World

Until a few months ago, life was relatively peaceful in Kyiv when compared with the situation near the war's front lines elsewhere in Ukraine. Now, as Russia expands its attacks on the capital, Kyiv has increasingly become a front-line city.  With too few shelters for the 4 million residents of Kyiv, subway stations double as makeshift dormitories. Starting at about 10 every night, people create sleeping areas with mattresses and small tents. Children snuggle up to adults; pets seek comfort from their owners or find a spot among strangers between the cold walls. "We're alive," Halyna told DW, holding her 5-year-old son, Roman, close. "We've been lucky once again." Most evenings — even when no air-raid siren has sounded — she takes the boy to the nearest subway station. Her apartment is l...

For months, drone strikes by Ukraine have forced the suspension of flights to and from airports in Russia. Moscow's Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Zhukovsky and Vnukovo airports have had to shut down operations almost daily in October, according to reports from the independent investigative media outlet Agentstvo. On some days, the airports were reportedly closed for up to nine hours. In early September, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine would seek to cut off the airspace around Moscow and other destinations in Russia. "Today, we would like to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who continues to use major Russian airports: Russian airspace will become completely unsafe," Zelenskyy said. The following day, Ukraine sent a corresponding w...

"Laila" awoke in the middle of the night for a glass of water, checked her phone almost by accident, and saw an email that made her stomach drop. The US would stop funding the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), one of the last places women can still study in the country. Laila said she sat on her bed, staring, her thoughts racing through the past five years and everything she had endured just to get an education. It had not been easy to find a way to study in Afghanistan after the Taliban outlawed women's education. The American University campus was already taken over by the Taliban, but she could study secretly through the university's online program. But now that the university is losing its financing, she told DW she and her classmates fear it will shut down entirely. Her na...

A sense of hope swept through Belgrade on Thursday evening as thousands gathered for the final rally of the Student List, the group of candidates put forward by the student movement that has been protesting against the government for almost exactly two years. The Student List is calling for an end to the current regime in Serbia via the ballot box in Sunday's parliamentary election. Many of those who attended the rally had spent days walking to the Serbian capital from all four corners of the country, turning the campaign finale into a display of solidarity and peaceful determination. "We have walked across Serbia from one end to the other, visited villages and neighborhoods, looked you in the eye and realized that we can count on you," biology student Arsa Stojanovic told the crowd. "...

Japanese Foreign Ministry officials were in Moscow this week in an attempt to contact a journalist arrested in Russia's far east on spying claims. Journalist Yuki Imai was arrested on October 14 by Russia's FSB security service in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island. Televised footage of the arrest showed FSB officers barging into his hotel room as he slept. The correspondent for the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper was accused of attempting to obtain information on soldiers in the region, which is near the Kiril islands, a geopolitical sore spot in Russia-Japan relations. Russian authorities quickly transferred him to Lefortovo Prison in Moscow, where a court ordered him to be held in pre-trial detention until at least December 12. If convicted, 34-year-old Imai faces up to 20 y...

The first confirmed Ebola patients in Kenya and Nigeria may have crossed paths at Uganda's Entebbe International Airport, according to African health officials, as new information from Switzerland contradicts Uganda's account of the Nigerian patient's travel history. Uganda, a country reporting no active Ebola infections, has become a focus of investigations into cases thousands of kilometers apart. Uganda insists it has no confirmed active cases of the deadly virus. Yet health authorities in Kenya and Nigeria are investigating Ebola infections involving people whose travel histories or contacts are connected to the East African nation. Both patients passed through Entebbe International Airport on October 3, according to Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response at th...

The recent death of an iconic male elephant in Sri Lanka has raised concerns over ongoing contact between humans and the giant animals, whose habitats have been greatly reduced. The elephant known as "Kavantissa" had been considered to be the tallest living male elephant in the Sri Lanka. Thought to be around 45 years old and measuring roughly 3.3 meters tall (11 feet), he roamed Sri Lanka's northwest near the village of Galgamuwa, and was widely admired for his majestic stature. In late September, villagers noticed the 5.5 ton-tusker (5,500 kg) was limping, and a closer look reveled a gunshot wound on his right leg. Despite the intervention of veterinary surgeons, the elephant died on October 16.  Sri Lanka records the highest number of elephant deaths annually and the second highest n...

Vietnam's Communist Party chief and president, To Lam, arrived in Brussels on Wednesday for an official visit to the European Union (EU) and Belgium in another sign that relations continue to expand.  The visit comes just days after Vietnam signed a free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), comprising Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Trade ties between Vietnam and Europe have deepened in recent years. The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), which took effect in August 2020, substantially expanded Vietnam's commercial ties with most European states. Amid global tariff wars, the EU-Vietnam relationship "is a welcome advertisement for keeping markets open," Khac Giang Nguyen, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, ...

The fallout from the October 13 protests was still visible when students and faculty from the University of Tirana gathered outside the Education Ministry in Albania's capital on Tuesday to express their continued discontent. Smashed windows have yet to be replaced; the walls are still black with soot from fires that broke out during the protests. Albania has seen nearly five months of peaceful anti-government protests, sparked initially when plans were made public that Jared Kushner — a son-in-law of US President Donald Trump — and associates intended to build a luxury hotel complex within a nature reserve. Since then, anti-government and anti-corruption protests have escalated. Now, college and high school students clash with police forces almost daily, with the fiercest clashes so far...

Videos of alleged police violence are going viral on French social media as a wave of protests grips France. One video shows the police beating a man to the floor then dragging him away unconscious. Another shows an officer grabbing a young man from behind, seemingly unprovoked, and dragging him by the neck. Another shows a young woman being hauled off with a twisted arm, screaming in pain. These videos could not be independently verified.  The French police have drawn renewed criticism from rights groups, not only because of their methods but also because of their use of stun grenades and rubber bullets. France has one of the most heavily armed police forces in Europe. During the student protests of the past weeks, several teenagers sustained life-changing injuries as a result: One had a...