Author: DW

A new European Union body designed to clamp down on money laundering and schemes to circumvent sanctions will be based in the German city of Frankfurt, the Belgian presidency of the EU announced on Thursday. Nine cities — Brussels, Dublin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris, Riga, Rome, Vienna, and Vilnius — were in the running to be the host city for the bloc’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA). The European Parliament and the European Council agreed the agency should be based in the German financial capital, which is also home to the European Central Bank. The agency, tasked with combatting money laundering and terrorist financing,…

Not many people can say they’ve been to North Korea, but this month’s private Russian tour offered a glimpse into a secretive country largely shut off from the rest of the world.  A group of around 100 Russians were among the first to visit the country since the pandemic on a four-day trip and the North Koreans put on a show – from a flight on the country’s only airline, to empty ski resorts and accordion performances. But the images and videos from the tourists paint a picture of what it’s like inside North Korea that contradicts the official version.…

02/22/2024February 22, 2024UN says impact of Russia’s war to be ‘felt for generations’UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk says Russia’s war in Ukraine has inflicted a terrible human cost, causing huge suffering for millions. Speaking ahead of the second anniversary of the invasion on February 24, 2022, Türk said the damage caused by the war would be felt for decades. He also repeated his call for Moscow to immediately end the conflict. “The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has exacted a horrific human cost, inflicting immense suffering on millions of civilians,” Türk said. The rights…

Who was Quane Martin Dibobe? Dibobe was born near Douala, Cameroon, in 1876, where his father held local political office. He was educated at a mission in Cameroon where he learned to read and write in German. He arrived in Germany in the mid-1890s to participate in the Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin.  What was the first German colonial exhibition of 1896? This fair aimed to show that Germany was a “land of boundless opportunity.” A concerted propaganda effort was underway to convince Germans that it was right for Germany to have colonies. It included ethnological expositions of “everyday life in…

Alexei Navalny’s mother has said she has seen the body of her son – and that officials are trying to force her to hold a private burial ceremony without mourners.Lyudmila Navalnaya, speaking in a video published on YouTube, said officials had told her “time is not working for you” and that suggested her son’s body was “decomposing”. She said officials had threatened to “do something” with the body if she didn’t agree to a secret funeral.”I’m recording this video because they started threatening me,” she said.”Looking into my eyes, they say that if I do not agree to a secret…

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is in a strong position to become the next leader of NATO after he recieved the backing of the United States and the United Kingdom. Current NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will end his term in October. His successor will have to balance the NATO members’ support for Ukraine while guarding against any escalations that would draw the alliance into a war with Russia. “President Biden strongly endorses PM Rutte’s candidacy to be the next Secretary General of NATO,” a US official told reporters on Thursday. “PM Rutte has a deep understanding of the importance…

At least five people have died after a ship collided with a bridge in the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou on Thursday, causing a part of it to collapse. According to the Guangzhou maritime affairs bureau, the collision sent five vehicles, including a motorbike, off the bridge and either into the water or onto the empty cargo ship below. Rescuers workers rushed to the site of the accident. China’s state television showed footage in which the vessel can be seen wedged between two bridge pillars and a significant gap can be seen in the two-lane bridge above it.  What happened to the…

Joe Biden has sparked a war of words with the Kremlin after he called Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB” at a fundraiser.Speaking at an event in San Francisco, the president fired a barb at his Russian counterpart while discussing the effects of climate change. “This is the last existential threat. It is climate,” Mr Biden told donors in California.”We have a crazy SOB like that guy Putin and others and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict, but the existential threat to humanity is climate.”Ukraine-Russia war latest Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response: “Has Mr Putin ever used…

Worries about US commercial property are making a German bank nervous. What had previously promised high profits is becoming a massive problem for Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (pbb). The mid-sized bank based near Munich specializes in commercial real estate loans in Europe, but is also heavily invested in America. The vacancy rates for offices and business premises there are higher than they have been for years. It is partly a knock-on effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the new norm of working from home. More broadly, tighter lending, higher interest rates and inflation are making construction and real estate less attractive. Overall, pbb is sitting…

A cellular outage affected thousands of users across the United States on Thursday. More than 73,000 customers reported outages, according to data from outage tracking website Downdetector.com. Calls, text and internet access hampered  Service providers AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and other networks were affected, though  T-Mobile and Verizon said their network was operating normally and the outage was potentially related to customers trying to connect other networks. “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored,” AT&T said in…