Author: DW

Firefighters battled the blaze at Sweden’s largest amusement park in the western city of Gothenburg for the third day in a row on Wednesday. Firefighting efforts were complicated by the risk of building collapse, emergency services said. “The construction is burning and we can’t enter some parts of the building to fight the fire because the risk of collapse is too great,” Gothenburg emergency services said in a statement. “We are making sure the fire doesn’t spread to adjacent buildings.” Firefighters had said the blaze was under control on Tuesday, but there was a flare-up in the evening. They could not…

Exhausted after months on the move, Palestinians in Rafah face impossible decisions once again. More and more people have crammed into Gaza’s southernmost city, which itself is squeezed against the heavily fortified border with Egypt, and wonder where they can go as the threat of an Israeli ground offensive in the city weighs on their minds. “We are afraid for our lives,” Iman Abu Musa told DW in a WhatsApp message. The 22-year-old recently fled to Rafah from neighboring Khan Yunis, where heavy ground fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants has sent thousands of people south and west in search…

A woman and two children are reported to be among four people killed in a wave of Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon.Security sources told the Reuters news agency the deaths came during Israeli strikes on a village.Eleven people were wounded across southern areas and the level of damage was “vast”, the sources said.Lebanon’s powerful armed group Hezbollah said a strike on a separate town killed one of its fighters.Middle East latest – ‘millions in cash’ found in tunnelMedia reports in Lebanon said buildings were on fire after the attacks by Israel.The strikes come after reports a woman had died and…

Alaskapox is an orthopoxvirus related to smallpox, cowpox and mpox (initially known as “monkeypox”). Infections have so far only occurred in the US state of Alaska. There have only been seven recorded cases in humans since the first one was reported in 2015. Patients infected with Alaskapox report one or more skin lesions similar to spider or insect bites. Other symptoms include swollen lymph nodes and joint or muscle pain that usually clears up in a few weeks.   Before the patient who died in January, all other cases of Alaskapox were mild and did not require hospitalization.  How is the…

Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto on Wednesday claimed victory in the presidential election as unofficial tallies indicated that he and his running mate, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, were poised to win in a single round.  “All counts, all pollsters… showed figures that Prabowo-Gibran won in one round. This victory should be a victory for all Indonesians,” he told a crowd at an arena in central Jakarta. Independent pollster Litbang Kompas said that Subianto was leading with nearly 60% of the vote, based on over half of the votes counted at a sample of polling stations across the country. Two other pollsters, Poltracking…

Germany will meet NATO’s defense spending target of 2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) for the first time since the early 1990s, according to a Defense Ministry spokesman and NATO forecast released Wednesday. German news agency DPA put the figure of the German government’s reported allocation for defense spending at $73.41 billion (€ 68.58 billion) in the current year which it said would be 2.01% of Germany’s GDP. In 2023, Germany spent 1.57% of GDP on defense, well short of the 2% target. This Monday, however, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to meet the 2% spending commitment while on a visit to Rheinmetall’s…

An 800-person rescue operation is under way to save at least nine workers trapped in a gold mine that was engulfed by a massive landslide in eastern Turkey.The landslide struck the Copler mine in the town of Ilic in Turkey’s mountainous Erzincan province on Tuesday. Footage showed a huge mass of earth rushing down a gully, overrunning everything in its path. Image: An ambulance leaves the Copler gold mine. Pic: AP Interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said the landslide involved a mound of soil extracted from the mine.Some 800 search and rescue personnel, including police and military teams, mine rescuers and…

When South Korea’s Ministry of Trade and Industry submitted revisions to laws covering industrial espionage to the country’s legislature in November, it was widely accepted that the new provisions were designed to fend off alleged attempts by Chinese companies and the government in Beijing to access secret technologies.   But reports that authorities are investigating one of the 15 Indonesian engineers working at Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) on the joint development of the KF-21 fighter jet, on suspicion he stole critical technologies, indicate that South Korea has a similar problem with nations that it considers allies and business partners. Revisions…

Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji said two explosions along Iran’s main south-north gas pipeline network were caused by sabotage. But his televised statement made no mention of possible suspects. “This terrorist act of sabotage occurred at 1 a.m. (9.30 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday morning in the network of national gas transmission pipelines in two regions of the country,” Owji on Thursday. He added that only the villages near the damaged pipeline were experiencing gas outages and that those would be fixed later today. Iranian authorities denied reports that the incident caused gas cuts to industrial plants and offices. Owji pointed to a similar…

Chinese football fans have called Lionel Messi a “thief” and mocked him over the Falkland Islands.The Argentinian star angered supporters when he didn’t play during Inter Miami’s game in Hong Kong earlier this month. Messi was on the bench due to a groin injury but fans had splashed out on pricey tickets with the expectation of seeing the footballing great.Hong Kong authorities also criticised the no-show and his appearance during a game in Japan days later irked Chinese fans even more.Anger on social media in recent days has seen some reportedly bring up the Falkland Islands – over which Argentina…