Author: DW

Some 347 million children in South Asia are facing severe water shortages due to climate change, according to a UN report published on Monday. The figure represents over half the number of children living in the region. South Asia, comprising eight countries, is home to more than a quarter of the world’s children and is increasingly affected by climate change-related disasters such as floods and droughts. What the UN said about children and water scarcity The report revealed that 55% of children in South Asia are affected by water scarcity — the highest rate worldwide. “Climate change is disrupting weather patterns…

The European Commission on Tuesday recommended a 90% net greenhouse gas emissions cut by 2040 on Tuesday, in a session that kicked off the political debate on the aim. The 2040 target should be on track with the bloc’s plans to have net zero emissions by 2050. However, the session comes at a time when the bloc is faced with angry farmers staging disruptive protests that criticize, among other things, what they say are overly ambitious EU climate goals. It also comes as the EU braces for elections over the summer, where the far-right, which has been capitalizing on the farmers’ protests,…

President Macky Sall’s postponement of Senegal’s February 25 presidential election has sparked protests and put a spotlight on the state of the country’s democracy. Lawmakers on Monday voted to endorse the delayed election announced by the outgoing president. Straying from an earlier proposed bill that set August 15 as the country’s delayed election date, lawmakers on Monday voted to hold the vote on December 15 instead, causing even more public outrage. Sall said the poll had to be delayed to prevent potential electoral disputes that could erupt afterward.  His decision, however, has plunged Senegal into an unprecedented constitutional chaos.Should Macky Sall be commended for not…

An Aberdeenshire grandfather who was facing jail in Dubai following a row over a noisy New Year’s Eve party has been allowed to leave the country.Ian Mackellar, 75, had been visiting his daughter and granddaughter when he found himself arrested after complaining to neighbours over their New Year’s Eve party ruckus. Mr Mackellar was charged with trespassing and verbal assault and was blocked from leaving the United Arab Emirates.Under Dubai’s laws, Mr Mackellar could have been facing time behind bars.He has been spared a prison sentence and was instead fined £650. Detained in Dubai, which supports people caught up in…

Sometimes new discoveries take a long, long time to surface. Paleontologists first saw the bones of the new pterosaur Ceoptera evansae in 2006, during a field trip to the southwest coast of the Isle of Skye in Scotland. They have since spent years carefully preparing the fossils, which remain almost entirely embedded in rock — “in matrix,” as the scientists say — for analysis. The find is only a partial skeleton, consisting of shoulders, wings, legs and backbone, but the scientists have said the bones belong to a single pterosaur. The pterosaurs are thought to have been related to both dinosaurs and…

India’s Hindi film industry, Bollywood, is based out of the country’s financial capital, Mumbai. The name Bollywood is a compound of the words Bombay, the old name for the city of Mumbai, and Hollywood, the glitzy US blockbuster movie industry. The name Bollywood was coined in the 1970s to make one of the world’s most successful industries more palatable to Western audiences. But, is it possible to compare Bollywood to Hollywood, particularly when it comes to women working in the movies? The short answer is “no,” according to Priyanka Singh, a lecturer in film studies who specializes in women’s authorship and…

President Macky Sall’s postponement of the February 25 presidential election has sparked protests and put the spotlight on Senegal’s democracy. Lawmakers on Monday voted to endorse the delayed election announced by the outgoing president Macky Sall. From an earlier proposed bill that had set the election date of August 15, the lawmakers voted to have the election held rather on December 15, amid public outrage. Sall said the poll had to be delayed to prevent potential electoral dispute that could erupt afterward.  His decision, though, now plunges Senegal into unprecedented constitutional chaos.Should Macky Sall be commended for not breaking the…

Thailand’s Move Forward Party (MFP), which won the most seats in parliament during last year’s general election, is facing the threat of being disbanded, according to many analysts and political commentators. The Southeast Asian nation’s Constitutional Court ruled last week that the progressive party must abandon its pledge to amend the law on royal defamation. The court’s nine judges deemed it unconstitutional to advocate a change in Article 112 in the country’s criminal code — also known as the lese-majeste law. The law protects the monarchy in Thailand from criticism by imposing severe penalties on those found to violate it, including…

A Kenyan doomsday cult leader and 29 associates have been charged with the murder of 191 children.Paul Mackenzie and his fellow defendants all denied the charges at a court in the coastal town of Malindi. One suspect was found mentally unfit to stand trial. Image: Paul Mackenzie smiled in court when he appeared in January. Pic: Reuters Prosecutors argue Mackenzie ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so they could go to heaven before the world ended.The children were among more than 429 bodies found over the course of months of exhumations across tens of thousands…

Let’s say you’ve got a four-year-old standing in front of you. And you ask that kid if it’s okay to stomp hard on another kid’s foot. The answer will probably be “no.” Then you say: “What if God said that the opposite is right? God says you should do it.” Researchers Madeline Reinecke (Oxford University) and Larisa Solomon (Columbia University) were looking to investigate whether widely shared moral rules can be changed by religion in their study involving some 130 children in the US. Conor Dillon and Gabriel Borrud, of the DW-podcast Science unscripted, spoke with Madeline Reinecke about the results of the study.…