Author: DW

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…

Google, Meta and other tech giants are making it more difficult to access independent media content in Belarus, exiled journalists have told the European Commission. By complying with restrictions imposed by Minsk,these companies have “become tools for a totalitarian and authoritarian regime to put pressure on civil society instead of helping to promote independent media,” the exiled journalist Natalia Belikova told the Financial Times in January. “It is becoming increasingly clear that technology companies have enormous power — perhaps in some cases even more than those in political power,” Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya told DW in January on the sidelines of…

A Russian hacking group gained access to Microsoft’s corporate email system and accessed the accounts of senior executives, the company said Friday evening. Microsoft believes the Russian state-sponsored group Midnight Blizzard, also known as Nobelium, was responsible for the hack. “To date, there is no evidence that the threat actor had any access to customer environments, production systems, source code, or AI systems. We will notify customers if any action is required,” Microsoft Security Response Center said in a blog post on Friday.What is cyber warfare?To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that…