Author: DW

Police fired tear gas at anti-government protesters Thursday evening in at least two Serbian cities, including the capital Belgrade and the northern city of Novi Sad. Anti-government protesters attacked the Novi Sad headquarters of the President Aleksandar Vucic’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, smearning it with red paint and smashing windows. The police or Vucic’s supporters, who have guarded the office for months, where nowhere to be seen, AP news agency reported. Police in full riot gear later cordoned off several blocks in the center of Novi Sad, Serbia’s second biggest city, and used tear gas to disperse the…

Mali’s military leadership has said it thwarted a coup attempt and arrested two generals as well as a French national who they say is a suspected foreign agent, among others. Security Minister General Daoud Aly Mohammedine announced the arrest of a group of military officers and civilians in a statement read out on state television late Thursday evening. The statement also confirmed the detention of dozens of soldiers in recent days. Rumors of the arrests had circulated for several days in Mali. The group had support from abroad, Mohmammedine said, and had allegedly attempted to destabilize Mali. What do we…

Renee Duering still remembers how painful it felt when an Auschwitz prisoner tattooed the camp number on her arm. “Be glad you’re getting a number, otherwise you’d end up straight in the oven,” the man told her. The Nazis gave her a choice: “Either you go to the Birkenau extermination camp, or become a subject for medical research. That won’t kill you.” Duering, who was born in 1921 in Cologne, chose the latter, becoming a human guinea pig in the hands of Nazi gynecologist, Carl Clauberg. She was one of hundreds of Jewish women who were subjected to sterilization experiments, and…

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the aggressor was hit with economic sanctions from the US, UK, European Union and others. These sanctions restricted domestic companies or individuals in how they trade and do business with Russia. The sanctions were an effort to make Russia change its course without resorting to direct military force. Since then, the sanctions have piled up. Russia’s foreign assets have been frozen, and a majority of Russian banks have been cut off from the global banking system.  To keep its economy going, Russia has redirected trade to other countries like China, India, Turkey and the…

During the midday prayers on March 28, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck central Myanmar along the Sagaing Fault.  With an epicenter close to Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, it was the most powerful earthquake to strike Myanmar since 1912. It caused widespread destruction of Mandalay’s infrastructure while reports have put the death toll between 3,700 and more than 5,000 people.  Its seismic impacts reached as far as Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, where it collapsed a 30-story skyscraper, claiming at least 92 lives.  Could seismologists have seen it coming?  Scientists had been anticipating a large earthquake along a segment of the fault, which had not ruptured since a…

Lara Schenk has never been one to be afraid of upping roots to pursue a new challenge in a foreign land. So perhaps it is not that surprising that the 25-year-old German took a leap of faith earlier this year, signing on to play in the world’s newest women’s professional soccer league, the Northern Super League (NSL). Since crossing the pond in April, Schenk has established herself in the starting 11 of the Montreal Roses, one of the NSL’s six founding clubs. For the only German player in Canada’s topflight, who describes herself as a “two-footed and aggressive defender,” the…

Two weeks after the European Commission laid out a plan to impose first-of-their-kind penalties on Israel, the proposal remains stalled due to disagreements among the bloc’s members. Germany is among the hold-outs asking for more time to review, European Union (EU) diplomats told DW. Without Berlin’s backing, the plan is unlikely to advance. “Humanitarian suffering in Gaza has reached unimaginable levels, with famine unfolding before our eyes,” the EU’s executive warned on Tuesday. In a bid to pressure Israel to change course, it proposed barring Israeli startups from accessing part of a pot of EU research funding known as “Horizon…

Kim Jong Un’s sister denied claims North Korea had removed some of its loudspeakers along its border with the South, saying Seoul is wrong to think of renewed dialogue between the two countries. “We have never removed loudspeakers installed in the border area and are not willing to remove them,” Kim Yo Jong said on Thursday. Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s powerful sibling, repeated previous North Korean statements that Pyongyang has no interest in reviving negotiations with the US and South Korea. She said an upcoming military drill planned between the two countries at the end of August is…

Needing to fill some space in the first issue of Germany’s Bild tabloid newspaper in 1952, comic artist Reinhard Beuthien came up with Lilli, a sensual character designed to attract male readers. Lilli’s titillating comic strip adventures were like scenes from an erotic film: Sometimes she talked about a long-distance truck driver who “helped out” when her car broke down, leaving her dress covered in oily hand prints. Another time she teases a policeman on a beach where two-piece swimsuits are banned, asking him: “Which part should I take off?” Who would have thought that a version of this sexualized caricature…

Fraudulent scientific research is on the rise and is jeopardizing medical research, experts have warned. A new study has found that networks of bad actors work together to publish bogus research. The findings, published in the journal PNAS this week, came from analyzing more than 5 million scientific articles published across 70,000 journals. “There are groups of editors conspiring to publish low-quality articles, at scale, escaping traditional peer review processes,” said the study’s lead author Reese Richardson, a social scientist at Northwestern University in the US. The research uncovered evidence of networks of scientific journal editors who frequently publish research that is…