Author: DW

Olkiluoto island on the western coast of Finland used to be just an energy hub for the country bordering Russia. But with the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it became strategically important as Helsinki decided it could no longer rely on Russian energy. Up until then, the country had been receiving half of its energy imports from the neighboring country, with which it shares a 1,300-kilometer (807-mile) border. They included electricity, oil and natural gas deliveries.Olkiluoto island has become crucial for ensuring Finland’s energy supplyImage: Tapani Karjanlahti, Posiva “Before 2022, there had been the optimistic hope we…

An Istanbul court issued arrest warrants for the eight suspects, including a club president and several referees, the state-owned Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday. Murat Ozkaya is the president of Eyupsport, who play in Turkey’s topflight Super Lig. Eleven other suspects who had also been taken into custody on Friday have been released on bail. The suspects stand accused of abuse of office and match-fixing, among other things. The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) says that it has summoned 1,024 players before its disciplinary committee on charges of betting on matches. For the past two weeks, all matches in Turkey’s…

About 200 protesters demonstrated in front of the parliament building in Austria’s capital Vienna on Tuesday evening. They were rallying against an event called the Dinghofer Symposium that they say is antisemitic. Parliamentary speaker Walter Rosenkranz, who hosted the event, had attracted massive criticism in the past weeks for going ahead with the symposium despite calls to cancel it. Some protesters held up placards that read “No place for antisemitism” or “Shame.” “Dinghofer was an antisemite and a Nazi party member during World War II,” said Lia Guttmann, co-president of the Austrian Union of Jewish Students group. Guttmann said the…

Power was restored in parts of the Dominican Republic on Tuesday after a countrywide outage hit earlier in the day and brought the country to a standstill, officials said. Generation units in San Pedro de Macorís and the Quisqueya Power Plant shut down, triggering a domino effect at other transmission and generation plants, according to the Dominican Electricity Transmission Company, a decentralized state agency. The nationwide blackout disrupted mass transit systems, including aerial cable cars and the metro in the capital, Santo Domingo, where some people were forced to leave the train and begin walking through tunnels alongside the railway.…

It’s Sunday afternoon, and 10 people are gathered for a theater rehearsal in a community hall in Lille, a city in northern France. Most of the amateur actors did not get to know each other through the arts scene. They met during France’s  “yellow vests” protests.  The grassroots protest movement was at its height in 2018 and 2019 when protesters wearing yellow, high-visibility vests, blocked streets across France in response to fuel tax hikes designed to partially finance climate measures. Since then the movement, named “gilets jaunes” in French, has dissipated somewhat. Smaller, local actions still take place but the larger protests…

The future’s so bright for Elon Musk, even industrial-grade shades won’t block the glare from his $1 trillion (€862 billion) pay deal. That is, of course, if he manages to hit some truly mind-boggling goals for Tesla, the electric-vehicle company he founded and transformed into a tech juggernaut. To unlock the full value of his compensation package, Musk must hit milestones that sound more like science fiction than corporate strategy. These include deploying one million robotaxis — autonomous vehicles that generate revenue without human drivers — and producing a million Optimus humanoid robots, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Musk will only become the world’s first trillionaire, albeit…

North Korea’s women have won back-to-back U-17 World Cup titles after defeating the Netherlands 3-0 in Morocco. It was the fourth time that the country has won the competition. With the country’s U-20 team winning their third World Cup in 2024, North Korea’s women have cemented their status as the dominant force in women’s youth football. But what is it that makes a state that, according to the United Nations, “does not have any parallel in the contemporary world” so good at youth football? “International sport is one of the few ways to demonstrate their sovereignty, existence and identity to the international community, so this type…

US President Donald Trump’s team has sent a letter to the BBC threatening to sue the UK-based public broadcaster for $1 billion (€865 million). His lawyers said the broadcaster must retract a controversial documentary by Friday or face a lawsuit for “no less” than $1 billion. The letter follows the resignation of BBC Director General Tim Davie and Chief Executive of News Deborah Turness on Sunday, after claims that a documentary aired by the flagship Panorama program misled viewers. The program allegedly spliced two separate excerpts from one of Trump’s speeches, creating the impression that he was inciting the January 6 Capitol…

British-Hungarian writer David Szalay has been awarded the Booker Prize for fiction for his novel “Flesh,” a tortured story of a Hungarian emigre who makes and loses a fortune. The 51-year-old writer beat five other finalists to take the high-profile annual literary award, which honors the best English-language novel published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. It comes with a 50,000-pound ($66,000, €57,000) prize and a big boost to the winner’s sales and profile. Written in sparse prose, “Flesh” follows the life of a working class and taciturn Hungarian man over decades. It charts his teenage relationship with an older…

It can seem like a strange coincidence to see children parade through the streets of Germany with lanterns to mark St. Martin’s Day on November 11 while, at the same time, colorfully dressed carnival revelers shout “Alaaf” or “Helau.” Do these things really go together? In fact, Carnival and St. Martin’s Day are two customs that share a common origin dating back several centuries. Bishop Martin of Tours died on November 8, 397, and was buried three days later. This was a huge event, and explains why November 11 is celebrated, and not the day of his death. The legend of how Martin shared…