Author: DW

Regardless of who is winning, losing or playing, the major narratives in German football are often attributed to Kopfsache – literally translated as a “mind matter.” About 5% of athletes in elite sports suffer from depression, roughly in line with the general population. German football is already extremely aware of mental illnesses like depression after the tragic death of Robert Enke in 2009, so how is the current sports psychology system in Germany faring? In September, Rene Paasch, one of Germany’s most prominent sports psychologists, suggested the role was in need of a “paradigm shift” because “outdated thought patterns and approaches” had left little room for…

Jacques Delors, a former head of the European Commission and key figure in the creation of the euro currency, died in his sleep in his Paris home at the age of 98, his family announced on Wednesday. Marked by World War II and its horrors, the generation Delors grew up in developed a creative, formative determination — a determination that drove Delors, as president of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995, to lay the foundations of the modern EU. Within half a year of taking office in January 1985, Delors presented his masterpiece, the White Paper on the Completion of…

Oil exports to the two most populous countries on the planet, India and China, have made up 90% of all Russia’s crude exports this year, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told Russian state broadcaster Rossiya-24 on Wednesday.  Novak, whose portfolio includes control of the country’s energy sector, said Moscow had successfully circumvented the effects of Western sanctions amid its invasion of Ukraine by rerouting supplies primarily to the two Asian giants.  He said that this process had already begun before its February 2022 invasion and the sanctions that soon followed, but that US and EU restrictions had served as a…

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Wednesday, alleging that the tech giants used millions of articles without permission to train the artificial intelligence models that power tools such as ChatGPT. The lawsuit said the two companies “seek to free-ride on The Times’ massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment.” Microsoft has a partnership with OpenAI that allows it to capitalize on the AI technology made by the smaller company. It is also OpenAI’s biggest financial backer While no sum is specifically requested from OpenAI and Microsoft, the New York…

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said the war in Gaza is “greater than a war of extermination”. Speaking to Egyptian TV channel ON, Mr Abbas claimed the impact of the conflict between Israel and Hamas on the Palestinian people is “greater than a disaster”. He went on to compare the war to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war – which the Palestinians call nakba, meaning catastrophe in Arabic.”What happened in 1948, emigration and destruction, and what is happening now is far uglier than what happened (then),” Mr Abbas said.”What is happening now is the…

Five dead bodies were found on Christmas Day in an apartment near Paris, French prosecutors said on Tuesday. The incident occurred in the town of Meaux, some 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) east of the center of Paris, in the northern Ile-de-France region. The news website Actu17 reported that the victims were a woman and her four young children. It said that police were searching for the 33-year-old father who was “on the run.” He was already known to the police and was the primary suspect in the case. The bodies were found at around 9 p.m. local time (2000 UTC) on…

One of Brazil’s top criminal leaders has surrendered after negotiations with local authorities, according to the country’s federal police. Luis Antonio da Silva Braga, better known as “Zinho,” had been on the run since 2018 and is the subject of at least a dozen outstanding warrants, according to a police statement issued late Sunday. ‘Public enemy Number 1’ “Zinho” had been designated the state of Rio de Janeiro’s “public enemy Number 1.” He is now in custody awaiting trial, according to a police statement. “After the formalities due to his arrest, the inmate was taken for medical forensics and then sent to the state’s…

Russia has completed its shipments of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, according to the country’s president, raising international concern.At a meeting of a Moscow-led economic bloc in St Petersburg, Alexander Lukashenko said the deliveries were finished in October – though he didn’t say how many or where they have been deployed. Tactical nuclear weapons, which are designed for use on the battlefield, have a short range and a low yield compared with much more powerful nuclear warheads fitted to long-range missiles.They can have a yield as small as about 1 kiloton, significantly less than the 15 kiloton-yield of the US…

Czech police worked on Friday to determine the motive of the man who a day earlier shot 14 people dead and injured over two dozen more in Prague. Authorities said on Friday that the people injured included three foreigners, one person from the Netherlands and two from the United Arab Emirates. Media reports Friday varied with some placing the number killed at 13 or 14 plus the shooter.  A 24-year-old opened fire at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in the heart of the Czech capital. On Friday, police said the perpetrator killed himself after shooting his victims. The mass…

Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza will expand over the coming days, Benjamin Netanyahu has warned, as attacks appeared to intensify on Christmas Day.The Hamas-led Gaza health ministry says 250 Palestinians have been killed and 500 wounded in the past 24 hours – with 106 of those said to have died in an airstrike on the Maghazi refugee camp.But despite international efforts to halt the fighting, Israel’s prime minister told members of his Likud Party the war “isn’t close to finished”.”We are not stopping. We are continuing to fight and we are expanding the fight in the coming days,” Mr Netanyahu…