Author: DW

The Austrian capital last hosted the ESC extravaganza in 2015 and 1967. Vienna beat out the Alpine city of Innsbruck to host the 2026 European Song Contest, Austrian public broadcaster ÖRF said on Wednesday. Austria won the rights to host the 70th edition of the event after the country’s singer, JJ, won in May 2025 with his song “Wasted Love.”JJ’s “Wasted Love” mixed techno beats with operatic vocalsImage: Denis Balibouse/REUTERS The venue for the final will be the Wiener Stadthalle, the city’s largest indoor arena. Since the first ESC in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1955, Eurovision has become on of the world’s…

Work has slowed or stopped in Kolkata, a major hub for India’s steel foundries that export sanitary castings. Owners discuss distress privately but don’t share much publicly, and workers are confused.  But some owners, like Vijay Shankar Beriwal of Calcutta Iron Udyog, are not holding back. He blames the 50% tariff on steel and aluminum imposed by US President Donald Trump, which went into effect in June. Trump cited national security concerns under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act of 1962 for the move. In addition to the steel tariffs, Trump has also imposed 25% “reciprocal tariffs” on…

A cholera infection doesn’t have to be deadly, but it can be, especially in conflict zones such as in Sudan. A year into an ongoing outbreak, Sudan has recorded more than 65,000 cholera cases — about 32,000 of those in 2025 alone — and about 1,700 deaths (426 in 2025). “In Sudan, the conflict has severely disrupted access to safe water, sanitation and health care — the very systems that prevent and contain cholera,” Joe English, an emergency communication specialist at the United Nations Children’s Fund, wrote in an email to DW. Data published by the World Health Organization (WHO)…

The German Football Association (DFB) has launched an investigation into the incidents of alleged racist abuse at two German Cup matches on Sunday. “The supervisory committee is investigating the incidents and initiating investigations against the respective clubs,” a spokesman for the DFB told Germany’s DPA news agency on Monday. What happened at the weekend matches? Schalke’s 1-0 win after extra time away at Lokomotiv Leipzig was briefly suspended in the 13th minute after Schalke’s Christopher Antwi-Adjei confronted fans. The match was interrupted for around three minutes. The stadium announcer then urged supporters to refrain from using racist or discriminatory language. After the game,…

Colombia’s Superior Court on Tuesday ordered the release of former President Alvaro Uribe from house arrest while he appeals a conviction for witness tampering and bribery in a case related to the country’s prolonged civil war. On August 1, the 73-year-old was sentenced to 12 years of detention. This was the first time in Colombia’s history that a former president was convicted of a crime. He also received the longest possible prison term. Accused of overseeing human rights violations Uribe was president from 2002 to 2010 and oversaw the fight against leftist rebels. His hardline approach is attributed to FARC…

In their meeting in Alaska on Monday,Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, are reported to have agreed that Ukraine should cede Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin wants Ukraine’s armed forces to withdraw completely from the areas. In exchange, he would freeze the fighting along the rest of the front line — particularly in the southern Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which are currently largely occupied by Russian forces. In recent years, Putin has repeatedly emphasized the importance of  Donetsk and Luhansk, which together make up the Donbas. He says the region is historically linked to Russia and…

Two narrow straps that sit just above the hipbone, their edges cutting into sun-tanned flesh: the thong.  These days, thanks to the revival of fashion from the 2000s, it seems to be everywhere: sticking out of low-rise jeans, shimmering underneath transparent beach dresses or revealing derrieres on the beach.  But what many people might not know about the thong bathing suit is that its creation was political — and its creator a gay man.  July 1974: Los Angeles’ last summer of nude bathing  “Everyone was nude,” a lifeguard recalls in the newspaper LA Times. In the summer of 1974, Venice Beach became a sea of bare bottoms.…

When athletes started to return their 2024 Paris Olympic medals after they began to corrode, it was an omen of things to come. The medals were designed by French jeweler Chaumet, which LVMH, a luxury goods giant, owns. Though the French mint produced the medals, LVMH suffered bad publicity after it made a spectacle of its corporate sponsorship of the games. A luxury pioneer in downturns, too? Paris-based LVMH is not corroding, but it is not doing great either. In late 2022, the company’s market value soared high enough to make Bernard Arnault, its founder and chairman, who controls about half of the company’s shares, the…

Zero. That is the number of people killed in traffic accidents in Helsinki, Finland, during the last year. Other cities have achieved this feat, such as the Norwegian capital, Oslo, in 2019. However, Helsinki, which has almost 690,000 people, is among the largest cities to do so. Its most recent traffic fatality was in July 2024.  The Finnish capital’s road toll has been substantially lower than that of other European capitals, both in absolute terms and per capita.  It recorded four traffic fatalities in 2024, 0.59 per 100,000 inhabitants, until early July. By comparison, Berlin recorded 1.45 per 100,000 and London 110. Oslo, which is only…

There is no denying that the Bundesliga has experienced a significant loss of talent over the summer.  Florian Wirtz has moved from Bayer Leverkusen to Liverpool; Bayern Munich legend Thomas Müller chose to wind down his career at the Vancouver Whitecaps, and Kingsley Coman, who  scored the winner in the final the last time Bayern won the Champions League in 2020, has moved on to Al-Nassr of the Saudi Pro League. Each move had its own logic: The 22-year-old Wirtz was looking to take the next step in his career, while the now-35-year-old Müller chose Vancouver, a city regularly ranked…