcaster ARD and the US newspaper, The New York Times, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine at a swimming competition in January, 2021 in Shijiazhuang, the capital of the northern Chinese province of Hebei. However, the Chinese anti-doping agency, CHINADA, did not classify the results as specific suspected cases and the participants were allowed to continue competing. The reason, according to CHINADA, there were low concentrations of the…

Indian manufacturer Everest Food Products said on Tuesday its spices were safe for consumption after Singapore and Hong Kong flagged allegedly high levels of a cancer-causing pesticide in a product.  Singapore advised people against using the spice mix for fish curries earlier this month. It came after Hong Kong also suspended the sale of the Everest spice mix for fish curries, along with three other products by a similarly popular Indian brand called MDH. Authorities in Singapore and Hong Kong said the products allegedly contained high levels of ethylene oxide, a pesticide that can lead to cancer. “Consumers who have purchased the implicated product are advised…

Asia was most affected by climate and weather-related events in 2023, a United Nations report said on Tuesday, with floods and storms causing the most deaths and economic loss. The “State of the Climate in Asia 2023” report released Tuesday by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the “accelerating rate” of key climate change indicators will have “major repercussions for societies, economies and ecosystems.” These indicators include average temperatures, precipitation levels, glacier retreat and sea level rise. “The report’s conclusions are sobering,” said Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of WMO. “Climate change exacerbated the frequency and severity of such events, profoundly impacting societies, economies and, most importantly,…

A celebrity handbag designer whose products have been used by Britney Spears and on Sex And The City has been jailed for smuggling crocodile handbags into the US for fashion shows.Nancy Gonzalez, 71, admitted recruiting couriers to carry as many as four products each on commercial flights from her native Colombia to the US for New York Fashion Week, among other high-profile events. Gonzalez, who was arrested in 2022 in Cali, and later extradited to the US, was sentenced to 18 months in a federal court in Miami on Monday for breaking US wildlife laws.The handbags, made from the hides…

As the populist, anti-immigrant AfD(Alternative für Deutschland) party were rising fast in the German polls in 2023, national culture collective Die Vielen (The Many) decided to act. The alliance of some 4,500 theaters, galleries and cultural institutions had been on hiatus since the COVID pandemic. But Die Vielen members saw the upcoming European elections, to be held from June 6-9 — along with local and state ballots and a looming 2025 federal vote — as an existential threat to the pluralist democracy that allows artistic expression to flourish. Having initiated protests against the AfD in the run-up to the 2019 European elections, Die Vielen’s…

Germany is grappling with a critical labor shortage and aging population, with projections indicating a deficit of seven million skilled workers by 2035. With some 700,000 vacancies currently unfilled, Germany’s economic growth potential has dropped to about 0.7% now from around 2% in the 1980s, and is set to fall further to 0.5% if the country fails to resolve this problem, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck has said, stressing the importance of migration in bridging this widening gap. Engaging Germany’s Indian student population in the workforce may be part of the solution. Tapping into the international student talent pool According…

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a launch of “super-large” multiple rocket launchers intended for use in a nuclear counter-strike, state media KCNA said on Tuesday.  The report said the launch, which took place on Monday, marked the first demonstration of Pyongyang’s new nuclear-weapons management and control system called the “nuclear trigger.” On Monday, South Korean and Japanese authorities reported the launch of what they suspected to be several short-range ballistic missiles by North Korea. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the projectiles landed in waters to the east. According to the report, Kim said the drills were in…