Sports

The 2026 FIFA World Cup marks a turning point for African football. With the tournament expanded from 32 to 48 teams, the African continent is enjoying unprecedented representation on soccer's biggest stage. Ten African nations qualified for this year's World Cup: Morocco, Senegal, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tunisia, Algeria, Ghana and Cape Verde. In last week's opening match against Mexico — one of three host nations alongside the United States and Canada — South Africa faced a huge challenge in front of one of the tournament's loudest crowds. Though Mexico secured a 2–0 victory, Bafana Bafana, the nickname of South Africa's national football team, meaning "The Boys" in isiZulu, worked hard to move beyond their 2010 World Cup legacy.  The 201...

On the pitch, the focus in Germany during Sunday's FIFA World Cup match was on the national team's convincing 7–1 victory over Curaçao. Off the pitch, however, many social media users were fixated on something entirely different: an image of a fan inside the stadium wearing a German shirt, holding a German flag, and bearing a resemblance to Adolf Hitler. The image was shared across several platforms, amassing millions of views. This post on X, for example, has garnered more than 3 million views, while this one on Instagram has attracted over 460,000 likes.  The claim also spread in several languages, including Spanish on Facebook and Russian on Threads. Some posts also contained undertones of anti-German sentiment, such as a Reddit postthat sarcastically read: "It's always awesome to ...

At about 6 p.m. on August 21, 2025, the former Belarusian diplomat and sports official Anatol Kotau boarded a private yacht in northeastern Turkey. He said he would be home in a few days.   The yacht was officially bound for Russia — one of two countries with a warrant out for his arrest — but it is unclear whether Kotau knew its intended destination. What is known is that three hours into his journey, he stopped responding to messages.  He never returned home.  Using information from sources, documents, satellite imagery and leaked databases, DW and its partners, the Belarusian Investigative Center(BIC) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, have determined that Kotau was taken off the yacht by the Russian Coast Guard, a division of the FSB domestic intelligence agen...