Author: DW

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto signed a strategic partnership agreement with Russia on Thursday following talks in St Petersburg with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The agreement comes as Indonesia enters the BRICS grouping as a full member, and Prabowo on Thursday thanked Putin for his support on Indonesia’s BRICS bid. “Today we have met and our relationship is getting stronger again,” Prabowo said in a statement. “My meeting with President Putin today was intense, warm and productive. In all fields of economics, technical cooperation, trade, investment, agriculture, they all have experienced significant improvements,” the statement said. Putin called Indonesia one of Russia’s…

Niger’s ruling junta militia announced plans to nationalize Somair — a unit of the French uranium company Orano, on Thursday, escalating tensions between the two nations.  “Faced with the irresponsible, illegal and disloyal behavior of Orano, a company owned by the French state, a state openly hostile to Niger, Niger has decided, in all sovereignty, to nationalize Somair,” the junta said in a statement read on Niger’s national television.  The decision comes amid a deepening rift between Paris and Niamey after a deterioration in 2023 when the military junta staged a coup to take over Niger. As a result, France…

The Strait of Hormuz is a key waterway that lies between Oman and Iran, and connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) describes it as the “world’s most important oil transit chokepoint.” At its narrowest point, the waterway is just 33 kilometers (21 miles) wide, with the shipping lane just two miles wide in either direction, making it crowded and perilous. Large volumes of crude extracted by OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq from oil fields across the Persian Gulf region and consumed…

For more than 60 years, Juliana Lumumba has had questions. Who murdered her father? How did the Americans help? What did the United Nations do? Did they stand idly by, even though he was under their protection? They are uncomfortable questions, political questions. And Juliana will not rest until she has answers. “You cannot be the child of Patrice Lumumba without this impacting your life” she says. Her gaze is composed as she looks out of the window of her house in Kinshasa, the capital of the  Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lumumba murder case could go to trial On…

Coco Gauff, the world No. 2 female tennis player, has called on social media companies to do more to tackle online abuse, describing the comments she receives as “gross.” On Tuesday, the WTA Tour, which runs women’s tennis, released a report that laid out the widespread abuse aimed at players online. The report noted that much of the abuse came from disgruntled gamblers, with 15 cases so serious that law enforcement was involved. Data provided by tech company Signify Group and detected using AI, revealed that there were around 8,000 “abusive, violent or threatening” comments sent to 458 players in 2024. More…

Members from across the European Parliament’s political spectrum on Wednesday condemned Hungary’s likely ban of an upcoming Pride event in Budapest and called on the EU executive branch to intervene. In March, the Hungarian Parliament passed a bill allowing the prohibition of public LGBTQ+ events on “child protection” grounds, and empowering police to use facial recognition technology to identify attendees. Weeks before far-right nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban had warned Budapest Pride organisers “should not even bother” to organize a 2025 event. Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony, a liberal political opponent of Orban, has pushed back by trying to hold a Pride celebration…

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was open to speaking to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as well as meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a midnight meeting with international news agencies on Wednesday. Putin spoke on a range of matters, including what he called a resolution to the war in Ukraine and the recent hostilities between Israel and Iran. Russia launched an illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Despite repeated attempts at negotiating an end to the war, including from US President Donald Trump, Putin has shown little interest in stopping the fighting. What did Putin say about…

War is expensive. Besides causing destruction, personal tragedies and deaths, it costs a lot of money to buy and mobilize equipment. It also costs manpower as Isreal — and its economy — is finding out on multiple fronts. Since the militant islamist group Hamas attacked the Jewish state on October 7, 2023, Israel has been engaged in intense fighting in Gaza. After that, Israel launched airstrikes into Lebanon as retaliation for cross-border Hezbollah missile and drone attacks. Last week, Israel struck deep within Iran with the aim of disabling its nuclear capabilities. Israel has big problems and big budgets With all…

Lauded pianist and author Alfred Brendel passed away quietly at his home in London on Tuesday at the age of 94. He gained fame for his sensitive interpretations of works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Liszt, among others.  Brendel was born on January 5, 1931, in northern Moravia in the present-day Czech Republic. The boy of German, Austrian, Italian and Slavic heritage grew up on the Adriatic coast in what is now Croatia. He went to school in Zagreb, studied at the Conservatory in Graz, Austria, then moved to Vienna in 1950 and to London in 1970, which was his home until his…

Appendix cancer is one of the rarest types of cancers, with cases generally limited to older adults, if ever, in cancer clinics. But a new study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine has found that the number of appendix cancer cases has increased dramatically — specifically in people born after the 1970s. While the number of people getting appendix cancer is still very low — just a few people per million get the disease per year — the incidence has at least tripled, or even quadrupled, in younger generations, compared with those born in the 1940s. What’s concerning health…