Author: DW

The delayed 2023 African Games kicked off this week, with the official opening ceremony in Ghana’s capital, Accra, on Friday. The games, formerly called the All-African Games, are held every four years, the year before the Olympics. This year, 52 countries are competing, making it an actual pan-African sporting event. Some 5,000 athletes will battle it out to win medals and break records in 30 disciplines, an increase from the 2019 African Games, which offered 26 sports. The 2015 Games had 22 disciplines. Events are being held in Accra, Cape Coast and Kumasi, Ghana’s second-largest city. Table tennis was the first event…

Emmanuel Macron has set the cat among the pigeons once again. Known for proclivity to provoke debate among EU and NATO allies, the centrist French president raised eyebrows by taking aim at a long-standing taboo in the war in Ukraine: the prospect of deploying Western troops. “There is no consensus today to send ground troops… [but] nothing should be ruled out,” Macron said at a gathering of Ukraine’s allies in Paris last week, convened amid worrying signs and reported ammunition shortages from the front line of fighting with Russia. Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK, Poland, NATO and the European Commission all underlined…

Kidnapping in Nigeria has evolved into a lingering security threat that feeds a vast network of criminal and Islamist groups. From July 2022 to July 2023, at least 3,620 people were abducted in Nigeria. That’s according to an analysis of Nigeria’s kidnapping industry published by SBM Intelligence, an Africa-focused consulting company. Mass abductions are also common, with an average of six people taken for every kidnapping incident. Kidnappers demanded ransom totaling at least 5 billion naira ($6.4 million or €5.8 million in June 2023) from July 2022 to June 2023, the report found. However, as a sign of Nigeria’s struggling economy and…

Politicians have condemned a “moronic act of vandalism” after pro-Palestine activists damaged a portrait of Lord Balfour. Palestine Action shared a video on social media of a demonstrator defacing and slashing the historic painting, which hangs at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College.In the clip, a woman can be seen spraying red paint before using a sharp object to slice open the canvas.Lord Arthur James Balfour was a Conservative prime minister between 1902 and 1905. He later became the foreign secretary, when he signed the Balfour Declaration in 1917.The declaration was a public statement issued by the British government which…

It was an ordinary afternoon, March 7, 2024, until residents in Germany received a warning from the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance — abbreviated in German as BBK. It warned that fragments of space debris were expected to fly over Germany the following days, March 8-9. Details were sparse from both the BKK and the European Space Agency. Authorities expected a palette of nine batteries to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere on an uncontrolled trajectory. The total mass was to be in the region of 2.6 metric tons — the equivalent of 2,600 kilograms (about 5,730 pounds), or, as…

Japanese comic creator Akira Toriyama has died, his studio said Friday, aged 68. Creator of the best-selling “Dragon Ball” series and other popular anime, Toriyama’s genre-defining artwork enchanted millions around the world and helped propel the genre beyond Japan and into international markets. In just six hours, some 2.5 million messages were posted on social media website X (formerly Twitter), paying tribute to Toriyama. Among them was French President Emmanuel Macron, who wrote: “To Akira Toriyama and the millions of fans who grew up with him,” sharing one of his images. Global hit The “Dragon Ball” manga series was first serialized in 1984, with millions of copies sold worldwide. It was…

After much speculation and plenty of recriminations following a failed World Cup campaign in 2023, the German Football Association (DFB) picked International Women’s Day to announce Christian Wück as their new permanent coach. The 50-year-old said it will be “an honor” to take over once interim coach Horst Hrubesch departs after the upcoming Olympics in Paris.  “When the request came, I didn’t hesitate for long: coaching this team, further developing the existing individual quality of the players and thus making the team fit for success in the future is one of the most exciting and responsible tasks in German soccer,” he said. Cultivating youth key task…

Authorities in Ukraine on Friday said that four people had been killed in a wave of overnight attacks. Governor of Kharkov, Oleh Synegubov, said a multiple rocket launcher attack killed two people in Kupiansk, which was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in late 2022. “Houses and cars were damaged. A 36-year-old man was rescued from the rubble. A 64-year-old woman and a 58-year-old man died,” he wrote on Telegram. Synegubov also said that a guided aerial bomb killed a woman in Vovchansk, which lies seven kilometres (four miles) from the Russian border.   In separate strike in the Chernihiv region, north of Kyiv,…

Bitcoin hit a record high of over $69,000 (€63,000) this week before falling slightly, stunning investors with a remarkable recovery following the cryptocurrency’s plunge in 2022 amidst market turmoil. Bitcoin’s price has surged by over 300% compared with November 2022, when it had dipped below $20,000. The cryptocurrency’s market capitalization also hit a record high of nearly $1.35 trillion. The combined value of the total crypto market currently stands at around $2.5 trillion, its highest level since November 2021 and just 10% below its all-time high of $2.8 trillion.New ways to invest in Bitcoin and the prospect of lower interest rates…

A UN fact-finding mission looking at the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in Iran in 2022 and the subsequent protests and crackdown in the country said both that physical trauma suffered in detention contributed to Amini’s death and that Iran employed “unnecessary and disproportionate use of lethal force” to quell the protests that followed. The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died in the custody of the so-called “morality police,” having been detained for not covering her hair in accordance with Iran’s religious laws. Her death prompted rare, widespread protests against the authoritarian regime. Iran has always denied being responsible for Amini’s death and said…