Author: DW

The international football player union FIFPRO reviewed how much players are playing, releasing its finidings in a report published on Monday. Moroccan star Achraf Hakimi, as a result of his treble-winning season with PSG and his commitments with the national team, has been under extreme physical strain. Last season, Hakimi, 26, played 69 matches, accumulating 6,371 minutes. This was a noticeable increase from his previous season, when he played 53 games and 4,869 minutes for club and country. Hakimi was not alone in playing 69 games in the last campaign. Bayern Munich’s Joshua Kimmich played the same number of matches and…

“Russia and Russian influence? No thank you!” This was the clear message sent out by an unexpectedly large majority of voters in Sunday’s parliamentary election in the Republic of Moldova. The winner by a clear margin was the ruling pro-European Action and Solidarity (PAS) party, which contrary to all opinion poll predictions in the run-up to the election garnered just over 50% of the vote, unexpectedly retaining its absolute majority. Even though it lost eight seats, it is still likely to have a majority of 55 of the 101 seats in parliament. The pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc alliance led by former…

Police detained dozens of people on Monday in Morocco, according to a local rights group and news agencies, as they sought to quash a third day of protests calling for education and health reforms. A heavy security presence was seen in cities such as the capital Rabat and Morocco’s largest city Casablanca as well as in Agadir, Tangier and Oujda. Authorities have been trying to prevent groups of young people from gathering since online calls circulated for protests over the weekend. Both AFP and Reuters news agencies cite journalists and witnesses as reporting seeing police arrest dozens of young protesters who…

“This is all so pointless. My life is hell,” says Bernd das Brot — Bernd the bread — one of Germany’s most unusual children’s TV characters. For 25 years, the perpetually grumpy loaf of bread has wandered through children’s television with world-weariness and dry quips. Now the sad loaf has gained viral appeal  in the US, after TV host John Oliver introduced the bad-tempered German character on his show, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” Bernd embodies the stereotype of a humorless German who always has something to complain about, Oliver dryly observed: “That’s the most German thing I’ve ever…

Hankavan is about an hour’s drive from Armenia’s capital Yerevan and is known for its campgrounds. Every summer, all kinds of programs draw students here. During the last week of August, more than 100 young people came for something new: learning about career paths in artificial intelligence (AI). A nonprofit called the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology organized the camp as part of their efforts to get young Armenians ready for tech jobs. On the last day of the program, Armenian tech professionals sat in circles with high school students from all over the country to share advice. One…

How did the EuroLeague come about? A quarter of a century ago, many of Europe’s top basketball clubs were dissatisfied with how the then-EuroLeague was being operated and marketed. That version of the EuroLeague was operated by FIBA, basketball’s global governing body and the clubs were seeking more control over revenue, schedules, and media rights. In 2000, a group of clubs established the current EuroLeague under the umbrella of the Union of European Leagues of Basketball (ULEB). The goal was a professional, commercially successful club competition, similar to football’s Champions League. The organizers were able to call it the “EuroLeague”…

The karearea, New Zealand’s only falcon, was crowned Bird of the Year in the country’s annual bird competition on Monday. This year, more than 75,000 voters from 123 countries flocked online to rank their favorite bird, according to Forest & Bird Chief Executive Nicola Toki. Voter participation was second only to the competition in 2023 when Last Week Tonight host John Oliver playfully volunteered as a campaign manager. “Behind the memes and mayhem is a serious message,” said Toki. New Zealand’s fastest bird Capable of flying 200 kilometers (124 miles) per hour to capture its prey, the karearea, the Indigenous…

Sixty-two years old at the time, Volodymyr Mykolaienko joined his local territorial defense force on the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. His hometown of Kherson, where he served as mayor from 2014 to 2020, was captured by Russian troops within weeks. The following month, soldiers arrested Mykolaienko on the street. He was interrogated, tortured, and taken as a prisoner to occupied Crimea, then on to a penal colony in Russia. Kherson remained under occupation for nine months, until Ukrainian troops liberated the city in November 2022. Mykolaienko spent more than three years in captivity before…

Miradie Tchekpo biggest dream has come true: She has landed a job as an interpreter working for a Chinese trading company in her home country of Benin.  “In middle school, I watched Chinese TV channels and dreamed of traveling to China and getting to know the culture,” she told DW. “So I studied Chinese … and attended courses for three years to gain a professional qualification in Chinese,” she said. After finishing school, Tchekpo enrolled at the Confucius Institute — China’s government-run institute for the promotion of its language and culture — at the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin. She hopes that one day she will get to look…

Chimpanzees regularly consume fermented fruit in the wild – ingesting significant amounts of alcohol in the process, according to a new studypublished by Science. Researchers led by Aleksey Maro from the University of California reported this month that each day the animals consume a dose equivalent to approximately one small bottle of beer for humans. In Uganda’s Kibale National Park and the Ivory Coast’s Taï National Park, the researchers analyzed the 20 most popular fruit varieties, whose ripe pulp contains an average alcohol content of 0.3%. Since a chimpanzee consumes around 4.5 kilograms of these fruits each day, the amount…