Author: DW

Thousands of Russians have been affected by heating systems failing across the country, including Moscow and its outskirts, the Moscow Oblast, as they face one of the harshest winters in decades. The wave of breakdowns started in December and shows no sign of stopping. This week, at least 16 people suffered burns in the city of Nizhny Novgorod when a large-bore heating pipe exploded, spouting boiling water into the street. The pipe failure also left over 3,000 people without heat, according to a local news channel on Telegram. The messaging service is one of the few remaining platforms Russians use…

Two men were arrested on Thursday over the murder of Ecuadoran prosecutor who was tasked with investigating last week’s dramatic gang attack on a TV studio that was broadcast live. Prosecutor Cesar Suarez was gunned down in his car in the port city of Guayaquil on Wednesday. “We have apprehended two suspects involved in the murder of prosecutor Cesar Suarez… after investigative steps that allowed us to identify the alleged involvement in the criminal act,” Police Commander General Cesar Zapata said on social media. Police said the killing had the hallmarks of an assassination and evidence they recovered included a…

The UK government is backing new financial support for a controversial form of electricity that is generated by burning wood pellets.The news has been welcomed by the energy industry, but it could contradict advice from its climate advisers. The UK classes biomass as clean power, because new trees are planted to absorb the carbon dioxide released from burning the wood pellets – though this science is disputed.Its renewable status entitles it to government subsidies of around £600m a year, under a scheme due to expire in 2027.The government has today launched a consultation about extending the subsidies from 2027 to…

In 2020, the world was heralding a new wave of queer creativity in Russia, a state that had outlawed much LGBTQ cultural life.  “The country’s LGBTQ+ music and nightlife scene is changing how the world looks at Russian youth,” beamed i-D magazine in April that year. Gay artist, model and musician Angel Ulyanov embodied this idea, his latest single and video serving to “dismantle homophobia” in the former Soviet Union.      Founded only five years after President Vladimir Putin’s infamous “gay propaganda law” was passed in 2013, the Moscow-based publication O-Zine was then a vanguard of the queer culture underground. But this seeming tolerance…

Mauritania’s national team was the last of the 24 teams to arrive in Ivory Coast for the 34th Africa Cup of Nations. The players, dressed in traditional national costumes, proudly strode off the Mauritania Airlines plane that had delivered the team to the small airport in Bouake. The Western Sahara nation that these players hail from is mostly made up of desert and has one of the lowest population densities of any country in the world. Most of Mauritania’s almost five million inhabitants live in the south — in or near the capital, Nouakchott. The fact that this country has qualified…

The US on Wednesday launched a new wave of missile strikes on Houthi-controlled sites in Yemen.  US Central Command (CENTCOM) said American forces targeted 14 missile sites. The Houthi missiles presented an “imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region,” the military said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.   The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said on Thursday that US and British aircraft had targeted a number of areas in Yemen. The governorates that were targeted were Hodeidah, Taiz, Dhamar, al Bayda and Saada, the agency reported. Yemen’s Houthis hit US-owned ship in the Gulf of Aden Meanwhile, Houthi rebels claimed…

In an effort to get pharmaceuticals giant Bayer back on track, company CEO Bill Anderson, who has been in office for nine months, wants to restructure the group’s organization. For many employees, this will mean looking for new jobs. Bayer employs more than 100,000 people worldwide, including around 22,000 in Germany. The company announced job cuts on Wednesday without giving further details, although as things stand, there will be no compulsory redundancies until the end of 2026. However, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, employees whose positions have been eliminated and have not left the company, could be dismissed after…

Morocco is taking its role as gatekeeper of migration toward Europe increasingly seriously. According to a recent statement by the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces, around 87,000 migrants were stopped in 2023, a steep increase compared to around 56,000 between January and August 2022. The majority were arrested near Morocco’s western coastline, the army stated. From there, the Spanish Canary Islands are only around 100 kilometers (62 miles) away. Between January and November 2023, however, 56,852 people also arrived on the Canary Islands via that route. This marks a record increase of 82% compared to 2022, according to a recent statementby the European Council.  However,…

A doomsday cult leader in Kenya has been charged with the murders of 191 children after their bodies were found in the forest where his church was based.Paul Mackenzie allegedly told his followers to starve themselves to death so they would meet Jesus Christ before the world ends. The children were among 429 bodies that were found over the course of months of exhumations across tens of thousands of acres of the Shakahola Forest in the coastal county of Kilifi.The exhumations began after the first bodies were discovered in April 2023 – with the number that was eventually found making…

Is it something to do with all the schnitzel and the fresh mountain air? The cliches foreigners harbor about the small central European nation of Austria probably have little bearing on it, but its residents are the most satisfied people in the European Union — at least according to the freshly published findings of EU statistics agency Eurostat.On a scale of 1 to 10, Austrians rated their overall life satisfaction at 7.9, putting them ahead of Finland, Poland and Romania, each scoring 7.7. The EU average, calculated using survey data from each of the 27 member states gathered in 2022, was 7.1. Finns…