Author: DW

The first sectors to feel the pinch of worker shortages were nursing and elderly care. The problem soon spread to construction and delivery businesses, followed by taxi firms, forestry companies and train operators.   Now, Japan’s acute shortage of labor has spread to the government sector, with the Education Ministry in late January asking local authorities to estimate how many teachers they will be short of when the new academic year starts in April. Early indications are not positive, with a survey conducted last year suggesting that 29 of the nation’s 68 prefectures were already feeling the effects of teacher shortages.…

Controversial right-wing US journalist Tucker Carlson will shortly release an interview he conducted with Russian President Vladimir Putin.It stands as the first time Mr Putin has been interviewed by Western media since the invasion of Ukraine began. In a video shared on the X social media platform, Carlson – who was fired from Fox News in April last year and has been a vocal supporter of Mr Putin – said he is doing the interview to “inform” Americans.Here we take a look at what Carlson has previously said about the Russian president, Ukraine and the war.Vladimir Putin and Russia Russia…

Three young scientists have won the grand prize in the Vesuvius Challenge for deciphering passages on a previously unreadable Herculaneum scroll. More than a thousand scrolls were buried and covered in volcanic debris when Mount Vesuvius erupted about 2,000 years ago. They were in a library at a Roman villa in the ancient city of Herculaneum and discovered in the 1800s by a local farmer. Many people have tried to read the ancient papyrus scrolls since then, but most attempts have destroyed the documents, which were left underground rolled, carbonized and fragile, for centuries. The winners — Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor and Julian Schilliger — overcame this…

Two blasts took place near electoral candidates’ offices in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan, local officials said on Wednesday. The explosions come a day ahead of the country’s general election. In the first incident, at least 12 people were killed at the office of an independent candidate in Pishin district. A second explosion left 10 people dead in Qilla Saifullah, a town near the Afghan border. Khanzai Hospital, close to the first blast site in Pishin, treated numerous casualties, some with serious injuries. Jan Achakzai, caretaker information minister of Balochistan, said the second explosion “took place close to the election…

The airline business is booming in India, where the government has earmarked around $11 billion (€10.22 billion) to build new airports and refurbish existing ones. The goal is to have about 200 airports across India within five years, up from 150 today. Rise in demand for air travel India, with its 1.4 billion people, is home to the world’s fastest-growing air passenger market and is poised to become the world’s third-largest aviation market, after China and the United States. India’s domestic air passenger traffic is expected to double in the next six years, reaching 300 million by the end of 2030, according…

The US claims to have found the instigator of a drone attack on a US base in Jordan near the Iraqi border that claimed the lives of three soldiers at the end of January. Speaking to the press ahead of the recent US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Iranian-backed militias, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Washington believed the drone attack was “planned, resourced and facilitated by an umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq” — a group of several Iraqi armed groups that are backed by Iran. The military action took place amid extreme tensions in the Middle East…

The road into Gaza is a boggy quagmire. We drove for over an hour, in heavily armoured Israeli military vehicles, through deserted and destroyed neighbourhoods in the south of the strip.There are no windows to see out of, but from the video feed on the small screens inside the cab I didn’t spot a single sign of civilian life and not a building untouched by months of war.Khan Younis has witnessed the heaviest fighting in recent weeks – we were the first journalists to get access into the centre of the city since the war began.The Israel Defence Forces (IDF)…

Carnival has been celebrated in the Rhineland city of Cologne for centuries. However, it used to be rough, disorderly, anarchic and so offensive to some people that in the 19th century, a group of influential Cologne residents decided to band together and regulate the wild festivities. In 1823, a group of several men from Cologne’seducated elite founded the “Festordnende Comite” (Festival Organizing Committee) and introduced a new figure to the revamped carnival: the “Carnival Hero.” The hero was supposed to “guide the wretchedness of ordinary goings-on” with his noble character. By the late 19th century, that carnival hero became known…

The US claims to have found the instigator of a drone attack on a US base in Jordan near the Iraqi border that claimed the lives of three soldiers at the end of January. Speaking to the press ahead of the recent US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Iranian-backed militias, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Washington believed the drone attack was “planned, resourced and facilitated by an umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq” — a group of several Iraqi armed groups that are backed by Iran. The military action took place amid extreme tensions in the Middle East…

Swedish prosecutors said on Wednesday they would drop their investigation into the September 2022 explosions on the underwater Nord Stream pipelines. The cause of the blasts in the pipelines built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany is unknown, but it is widely believed that they were the result of an attack. Denmark and Germany are also examining the circumstances surrounding the blasts, and Sweden said it would hand evidence uncovered in their probe over to German investigators. Public prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said there was no Swedish jurisdiction in the case.  The prosecution authority’s investigation was “to establish whether Swedish…