Author: DW

In the Canadian capital, Ottawa, on Monday, the defense ministers of Norway and Germany, Tore Sandvik and Boris Pistorius , received military honors from their Canadian counterpart, David McGuinty, at the start of what might informally be described as a sales presentation. Sandvik and Pistorius want to convince the Canadians to join a German–Norwegian project that has been running since 2023, to procure standardized, modern submarines. They hope to secure an order from Canada of up to 12 units over the next 10 years. This would provide a significant boost to the German and Norwegian companies that are building these submarines. As…

North Korea test fired ballistic missiles on Wednesday, South Korea’s military has said. Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles flew east, with the South Korean Yonhap news agency saying it was launched toward the East Sea (also known as the Sea of Japan) off North Korea’s east coast, without specifying where they had landed. What else do we know about the latest missile launch from North Korea? South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said multiple short-range ballistic missiles, which were launched from an area to the south of the North Korean capital Pyongyang, had been detected. The South Korean military said the missiles flew around…

Over 30 million people in Sudan — 66% of the population — are currently in need of humanitarian assistance. More than 12 million have been forcibly displaced since the Sudanese civil war broke out in April 2023 between the country’s army and a powerful paramilitary group. Almost 4 million children under the age of 5 face severe and acute malnutrition. Women and girls are particularly exposed to sexual and gender-based violence. “In my experience, it’s the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” Samy Guessabi, country director in Sudan for the NGO Action Against Hunger, told DW. He was attending the event, “Khartoum Calling,” which was organized by…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the new currency of global power, and China is amassing it at scale. In 2017, China declared its ambition to become the world’s leading AI power by 2030 and has pumped in billions, spurring domestic innovation. Between the state and the private sector, the country is projected to spend nearly $100 billion (€85.76 billion) on AI in 2025 alone. So far this year, China has stunned the global tech community with the rise of DeepSeek, a startup whose large language model (LLM) rivals top Western brands like ChatGPT and Grok. DeepSeek delivers mostly comparable performance at a fraction of the cost…

After a frustrating false start, Afghanistan’s women’s national football team are set to play their first official match since 2021 in Morocco. On Monday, three days before the “FIFA Unites: Women’s Series” was due to kick off in the United Arab Emirates, football’s world governing body, FIFA, announced Morocco would be the new hosts. The tournament was taken out of the UAE after the Afghan players were denied visas to enter the country. Initially slated for October 23, the matches will now begin on October 26, giving players, coaches and organizers a tight timeframe to travel, acclimatize and train before the matches. Fourth team…

Social media influencers, public figures and local and international faith-based organizations are amplifying claims of a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria. They point to the wave of attacks on churches and Christian communities across the central and northern parts of the country. In one instance, US senator Ted Cruz said on social media platform X that Nigerian officials are ignoring and enabling “the mass murder of Christians by Islamist jihadists.” Cruz even introduced a bill aimed at sanctioning Nigeria for the persecution of Christians. The Nigerian government denies the claims. Minister of Information and National Orientation Mohammed Idris admits that Nigeria has security problems but the claims of…

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) convenes behind closed doors in Beijing this week for its fourth plenary session, with charting a five-year plan for the country’s social and economic roadmap topping the agenda. Right now, there are many structural issues with the economy that need to be addressed, and analysts say Chinese policymakers are balancing efforts to spark consumer spending, while at the same time stimulating growth for developing high-tech industries.  For decades, the world’s second-largest economy has been driven by export trade and infrastructure investments, while the third pillar, domestic consumption, has been neglected. As China’s export…

The cultural heritage stolen from Paris’ Louvre Museum on October 19 is priceless: the tiaras, brooches and necklaces from the time of Napoleon III are pieces of French history. The trail of the thieves who boldly robbed these French crown jewels remains cold. Investigators are examining links to Eastern European stolen goods networks that procure art objects on behalf of wealthy collectors — or use them as currency in illegal trade. Art hard to sell, unlike precious metals and gems Tim Carpenter, head of the art protection organization, Argus Cultural Property Consultancy, was the long-time head of the FBI’s art crimes division. He told…

Amazon’s cloud services unit, AWS, which provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals, experienced an outage Monday. The disruption caused widespread connectivity issues for major online companies around the world. According to the internet services monitoring platform Downdetector, Amazon’s own shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa all faced problems. AWS identified the issue as a problem with a regional gateway on the US East Coast. Hours later, it said “underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated,” and added most service operations were “succeeding normally now.” Disruption hits internet services The AWS outage was the most…

Four years since they last played an official match ahead of the devastation, destruction and displacement caused by the return of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s women are ready to play for their country once again. The FIFA Unites: Women’s Series will see the newly formed Afghanistan women’s refugee football team play against Chad, Libya and hosts the United Arab Emirates from October 23 to 29. While the games do matter, sending a message to the oppressive rulers of their homeland matters even more. “There are a lot of emotions coming up, a mix of excitement and looking forward to the tournament, but also,…