Vossische Zeitung - News from Berlin, Brandenburg, Europe and the whole world

Myanmar's junta suffered a fresh diplomatic blow Thursday as regional bloc ASEAN barred its top diplomat from attending an upcoming meeting of foreign ministers.

The Taliban are inching closer towards international recognition but any concessions Afghanistan's new rulers make will be on their terms, the regime's foreign minister said in an interview with AFP.

As a child, Roma actress and playwright Alina Serban didn't see herself represented on television, in movies or books, her stigmatised community shunned from the cultural mainstream.

Skeleton racer Kim Meylemans said Thursday she was "safe" and back in the Beijing Olympic Village having been released from a Covid isolation facility following a tearful post on Instagram.

Intimidating, stressful, nerve-racking, but great fun: just some of the reactions of the ski racers after Thursday's first men's downhill training run on the untested man-made Olympic speed slope.

At least twelve people were injured on the French Indian Ocean territory of La Reunion Thursday as tropical cyclone Batsirai skirted the island, hitting it with torrential rains and powerful winds and leaving all residents confined to their homes.

The Beijing Olympics will "change the scale of winter sports forever", IOC president Thomas Bach said Thursday, on the eve of a Games beset by concerns about human rights and Covid.

Only four Taiwanese athletes will compete at the Winter Olympics, in frosty temperatures rivalling Beijing and Taipei's relations -- which have plunged to their lowest point in years.

At least 20 people died and 74 more were hospitalized in a Buenos Aires suburb after consuming cocaine cut with a toxic substance, possibly opioids, Argentine authorities said Wednesday.

The wreck of Captain James Cook's famed vessel the Endeavour has been found off the coast of the US state of Rhode Island, Australian researchers said Thursday.

Canada moved to the brink of their first World Cup finals appearance in 36 years on Wednesday with a 2-0 win over El Salvador as the United States reignited their qualification campaign with victory against Honduras.

Spencer Dinwiddie delivered a triple-double of 14 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists to power the short-handed Washington Wizards to a 106-103 NBA victory over the 76ers in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

Revelations of rape and sexual assault at Rio Tinto are the latest in a series of scandals to hit the global mining giant, which is listed in London and Sydney.

France may be "red-hot favourites" to win the Six Nations according to England coach Eddie Jones, but several sides will fancy their title chances when spectators return for a 2022 edition that starts this weekend.

West African leaders hold a key summit on Thursday as a wave of coups buffet a region struggling with poverty and a long history of turbulence.

Asian markets were mixed Thursday, with a split between those suffering from profit-taking following a recent rally and those that were playing catch-up after a midweek break across much of the region.

Bill Belichick, who coached Tom Brady to six of his seven Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots, praised the now-retired superstar as the "best player in NFL history."

Scooping up handfuls of white crystals from coastal pools, a group of women in Yemen harvest salt -- a traditional industry proving to be a lifeline after seven years of war.

Scattered across Iraq lie more than 100 opulent palaces and villas built by former dictator Saddam Hussein -- some in use, many in ruins like much of the war-scarred country.

New Zealand will start easing some of the world's toughest pandemic border restrictions this month but will not fully reopen until October, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits Kyiv on Thursday in a bid to set the stage for a three-way summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin aimed at avoiding war in Ukraine.

The United States reignited their World Cup qualifying campaign on Wednesday with a 3-0 victory over Honduras.

A researcher focused on how discrimination has harmed the American economy and the damage downturns do to the poor, Lisa Cook would bring a new perspective to the US central bank.

Though set up as an institution operating above the partisan fray in Washington, the Federal Reserve has again become a political football, with Republicans and business groups attacking President Joe Biden's nominees to serve on the central bank's board.

A museum dedicated to NFTs -- the blockchain-based creations that have taken the artworld by storm -- has opened its doors in the United States.

Thousands of mansions in a remote corner of India once housed some of the nation's wealthiest bankers and traders but a century later most of them lie abandoned, their desolate remains a mute testament to lost riches.

Russia has a stake in crises around the world from Ukraine to Syria, Sudan and Mali -- and that is reflected in the active role it takes at the UN Security Council on issues both big and small, contrasting with the relative detachment of the United States.

Marcel Duchamp scandalised the art world in 1917 by submitting a urinal as his entry to a prestigious competition. A century later, an American artist known as Robness sparked his own controversy by selling an NFT of a rubbish bin for $252,000.

Thousands of artists beaver away every day creating images to sell as digital tokens (NFTs) in online exchanges. The market is booming, the most popular pieces can sell for millions, but outsiders may wonder why anyone would pay anything at all.

Troops from the US-led anti-jihadist coalition landed in northwest Syria Thursday in search of wanted militants, resulting in clashes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Facebook's parent firm Meta on Wednesday delivered a gloomy mix of a sharper-than-expected drop in profit, a decrease in users and threats to its ad business that plunged shares some 22 percent in after-hours trading.

A US intelligence agency said Wednesday that its newest spy satellite successfully launched into orbit atop a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.