Author: DW

Alexander Zverev’s upcoming assault trial has brought the ATP Tour’s lack of a domestic abuse policy back into the spotlight, with top female players asking why the German tennis star is still allowed to play despite the allegations against him. Zverev, the reigning Olympic champion, denies physically abusing an ex-girlfriend. Until his public hearing takes place at the end of May, he maintains the presumption of innocence. The Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), an independent group that men’s world No. 1 Novak Djokovic co-founded as an alternative voice to the ATP and women’s WTA Tour, told DW it would back creating a…

Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed have been held as hostages in Gaza since 2014 and 2015, respectively. Unlike the roughly 240 people kidnapped in the Hamas October 7 terrorist attacks, the campaign for the release of Mengistu and al-Sayed has received little publicity. The two cases, and the similarities between them, tell a bigger story about how Israel views its hostages. ‘It’s very hard,’ say relatives Hisham al-Sayed is an Israeli citizen, a Bedouin from the southern town of Hura. In 2015, he crossed the Gaza border and has been held there by Hamas ever since.  It wasn’t the first time al-Sayed crossed the…

Germany’s GDL trade union, whose members are mostly train drivers but also include other rail network employees, announced a six-day strike in the early hours of Monday morning.  The planned industrial action will start at 2 a.m. on Wednesday morning — and a few hours earlier for freight services — and continue until 6 p.m. the following Monday.  Although it’s the latest in a series of GDL strikes, the threatened six-day action is set to last longer than those that have come before.  German rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) had tried to tempt the union back to the negotiating table with…

Global cooperation needs to be ramped up in order to combat drug trafficking, Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in comments published on Monday. “The harbors in the Netherlands, Belgium and France are becoming even more strained by international drug smuggling,” Faeser told Germany’s Funke media group of newspapers.  Drug traffickers were also targeting Germany’s main port in Hamburg, she added. Faeser said drug cartels were responsible for “an unbelieve spiral of violence” that included journalists and prosecutors being threatened or even murdered, and torture chambers being set up in Europe. “Therefore, I want tougher and more internationally coordinated actions against…

Churchillian it wasn’t – this was surrender He’ll fight them on the seas and oceans, he’ll fight them on the beaches… Ron DeSantis just won’t fight them in New Hampshire. The Florida governor is fond of quoting Winston Churchill in a set-piece speech and he did it again in the social media address that announced the suspension of his campaign. Two days before the New Hampshire primary, Churchillian it wasn’t – this was surrender. And yet, there was a time when he was the Republican hot ticket, Donald Trump’s biggest danger. Like others before him, and around him, DeSantis couldn’t…

Protest is in the air in Germany at the moment, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets across the country on Saturday to demonstrate against alleged far-right plans for mass deportation of migrants. This came after farmers took their turn earlier in the week. For the country’s top football league, it’s not an unusual state of affairs, with Bundesliga fans renowned for their willingness to make their voices heard. The primary cause for concern this season has been last month’s approval of a plan to sell off some of the league’s TV rights in order to raise an injection…

After two days of mass protests, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of German cities on Sunday to demonstrate against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and its anti-immigration agenda. From Friday through the weekend, demonstrations were called in about 100 locations across Germany. On Sunday, rallies were held in major cities such as Cologne, Munich and Berlin. Several other German cities, including Cottbus, Dresden and Chemnitz in the east, also planned to hold demonstrations. Police in Munich said that some 80,000 people participated in the march, while organizers put the figure at 200,000. The march had…

On call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Early mornings, long hours. No spontaneous vacations. Constant worry about weather, a lack of workers, foreign competition, succession planning and all of the living things in your care. And now a new government plan to phase out tax relief on agricultural diesel, a subsidy that has been in place for more than 70 years. This is the life of many small-scale farmers in Germany. So maybe it is no wonder that since 2020, the country has lost around 7,800 farms. That corresponds to an average of 2,600 businesses closing shop each…

After two days of mass protests, tens of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets of German cities on Sunday to demonstrate against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and its anti-immigration agenda. From Friday through the weekend, demonstrations were called in about 100 locations across Germany. On Sunday, rallies will be held in major cities such as Cologne, Munich and Berlin. Several other German cities, including Cottbus, Dresden and Chemnitz in the east, are also expected to hold protests. Police in Munich are expecting up to 25,000 participants. Organizers of a rally in Cologne put…

Pregnant women are having C-sections without anaesthetic while others are forced to use scraps of tents in place of period products, aid workers say.Babies are being “delivered into hell”, without their mothers having any anaesthetic, according to UNICEF communications specialist Tess Ingram. With more than 1.9 million Gazans displaced since 7 October, a tent “city” of almost two square miles has been set up in Rafah, south of the strip.No food or medical supplies are allowed to enter the territory, including sanitary towels, tampons and contraceptive pills that could stop or delay periods.Middle East crisis latest Riham Jafari, an ActionAid…